[53] See "Khronika Proletkul'ta," Proletarskaia kul'tura , no. 20/ 21, p. 53. For a similar view of women see Il'ia Sadof'ev, "Nashel," Griadushchee , no. 12/13 (1920), pp. 4–8.
[54] Glickman, Russian Factory Women , pp. 132–45.
[55] See S. A. Smith, Red Petrograd (Cambridge, Eng., 1983), pp. 192–97; and Clements, "The Birth of the New Soviet Woman," pp. 220–25.
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of the revolution. Numerous Proletkult commentators insisted that women had to be taught to value what the revolution had to offer them.[56] Most important, female participants had to learn to change their limited perspective on society, the family, and the home because women were the main inculcators of class-alien values. As one orator at the national congress in 1918 insisted, the best way to eradicate petty-bourgeois attitudes in daily life was to reeducate women in Proletkult programs.[57]
Yet even the most modest step in this program, encouraging women workers and working-class wives to join Proletkult activities, was not seriously addressed by many local organizations. A handful of intellectual women headed important local groups and earned a place on the national governing board, but local records show that female participants were always in the minority.[58] When P. N. Zubova joined a theatrical troupe touring the front lines in 1920, only two other women accompanied her.[59] Some groups had no female members at all.[60]
Those organizations with a more successful record of female participation made a special effort to gain women's interest. The Proletkult in Kostroma, a textile town with a high percentage of women workers, had fairly high female participation rates in its main club. The club organizer, M. A. Rostopchina, made sure that the agitators who tried to get women to join were women themselves, and she also planned
[56] See, for example, Ivan Knizhnik, "Na grany novoi kul'tury," Griadushchee , no. 11 (1920), p. 2; I. Fuks, "Rabotnitsa v svete novoi kul'ture," Griadushchaia kul'tura , no. 3 (1919), pp. 14–15; and P. Rabochii, "Zhenskoe tvorchestvo," Zori griadushchego , no. 1 (1922), pp. 121–22.
[57] Protokoly pervoi konferentsii , pp. 98–99.
[58] See, for example, "Svedeniia o studiitsakh Izhevskogo Proletkul'ta," TsGALI f. 1230, op. 1, d. 1221, l. 73; and "Spisok studiitsev," Tver, 1921, d. 1525, ll. 66–69.
[59] "Vospominaniia P. N. Zubovoi," TsGALI f. 1230, op. 2, d. 14, l. 3.