[9] A.A. Mgebrov, Zhizn' v teatre (Moscow and Leningrad, 1933), vol. 2, pp. 408–10.
[10] M. T., "V Moskovskom Proletkul'te," Narodnoe prosveshchenie , no. 32 (1919), p. 20.
[11] "Organizatsiia Kostromskogo Proletkul'ta," Sbornik Kostromskogo Proletkul'ta , no. 1 (1919), p. 109.
― 128 ―
in her classes and kept a close record of her students' progress. In Tambov the musician Vasilev-Buglai shaped the Proletkult's first choir from the remnants of a church chorus. He not only planned what the choir would sing, he also arranged to give his students classes in political economy.[12]
At the end of the Civil War the Proletkult was harshly criticized for its "isolated laboratory methods," which supposedly cut off its work from the population at large. However, Proletkult studios were never really laboratories in any meaningful sense of the word. To begin with, artistic collectives were not stable enough to form a cohesive creative environment. Both the staff and the student body changed constantly because of wartime recruitments, housing and heating crises, and uncertain funding. A Moscow district art studio first opened in 1918 with almost one hundred students, but as the winter descended most abandoned the unheated quarters. A few months later only a dedicated core of twenty-five was left that was willing to brave the cold.[13] Leaders of the small Parfenev Proletkult in Kostroma province complained that their most talented instructors and members had departed for the front in the summer of 1919.[14]
The word "laboratory" implies that studio work was carefully monitored and perfected before it was brought to light, but this was not the case. Instead participants presented their creations to the public at every opportunity. Art studios, for example, made posters, banners, and emblems for unions and helped to decorate agitational trains and boats. In the summer of 1919 the Tula art workshop published a proud production report announcing that its students had made five
[12] V. Smyshliaev, "Opyt instsenirovka stikhotvoreniia Verkharna 'Vosstanie,' " Gorn , no. 2 (1919), pp. 82–90; a report by the Kologriv instructor Rozova, 1919, TsGALI f. 1230, op. 1, d. 1278, ll. 79–82; and Dmitrii Vasil'ev-Buglai, "Na fronte v 1918 godu," Sovetskaia muzyka , no. 2 (1940), pp. 12–15.
[13] E. Lozovaia, "O raionnom Moskovskom Proletkul'te," Vestnik zhizni , no. 6/7 (1919), p. 141.