[72] This point is particularly emphasized in Husband, Workers' Control , pp. 34–43.
[73] See Smith, Red Petrograd , pp. 246–52.
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tion and war, combined with the disastrous state of the economy to contribute to the failure of workers' control.
The Proletkult's own attempt to promote proletarian leadership was on a much more modest scale. Its primary goal was to foster workers' independence within its own circles and studios. Yet even this limited experiment met with questionable results, as was clearly illustrated by the presence of intellectuals at all levels of the organization. As in the case of factory councils, this pattern can in part be traced to the severe economic and political disruptions of the early Soviet years. The Civil War weakened the proletariat's cultural vanguard, the very constituency for whom the organization was intended. But external factors alone were not to blame. Proletkult participants voluntarily chose a skilled and experienced leadership, often at the expense of class purity.
The visible role of intellectuals in the Proletkult was a source of conflict in many local organizations. According to one report in Proletarian Culture trade unionists in the provinces frequently complained that intellectuals held too much power. Disputes emerged over whether the new culture would be made "from above" by intellectuals or "from below" by the workers themselves.[74] As one speaker at a Moscow conference protested, it seemed that the organization was led by representatives of the bourgeoisie, people without any understanding of the proletarian milieu or proletarian creativity. In the provinces they called the Proletkult "Intelligentkult."[75]
These tensions could lead to bitter power struggles. The Communist Party division in Orsha, Mogilev province, shut down the local Proletkult because it reportedly had no work-
[74] "Khronika Proletkul'ta," Proletarskaia kul'tura , no. 6 (1919), p. 30.
[75] V. A. Razumov, "Rol' rabochego klassa v stroitel'stve sotsialisticheskoi kul'tury v nachale revoliutsii i v gody grazhdanskoi voiny, 1917–1920," in Rol' rabochego klassa v razvitii sotsialisticheskoi kul'tury , ed. M. P. Kim and V. P. Naumov (Moscow, 1967), pp. 18–19. The speaker is identified as a student named Efremenkov.
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ers in it. In the town of Brasovo, Orel province, participants threatened to expel all intellectuals because they wanted too much power. The vice president of the Kologriv Proletkult was ousted when a rival candidate exposed him as an intellectual careerist who had worked his way into proletarian organizations under false pretenses.[76]
Intellectuals also resisted the Proletkult's attempts to make use of their talents. Numerous local organizations complained that they had trouble attracting and keeping a trained staff. When the Izhevsk organization was restructured under worker leadership, the new presidium still wanted the help of the local intelligentsia, but its help was difficult to procure. The Proletkultists there complained that the technical staff had undermined comradely relations by asking for higher wages.[77] An organization in the village of Tomna reported that it had extreme difficulties finding teachers. It had invited the local intelligentsia to take part, but no one responded.[78]
However, some of the battles that appeared to center on workers' control were in fact conflicts between different groups of intellectuals who claimed to represent workers' interests. In the Petrograd Proletkult, for example, a struggle developed between two factions advocating different theatrical programs. The young director Dmitrii Shcheglov, a proponent of realism, was called to task for diverging from the symbolist direction of other Petrograd studios. According to Shcheglov's memoirs, Samobytnik-Mashirov, the proletarian leader of the Petrograd organization, criticized him for the independent direction of his classes and then berated himself for giving an intellectual so much control. Shcheglov recalled
[76] "Khronika Proletkul'ta," Proletarskaia kul'tura , no. 6 (1919), p. 30; "Rost Proletkul'ta," Proletarskaia kul'tura , no. 9/10 (1919), p. 31; and the correspondence from the Kologriv organization to the center, November 5, 1919, TsGALI f. 1230, op. 1, d. 1278, ll. 43–44.