[98] "Khronika Proletkul'ta," Proletarskaia kul'tura , no. 7/8 (1919), p. 68. See also Proletarskaia kul'tura , no. 5 (1918), p. 41; no. 6 (1919), p. 34; no. 11/12 (1919), pp. 61–62.
[99] On the formation of Glavpolitprosvet see Fitzpatrick, Commissariat , pp. 186–96. On Glavpolitprosvet and Proletkult club work see A. K. Kolesova, "Preodolenie v deiatel'nosti rabochikh klubov vliianiia oshibochnykh teorii Proletkul'ta," Uchenye zapiski Moskovskogo gosudarstvennogo instituta kul'tury , vol. 15 (1968), p. 317.
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wane, its leaders made ever more strident efforts to distinguish their clubs from those of other institutions in order to provide a justification for the Proletkult's continued independence. Proletkult clubs were superior to union and Narkompros circles, argued the central leadership, because they placed creative work at the center of their programs. They alone were committed to changing the patterns of everyday life.[100] The national leadership explicitly stated that Proletkult clubs were intended to facilitate artistic and scientific discovery, not to meet the rudimentary demands of poorly educated participants.[101]
The transformation of daily life and daily habits became an ever more common theme for Proletkult club activists, particularly during the first years of the New Economic Policy. Proletkult leaders worried that the reinvigoration of capitalist trading would encourage petty-bourgeois behavior. Clubs, however, could be a bulwark against this danger. They would serve as the "basic creative cell for the proletarianization of daily life."[102] But in a marked shift from the Civil War years, the values that were to emerge were predefined. In a more forceful fashion than ever before Proletkult organizers prescribed the proper forms of proletarian behavior that the clubs were meant to imbue: mores would change as workers became more punctual, more sober, and more knowledgeable about politics and the economy.
At the heart of Proletkult club work lay curious contradictions. On the one hand, the clubs were the movement's last bastion of experimentation, the places where science, the family, and daily life were to be immutably altered. On the other hand, Proletkult leaders seemed determined to under-
[100] See Proletarskaia kul'tura , no. 17/19 (1920), p. 82.
[101] See "Deklaratsiia, priniataia plenumom Vserossiiskogo Ts. K. Proletkul'ta 19 dekabria 1920," Griadushchee , no. 4/6 (1921), p. 58.
[102] Ibid.
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mine the very elements that made these circles popular. Although praising clubs for their ties to the broad masses, Proletkultists called for demanding programs that depended on highly literate and well-prepared participants. Although they valued the clubs' roots in local communities, they tried to centralize and standardize their work. They singled out clubs as the best expression of workers' creativity and independence but nonetheless began to dictate the very values such autonomy was meant to achieve.
Proletkultists were inspired by a vision of the future that lent a utopian fervor to all they undertook. When described by the organization's enthusiasts, even ordinary cultural events like piano lessons and science lectures had the potential to transform the world. Although this transcendent image of the new society was never abandoned, the Proletkult's utopianism was significantly muted during the first years of Soviet power. Proponents of proletarian science moved away from grand schemes; instead they turned to modest courses meant to encourage political awareness and labor discipline. The critics of the family quickly stopped waiting for its demise; they devised limited plans to rationalize household chores. Those who offered a hazy promise of socialist habits and mores recast in the fire of revolution ended up with agitational campaigns to promote sobriety and punctuality.
This loss of revolutionary fervor was not unique to the Proletkult. Communist Party activists who believed they had seen the end of private ownership and private trade had to accept the sobering initiation of the New Economic Policy. The critics of political bureaucracies witnessed a speedy centralization process that set their dream of a stateless society off into the unknown future. The advocates of educational experiments who hoped to erase the distinction between mental and physical labor were challenged by the pragmatic needs of the Soviet economy. Everywhere political activists
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raised their voices against utopian luxuries—the luxury of worker-run factories, of egalitarian schooling, and even the "luxury of discussion and argument," Lenin's way to discourage oppositional tendencies within the party.[103] The Civil War, with its peculiar mix of hardship and heroism, had nurtured radical schemes. But when the hard task of reconstruction began, such schemes seemed oddly unsuited to the task.
The Proletkult's shift in tactics was in part a conscious strategy as its participants came to realize that the revolution would not undermine old social institutions as thoroughly as they had hoped. Rather than vainly predicting the end of the family or blaming women for their backwardness, they chose the slower road of inclusion and education. Instead of starting elaborate and expensive new institutions, they shifted the locus of educational work to their own clubs.
Nonetheless, this new course was not entirely voluntary. Club activists proposed ever more specialized programs as a way to distinguish their work from other groups and thus protect the independence of their circles. Bogdanov's plans for an innovative proletarian university were not even given a chance to be tested. The organization's pragmatism reflected the rapidly shrinking sphere allotted to it by its cultural competitors. By the end of the Civil War both Narkompros and the Communist Party had grown impatient with the Proletkult's ambitious cultural agenda and were eager to expedite its retreat from utopia.
[103] Desiatyi s"ezd Rossiiskoi Kommunisticheskoi partii: Stenograficheskii otchet (Moscow, 1921), p. 2.
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