[37] See Roslavets's report on the Moscow Proletkult's music division in July 1920 in Stepanova, Muzykal'naia zhizn' Moskvy , p. 291.
[38] On Konenkov see Gorn , no. 2/3 (1919), p. 127; on Katurkin see the delegate list to the 1921 national congress, TsGALI f. 1230, op. 1, d. 144, l. 127.
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simple drawing classes to lessons in architecture and stage design.[39]
To enrich the work of beginning writers, literary divisions sponsored lecture series and seminars. Tambov studios gave classes in the theory of poetic creation, along with the history of drama and prose. In Moscow interested students could choose courses on the history of culture, the literature of the nineteenth century, and the history of the theater, among many other offerings.[40] Vladislav Khodasevich, a very disgruntled lecturer in the Moscow Proletkult, gave seminars on Pushkin's work.[41]
Many aspiring Proletkult authors took the nineteenth century classics as their models rather than the stirring themes of the revolution. In the pages of provincial publications one can find works that seem far removed from the social conflagration of the Civil War. A poem called "Here and There," published in Kologriv's Life of the Arts , sounded like the conscience-stricken call of the prerevolutionary intelligentsia. It contrasted the life of the decadent rich to that of the poor.
Here—a night without hope, a night without end.
There—a bacchanalian feast and wonderful dreams.
Oh, great, magnanimous, and eternal God,
When will we all become equals?[42]
Other authors avoided politics altogether. They composed lyric incantations of nature, filled with winter skies and passing thunderstorms. Leonid Tsinovskii, the self-educated son of Petrograd factory workers, was a Red Army propagandist,
[39] Griadushchaia kul'tura , no. 3 (1919), p. 25; and Proletkul't (Tver), no. 1/2 (1919), p. 45.
[40] On Tambov see Griadushchaia kul'tura , no. 4/5 (1919), inside back cover; on Moscow see N. Pavlovich, "Rabota literaturno-izdatel'skogo otdela," Gorn , no. 1 (1918), pp. 44–45.
[41] V. Khodasevich, Literaturnye stat'i i vospominaniia (New York, 1954), pp. 325–31.
[42] Chaika, "Zdes' i tam," Zhizn' iskusstv , no. 3 (1918), p. 7.
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Communist Party member, and Proletkult leader. In the midst of the revolutionary upheaval, he published these lines:
In pearl strands under a bridal veil,
In robes of woven silver,
The white grove of birch trees
Stands immovably frozen
As if bewitched by a dream.[43]
The prevalence of prerevolutionary forms in Proletkult workshops, publications, and public performances discouraged many of those who hoped to find the foundations for original, autonomous creative work. Lebedev-Polianskii, the Proletkult president, was very disappointed by the writing in provincial journals. Not only was it stylistically weak, but he also felt that it depicted the revolution in "purely democratic," nonproletarian terms.[44] The futurists, who believed themselves to be the real creators of revolutionary culture, faulted the Proletkult at every opportunity for its cultural conservatism.[45]
Without a doubt, Proletkult studios helped to inculcate respect for prerevolutionary high culture, thereby contributing to the elevation of that culture within Soviet society. Nikolai Roslavets, who taught in the Moscow organization, wrote a positive assessment of the movement's accomplishments in 1924, long after it had been discredited and had sunk into relative insignificance. In his view the Proletkult had attracted the best intellectuals and offered the masses serious artistic training. "Now we can say with conviction that precisely the Proletkult should be given the honor of saving Russian artistic culture."[46]
[43] L. Tsinovskii, "Sad," Tsvety truda (Archangel, 1922), p. 10. On Tsinovskii's background see "Lichnaia anketa," TsGALI f. 1230, op. 1, d, 118, ll. 60–61.
[44] P. I. Lebedev-Polianskii [V. Polianskii, pseud.], "Poeziia sovetskoi provintsii," Proletarskaia kul'tura , no. 7/8 (1919), pp. 43–49, 56–57.
[45] See, for example, O. M. Brik, "Nalet na futurizm," Iskusstvo kommuny , no. 10 (1919), p. 3.
[46] Nikolai Roslavets, "Sero' let Oktiabria v muzyke," Muzykal'naia kul'tura , no, 3 (1924), pp. 184–86, quotation p. 184.
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Nonetheless, it would be wrong to conclude that Proletkultists were merely engaged in a process of assimilation. Through their efforts students transformed the artistic material to which they were exposed. Participants made their "conservative" repertoire revolutionary by placing it in new contexts. Ostrovsky plays performed on an open stage for Red Army soldiers conveyed a different meaning than the same works put on by a professional troupe. Exposure to the arts in itself had an emancipatory power. As one woman worker from a Proletkult club in Kostroma explained:
In this fine building we pass the best days of our lives. We rest from daily labor and cares, studying all that is good and worthy, studying things we never knew or saw before. Comrade workers! Remember that we used to live as oppressed slaves. We did not understand what music was, what literature was, and many other fine things. Now in our club we workers study subjects that were once unknown to us. Now we understand that we are people like everyone else and that we have even more right to live than others because everything is made by our hands.[47]
Worker-Centered Art
Clearly not all Proletkultists were content to study the culture of the past; many hoped to find a distinctive working-class art that would embody the spirit of socialism. The aesthetics of this genre were never very clearly defined, even by the organization's most enthusiastic advocates. For Bogdanov proletarian creation would evolve from the labor process and express the workers' collective ethos; it would serve as a means to organize and articulate the proletariat's unique vision of the world. But these principles offered few guidelines for either form or content.[48] Lebedev-Polianskii was only slightly more
[47] V. Pashkina, in "Vpechatleniia rabochikh ot klubnoi zhizni," Sbornik Kostromskogo Proletkul'ta , no. 1 (1919), p. 38.
[48] See A. A. Bogdanov, "Chto takoe proletarskaia poeziia," Proletarskaia kul'tura , no. 1 (1918), pp. 12–22; idem, "Proletariat i iskusstvo," Protokoly pervoi konferentsii , pp. 72–79; and idem, O proletarskoi kul'ture , pp. 104–99.
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specific. He believed that the new art had to focus on the city and the workplace as the loci of the proletariat's creative powers.[49]
The worker-centered art composed by Proletkult writers, painters, musicians, and playwrights came in many different forms. Most was stylistically conservative and followed standard artistic conventions. But in contrast to the classics, Proletkult artists crafted poems, songs, plays, and paintings that lauded the powers and virtues of the victorious proletariat and depicted the future of the revolution in grandiose, utopian terms. Critics of the 1920s and 1930s, who sought either more realism or more innovation, named this genre "revolutionary romanticism."[50]
This celebratory style was best developed in literature, where many worker-writers had begun their publishing careers long before the revolution. The best-known Proletkult authors, Pavel Bessalko, Mikhail Gerasimov, Vladimir Kiril1ov, Aleksei Samobytnik-Mashirov, and Ilia Sadofev, helped to set the tone for workers' literature during the Civil War. Their work was not all of a piece, nor was it sui generis. Numerous literary critics have traced the influence of Lermontov, Nekrasov, Verkhaeren, Whitman, Briusov, Blok, and Maiakovskii in Proletkult creations.[51]
Nonetheless, these authors did address common themes
[49] P. I. Lebedev-Polianskii [V. Polianskii, pseud.], "Motivy rabochei poezii," Proletarskaia kul'tura , no. 3 (1918), pp. 1–12.
[50] See, for example, A. Voronskii, "O gruppe pisatelei 'Kuznitsa,'" Krasnaia nov ', no. 13 (1923), pp. 297–312; A. Lezhnev, "Proletkul't i proletarskoe iskusstvo," Krasnaia nov' , no. 19 (1924), pp. 272–87, no. 20 (1924), pp. 268–82; and V. Sytyrin, "O blagorodnykh predkakh, neblagorodnykh potomkakh," Na literaturnom postu , no. 3 (1930), pp. 15–30.
[51] I. S. Eventov, ed., Poeziia v bol'shevistskikh izdaniiakh, 1901–1917 (Leningrad, 1967), pp. 39–40; K. V. Driagin, Pateticheskaia lirika proletarskikh poetov ephokhi voennogo kommunizma (Viatka, 1933), pp. 93–119; and Martynova, "Problema kollektivizma," pp. 59–68.
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that made their work distinctive. The revolution was central to their writing. It was presented as a festival made by and for the proletariat. They looked to the glorious future that socialism would initiate. Most important, they used their work to praise workers and workers' collectives, often in inventive and hyperbolic language. Workers were giants, titans, and masters capable of anything. As Vladimir Kirillov wrote in his poem "To the Proletariat":
O, many-faced (mnogolikii ) ruler of the world
Your faith—reason; your strength—labor.
. . .
Beneath your dark shirt, in your stern heart
You carry the sun of a new life.[52]
In Proletkult writing symbols of progress and beauty were drawn from the lives of industrial laborers, something apparent in the titles of many poems: "Iron Flowers" (Gerasimov), "The Iron Messiah" (Kirillov), "Machine Paradise" (Samobytnik-Mashirov), "We Grow from Iron" (Gastev). Industrial imagery was so predominant that one contemporary critic called proletarian writers' work "machinism."[53]
The literature of this older generation of Proletkult authors dominated the most important journals in the two capitals and was given a central place in provincial publications as well. Aspiring new writers looked to the creations of their established colleagues, who took their didactic functions very seriously. The editorial board of Petrograd's The Future , led by Bessalko, Kalinin, Kirillov, and Samobytnik-Mashirov, published rejection notices that betray their sense of purpose and also their sense of superiority. "Save your time and ours, comrades," one such notice read. "There is no point wasting time reading or writing poems like the ones you have sent. They are hopelessly weak." Prospective authors were often
[52] Vladimir Kirillov, "Proletariatu," in Stikhotvoreniia i poemy , by Vladimir Kirillov, p. 33.
[53] L. N. Kleinbort, Ocherki narodnoi literatury, 1880–1923 gg.: Belletristiki (Leningrad, 1924), p. 267.
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taken to task for using old and dated imagery, but the most critical responses were saved for those who addressed "non-proletarian" themes. One who bemoaned his fate was admonished, "That's a hopeless task, comrade. To struggle with fate is like fighting with windmills. The proletariat believes in the power of collective reason, not in fate." They taunted another who sent in a poem titled "To My Weary Soul." In the editors' opinion such intellectual rubbish did not belong on the pages of a proletarian journal.[54]
The industrial imagery so important to the first generation of Proletkult authors was emulated in the provinces. In journals with names such as Glow of the Factories (Zarevo zavodov ), The Hammer (Molot ), and Our Furnace (Nash Gorn ) provincial writers praised the factory, workers' collectives, and the glorious future of socialism, which was to be built by proletarian hands. As one Proletkultist in Saratov wrote:
Here they are, these calloused hands!
These huge rakes
That pierce the depths of the earth
With fingers of red steel!
Here they are, these calloused hands!
They will build a home
For freedom, art, and science
With no room for pain or suffering.[55]
Proletarian poetry was used as a model for other artistic forms. One of the first Proletkult plays, Vasilii Ignatov's Dawn of the Proletkult (Zori Proletkul'ta ), was actually a compendium of popular poems tied together by symbolic figures, among them a young girl in red representing the Communist Party.[56] Well-known poems were also put to music to create what was
[54] Griadushchee , no. 1 (1919), p. 24; no. 2/3 (1919), p. 32.
[55] Sergei Stradnyi, "Ruki," from Pod Oktiabrem , a Saratov Proletkult publication, reprinted in Z. S. Papernyi and R. A. Shatseva, eds., Proletarskie poety pervykh let sovetskoi epokhi (Leningrad, 1959), pp. 452–53.
[56] L. Tamashin, Sovetskaia dramaturgiia v gody grazhdanskoi voiny (Moscow, 1961), pp. 44, 52.
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known as "revolutionary hymns," a favorite method in the Petrograd Proletkult. At the opening of the main Proletkult building in Petrograd on May 1, 1918, the choir, under the direction of the composer Ianis Ozolin, performed "Workers' Palace" ("Rabochii dvorets") to the words of Aleksandr Pomorskii's poem and "May Day" ("Pervyi mai") to the words of Kirillov's poem.[57] The central Proletkult leader Fedor Kalinin was so impressed by this approach that he wanted revolutionary hymns to form the basis of the Proletkult's musical curriculum.[58]
Proletkult writers also tried their hands at plays, creating agitational and inspirational works that depicted workers' struggles in the revolution and Civil War. One of the most successful was The Bricklayer (Kamenshchik ) by Pavel Bessalko, who had studied with Lunacharskii in Paris.[59] This play is an allegorical tale about an architect who designs tall buildings and the worker who executes his plans. The architect is afraid of heights and dies trying to overcome his fears. When the revolution begins, the bricklayer, who has now studied architectural theory, assumes his former employer's job. He starts to construct a huge "tower of the commune," a revolutionary tower of Babel that will end national divisions between workers and inspire a single international language. The play discusses themes dear to the hearts of Proletkult theorists, including the need for workers to take over the tasks of intellectuals. As one laborer tells the protagonist, "It is good that you studied the art of building. Workers will trust you to construct the tower. You are ours; we are proud that you are one of our own."[60] The play ends as the bricklayer scales the
[57] V. Ignatov, "Otkrytie Dvortsa Proletarskoi Kul'tury," Griadushchee , no. 3 (1918), pp. 4–5.
[58] Proletkult central committee meeting, July 5, 1919, TsGALI f. 1230, op. 1, d. 3, ll.71 ob.–72.
[59] Bessalko, who died of typhus in early 1920, is commemorated in A. V. Lunacharsky, Revolutionary Silhouettes , trans, and ed. Michael Glenny (New York, 1968), pp. 149–53.
[60] P. Bessal'ko, Kamenshchik, Plamia , no. 33 (1918), pp. 2–7, quotation p. 6.
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tower to place a red flag at the top. A popular favorite in Proletkult organizations, The Bricklayer was also used as a model for theatrical improvisations in the Red Army.[61]
Valerian Pletnev, an important Moscow leader and head of the national Proletkult after 1920, became one of the organization's best-known playwrights. His theme was the history of the workers' struggle and the evolution of the revolutionary movement in Russia. By 1921 Pletnev's plays were standard fare in many provincial organizations and workers' clubs.[62] Among his most popular works were the following: The Avenger (Msititel '), a heroic tale of self-sacrifice during the last days of the Paris Commune that was inspired by the work of the French author Léon Cladel; Strikes (Stachki ), based on a story by Aleksei Gastev about youths who engage in a labor protest in prerevolutionary Russia; Improbable, but Possible (Neveroiatno, no vozmozhno ), a farce about the Provisional Government; and Lena , about workers' lives during the strike that led up to the Lena massacre.[63]
The Civil War itself became the subject matter of Proletkult drama. Pavel Arskii, from the Petrograd organization, wrote a short agitational piece, For the Red Soviets (Za krasnye sovety ), depicting an assault by White forces on a peasant village and their brutalization of women and children. It was used by the Petrograd troupe and by the Red Army to discourage desertion.[64] When the Moscow Proletkult went to the Polish front in
[61] A. Z. Iufit, ed., Russkii sovetskii teatr, 1917–1921: Dokumenty i materialy (Leningrad, 1968), pp. 318–19.
[62] See local Proletkult questionnaires sent to the center in 1921, TsGALI f. 1230, op. 1, d. 118, ll. 27, 46, 9; and A. K. Kolesova, "Prakticheskaia deiatel'nost' rabochego kluba v 1917–1920 godakh," Uchenye zapiski Moskovskogo gosudarstvennogo instituta kul'tury , vol. 17 (1968), p. 244.
[63] V. F. Pletnev, Lena (Rostov on Don, 1921); idem, Mstitel ' (Moscow, 1922); idem, Neveroiatno, no vozmozhno (Moscow, 1921); and idem, Stachki (Moscow, 1921).
[64] Pavel Arskii, Za krasnye sovety , in Pervye sovetskie p'esy , ed. V. F. Pimenov (Moscow, 1958), pp. 489–99; and L. A. Pinegina, Sovetskii rabochii klass i khudozhestvennaia kul'tura, 1917–1932 (Moscow, 1984), p. 203.
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1920, the traveling studio devised a special play, Pan Bunia , to expose the corruption of the Polish landlords.[65]
Like theater groups, music collectives were quick to discover an appropriate revolutionary repertoire. Choirs performed popular prerevolutionary workers' songs of struggle, such as "The Red Banner" ("Krasnoe znamia") and "Boldly Keep Step, Comrades" ("Smelo, tovarishchi, v nogu"),[66] along with "The Internationale" and "The Marseillaise." They also devised new lyrics for well-known tunes. For example, Pavel Arskii supplied verses that could be sung to "The Internationale":
Rise up, all of toiling Russia.
Rise up, our giant, our titan.
Yours—all the working masses.
Yours—the workers of all lands.[67]
Vasilev-Buglai composed a rousing political message for the popular gypsy ballad "White Acacias."[68]
In the visual arts many Proletkult participants tried to discover a simple, realistic style based on working-class themes. "The body of the working man, here is the ideal of future sculpture," read one explanation of a proletarian aesthetic.[69] An intellectual instructor in a Saratov art studio defined workers' art as the expression of monumental content through clear and simple forms. In his view such an approach grew organically from workers' life experiences. "Each worker's broad hand decisively and energetically draws the charcoal across the paper; it powerfully and boldly kneads and shreds the clay. The reason for [the workers'] special traits is not hard to explain. Since childhood these joiners, turners,