[8] N. K. Krupskaia, "Neskol'ko slov o Proletkul'te," in Pedagogicheskie sochineniia v desiati tomakh , by N. K. Krupskaia (Moscow, 1961), vol. 7, p. 60.
[9] "O Proletkul'te," Vneshkol'noe obrazovanie (Moscow), no. 4/6 (1919), columns 171–72; and Izvestiia TsIK , May 13, 1919.
[10] S. Kluben', "Proletkul't i Narobraz," Griadushchaia kul'tura , no. 6/7 (1919), pp. 19–21.
[11] "Svedeniia, kasaiushchiesia deiatel'nosti Proletkul'ta," Tsentral'nyi Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv RSFSR [henceforth cited as TsGA RSFSR] f. 2306, op. 17, d. 9, ll. 1–4, quotation l. 3.
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something for everyone. Local Proletkults were to become subsections of local Adult Education Divisions, which partially confirmed the decision of Krupskaia's section. However, they could continue to conduct their work independently with their own separate budgets.[12] This ambiguous ruling did little to resolve the issue. In some towns, such as Tver, Proletkult workers came to an amiable agreement with the Adult Education Division.[13] But conflicts persisted in many other localities. State representatives were hardly satisfied, and when the Adult Education Division began its reorganization in the summer of 1920 many of its officials perceived this as an opportunity to take full charge of Proletkult operations.[14]
Until 1920 the Communist Party did not officially take sides in these skirmishes over the Proletkult's status. Because there were no firm guidelines, Proletkult-party relations varied from one locality to the next. Whereas in Tula the provincial party committee helped to found the Proletkult and confirmed its leadership, in Tambov Proletkultists confronted hostility from party members, who believed that the organization was a frivolous distraction from serious social responsibilities.[15]
But as it became clear that the Civil War was coming to a close, the Communist Party Central Committee abruptly ended its official silence and began to express concern about the Proletkult's status. Lenin was chiefly responsible for this change. Initially, he had seemed to approve of the new organization, which he viewed as a way to educate workers to assume positions of authority in the state.[16] However, once he
[12] June 10, 1919, circular from the Proletkult division in Narkompros, Tsentral'nyi Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Literatury i lskusstva [henceforth cited as TsGALI] f. 1230, op. 1, d. 240, l. 3. The decision was publicized in many Proletkult journals. See, for example, Proletkul't (Tver), no. 3/4 (1919), pp. 19–20.
[13] Proletarskaia kul'tura , no. 15/16 (1920), pp. 75, 83.
[14] Fitzpatrick, Commissariat , p. 176.
[15] For Tula see the August 1918 minutes of a provincial party meeting, TsGALI f. 1230, op. l, d. 1536, l. 8; on Tambov see B. V., "O rabote Proletkul'ta," Griadushchaia kul'tura , no. 4/5 (1919), p. 18.
[16] See Lenin's greeting to the first Proletkult congress, "Pis'mo prezidiumu konferentsii proletarskikh kul'turno-prosvetitel'nykh organizatsii," Protokoly pervoi Vserossiiskoi konferentsii proletarskikh kul' turno-prosvetitel'nykh organizatsii, 15–20 sentiabria, 1918 g ., ed. P. I. Lebedev-Polianskii (Moscow, 1918), p. 3.
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took notice of the scope of Proletkult activities, he became much more critical and began to formulate his own ideas about cultural transformation. Although he would not finalize his thoughts on culture until the last years of his life, already in 1919 Lenin began to attack what he felt were the mistaken priorities in Proletkult work.[17]
Lenin was a cultural conservative whose own tastes tended toward the Russian classics. He took a dim view of the many avant-gardist experiments engendered by the revolution, Rather than squandering resources on such projects, Lenin believed that the state had to address Russia's cultural backwardness, especially its low literacy levels and poor work habits. To overcome these obstacles, the new regime had to make use of the cultural foundation inherited from capitalism and employ the experts that capitalism had trained. "We have to build socialism from that culture," he insisted. "We have no other materials."[18] Speaking out at the 1919 conference of adult education workers, Lenin proclaimed his opposition to "all kinds of intellectual inventions (vydumki ), all kinds of 'proletarian culture.' "[19] The real evidence of proletarian cul-
[17] For Lenin's ideas on culture in the last years of his life see Moshe Lewin, Lenin's Last Struggle (London, 1975), pp. 113–14. There is a large literature comparing Lenin's understanding of culture with Proletkult views. For the most useful see Peter Gorsen and Eberhard Knödler-Bunte, Proletkult: System einer proletarischen Kultur (Stuttgart, 1974), vol. 1, esp. pp. 76–102; I. S. Smirnov, "Leninskaia kontseptsiia kul'turnoi revoliutsii i kritika Proletkul'ta," in Istoricheskaia nauka i nekotorye problemy sovremennosti , ed. M. I. Gefter (Moscow, 1969), pp. 63–85; V. V. Gorbunov, "Kritika V. I. Leninym teorii Proletkul'ta ob otnoshenii k kul'turnomu naslediiu," Voprosy istorii KPSS , no. 5 (1968), pp. 83–93; idem, Lenin i sotsialisticheskaia kul'tura (Moscow, 1972), esp. pp. 169–213; and Zenovia A. Sochor, Revolution and Culture (Ithaca, 1988), chapters 5 and 6.