The Ideals of Proletkult Leadership
Proletkult theorists posed challenging questions about authority, class identity, and expertise in the new revolutionary society. They hoped to nurture an ethos of socialism that was based on the spirit of collectivism. At the same time, they wanted to advance new proletarian intellectuals to prove that the working class had the skills and the resources to take charge. Finally, they intended to make use of the talents of the old intelligentsia in a way that would augment, not inhibit, proletarian creativity. These were daunting and sometimes contradictory goals.
For Proletkultists socialism meant the victory of the collective over bourgeois individualism, the victory of "we" over "I." The principle of collectivism pervaded Proletkult organizational guidelines: power was delegated to groups rather than to individuals. The national charter gave control to large leadership councils elected at periodic conferences.[3] There were no written guidelines about the class makeup of the leadership, surely because Proletkult planners assumed that a collective of worker-members would select a collective of worker-leaders. The rules also did not describe power relationships within the leadership councils; there were no instructions about conventional offices like president, vice president, or secretary. This same commitment to collectiv-
[3] "Plan organizatsii Proletkul'ta," Proletarskaia kurl'tura , no. 6 (1919), pp. 27–28.
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ism emerged in any number of local manifestoes and guidelines. Participants in one Kolpino art section declared that they wanted "neither literary generals nor colonels." Their group would be composed of equals who might know a little more or a little less.[4]
Despite this commitment to egalitarianism, many local groups followed the organizational patterns set by the national Proletkult and common practice, choosing presidents, subordinate officers, and the leaders of artistic divisions. Ideally, these officials were elected at periodic conferences and could be recalled if they abused their position, but these democratic principles were not always realized. Some circles began work without founding conferences, and others never reconvened after the opening session.[5] Of course, even when leaders were confirmed through elections, they could exercise considerable personal influence over local cultural agendas.
This tension between group leadership and personal authority was partially implicit in the organization's goals. The foremost Proletkult theorist, Aleksandr Bogdanov, did not believe that collectivism meant the denial of individual accomplishment. Only selfish bourgeois individualism would be extinguished under socialism. Human individuality, separate but tied to the good of the collective, would flower in the new society.[6] In less abstract terms many Proletkultists were proud of the talents of individual worker-artists and organizers. When Fedor Kalinin, the best-known proletarian leader, died in early 1920, the Proletkult press abounded with moving remembrances of his exploits, and Bogdanov praised him as
[4] "Ot literaturnoi sektsii Kolpinskogo Proletkul'ta," Mir i chelovek , no. 1 (1919), p. 10.
[5] Both the Izhevsk and Pudemskii factory Proletkults began without conferences. The Archangel organization reported only one conference between its founding in early 1920 and late 1921. See local questionnaires in Tsentral'nyi Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Literatury i Iskusstva [henceforth cited as TsGALI] f. 1230, op. 1, d. 117, ll. 10, 54 ob.; d. 118, l. 39.