8 The Proletkult as Postscript, 1923–1932
The Proletkult never recovered from the attacks leveled against it in the early 1920s. Despite considerable effort, participants could not overcome its poor reputation as a politically suspect and socially restrictive organization. The membership shrank still further during the New Economic Policy as the Proletkult struggled to define a place for itself in the new cultural and political environment. To be sure, during the First Five-Year Plan, when the state's direct appeals to the working class rekindled proletarian movements, the Proletkult began to expand again. But even then it was overshadowed by newer cultural organizations that had much closer ties to the regime.
In contrast to the Civil War years, the period of the New Economic Policy did not favor proletarian cultural projects. In its search for talent and resources to help rebuild the wartorn country the government extended itself to social groups that had been alienated during the bitter years of the Civil War. Both the peasantry and parts of the intelligentsia benefited from this change of policy, but many workers experienced worsening conditions.[1] Groups like the Proletkult,
[1] On state policies toward workers during the New Economic Policy see William J. Chase, Workers, Society, and the Soviet State: Labor and Life in Moscow, 1918–1929 (Urbana, 1987).
― 230 ―
with their message of working-class hegemony and proletarian dictatorship, raised dissonant themes out of step with the dominant ideology of the 1920s.
Nonetheless, new cultural unions seeking proletarian forms of expression took shape in all artistic media. The Proletarian Writers' Union, known by its acronym VAPP, was an aggressive advocate of working-class literature. A special group for proletarian music, RAPM, was founded, and artists opened the Association of Revolutionary Russian Artists, AKhRR. The theater also had its circles, including the Blue Shirt (Siniaia Bluza) and the Theater of Working Class Youth (TRAM).[2]
Although they were reluctant to acknowledge it, these groups owed a debt to the Proletkult. Their participants believed that art was a powerful ideological weapon through which to organize society. In their search for uniquely proletarian artistic forms they believed they could help consolidate working-class power. And like the Proletkult, these new organizations had tenuous ties to the class that they claimed to represent. Less than a quarter of VAPP's members were industrial workers in 1928.[3]
Despite these similarities, there were marked differences between the Proletkult and its successors. The new circles were concerned with specific artistic media, but the Proletkult viewed culture broadly as a combination of art, ideology, and daily life. None of the organizations established during
[2] On these groups see Edward J. Brown, The Proletarian Episode in Russian Literature, 1928–1932 (New York, 1953); Hubertus Gassner and Eckhardt Gillen, eds., Zwischen Revolutionskunst und sozialistischen Realismus: Kunstdebatten in der Sowjetunion von 1917 bis 1934 (Cologne, 1979); I. M. Gronskii and V. N. Perel'man, eds., AKhRR—Assotsiatsiia Khudozhnikov Revoliutsionnoi Rossii: Sbornik vospominanii, statei, dokumentov (Moscow, 1973); L. A. Pinegina, Sovetskii rabochii klass i khudozhestvennaia kul'tura, 1917–1932 (Moscow, 1984); and Boris Schwarz, Music and Musical Life in Soviet Russia , Rev. ed. (Bloomington, 1983), chapters 3–5.
[3] "Na Vserossiiskom s"ezde proletarskikh pisatelei," Na literaturnom postu , no. 19 (1928), p. 71.
― 231 ―
the New Economic Policy could boast the same large following as the early Proletkult, and none manifested the same political independence. Each had close ties to state and party institutions: AKhRR worked with the Red Army; some circles of VAPP made party membership a requirement to join; RAPM was sponsored in part by the state publishing house; and TRAM was allied with the Komsomol.[4]
Proletarian culture remained a controversial issue in the 1920s; debates about its significance and place in Soviet cultural life continued unabated. The foes of working-class art found an eloquent advocate in Leon Trotsky, who insisted that the whole concept had no place in Marxist historical development. Although the bourgeoisie had developed its culture over centuries, the transition period between capitalism and socialism would be too short for the proletariat to find its own unique modes of artistic expression.[5] Trotsky's views were elaborated in well-funded state journals like Red Virgin Soil (Krasnaia nov '), edited by the brilliant critic Aleksandr Voronskii. Voronskii's publication served as a forum for talented nonproletarian authors, known as "fellow travelers," and also for those who had a skeptical view of working-class creation.[6]
However, the new artistic groups did not suffer in silence. Instead, led by the Proletarian Writers' Union, they clamored loudly for more party support and for a dominant position in Soviet cultural life. VAPP's major journals—On Guard (Na
[4] On AKhRR see Elizabeth Valkenier, Russian Realist Art (Ann Arbor, 1977), pp. 150–52; on VAPP see Brown, The Proletarian Episode , pp. 12–20; on RAPM see Schwarz, Music and Musical Life , p. 54; on TRAM see V. Mironova, TRAM: Agitatsionnyi molodezhnyi teatr, 1920–1930kh godov (Leningrad, 1977).
[5] Leon Trotsky, "Proletarian Art and Proletarian Culture," in Literature and Revolution , by Leon Trotsky (Ann Arbor, 1975), pp. 184–214.
[6] The classic study of this important journal is Robert A. Maguire, Red Virgin Soil (Princeton, 1968). For examples of the journal's stance on proletarian literature see A. Voronskii, "O gruppe 'Kuznitsa,'" Krasnaia nov ', no. 13 (1923), pp. 297–312; on the visual arts see Fedorov-Davydov, "Tendentsii sovremennoi russkoi zhivopisi v svete sotsial'nogo analiza," Krasnaia nov ', no. 23 (1924), pp. 329–48.
― 232 ―
postu ), succeeded by On Literary Guard (Na literaturnom postu )—tirelessly attacked Voronskii and Trotsky in the 1920s. But the many artistic unions never presented a united front. Divided by serious aesthetic differences and internal power struggles, they lashed out against one another almost as much as they did against the fellow travelers.
In the ongoing cultural debates the Proletkult served as a negative reference point. Its theoretical foundation and cultural practices had been explicitly denounced by Lenin, and his statements were periodically reprinted during the New Economic Policy. Because Lenin had linked the very idea of proletarian culture to the Proletkult and Bogdanov, other groups, especially the vocal and combative VAPP, spent considerable energy trying to show how their conception of proletarian art and ideology differed from Bogdanovism and the Proletkult's "false laboratory methods."[7] Inevitably, such tactics weakened the Proletkult's position, even among potential allies. It became a convenient scapegoat for those new organizations that wished to deflect hostility from their own efforts to define a proletarian culture.