[60] Proletkul't (Tver), no. 3/4 (1919), p. 54.
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special reading circles aimed specifically at women workers. According to published participation figures these efforts bore fruit. In the beginning most club users were male, but soon the number of women rose until they constituted 35 percent of the members and on any given day might make up 40 percent of those using club facilities.[61]
The Tula Proletkult initially also reached out to include female members. Vasilii Ignatov and his collaborator, the local party leader Grigorii Kaminskii, appealed directly to women in the organization's first announcement:
Comrade women workers! If in the past you were beaten down and exhausted, now even for you a new day has begun. Now you, together with your fathers, husbands, and brothers, can take part in the building of a new Communist life with equal rights. Don't turn away from them. Don't shut yourself off as you once did in your rooms, corners, and basements. Come bravely to your Proletkult. Give it your leisure time and take a creative part in building class cultural values. Come, and don't be ashamed of your age, your semiliteracy, or even your complete illiteracy.[62]
The elaborate membership rules drawn up in early 1919 censured male behavior that might offend women, such as rude language, teasing, and the use of insulting nicknames.[63]
But experiences in Tula illustrated that it took more than progressive rules or posters to raise female participation figures. Although the Tula organization quickly developed diverse cultural studios, among them even a workshop for circus techniques, there was no general educational division and no literacy programs for those semiliterate women to whom
[61] M. Rostopchina, "Kul'tura nasha," Sbornik Kostromskogo Proletkul'ta , no. 1 (1919), pp. 8–10, 15, 19–20, 28–29.
[62] "Ot Proletkul'ta k Tul'skomu proletariatu," 1919, TsGALI f. 1230, op. 1, d. 1536, l. 74. On the drafting of this appeal see N. A. Milonov, "O deiatel'nosti Tul'skogo Proletkul'ta," in Aktual'nye voprosy istorii literatury , ed. Z. I. Levinson, N. A. Milonov, and A. F. Sergeicheva (Tula, 1969), p. 147.
[63] "Ustav," 1919, TsGALI f. 1230, op. 1, d. 1536, l. 1.
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the poster was addressed. In 1921 only eight out of fifty-four studio participants were women.[64]
Faced with evidence of low female participation, some of the movement's members fell back on the common panaceas prevalent in early Soviet writings on the family: as socialism took hold and technology evolved, family problems would automatically be resolved. "Even now the woman worker remains in very bad conditions," lamented one writer in Tambov, "and it is our responsibility to try to free her from them." But the only solution the author proposed was the vague hope that machines would someday take over women's more unpleasant household tasks, like mending and laundry.[65]
Although the status of women remained a marginal issue for many members, the fate of proletarian children sparked more interest. Women embodied all the problems of the past, but children were the hope of the future. When addressing the problems of the young, Proletkultists revealed yet another mark against the old family: it inhibited the radical potential of children. In the opinion of one Petrograd activist, Elena Bagdateva, the Proletkult had to become involved in child care to shield young people from the harmful effects of "the petty-bourgeois mother, the money-grubbing father, and the bigoted grandmother."[66] The school and the workplace should become as important to children as the family. The Moscow Proletkult even passed a "Declaration of Children's Rights," which guaranteed that children could pick their own form of education, their own religion, and could even leave their parents if they chose.[67] Some took these ideas to their logical conclusion. They wanted the Proletkult to assume responsibility for all proletarian children by taking them from their
[64] Statistics on Tula studio participants, December 15, 1921, TsGALI f. 1230, op. 1, d. 1538, ll. 28–29.
[65] I. Fuks, "Zhenshchina v svete novoi kul'tury," Griadushchaia kul'tura , no. 3 (1919), pp. 14–15, quotation p. 14.