[88] V. F. Pletnev, "V Proletkul'te," Pravda , October 20, 1922.
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put forward a year before, the Proletkult president apparently hoped to show that his demands for continued state support were reasonable and modest, and that the collapse of the national network had taken place at least in part by design. He ended with a plea for continued subsidies: the effects of the New Economic Policy in 1922 had reduced the Proletkult well below its 1921 level. Now there were only twenty organizations and requests were coming from industrial areas to open new ones. He had heard rumors that the government might remove state support altogether. "If there is a wish to kill the Proletkult, then taking away government support will surely accomplish this."[89]
But this emotional defense served only to mobilize the Proletkult's opponents. Nadezhda Krupskaia was the first to respond. Although she did not dispute that the revolution would inspire a new class ideology, she separated the issue of proletarian culture from the Proletkult organization, which was too limited, too cut off from the masses, and too uncritical of bourgeois art to create a new culture. The proletariat did not come to power to lord it over other classes; instead it had to convince them of the rightness of its views. The Proletkult had much to be proud of, according to Krupskaia, for its studios had introduced many workers to artistic education. But she denied that it had created a uniquely proletarian art, and she rejected the idea that such an art, when it did emerge, would be made by workers alone. Proletarian culture would come from life itself; it could not be "hatched."[90]
Krupskaia's criticisms were mild compared to Lenin's. Outraged by Pletnev's first article, Lenin immediately sent off a protest to Bukharin for publishing it in Pravda . He then began to plan with Iakov Iakovlev, second in command at Agitprop, for a full-scale onslaught against Pletnev.[91] Iakov-
[89] Ibid.
[90] Nadezhda Krupskaia, "Proletarskaia ideologiia i Proletkul't," Pravda , October 8, 1922, reprinted in her Pedagogicheskie sochineniia , vol. 7, pp. 139–44.
[91] Lenin o literature , pp. 311, 411.
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lev's long response, written with Lenin's aid, found nothing of value in Pletnev's defense of Proletkult work. Pletnev's ideas on science were silly and mystical. The Proletkult had no business insisting on a rigid, class-exclusive approach. Now was the time to make peace with the peasantry and the specialists. Iakovlev also lashed out at the Proletkult's artistic practice, particularly its plays.[92]
The most interesting part of this sustained critique was the picture it painted of the Russian proletariat. Iakovlev doubted that the present-day working class had the knowledge or the experience to fulfill the tasks that Pletnev described. His opponent showed absolutely no appreciation of the cultural conditions of present-day Russia, chided Iakovlev. There were aspects of bourgeois culture that were definitely needed to fight against Russia's cultural backwardness (nekul'turnost '). The years of war and revolution had robbed the proletariat of its best elements, leaving semiliterates, peasants, and speculators (meshochniki ) in their place. Instead of these "real" workers, who still prayed to the holy mother on the shop floor, Pletnev offered a fantastic vision of the working class. "Some elements of 'fantasy' were unavoidable, especially in the first period of the revolution when the working class of Russia shook the entire edifice of the bourgeois world with its mighty blows." But now the time for fantasy was over, Iakovlev concluded.[93]
Such a somber assessment of the proletariat and its skills echoed Lenin's own disparaging comments at the Eleventh Party Congress, where he insisted that Russian factories were now filled with all kinds of "accidental elements."[94] This analysis led Lenin to reject the whole idea of proletarian culture, a new step in the controversy. Before the country could
[92] Iakovlev's two-part article, first printed in Pravda on October 24 and 25, 1922, is reprinted in Lenin o literature , pp. 411–23.
[93] Ibid., p, 415.
[94] See Sheila Fitzpatrick, "The Bolsheviks' Dilemma: Class, Culture and Politics in the Early Soviet Years," Slavic Review , vol. 47, no. 4 (1988), pp. 599–613.
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even consider tossing out what was false in the heritage of capitalism, it had to attain those accomplishments necessary for socialism, such as literacy and a disciplined work ethic.[95] As Lenin wrote in one of his last articles, "Better Fewer, But Better," flippant talk of proletarian culture had blinded too many people to the country's cultural inadequacies. "For a start we should be satisfied with real bourgeois culture; for a start we should avoid the cruder types of prebourgeois culture, that is, bureaucratic culture and serf culture, etc. In matters of culture, haste and sweeping measures are most harmful."[96]
This acrimonious discussion accomplished exactly the opposite of what Pletnev had hoped. Although the organization was not disbanded, its upcoming conference was canceled and the Politburo voted to make it financially self-supporting. It would only provide enough funds to insure that the Proletkult did not collapse entirely.[97] Addressing this move at a Politprosvet conference a month later, Lunacharskii assumed a bittersweet tone. He conceded that the Proletkult turned out to be more expensive than expected and had brought few concrete results. But if the organization did not survive, they would have to find another way to allow the most talented workers to find their own approach to culture, science, and education.[98]
The result of the new cutbacks, predictably enough, was that the Proletkult shrank still further. By November 1922 the central organization had concluded that it did not have enough funds to cover heating costs for local organizations.
[95] See Lewin, Lenin's Last Struggle , pp. 110, 113–14.
[96] V. I. Lenin, "Luchshe men'she, da luchshe," in Polnoe sobranie sochinenii , by V. I. Lenin, 5th ed. (Moscow, 1970), vol. 45, p. 389.