[9] A. Mashirov, "Zadachi proletarskoi kul'tury," Griadushchee , no. 2 (1918), p. 10.
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Kalinin warned that intellectuals possessed a different worldview than the working class. No matter how sympathetic they were, they still would draw workers away from proletarian forms of expression.[10]
Such outbursts revealed the lower classes' longstanding distrust of the intelligentsia, but they served mainly a rhetorical function. As president of the Petrograd Proletkult, Samobytnik-Mashirov helped to recruit intellectuals to his programs. Kalinin shared the leadership of the central Proletkult with his friends and mentors, the intellectuals Bogdanov and Lebedev-Polianskii. Many other lower class participants welcomed intellectuals' aid without any ambivalence at all.
The national organization contributed to the confusion, sending out very mixed messages on this complex issue. Proletkult theorists worried that the intelligentsia might gain control of the creative processes in local organizations, and they warned about the dangers this posed to proletarian culture. But they also recognized that the movement could not survive without some intellectual aid. In the words of the first Proletkult president Lebedev-Polianskii, the socialist intelligentsia who came to the Proletkult had kul'turnyi stazh , cultural experience.[11] That was one asset a cultural organization could not forgo.
Torn between suspicion and need, the central Proletkult tried to discover ways to harness intellectuals' experience while limiting their influence. At the first national conference delegates decided that the Proletkult would make use of intellectuals' skills "as far as possible."[12] The 1919 national charter
[10] Fedor Kalinin, "Proletariat i iskusstvo," Proletarskaia kul'tura , no. 3 (1918), p. 13. See also I. Sadof'ev, "Na solnechnyi put'," Griadushchee , no. 10 (1918), pp. 15–16 and S. Kluben', "S burzhuaznogo Parnasa—v Proletkul't: O 'proletarizatsii pisatelei,' " Griadushchaia kul'tura , no. 3 (1919), pp. 17–18.
[11] "Revoliutsiia i kul'turnye zadachi proletariata," Protokoly pervoi Vserossiiskoi konferentsii proletarskikh kul'turno-prosvetitel'nykh organizatsii, 15–20 sentiabria, 1918 g. , ed. P. I. Lebedev-Polianskii (Moscow, 1918), p. 20.
[12] Ibid., p. 29.
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spelled out just how far that was. A real knowledge of proletarian spirit and character could only be achieved through long exposure to workers' lives and customs, something very difficult for nonworkers to achieve. Therefore, sympathetic nonproletarian elements would be limited to technical and auxiliary roles in Proletkult creative work.[13]
Yet this simple solution, which turned intellectuals into outside helpmates in an organization supposedly composed of and led by workers, proved to be very difficult to implement. The old intelligentsia's cultural experience granted them authority that the rules of collective management could not confine. Committed artists and educators gained considerable influence in local circles and left an indelible mark on the movement's cultural programs.
By addressing the problems of leadership and class identity, Proletkultists wrestled with the contradictions posed by the socialist revolution itself. Could egalitarianism be reconciled with skill and talent? Was it possible to nurture a new intelligentsia without conferring power on the old? In the variety of answers that participants found to these questions they inadvertently acknowledged the limits of proletarian power and redefined the language of class control.