[26] For a list of central Proletkult officers elected at the 1920 congress see Proletarskaia kul'tura , no. 17/19 (1920), pp. 78–79.
― 103 ―
defender of workers' literature in one of the earliest disputes on proletarian culture before 1917.[27] He was a key participant in the Moscow Proletkult theater and became a member of the local executive committee in 1919. By 1920 he gained a place in the national Proletkult presidium. His numerous plays, focusing on the history of the revolutionary movement, were widely produced in workers' theaters by the end of the Civil War.[28]
Pavel Arskii, another member of this new cohort, was elected to the national governing board from the Petrograd organization. Like Pletnev, he had a few publications to his credit before 1917. Mobilized during the war, he took part in the February Revolution and had helped to storm the Winter Palace, although he did not join the Bolsheviks until 1918. An early member of the Petrograd Proletkult, Arskii contributed poetry to Proletkult journals and wrote plays for the Petrograd theater. His first literary collection, Songs of Struggle (Pesni bor'by ), was published in 1919.[29]
The Petrograd worker Georgii Nazarov, elected to the central committee in 1920 and again in 1921, was another national leader who gained recognition for his work in local organizations. A machinist by trade, he was the head of the cultural commission of the Baltic factory committee in Petrograd in 1917. Although Nazarov had participated in cultural circles before the revolution, the Proletkult developed both his dramatic and his organizational talents. When the director Aleksandr Mgebrov started a theater at the Baltic factory,
[27] V. F. Pletnev [V. Valerianov, pseud.], "K voprosu o proletarskoi kul'ture," Nasha zaria , no. 10/11 (1913), pp. 35–41; and idem, "Pervyi shag," Bor'ba , no. 7/8 (1914), pp. 44–46.
[28] Teatral'naia entsiklopediia (Moscow, 1961–1967); Sheila Fitzpatrick, The Commissariat of Enlightenment (Cambridge, Eng., 1970), p. 315; and the delegate list for the 1921 Proletkult congress, TsGALI f. 1230, op. 1,d. 144, l. 115.
[29] A. A. Mgebrov, Zhizn' v teatre (Moscow and Leningrad, 1933), vol. 2, p. 319; and G.I. Kopanev, ed., Geroi Oktiabria: Biografii aktivnykh uchastnikov podgotovki i provedeniia Oktiabr'skogo vooruzhennogo vosstaniia v Petrograde (Leningrad, 1967), vol. 1, pp. 107–8.
― 104 ―
Nazarov was a star student. He followed Mgebrov to the Petrograd Proletkult and there came into contact with the energetic theater organizer, Vasilii Ignatov. Nazarov went to Tula with Ignatov, where he took control of the local Proletkult theater and joined the executive committee. In 1922 Nazarov returned to Petrograd to assume the job of Proletkult president.[30]
The lathe operator Andrei Kozochkin from the Izhevsk organization also rose rapidly from the ranks to assume a position of responsibility. A Proletkult first opened in this factory town under the guidance of the Narkompros division. However, workers from the local metalworking plant were dissatisfied with its nonproletarian leadership and decided to restructure it. Kozochkin, himself the son of a metalworker, was part of the new organizing committee. Without any special training for the job, he took charge of the theater studio. He was soon elected president of the Izhevsk Proletkult and in this capacity was chosen to serve in the national central committee as a candidate member in 1920 and a full member in 1921.[31]
This new generation did not come to the Proletkult with established reputations, as Kirillov had done. Although they were all members of the Communist Party, their credentials were newly minted compared to someone like Samobytnik-Mashirov, who had worked on the prerevolutionary Pravda . With less revolutionary and party experience they also had fewer commitments to other institutions. Kozochkin, for example, held no posts outside the Proletkult.[32]
These national leaders were the most visible but by no means the only examples of Proletkultists from the lower
[30] Mgebrov, Zhizn' v teatre , vol. 2, p. 304; the meeting of the Tula Proletkult presidium, January 9, 1919, TsGALI f. 1230, op. 1, d. 1537, l. 3; the local questionnaire from the Tula organization, d. 117, l. 105; and "Lichnaia anketa," d. 118, ll. 27 ob.–28.
[31] "Doklad o deiatel'nosti Izhevskogo Proletkul'ta," TsGALI f. 1230, op. 1, d. 1221, l. 1.
[32] "Lichnaia anketa," 1922, TsGALI f. 1230, op. 1, d. 118, l. 43 ob.
― 105 ―
classes who rose to high positions. Lower-level organizations rarely provided detailed biographical information on their staff. However, if the delegates to the 1921 Proletkult congress are any indication, the number of workers in leadership positions increased the further down one moved on the hierarchical ladder. Of the thirty-four delegates serving as executive officers in local organizations, only fourteen (41 percent) had working-class occupations. However, figures for presidium members, who served on the large collective governing boards, show a different picture: twenty-four of thirty-three representatives (73 percent) were from the working class.[33]
The same definitional problems that complicated debates about Proletkult membership recurred in discussions on leadership. What exactly was a proletarian leader? Judging by factory employment alone, someone like Kalinin would not qualify because his time at the bench lay far in the distant past. Nor would V. M. Blinkov, the self-educated baker who headed the Saratov literary studio, qualify nor Anton Chuvinok, an office worker who sat on the Tula Proletkult presidium.[34] But clearly for many participants lower-class origins, or evidence of proletarian sympathies, were just as important as a current factory job. This opened up the leadership to a very broadly defined proletariat. At the same time, it made it much easier for intellectuals to justify their place in this working-class movement.