[6] Zenovia A. Sochor, Revolution and Culture (Ithaca, 1988), pp. 137–38.
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the best example of the new kind of worker-intellectual.[7] The achievements of this gifted individual and others like him symbolized the abilities of the entire proletariat.
Inevitably, this complex interrelationship between the individual and the collective caused confusion. Not only was there ample room for power abuses, but organizations were often torn between conflicting goals. Should they devote their resources to the education and training of the proletariat as a whole? The advocates of this radical course denounced all forms of hierarchy, including the cultivation of a worker-elite to stand at the forefront of the proletariat.[8] Or should they nurture the talents of the most promising workers? Those in favor of this position believed that it was the best way to show the accomplishments of the working class and the power of proletarian culture. Each position brought its own dangers. If the Proletkult was too egalitarian, then it could easily turn into a basic educational movement whose activities were barely distinguishable from those of Narkompros. If it catered to the most sophisticated, it could lose its ties to the masses.
The role of the old intelligentsia posed equally difficult dilemmas. Rancorous debates about intellectuals' place in a proletarian movement began at the founding conference in 1917 and continued unabated throughout the Proletkult's history. In a revolutionary world split between a plebeian "us" versus a patrician "them," the intelligentsia was easily singled out as an implacable class enemy. Proletkult publications bristled with denunciations of the educated elite. The worker-writer Aleksei Samobytnik-Mashirov insisted that the Proletkult rely on the proletarian intelligentsia alone. "Only in it can there be a guarantee of proletarian culture"[9] Fedor
[7] A. A. Bogdanov, "Novyi tip rabotnika," in Sbornik pamiati F. I. Kalinina (Rostov on Don, 1920), pp. 33–38.
[8] See the denunciation of any kind of intelligentsia in R., "Sushchnost' intelligentsii," Griadushchaia kul'tura , no. 1 (1918), p. 20.