[86] V. F. Pletnev, "Na ideologicheskom fronte," Pravda , September 22, 1922, reprinted with Lenin's criticisms in Lenin o literature , pp. 304–11.
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transparent polemics against it everywhere. Pletnev spoke out against class compromise, the use of experts, and the participation of the peasantry, the bourgeoisie, and the intelligentsia in his organization. Proletarian culture, the necessary antidote to the current ills of the country, could only be made by the workers' hands.
"On the Ideological Front" was also a plea for more faith in the proletariat's creative powers. The working class had the force to conceive a new science and art, "even in this wild, uncultured, semiliterate, and impoverished country." Using strikingly Bogdanovist language, Pletnev defended the notion of proletarian science by insisting that the proletariat had to find new systems of knowledge, new ties between the disciplines, and a monistic understanding of the world. Moving from science to art, he proclaimed that the new culture must be made by worker artists, people who aimed to change the world, not just to beautify it. Perhaps the Proletkult had not made much progress in the four years of its existence, but one had to remember that the bourgeoisie had taken five centuries to develop its culture. "Should we consider the first experimental steps in this direction as utopian, as an unnecessary luxury?" he asked rhetorically.[87]
Pletnev answered his own question one month later. In an article entitled "In the Proletkult," he reiterated and expanded his description of Proletkult practice, praising its literary achievements, its theatrical output (especially his own plays), and its new trend toward production art. He also incorporated a novel explanation for the Proletkult's decline. The organization had grown much too large by late 1920 and the center could not provide enough resources to support such an extensive network. Therefore, from the 1920 congress onward it had deliberately reduced the number of local affiliates until there were only thirty-eight by November 1921.[88] By citing these deflated figures, which contradicted those he had
[87] Ibid., quotations pp. 308, 309.