Proletarian culture
Proletarian culture
“PROLETARIAN CULTURE” is the main theoretical organ of the All-Russian Council of Proletkult (see), published in Moscow in 1918-1921 under the editorship of P. I. Lebedev (V. Polyansky), F. Kalinin, V. Kerzhentsev, A. Bogdanov, A. Mashirov-Samobytnik. A total of 21 issues were published. Articles by A. V. Lunacharsky, N. K. Krupskaya, V. Polyansky, F. Kalinin, S. Krivtsov, A. Bogdanov, V. Kerzhentsev, V. Pletnev were published; poems by V. Kirillov, A. Gastev, M. Gerasimov, A. Pomorsky. The magazine focused on issues of proletarian culture, in particular poetry, criticism, and theater. The bibliography department systematically reviewed provincial proletkult journals. Considerable attention was paid to the creativity of novice workers-writers and cultural construction in the country.
Unfolding the fight against the capitulatory Trotskyist denial of the flight. culture, "P. To." was one of the first militant proletarian magazines that promoted the principles of class in culture and art; "P. To." rebuffed idealists, theorists of bourgeois art (Wolkenstein), criticized petty-bourgeois influences in poetry (futurism), opposed representatives of kulak lyricism (Yesenin, Klyuev), opposing them to the struggle for the creation of a class-focused, ideologically rich art of the proletariat.
At the same time, the magazine fully expressed all the shortcomings and weaknesses of the Proletcult movement. Already in No. 1, one of the program articles stated that Proletkult “should be free from those petty-bourgeois elements - artisans, employees and persons of liberal professions, who, according to the draft constitution, gain access to the Soviets in significant numbers,” because “ By the very essence of their social nature, the allies of the dictatorship are incapable of understanding the new spiritual culture of the working class.” It also spoke of the need to develop proletarian culture “regardless of those forms of organization prescribed by state bodies,” “beyond any decree.” "P. To." reinforced in these provisions the limitations of Proletkult, which considered itself a special form of the labor movement, which later led to the ideological and organizational isolation of “people who call themselves specialists in proletarian culture” (Lenin), who proposed to “develop” proletarian culture by artificial, laboratory means, in isolation from the tasks of the broad development of the cultural revolution.
The erroneous attitudes of Proletkult were reflected in literary criticism in the articles of A. Bogdanov and others. Bogdanov focused attention on labor and production, highlighted the motive of comradely cooperation, Menshevik losing sight of the motives of the class struggle, promoted a falsely understood collectivism through the concrete display of the image man of the revolution and the events of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
With the deepening of the cultural revolution in the country, Proletkult finally lost the basis for its activities, and “P. To." ceased to exist. Bibliography:
I. Bukharin N., Review of No. 1 “P. k.", "Pravda", 1918, No. 152, July 23; K. Z. (K. Zalevsky), The first pancake is lumpy, “Izvestia of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee”, 1918, No. 147 of July 14.
II.“Periodicals on literature and art during the years of the revolution,” comp. K. D. Muratova, Edited by S. D. Balukhaty, ed. Academy of Sciences of the USSR, L., 1933, p. 204 (it is incorrectly stated that the journal ceased in 1920 at No. 19).
Literary encyclopedia. - At 11 t.; M.: Publishing House of the Communist Academy, Soviet Encyclopedia, Fiction. Edited by V. M. Fritsche, A. V. Lunacharsky. 1929-1939 .
See what “Proletarian culture” is in other dictionaries:
"PROLETARIAN CULTURE"- “PROLETARIAN CULTURE”, magazine, the main theoretical organ of the All-Russian Council of Proletkult. Published in Moscow in 1918 1921 (21 issues were published) under the editorship of P. I. Lebedev (V. Polyansky), F. I. Kalinin, P. M. Kerzhentsev, ... ... Literary encyclopedic dictionary
PROLETKULT (Proletarian culture)- cult. lumen and creative organization in Sov. Russia and some other republics of the USSR (1917 32). In the Charter adopted in 1917, it proclaimed the task of forming proletarian culture through the development of the creative initiative of the proletariat. United... ...
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PROLETKULT- (Proletarian culture), cult. enlightenment, and creative organization in the Soviet Union. Russia and some other republics of the USSR (1917 32). In the Charter adopted in 1917, it proclaimed the task of forming proletarian culture through the development of creative initiative... ... Russian Pedagogical Encyclopedia
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Proletarian culture will enlighten you culturally. organization created in Petrograd in September. 1917 as an independent, voluntary organization flyover. amateur performances in various fields of art and literature. Having arisen in the pre-October period, P. naturally... ... Soviet historical encyclopedia
Proletkult- Proletarian culture (organization) ... Dictionary of Russian abbreviations
BBK 63.3(2)613-7+71.1+85.1
A.V. Karpov
the phenomenon of proletcult and the paradoxes of artistic consciousness of post-revolutionary Russia
The role of Proletkult in the formation of a new type of artistic consciousness in post-revolutionary Russia is explored. Issues related to changes in the social functions of artistic heritage and traditions in the revolutionary era are considered.
Keywords:
Proletkult, revolutionary culture, Russian intelligentsia, artistic consciousness, artistic tradition, artistic heritage.
In October 1917, in Petrograd, literally a week before the revolutionary coup, which radically changed the entire system of social and cultural coordinates, the first conference of proletarian cultural and educational organizations took place. In the colorful kaleidoscope of revolutionary everyday life, the conference went virtually unnoticed by the average person. Meanwhile, she gave a “start in life” to Proletkult - a unique mass socio-cultural and artistic movement of the revolutionary era, in the fate of which, like a mirror, many social and cultural contradictions of Russian history of 1917-1932 were reflected.
The practical activities of Proletkult covered various areas of socio-cultural practice: educational
educational and educational (worker's universities, polytechnic studios and courses, scientific studios and clubs, public lectures); publishing (magazines, books, collections, educational materials); cultural and leisure (clubs, libraries, cinema); cultural and creative (literary, theatrical, music and art studios). Proletkult included an extensive network of cultural and educational organizations: provincial
city, city, district, factory, uniting in its heyday, in the 1920s, about four hundred thousand people. The Proletkult movement spread not only in large but also in provincial cities. Recognized leader of Proletkult, theorist of Russian Marxism A.A. Bogdanov considered the main task of the movement to be the formation of a working intelligentsia - the creator of a new culture and society.
The relevance of the historical experience of Proletkult is connected with the “eternal” problem of the relationship between party-state power and extraordinary (its
kind of iconic) socio-cultural organizations and groups: incompatibility
party-state administration and the activities of a mass non-political movement; incompatibility of directive leadership with the principles of self-organization and free self-government. In addition, the history of Proletkult also shows the “dark sides” in the activities of the mass artistic and cultural movement: bureaucratization of cultural activity and artistic creativity, contradictions between program guidelines and real practice, dogmatization and vulgarization of ideas, suppression of individuality. Ultimately, here the problems of interaction between spiritual and institutional factors of culture are revealed in a concentrated form.
The socio-cultural situation in Russia during the revolutionary era was characterized by sharp contradictions between weakened, deformed or destroyed old spiritual structures and institutions and new ones that had not yet been formed, adequate to the latest social and political realities. The Proletkult program fully met the needs of its time, first of all, the need for a holistic model of world perception and world order. It was a program of cultural synthesis, both due to its versatility (artistic-aesthetic, moral-ethical, scientific-philosophical spheres1) and subordination to a single goal - the formation of a qualitatively different type of culture and consciousness, and due to the presentation of itself as a “final formula” world process of cultural development.
The key role in the formation of a new type of consciousness and culture belongs to
1 In particular, about the scientific and educational program of Proletkult, see, for example,.
Society
thorned art in the broadest sense (from literature to cinema). The role of art as a social institution was not limited to the implementation of artistic and aesthetic functions alone, realizing the ideological and socio-pedagogical aspirations of the “builders” of the new world (from the authorities to social movements and groups) to form a “new man”.
An important feature of the interpretation of the phenomena of culture and art in the revolutionary era is their interpretation in an applied way, as a form, means, and tool for creating a new social reality. In cultural activity and artistic creativity, the new power and, more broadly, the new man of the new world saw a way of ideological struggle and the formation of new social relations. Proletkult was no exception, becoming one of the driving forces that gave rise to the phenomenon of revolutionary artistic consciousness, the essence of which is the orientation towards radical renewal, experimentation, utopianism, focus on the future, violence, but at the same time an orientation towards variability, polystylistics of the artistic process. “The specificity of artistic consciousness is that it strives to go beyond the limits of human reality in any of its dimensions.” The content of the artistic consciousness of an era is “all the reflections about art present in it. It includes current ideas about the nature of art and its language, artistic tastes, artistic needs and artistic ideals, aesthetic concepts of art, artistic assessments and criteria formed by artistic criticism, etc.” . From this point of view, the artistic consciousness of post-revolutionary Russia was a series of contradictions, formed under the influence and interaction of ideological orientations and artistic preferences of several socio-cultural communities: “no-
howl" and the "old" intelligentsia, the mass recipient and the authorities. The “new” intelligentsia absolutized the tradition of the “old”, pre-revolutionary intelligentsia, which saw in literary activity a way of ideological struggle and the formation of a new social reality. The mass recipient (reader, listener, viewer) based his ideas and preferences on the principles of accessibility (comprehensibility), clarity,
simplicity, entertainment, “beautifulness”, predictability, modernity of a literary work. The principle of modernity in new cultural and political conditions meant revolutionism, in relation to which literary texts were interpreted. The authorities (the party-state apparatus) proceeded from the understanding of culture as a means of educating the masses, using literature as an instrument of influence. It would not be a great exaggeration to say that revolutionary artistic consciousness and artistic culture were the result of the co-creation of the intelligentsia, the masses and the authorities.
The attention of domestic art theorists of the revolutionary period, including the proletkult ones (A.A. Bogdanov, P.M. Kerzhentsev, P.K. Bessalko, F.I. Kalinin) was focused on the social aspect of art. They were convinced that the social nature of art is entirely connected with its class, class and group nature. The variety of social functions of art was reduced by them “to one single function - strengthening the dominance of the dominant class, estate, group.” The socio-cultural basis of the Proletcult program was the working intelligentsia - a subcultural community of workers whose cultural and leisure activities were aimed at mastering the artistic heritage through education and self-education (the system of out-of-school education, educational societies, workers' clubs, self-education societies, libraries); self-realization through creative activity (worker theaters and drama clubs, literary creativity, journalistic activity); self-determination through critical thinking (contrasting oneself, on the one hand, with the authorities, and, on the other hand, with “unconscious” workers, a special style of behavior). The spiritual needs of the working intelligentsia could only be satisfied within the framework of appropriate cultural institutions. The revolution released the creative energy of this layer, which strived from being subcultural to become dominant.
The ideological basis of the Proletkult program was the theory of culture by A.A. Bogdanov and alternative models of “proletarian culture”, formed in the social democratic environment even before the revolution. They touched upon key issues of cultural development:
principles of a new culture and mechanisms of its formation, the role and significance of the intelligentsia, attitude towards cultural heritage.
The revolutionary upheaval sharply intensified the cultural creative quest of the ideologists of the “new world,” and the proletkult project was the first to be conceptually completed. The basic principles of proletarian culture, according to Bogdanov, were as follows: cultural continuity (“cooperation of generations”) through a critical revaluation of cultural heritage; democratization of scientific knowledge; development of critical thinking among the working class and aesthetic needs based on socialist ideals and values; friendly cooperation; self-organization of the working class. Bogdanov viewed “proletarian culture” not as the current state of the culture of the proletariat and an innate class privilege, but as the result of systematic and long-term work. However, Bogdanov’s project, in demand by the revolutionary era, began to live its own life, being included in other socio-cultural, artistic and aesthetic contexts alien to its original logic.
The aesthetic principles of Proletkult boiled down to the following. Considering art entirely as a social phenomenon, the ideologists of Proletkult believed that the essence of works of art was determined by the class nature of the creators of artistic values. The main social function of art was considered to strengthen the dominance of the dominant class or social group. According to the ideologists of Proletkult, “proletarian” literature should supplant “bourgeois” literature, taking the best examples from old literature, based on which new forms should be sought. According to A.A. Bogdanov, art is “one of the ideologies of the class, an element of its class consciousness”; The “class character” of art lies in the fact that “under the author-personality lies the author-class.” Creativity, from the point of view of A.A. Bogdanov, is “the most complex and highest type of labor; his methods come from labor methods. In the field of artistic creativity, the old culture was characterized by uncertainty and unconsciousness of methods (“inspiration”), their isolation from the methods of labor practice, from the methods of creativity in other areas.” The solution was seen to be “to merge art with life, to make art an instrument of its active aesthetic transformation.” As
the foundations of literary creativity should be “simplicity, clarity, purity of form”, hence working poets should “study broadly and deeply, and not get their hands on cunning rhymes and alliteration.” New writer, according to A.A. Bogdanov may not belong to the working class by origin and status, but is able to express the basic principles of the new art - camaraderie and collectivism. Other Proletkultists believed that the creator of new literature should be a writer from the working class - “an artist with a pure class worldview.” The new art was associated with a “stunning revolution of artistic techniques,” with the emergence of a world that knows nothing “intimate and lyrical,” where there are no individual personalities, but only “objective psychology of the masses.”
The revolution gave birth to new cultural phenomena, creative concepts, artistic associations and groups, and even a mass writer - “yesterday’s non-reader.” The syndrome of mass graphomania was so great that the editorial offices of magazines were filled to capacity with manuscripts - no one knew what to do with them due to the artistic helplessness of these “creations.”
Proletkult was the first to undertake to channel the “living creativity of the masses” into an organized channel. A new writer was being forged in the literary studios of Proletkult. By 1920, 128 literary proletcult studios were actively working in the country. The studio study program was very extensive - from the fundamentals of natural science and methods of scientific thinking to the history of literature and the psychology of artistic creativity. About the curriculum. The literary studio is presented by the magazine of the Petrograd Proletkult “The Future”:
1. Basics of natural science - 16 hours; 2. Methods of scientific thinking - 4 hours; 3. Basics of political literacy - 20 hours; 4. History of material life - 20 hours; 5. History of the formation of art - 30 hours; 6. Russian language - 20 hours; 7. History of Russian and foreign literature - 150 hours; 8. Theory of literature - 36 hours; 9. Psychology of artistic creativity - 4 hours; 10. History and theory of Russian criticism - 36 hours; 11. Analysis of the works of proletarian writers - 11 hours; 12. Fundamentals of newspaper, magazine, book publishing - 20 hours; 13. Library arrangement - 8 hours.
The implementation of such a program was impossible without the participation of the intelligentsia, in relation to which the Proletcultists
Society
anti-intellectual sentiments and the realization that cultural development is impossible without the intelligentsia were intricately intertwined. In the same “Coming”, but a year earlier, we read: “In the literary department, in September and half of October, regular classes took place in the literary studio<...>. Classes take place four times a week; lectures were given: on the theory of versification by Comrade Gumilev, on the theory of literature by Comrade Sinyukhaev, on the history of literature by Comrade Lerner, on the theory of drama by Comrade Vinogradov, on the history of material culture by Comrade Mishchenko. In addition, Comrade Chukovsky read reports on Nekrasov, Gorky and Whitman. Lectures by T. A.M. Gorky was temporarily postponed due to illness."
What prompted the intelligentsia to participate in the work of Proletkult? M.V. Voloshina (Sabashnikova) writes in her memoirs: “Wasn’t this the fulfillment of my deepest desire to open the path to art for our people. I was so happy that neither hunger, nor cold, nor the fact that I had no roof over my head and spent every night wherever I had to, played no role for me.” Responding to the reproaches of her acquaintances as to why she did not sabotage the Bolsheviks, Voloshina said: “What we want to give to the workers has nothing to do with the parties. Then I was convinced that Bolshevism, so alien to the Russian people, would only last for a short period of time, as a transitional situation. But what the workers will receive by joining the universal culture will remain even when Bolshevism disappears.” Margarita Voloshina was not the only one who lived by such faith. Journalist A. Levinson recalled: “Whoever experienced cultural work in the Soviet of Deputies knows the bitterness of useless efforts, the doom of the fight against the bestial enmity of the masters of life, but still we lived with a magnanimous illusion during these years, hoping that Byron and Flaubert, penetrating the masses, at least for the glory of the Bolshevik bluff, they will fruitfully shock more than one soul” (quoted from.
For many representatives of the Russian intelligentsia, cooperation with the Bolsheviks and various Soviet cultural institutions was impossible in principle. I.A. Bunin. wrote his diary on April 24, 1919. “Just think: I still have to explain to one or the other why exactly I won’t go to serve in some Proletkult! We still have to prove that you can’t sit next to the emergency zone, where almost everyone
an hour to break someone's head, and to educate about the “latest achievements in the instrumentation of poetry” to some grunt with hands wet with sweat! Yes, strike her with leprosy to the seventy-seventh generation, if she even “anti-resents” with verses!<...>Isn’t it terrible that I have to prove, for example, that it is better to starve a thousand times than to teach this bogeyman iambs and trochees, so that she can sing about how her comrades rob, beat, rape, commit dirty tricks in churches, cut belts from officers’ backs , they are marrying priests with mares!” .
Proletarian literary creativity of post-revolutionary Russia is an independent subject for research. In proletarian poetry, according to E. Dobrenko, the entire “spectrum of mass psychology of the era” is reflected. It contains both religious motives and active fight against God, a decisive break with cultural tradition and an appeal to it. Here a new principle of understanding creativity as a duty found its embodiment. Proletarian poetry already contained all the necessary elements of the socialist realist doctrine: Hero, Leader, Enemy. “The birth of a new collective personality took place in proletarian poetry.” “Collectivity,” directed against individualism, was considered by the Proletcultists to be the best form of individual development. However, the practice of revolutionary culture indicated the opposite. The literary studio, for example, was proclaimed to be the basis of creativity, in which “separate parts of the creative process will be carried out by different persons, but with complete internal consistency,” resulting in the creation of “collective works” marked with “the stamp of internal unity and artistic value,” wrote Proletkult theorist P. Kerzhentsev.
According to M.A. Levchenko, the semantics of proletkult poetry is inextricably linked with the new Soviet picture of the world that was being built at that time. “In the poetry of Proletkult, a “lightweight” version of ideology is created, adapted for broadcasting to the masses. Therefore, the description of the poetic system of Proletkult helps to more fully imagine the process of structuring the ideological space after October.”
Literary sociologists V. Dubin and A. Reitblat, analyzing journal reviews in Russian literature from 1820 to 1979, identified signs
famous names to which the “working intelligentsia” and their ideologists are called upon to appeal
was to demonstrate the importance of own- received an opportunity for organizational
tional judgment. In 1920-1921 best design. However, revolutionary
A.S. turned out to be more relevant. Pushkin, enthusiasm for the possibilities of cultural
which was in the lead in the number of mentions, the tourism creativity of the proletariat soon faded away,
second only to A.A. Blok. According to the author, along with the political and organizers, Pushkin “acted, on the one hand, as a national-ideological factor of the
“horizon” and limit in interpretation and the cause of the crisis of the proletkult
Kino traditions” turned out to be sufficient at the turn of 1921-1922. the idea of a new cultural
but), on the other hand, its very center, so the ry (literature, art, theater) is by no means
that every time it was built around his name, it did not die, it was picked up by many
a new tradition was emerging.” After 10 separate groups, each of which
years in 1930-1931. the situation essentially sought to lead the artistic
has changed - it can be characterized by the process and rely on the party-state
as the most anti-classical TV apparatus in history; the authorities from their side
historical and cultural significance, and the emergence of a new aesthetics and wider -
relevance of the “current moment”. In spis- dozhestvennoy culture meant, according to the toe of the leaders in the number of mentions Pushley ideologues of “proletarian culture”
kin got lost in the second ten, ahead of the transformation of all its components: hud. Poor, but inferior to Yu. Libedinsky, pre-divine cultural environment - author - xL. Bezymensky, F. Panferov - names of works of art - works of art
currently known only to specialists. critical criticism - reader. In their concepts
Thus, as a result, the revolution became art itself,
tional revolution, aesthetic ideas and art - a revolution.
bibliography:
Bogdanov A.A. About proletarian culture: 1904-1924. - L., M.: Book, 1924. - 344 p.
Bunin I. A. Damned days. - L.: AZ, 1991. - 84 p.
Voloshina (Sabashnikova) M.V. Green Snake: Memoirs of an Artist. - St. Petersburg: Andreev and sons, 1993. - 339 p.
Gastev A.K. On trends in proletarian culture // Proletarskaya kultura. - 1919, No. 9-10. - pp. 33-45
Dobrenko E. Left! Left! Left! Metamorphoses of revolutionary culture // New world. - 1992, No. 3.- P. 228-240.
Dobrenko E. Molding of a Soviet writer. - St. Petersburg: Academic Project, 1999.
Dubin B.V. Reitblat A.I. On the structure and dynamics of the system of literary orientations of journal reviewers // Book and reading in the mirror of sociology. - M.: Book. Chamber, 1990. - pp. 150-176.
Karpov A.V. Revolutionary everyday life: seven days before the creation of the “New World” // The phenomenon of everyday life: humanitarian studies. Philosophy. Culturology. Story. Philology. Art history: Materials of the international. scientific conf. “Pushkin Readings - 2005”, St. Petersburg, June 6-7, 2005 / Ed.-comp. I.A. Mankiewicz. - St. Petersburg: Asterion, 2005. - P. 88-103.
Karpov A.V. Russian intelligentsia and Proletkult // Bulletin of Omsk University. - 2004. - Issue 1 (31). - P. 92-96.
Karpov A.V. Russian Proletkult: ideology, aesthetics, practice. - St. Petersburg: SPbGUP, 2009. - 256 p.
Kerzhentsev P. Organization of literary creativity // Proletarskaya culture. - 1918, No. 5. -S. 23-26.
Krivtsun O.A. Aesthetics. - M.: Aspect-press, 1998. - 430 p.
Kuptsova I.V. Artistic intelligentsia of Russia. - St. Petersburg: Nestor, 1996. - 133 p.
Lapina I.A. Proletkult and the project of “socialization of science” // Society. Wednesday. Development. - 2011, No. 2. - P. 43-47.
Levchenko M.A. Poetry of proletkult: ideology and rhetoric of the revolutionary era: Author's abstract. dis. Ph.D. Philol. Sci. - St. Petersburg, 2001. - 24 p.
Mazaev A.I. Art and Bolshevism (1920-1930s): problem-thematic essays. 2nd ed. -M.: KomKniga, 2007. - 320 p.
Our culture // The future. - 1919, No. 7-8. - P.30.
Our culture // The future. - 1920, No. 9-10. - P.22-23.
Pletnev V.F. About professionalism // Proletarian culture. - 1919. - No. 7. - P. 37.
Poetry of Proletkult: Anthology / Comp. M.A. Levchenko. - St. Petersburg: Own publishing house, 2010. - 537 p.
Shekhter T.E. Art as reality: essays on the metaphysics of art. - St. Petersburg: Asterion, 2005. - 258 p.
Shor Yu.M. Essays on the theory of culture / LGITMIK. - L., 1989. - 160 s.
Plan
Introduction
1 History of Proletkult
2 Ideology of Proletkult
3 Printed publications of Proletkult
4 International Bureau of Proletkult
Bibliography
Introduction
Proletkult (abbreviated from Proletarian cultural and educational organizations) - a mass cultural, educational, literary and artistic organization of proletarian amateur performances under the People's Commissariat of Education, which existed from 1917 to 1932.
1. History of Proletkult
Cultural and educational organizations of the proletariat appeared immediately after the February Revolution. Their first conference, which laid the foundation for the All-Russian Proletkult, was convened on the initiative of A.V. Lunacharsky and by decision of the trade union conference in September 1917.
After the October Revolution, Proletkult very quickly grew into a mass organization that had its own organizations in a number of cities. By the summer of 1919 there were about 100 local organizations. According to 1920 data, the organization numbered about 80 thousand people, significant layers of workers were covered, and 20 magazines were published. At the First All-Russian Congress of Proletkults (October 3-12, 1920), the Bolshevik faction remained in the minority, and then, by the resolution of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) “On Proletkults” of November 10, 1920 and the letter of the Central Committee of December 1, 1920, Proletkult was organizationally subordinate to the People's Commissariat of Education. People's Commissar of Education Lunacharsky supported Proletkult, while Trotsky denied the existence of “proletarian culture” as such. V.I. Lenin criticized Proletkult, and from 1922 its activity began to fade. Instead of a single Proletkult, separate, independent associations of proletarian writers, artists, musicians, and theater experts were created.
The most noticeable phenomenon is the First Workers' Theater of Proletkult, where S. M. Eisenstein, V. S. Smyshlyaev, I. A. Pyryev, M. M. Shtraukh, E. P. Garin, Yu. S. Glizer and others worked.
Proletkult, as well as a number of other writers' organizations (RAPP, VOAPP), was disbanded by the decree of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks "On the restructuring of literary and artistic organizations" dated April 23, 1932.
2. Ideology of Proletkult
The ideologists of Proletkult were A. A. Bogdanov, A. K. Gastev (founder of the Central Institute of Labor in 1920), V. F. Pletnev, who proceeded from the definition of “class culture” formulated by Plekhanov. The declared goal of the organization was the development of proletarian culture. According to Bogdanov, any work of art reflects the interests and worldview of only one class and is therefore unsuitable for another. Consequently, the proletariat is required to create “its” own culture from scratch. According to Bogdanov’s definition, proletarian culture is a dynamic system of elements of consciousness that governs social practice, and the proletariat as a class implements it.
Gastev viewed the proletariat as a class, the peculiarities of whose worldview are dictated by the specifics of everyday mechanistic, standardized labor. New art must reveal these features through the search for an appropriate language of artistic expression. “We are approaching some truly new combined art, where purely human demonstrations, pathetic modern acting and chamber music will recede into the background. We are moving towards an unprecedentedly objective demonstration of things, mechanized crowds and stunning open grandeur, which knows nothing intimate and lyrical,” wrote Gastev in his work “On the Tendencies of Proletarian Culture” (1919).
The ideology of Proletkult caused serious damage to the artistic development of the country, denying cultural heritage. Proletkult solved two problems - to destroy the old noble culture and create a new proletarian one. If the task of destruction was solved, then the second task never went beyond the scope of unsuccessful experimentation.
3. Printed publications of Proletkult
Proletkult published about 20 periodicals, including the magazine “Proletarian Culture”, “The Future”, “Gorn”, “Beeps”. He published many collections of proletarian poetry and prose.
4. International Bureau of Proletkult
During the Second Congress of the Comintern in August 1920, the International Bureau of Proletkult was created, which issued a manifesto “To the Proletarian Brothers of All Countries.” He was entrusted with the task of “spreading the principles of proletarian culture, creating Proletkult organizations in all countries and preparing the World Congress of Proletkult.” The activities of the International Bureau of Proletkult did not expand widely, and it gradually disintegrated.
Bibliography:
1. Changes in the state structure of the Russian Empire and its collapse. Chapter 3: Civil War
Proletkult began with the First Petrograd Conference of proletarian cultural and educational organizations, created in October 1917 on the initiative of factory committees and with the active participation of A. V. Lunacharsky, who was then the chairman of the cultural and educational commission of the Central Committee of the RSDLP (b). The conference took place over three days a week before the October Revolution. According to Lunacharsky’s recollections, three quarters of those gathered were workers - “entirely Bolsheviks or non-party people closely aligned with them.” (14) A resolution drawn up by Lunacharsky was adopted, which, in particular, said: “The conference believes that both in science and in art the proletariat will show independent creativity, but for this it must master the entire cultural heritage of the past and present. The proletariat willingly accepts the sympathy and help of socialist and even non-party intelligentsia in cultural and educational matters.”
Despite the fact that the disagreements that arose at the conference had not yet led, according to Lunacharsky, “to the slightest aggravation,” and the name itself - Proletkult - had not yet emerged, these disagreements still took place and they concerned the relationship of the emerging proletarian culture with existing culture, as well as the culture of the past. At the conference, voices were heard from those who christened “the entire old culture bourgeois” and declared that in it “there is nothing worthy of living” except “natural science and technology, and even then with reservations.” They also said that “the proletariat will begin the work of destroying this culture and creating a new one immediately after the expected revolution.”
And although such views were not reflected in the resolution adopted by the meeting, they were not slow to have an impact in the near future. It is also indicative that Lunacharsky noticed “a certain partiality and ill will” of the conference participants towards the intelligentsia, which was, in his opinion, “fair only in relation to the three or four Mensheviks who attended the conference, but spread to all intellectuals” (with the exception of Lunacharsky himself, although he and was "the leader of a more moderate group"). It is also characteristic that “the entire conference, as one person,” including Lunacharsky, was convinced of the need to “develop our own culture” and in no way become “in the position of a simple student” of the existing culture. The monolithic unity of the participants on this main issue led to the following formulation, recorded in the resolution: the proletariat “considers it necessary to take a critical view of all the fruits of the old culture, which it perceives not as a student, but as a builder called upon to erect a new building from the stones of the old.”
This thesis, which hides the possibility of completely different approaches to the problem of proletarian culture - from its assimilation of the “fruits of the old culture” and their creative processing to the assertion of its “independence” and independence from cultural tradition - predetermined after the victory of October the contradictions of the aesthetic (15) platform of Proletkult and the unclear position of A.V. Lunacharsky as the People's Commissar of Education in relation to him.
According to Lunacharsky, in the work he launched to organize Proletkult, “intellectuals” took an active part - P. I. Lebedev-Polyansky, P. M. Kerzhentsev, and partly O. M. Brik; “half-proletarian, half-actor” V.V. Ignatov; “from the workers” - Fyodor Kalinin, Pavel Bessalko, A. I. Mashirov-Samobytnik and others.
It should be noted that two of the persons mentioned by A.V. Lunacharsky - P.I. Lebedev-Polyansky and F.I. Kalinin, as well as himself, were associated before October with the factional group “Forward”, headed by A.A. Bogdanov . In 1909, the Vperyodists organized a school in Italy, on the island of Capri, where 13 people came from Russia to study, including the worker F.I. Kalinin. Lecturers at the school were A. A. Bogdanov, A. V. Lunacharsky, M. N. Pokrovsky, A. M. Gorky and others. At an extended meeting of the editorial board of the Bolshevik newspaper “Proletary” (June 1909, Paris), the structure of the Capri school was condemned, and the resolution of the meeting drawn up by V.I. Lenin said: “under the guise of this school, a new center of a faction breaking away from the Bolsheviks is being created.”
Possessing a pronounced leader complex, Bogdanov realized it in a purely theoretical sphere; he wanted to be not a leader, but an ideologist. Bogdanov considered himself a Marxist, but rejected Leninism and, above all, Lenin’s concept of the proletarian revolution. After the victory of October, such a position could have become extremely dangerous for Bogdanov, but V.I. Lenin did not settle personal scores with him, remembering his former party merits and still appreciating in him a person of strict and systematic knowledge (his book “Brief course of economic science" (1897) he considered the best in the economic literature of his time).
The symbolic key to understanding Bogdanov’s personality is his party pseudonyms - Private and Rakhmetov, seemingly mutually exclusive. Constantly speaking out against all kinds of authoritarian systems and simple authorities, against any originality, individualism and even individuality (“man is an individual, but his work is impersonal,” he liked to repeat), Bogdanov at the same time not in vain called himself Rakhmetov. Having founded the Institute of Blood Transfusion in 1926 (Bogdanov was a certified doctor), in 1928 he tested on himself a new (16) vaccine, hitherto tried only on animals, and died tragically.
Leading the life of a professional revolutionary until October, being in the thick of party work and struggle, being in prison and exile, Bogdanov strangely remained an armchair scientist. Having once and for all developed a worldview, he meticulously laid out impressions from fast-flowing life on the symmetrically built shelves of his perfectly organized brain. Having once and for all built blocks of speculative concepts, he no longer thought about their connection with the rapidly changing era (the complete opposite of Lunacharsky, always open to life, whose party pseudonyms - Voinov, Frivolous - also characterize the nature of the future People's Commissar very clearly). One day Bogdanov wrote in his diary: “Yes, I am in this theory [of proletarian culture. - G. T.] abstracted himself from the current backwardness of the proletariat.” This ability to “abstract” from the realities of reality was, perhaps, the main feature of Bogdanov’s spiritual make-up.
The theory of “proletarian culture” was developed by Bogdanov in the 1900-1910s, long before the emergence of Proletkult, the practical implementation of which he did not even think about. However, everything that Lebedev-Polyansky, Pletnev, F. Kalinin, Ignatov and many others said in the first years of October was just a rehash of Bogdanov’s old ideas. Bogdanov himself (Private!) stood modestly in the shadows. But publishing, along with others, an article or two in the magazine “Proletarskaya Kultura”, he, of course, could not help but see what a fire he had ignited. Without claiming priority, without being offended when he was retold almost verbatim, without complaining when he was rudely vulgarized, Bogdanov could not help but feel the satisfaction of a true leader, whose influence on the consciousness of others was organically strengthened in their “collective” psyche.
The foundation of the theory of “proletarian culture” was empiriomonism, Bogdanov’s philosophical system, in which the positivist concept of “experience” was not just fetishized, but interpreted in its own way - inseparable from the form organizations human labor activity. Bogdanov proposed that any human activity - social, technical, artistic - “be considered as some material organizational experience and explore from an organizational perspective.” The consequence of this approach was the understanding of culture as a model of production and labor practice; culture was identified with the method of organizing productive forces and directly resulted from production technology. “Any ideology (17) [is equal to culture in Bogdanov’s understanding. - G. T.], ultimately grows on the basis of technical life; the basis of ideological development is technical.”
In accordance with this attitude, Bogdanov divided the history of human development into four periods, distinguished, in his opinion, by “a special type of dominant ideologies - a special type of culture: 1) the era of primitive cultures; 2) the era of authoritarian culture; 3) the era of individualistic culture; 4) the era of the culture of labor collectivism.”
Bogdanov believed that by directly removing culture from the sphere of material production, he was steadily following Marx. Marx, however, pointing to material production as the root cause of all social superstructures, never forgot about the “relative independence” of the development of ideology, culture and, especially, art. Often using Marxist terminology, Bogdanov filled it with content that was far from materialist dialectics. Thus, speaking a lot and passionately about the disastrous consequences of the “division of labor,” Bogdanov reduced them to the fetishism of specialization, which gave rise to incomplete life, guild isolation, and “professional stupidity.”
In the history of mankind, Bogdanov saw “two breaks in the working nature of man” - authoritarianism and specialization. Authoritarianism was, in his opinion, the first fragmentation of the integral nature of man. When the “hands” separated from the “head”, the initial “authoritarian form of life” was formed, those who command and those who obey arose. The further development of civilization, changing the forms of authoritarianism, preserved its essence: “the experience of one person is recognized as fundamentally unequal to the experience of another, the dependence of man on man becomes one-sided, the active will is separated from the passive will.” In art, Bogdanov believed, authoritarianism consolidated the heroes - gods, kings and leaders - and everyone else acted as obedient executors of the totalitarian will.
The division of labor marked the beginning of the second phase of the “fragmentation of man” - specialization, which the bourgeois world fetishized. “Specialty philistinism” arose (E. Mach). Here are the consequences of specialization, impressively stated: “Special experience determines a special worldview. In the minds of one specialist, life and the world appear as a workshop where each thing is prepared for its own special block, in the minds of another - as a shop where happiness is bought for energy and dexterity, in the minds of a third - like a book written in different languages and in different fonts, in the consciousness of the fourth as a temple, (18) where everything is achieved through spells, in the consciousness of the fifth - as a complex branching<ся>scholastic task, etc., etc.” The possibility of mutual understanding between people is narrowed to the limit, which threatens, as Bogdanov prophesied, with a new Babylonian pandemonium.
Specialization has indeed limited and continues to limit the penetration of universal human experience into the consciousness of the individual, but it does not result in the “abstract fetishism” of science or professional art, which Bogdanov proposed to connect with “methods of proletarian creativity.”
Today, Bogdanov’s “organizational science” falls into a different socio-historical context and may be of special scientific interest. The three-volume “Tectology” is perhaps the first attempt to scientifically substantiate the “organizational point of view” that captivates modern scientists. Perhaps it was not in vain that Bogdanov considered his “Tektology” (from the Greek - the study of construction) the science of the future, which, in his opinion, equips a person with a method for solving “any issue, any life task, although they are outside his “specialty”” . Anticipating the modern cybernetic approach, Bogdanov argued that any explained function of a living organism can be likened to a mechanical one. ““Mechanism” - understood organization. <…>“The “mechanical point of view” is the unified organizational point of view in its development, in its victories over the fragmentation of science.”
And yet, the dialectic of connections within Bogdanov’s triad (empiriomonism - proletarian culture - tektology) does not go beyond the boundaries of the formal-logical structure. Bogdanov's concept, if you like, is fundamentally ahistorical. Not to mention the fact that the “eras of cultures” called by Bogdanov very conditionally correspond to the real development of human civilization (moreover, only in its European version), they, according to the author, replace each other mechanically, through repression, arise in return their predecessors - the “mode of production” changes - and the culture immediately changes.
Bogdanov derived proletarian culture from “methods of proletarian labor, that is, the type of work that is characteristic of workers in the newest large-scale industry.” In his opinion, specialization, which in other methods of production alienated man from himself and his own kind, was here transferred from workers to machines; the content of labor on different machines acquired “organizational” similarity and formed a “comradely form of cooperation.” This was followed by the thesis according to which - “methods of proletarian creativity are developing in the direction of (19) monism and conscious collectivism"[l]. This meant that, in contrast to the “individualistic” culture, which specialized a person in a certain “labor,” the “proletarian” culture supposedly established the identity of any human activity - technical, socio-economic, political, everyday, scientific, artistic - because all these “ varieties labor"are composed of absolutely identical "organizing or disorganizing human efforts." Bogdanov's “monism” assumed that from now on there would be no “methods of practice and science” that could not be directly applied in art, and vice versa. And “conscious collectivism” was proposed to be aimed at discovering “the germs and prototypes of the organization of the collective” everywhere - in human life and nature, politics and economics, science and art, the content and form of works of art. In short, as Mayakovsky later quipped, “Proletkults do not talk / about “I”, / nor about personality / “I” / for a Proletkult / is like indecency.”
Bogdanov’s concept implied a “break” of proletarian culture with the culture of the past; denial of the ideological function of art; denial of professionalism in science, art and other spheres of human activity; a nihilistic attitude towards the intelligentsia as the bearer of “individualistic” rather than “collective” experience, and much more.
After the revolution, Proletkult quickly took shape into an organization to which the Soviet government initially assigned a prominent place in cultural construction. Proletkult was allocated very significant funds, premises, and all kinds of assistance and support were provided.
Proletkult was supported primarily because it was formed as a mass organization. According to the magazine “Proletarian Culture”, by the beginning of 1920, 300 local proletcults united more than half a million people.
Lenin warmly welcomed the participants of the First All-Russian Proletkult Conference (September 1918), and in November of the same year made a speech at the evening of the Moscow Proletkult, where he said that “a powerful organizing tool - art, previously monopolized by the bourgeoisie - is now in the hands of the proletariat” , who “can create freely and joyfully.”
However, already in 1919, the tone and meaning of V.I. Lenin’s statements about Proletkult changed dramatically. He begins to talk “about personal inventions in the field of philosophy or in the field of culture,” targeting, first of all, A. A. Bogdanov. Although the latter was now listed (20) as just a member of the Central Committee of the All-Russian Council of Proletkult, while his former students P.I. Lebedev-Polyansky and F.I. Kalinin occupied leading positions in the organization, such a balance of power should have even impressed Bogdanov: not him united the ranks of adherents of “proletarian culture” - they grew and multiplied themselves, obeying the objective course of things.
And indeed, Bogdanov’s concept found support not only among a narrow circle of like-minded people, but also among the broad masses. This most important circumstance, in our opinion, is still underestimated. Modern research on Proletkult quite rightly notes the discrepancy between the ideological platform of the organization and the true interests of the working people. But they had yet to realize their true interests in the field of culture and art. B.V. Alpers was absolutely right when he expressed the following judgment in his article “Bill-Belotserkovsky and the Theater of the 20s” (1970): “The Proletkult program was not just the brainchild of a group of theorists. It reflected the views and sentiments of many, many people who made the revolution with arms in their hands, who, like the Bill, along with a holy hatred of the old world, carried within themselves an unjust hostility to everything that was once created by it, even to its most magnificent spiritual creations. This must be well remembered when we turn to the study of the theater of an early, now distant era in the history of the revolution.” As we see, even in the 1920s it was very difficult for the major Soviet playwright V.N. Bill-Belotserkovsky to overcome the “unjust enmity” towards the spiritual culture of the past. And, of course, he’s not the only one.
In his obituary dedicated to the memory of the untimely death of Pavel Bessalko, A.V. Lunacharsky, speaking about the purity of his moral character and undoubted artistic talent, could not help but note that the proletarian writer “had very Mahaevsky views,” i.e. quite obvious “bitterness against the intelligentsia.” Objectively, therefore, people like P. Bessalko, despite the impeccability of their proletarian origin, became carriers of a disorganizing element.
It should, of course, be noted that both Bill and Bessalko vulgarized Bogdanov’s ideas. Bogdanov highly revered the “spiritual creations” of the old world and did not take up arms against the intelligentsia as such. The “collectivistic” stage of culture, according to Bogdanov, did not at all mean that from now on poetry, for example, should be written by a group (and such an attitude was in many literary studios (21) of Proletkult). Bogdanov believed that even in the pre-“collectivist” stages of culture, collective, i.e., socially organized experience took place. “Under the author-personality,” he wrote, “hides the author-collective, and poetry is part of his self-awareness.” Seeing the collective experience of the proletariat as the basis of its culture, Bogdanov constantly stipulated that he did not mean “the majority of voices.” In the individual discovery of Copernicus, he explained, the collective experience of people was reflected; in the great works of art the universal human experience of cultural development shines through. But if you ask the “majority,” then even now, “probably, they would not be for Copernicus.” "The fact is that majority and organization not only are they not the same thing, but until now most often they even ended up on opposite sides.” Consequently, the intellectual was not forbidden to reorganize himself in a “collective” way (after all, Bogdanov himself was able to do this!), to recognize himself as a bearer of socially organized experience, which the happy proletarian possesses organically. But the “majority,” commented by Bogdanov with completely individualistic skepticism, did not want to delve into all the subtleties of the concept of the highly revered master. Because even with the above reservations, Bogdanov’s concept was an example of a vulgar sociological doctrine that did not satisfy the best feelings of the “majority”.
Proletkult gradually shied away from the urgent educational tasks of the time. He did not consider, for example, the fight against illiteracy “our common task.” Moreover, he did not consider her at all his task. He entrusted the education of the broad masses, including the proletariat, entirely to the People's Commissariat for Education, which, according to a declaration signed by the chairman of the All-Russian Proletkult Council P. I. Lebedev-Polyansky, was obliged to engage in education “on a state scale without distinction between groups of revolutionary people.” Proletkult itself considered itself called upon to “awaken creative initiative among the broad masses, to collect all the elements of working thought and psyche.” Proletkult, according to the conviction of its leaders, could fulfill this own “mission” only “outside of any decree”, in conditions of “complete independence from the state”, “constrained” by concerns about the “allies of the proletariat in the dictatorship” (peasantry, intelligentsia), supposedly incapable by virtue of their “petty-bourgeois nature”, to assimilate “the new spirit of working-class culture.” “In matters of culture, we are immediate socialists,” stated an editorial in one of the first issues of Proletarian Culture. “We affirm that the proletariat (22) must now, immediately, create for itself socialist forms of thought, feeling, and life, regardless of the relationships and combinations of political forces.”
The main point of ideological and aesthetic differences between V.I. Lenin and Proletkult was the problem of cultural heritage. It was not at all as simple as it still appears today in other statements about Proletkult. The fact is that none of the Proletkult theorists had a “sweeping denial of the old culture.” Proletkult's mistake was deeper and more serious. Having proclaimed the proletariat “the legitimate heir of all its [cultures of the past. - G. T.] valuable conquests, spiritual as well as material,” declaring that “the proletariat “cannot and should not renounce this inheritance,” the proletkult ideologists, it would seem, did not deviate in any way from the well-known Leninist definitions. But they put an end to where Lenin’s continuation followed, which is the essence of the Marxist approach to the problem of cultural heritage. The main thing in Lenin's teaching is the idea continuity, development, rather than simple recognition of the proletariat as the “legitimate heir” of the culture of the past.
Without denying the importance of heritage in cultural education, Proletkult “in the name of the proletariat” (words of A.V. Lunacharsky) declared its culture “sharply isolated.” To educate without introducing - this could be the slogan of Proletkult in relation to cultural heritage. This programmatic “break” of proletarian culture with everything that preceded it and was nearby in time determined both the separatist policy of the organization and the scholasticism of its aesthetic program. If we add to this that Proletkult, as already mentioned, delegated the task of cultural education to the People's Commissariat for Education, it turns out that it reserved for itself only the concern for cultivating “elements of proletarian culture” and vigilantly guarding its borders so that, God forbid, “ did not spread out in the environment”; so that proletarian art does not go beyond its boundaries - “does not mix with the art of the old world.”
Highly appreciating the craving of the broad masses for art and, in particular, for the theater, welcoming the scope of the amateur movement, Lunacharsky more than once noted that the quantitative indicators here do not coincide with the qualitative ones. In 1918, the Petrozavodsk “Bulletin of the Arts Department” announced: “All individuals and organizations wishing to work in the arts department in the fields of music, theater, cinematography, literary publishing are asked to apply. Don’t be shy about your abilities and talents (23). This announcement is a document eminently characteristic of the times.
On the one hand, the era, which put forward the creative initiative of the masses as its aesthetic dominant, for the first time so clearly placed art at the service of the revolution and the practical tasks of the day. Even “persons” who had “abilities and gifts” did not go to theater studios and write plays in order to discover and nurture their talents. They wanted to fight “in art” against external and internal enemies, to agitate for Soviet power. But, on the other hand, it did not at all follow from this attitude, born of October, that from now on everyone would be able to engage in art, if there was a desire. Meanwhile, the ideologists of Proletkult sought to instill in the masses just such an idea. In his 1919 article “Understanding Proletarian Culture,” P. Bessalko wrote: “At the feast of art, everyone is equal. There is no difference between the “chosen” and the non-“chosen” either in the quality or quantity of their minds.
Talent is the will aimed at a specific goal. The stronger the will, the greater the talent. Phenomenal persistence in work and in achieving one’s goals creates geniuses.” Bessalko himself, as already mentioned, had undoubted literary abilities, but he preached not just a creative “equalization”, but a barracks approach to the problem of artistic creativity. The figure of the artist, possessing “talent” in Bessalko’s interpretation, acquired almost sinister outlines.
The denial of professional art, which requires natural talent, and the promotion of “creativity” in its place, based on fanatical “perseverance,” disoriented the proletkult masses and hampered the development of those who truly possessed artistic talent. Here is an eloquent testimony of the times. A correspondent for the proletkult magazine “Gorn” interviews a working poet: “I’m teasing:
- “Proletarian Culture” [magazine. - G. T.] keeps you under real guardianship. She constantly shows you the true path. “Don’t go to the right, my dear, you’ll stumble there, and even here, perhaps, it’s from the evil one.” Doesn't this kind of nanny annoy you?
The poet smiles:
No, that's the way it should be. We, artists, are passionate people, it’s easy for us to get lost, to get lost in our eyes, and we really need “Proletarian Culture” for its attentive sobriety.”
This fear of deviating even one step from the prescribed guidelines has become a stumbling block for many Proletcultists on the path to genuine creativity and genuine art.
(24) V.I. Lenin saw only one way out of this situation - the party’s merciless criticism of the ideological platform of Proletkult, its unquestioning subordination to the People’s Commissariat for Education.
On October 5–12, 1920, the First All-Russian Congress of Proletkult was held in Moscow. And on October 2, another congress opened - the Third Congress of the Komsomol. As you know, V.I. Lenin gave a speech at it, the pathos of which was summed up in one word - “study”. Calling on those gathered to master “all modern knowledge,” Lenin sharply criticized those “ultra-revolutionary” “talks about proletarian culture”, those projects of “specialists in proletarian culture” that were invented in proletarian “laboratories” and confused young people. However, the report of P. I. Lebedev-Polyansky at the Proletkult congress and the resolution adopted on it indicated that Proletkult intended to reserve “cultural and creative work” for itself, and to use “cultural and educational”, at best, as “auxiliary "
Then Lenin invited the People's Commissar of Education A.V. Lunacharsky to speak at the congress with a direct indication of the need to subordinate Proletkult to the People's Commissariat for Education. Lunacharsky did not follow Lenin’s instructions, even taking into account the “Necessary Amendment”, where he argued that in the presentation of Izvestia the text of his speech at the congress was distorted “quite significantly.” Lunacharsky later recalled that he “edited” his speech in a “conciliatory” way, because it seemed to him wrong to “go on some kind of attack and upset the assembled workers.” This was an obvious excuse. The tactical evasiveness of the people's commissar's speech at the Proletkult congress was explained by Lunacharsky's persistent intention at all costs to preserve the independence of the organization (not political, of course), but cultural - the independence of the status of a cultural institution with its own aesthetic program, especially since Lunacharsky knew about the impending reform of the People's Commissariat for Education and the immediate subordination of all cultural and art institutions to the Glavpolitprosvet.
This position of Lunacharsky, at first glance, looks incomprehensible. After all, strictly speaking, Bogdanov’s triad resulted in the denial of aesthetics. In practice, Bogdanov even lacks the definition itself - aesthetics, and there are no terms of its nomenclature. Discussions “about art”, which are extremely rare in his writings, betray a commitment to the “classics” befitting Bogdanov’s generation and an open hostility to the latest “isms”; analysis of poetry from the point of view of “socially organized experience” is often simply curious, and purely technocratic thinking with (25) quite old-fashioned tastes separates from the “innovation of the “decadents” who went over from yesterday to the side of the revolution.” In the struggle between old and new in the art of the 20th century, Bogdanov clearly stands on the side of the “old,” although, quite in the spirit of the times, he interprets innovation “as an expansion of the means of artistic technique.” What was meant, however, was not the internal technique of art itself, but the enrichment and subsequent replacement of traditional art with the latest technical inventions - “photography, stereography, film photography, spectral colors, phonography, etc.” Bogdanov’s speech, therefore, was never about aesthetics proper, only sometimes about technical aesthetics. It is no coincidence that the hero of one of his science fiction novels (“Red Star”), having visited the Martian art museum, is delighted with the fact that “sculptures and pictures” are no longer exhibited in this “scientific and aesthetic institution” - socialist Martians have long since passed to convenient “stereograms”.
A legitimate question arises: how could Lunacharsky, a man with a uniquely developed aesthetic sense, highly value “the attempts to organize a general scientific proletarian basis made by Comrade Bogdanov”? Moreover, the quoted words, despite the accompanying reservation about the discrepancy between the “attempts” of the Proletkult ideologist and Marxist orthodoxy, refer to 1922, and, therefore, are boldly polemical to the content of the Letter of the Central Committee “On Proletkult” (December 1920). Everything, however, falls into place if we do not obscure the most important reality of the creative biography of the People's Commissar: the field of aesthetics not only during the time of the Capri school, but long before its creation - back in 1902 - 1903, i.e. during the formation of Russian positivism , was entirely under the jurisdiction of Lunacharsky himself. This was his “patrimony”, which is why Bogdanov could not bother himself with “aesthetics”, which, with the invention of “Tektology” in 1912, simply “disappeared”, like all areas of special knowledge.
But in 1904, when the first collection of Russian positivists was published, the “specialization” was still preserved. In “Essays on a Realistic Worldview”, next to the articles by A. Bogdanov “Exchange and Technology”, S. Suvorov “Fundamentals of the Philosophy of Life”, V. Bazarov “Authoritarian Metaphysics and Autonomous Personality”, Lunacharsky’s programmatic work “Fundamentals of Positive Aesthetics” was placed, defining the field his actions in the general complex of the positivist program. Lunacharsky did not abandon the ideas set forth in “Fundamentals of Positive Aesthetics” even after the October Revolution. In 1923, he published the work as a separate brochure with a characteristic note - “this article, published for the first time in 1903, (26) is being republished without changes for now” and presented it to V.I. Lenin with a dedicatory inscription - “To dear Vladimir Ilyich, the work that he, It seems that A. Lunacharsky once approved, with deep love. 10.III.1923."
It is not easy to imagine that Lenin even “once” liked Lunacharsky’s article. Apparently there was something else going on here. “In the summer and autumn of 1904,” wrote V.I. Lenin to A.M. Gorky in 1908, “we finally agreed with Bogdanov, how beki, and concluded that silent bloc, silently eliminating philosophy as a neutral area, which lasted throughout the revolution and gave us the opportunity to jointly carry into the revolution those tactics of revolutionary Social Democracy (= Bolshevism), which, in my deepest conviction, was the only correct one " Precisely because “there was little time to study philosophy in the heat of the revolution,” Lenin even intended to write an article on the agrarian question in Bogdanov’s Essays. But by 1908, “a fight between the beks on the question of philosophy” had become “completely inevitable,” and now Lenin was ready to allow himself to be “quartered rather than agree to participate in an organ or a board” preaching ideas similar to those expressed on the pages of new collection of Russian Machists, although he repeated again that “in my opinion, it would be stupid to split over this.” Reading one after another the articles of “Essays on the Philosophy of Marxism” (including Lunacharsky’s work “Atheists”), Lenin, in his own words, “was literally raging with indignation.” “No, this is not Marxism! - he wrote to Gorky. “It is impossible, under the guise of Marxism, to “teach workers religious atheism” and “adoration” of the highest human potentials (Lunacharsky).”
But these same ideas permeate “Fundamentals of Positive Aesthetics.” To one degree or another they are inherent in everyone special philosophical and aesthetic works of Lunacharsky up to the turn of the 1920s and 30s. The complex of ideas first expressed in “Fundamentals of Positive Aesthetics” is a reality of Lunacharsky’s worldview, a reality of the general cultural situation of the time, which had far-reaching consequences. Of course, M.A. Lifshits was right in principle when he said that Lunacharsky’s worldview “is entirely expressed in the parable of his life,” and his aesthetics, in which he saw “the focus of his worldview,” is a “deeply felt revolutionary ideal.” But to assert that “Lunacharsky’s worldview” generally “does not exist in the form of an abstract system of views” (the word “abstract” is used here, in our opinion, in vain - for emotional support of previous (27) thoughts), that his “aesthetics is not similar to university professorial science,” means denying the obvious. “Even now,” Lunacharsky wrote in 1925, “in aesthetics I remain more a student of Avenarius than of any other thinker.”
For all that, Lunacharsky was firmly convinced that his philosophical and aesthetic treatises were an expression of the “bright maximalist foundations of genuine revolutionary Marxism.” “Supplementing” Marxism with the synthetic philosophy of G. Spencer, the “pure form of positivism” of R. Avenarius, or the empiriomonism of A. Bogdanov, Lunacharsky proceeded from a narrow understanding of Marxism itself, the composition of which, as it seemed to him, was exhausted by economic theory and the doctrine of class struggle . This understanding of Marxism was not Lunacharsky’s personal mistake, but a general historical error. The exception was G.V. Plekhanov, who managed to establish some “Marxist” order in the philosophical “emulsions” of the young Lunacharsky, but he was also unable to shake his positivist authorities in the field of aesthetics. Plekhanov’s already renowned Marxist orthodoxy often manifested itself in the analysis of aesthetic problems and art itself in a too straightforward manner. Although G.V. Plekhanov liked to repeat that sociology should “open wide” the doors to aesthetics, he himself more than once closed these doors tightly. Lunacharsky noticed this before others, subjecting to emotional but quite convincing criticism the methodology of Plekhanov’s famous article “Henrik Ibsen” (1906) - a classic example of Marxist criticism. He rejected the very possibility of using the work of a great artist as an illustration of a sociological alternative - either the deliberate predetermination of any creative act by the social environment that formed the artist, or (like Ibsen) - the law of contrast - an artificial attempt to contrast oneself in creativity with this “environment”, inevitably leading to stillborn abstractions. Plekhanov himself, Lunacharsky ironically commented, came from the ranks of Tambov landowners, “whose policies also could not help but instill in him, like the “aristocrat,” the spirit [i.e. e. Ibsen. - G. T.] the greatest disgust, however, he did not despise all politics as a result, at least not for the rest of his life”[c]. As for the supposedly law of “contrast” in Ibsen’s work, “in contrast to Catholicism,” Lunacharsky reasonably noted, “one can become a Protestant, a deist, an atheist.” “In contrast with the petty philistinism - Don Quixote, a large predator, a drunkard. Life is not mathematics, (28) there are no simple pros and cons in it and the “sociological explanation” of Comrade. Plekhanov personally satisfies us very little.”
These words contain all of Lunacharsky, the very essence of his deeply artistic nature. It is all the more interesting to see how he disposed of the “vital differences”, “affectionals” and “co-affectionals” of the philosophy of R. Avenarius, which he forever loved, how he combined his aesthetics with the “monism” of A. Bogdanov, convinced precisely that life is mathematics , consisting, of course, not of “simple”, but exclusively of “collectively organized” pros and cons.
Lunacharsky's treatise is called - fundamentals positive, and not positivist aesthetics, and this is essential. “Fundamentals” are not another version of a purely positivist refraction of aesthetics, but an attempt to build positive aesthetic systems, acting according to objective scientific laws. With this attitude, Lunacharsky’s work is fundamentally different from most aesthetic works of the era, including the most famous of them, L. N. Tolstoy’s treatise “What is Art?” (1897). Tolstoy, who carefully studied almost all the aesthetic works written before him, giving a brief description of each of them, did not find support and confirmation anywhere his thoughts, and therefore rejected aesthetics itself and expressed own an understanding of what art is outside the category of beauty it discards. Lunacharsky, on the contrary, includes in his “system” the positive, from his point of view, principles of the corpses of “old and new thinkers” about the beautiful, and if the positivist approach to aesthetics still prevails in him, then this, first of all, is not explained Lunacharsky’s subjective predilections, and the reality of the then stage of development of aesthetics - the very introduction of natural scientific terminology into aesthetics (like the mentioned “affectionals”) is a consequence of the desire characteristic of the era to turn aesthetics into science - in those years only areas of natural and exact knowledge were considered science.
At the same time, Lunacharsky’s treatise, which claims to be a generally valid (non-historical) interpretation of aesthetic laws, essentially falls into a certain historical context of the operation of these laws. “Fundamentals” was written in an era when the natural scientific (biological) approach to aesthetics was already on its way out, when the “metaphysical” - the ideal - was again coming into force, interpreted, of course, in a new and different way, but actively winning back from the positivists what they had annulled the spiritual sphere. The uniqueness of Lunacharsky’s position lies (29) in the fact that he tries to combine both approaches - “materialistic” and “spiritual”, as a result of which the positivist Lunacharsky turns out to be a “god-builder”. True, he is building not a “temple of God”, but socialism, but socialism itself is understood in the “highest sense” as spiritual the culture of the proletariat is like its religion. And here Lunacharsky (at first glance, unexpectedly, but, according to historical logic, extremely natural) begins to largely coincide not only with L.N. Tolstoy, but also with V.S. Solovyov, the philosophical ideologist of Russian symbolism. Researchers of Lunacharsky’s aesthetics, who have more than once commented on the text of his treatise with positivist sources in order to emphasize the “lack of independence” of Lunacharsky’s positivism and the “eclecticism” of his work, have never paid attention to these, in our opinion, more significant coincidences.
Lunacharsky was certainly familiar with Tolstoy’s treatise (in a work written in the same 1903, he mentions “the ultra-utilitarian in aesthetics Count Tolstoy”), L.N. Tolstoy was unlikely to be familiar with “Fundamentals of Positive Aesthetics”, and even if he had become acquainted , then most likely would have considered Lunacharsky’s aesthetics “ultra-utilitarian”. To Tolstoy, the approach to beauty “according to its physiological effect on the body” (and it is, to one degree or another, inherent in all positivist aesthetics and Lunacharsky’s biological aesthetics as well) seemed incorrect. But it is significant that at the same time Tolstoy pointed out the obvious, from his point of view, advantage of the “new” (i.e., positivist) aesthetics over the old - “metaphysical” (“simple and understandable, subjective” definition of beauty, calling it “that which what you like,” Tolstoy preferred “to the objective, mystical”). The line in the development of aesthetic thought coming from Kant - positivism - is incomparably closer to Tolstoy than the line of Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and their followers.
The similarity with Lunacharsky in Tolstoy’s aesthetics arises, however, not in the rejection of the old “metaphysics” (that is, not on the basis of positivism), but in the construction of a new one. The initial ideological premises of the treatises of Tolstoy and Lunacharsky are, of course, fundamentally different. The gap between modern art and the life of the people, about which both researchers passionately write, leads them to similar conclusions regarding the people (Tolstoy could have taken Lunacharsky’s words as an epigraph to his essay - “a new, folk art is coming, for which the customer will not be the rich man, but the people” ), but diametrically opposed to art. Tolstoy with furious energy attacks the art of idle gentlemen, who for centuries created, on the basis of “fantastic (30) and unfounded” theories of beauty, art that is alien to the people, and therefore “bad,” incomprehensible and unnecessary for them. Lunacharsky, on the contrary, is confident that “the people are idealists from time immemorial” and no matter how their ideals become “realistic as they realize their strengths,” they will always have enough ability to “objectively enjoy” both the “brightly colored temples of the Egyptians and the Hellenic grace, and the ecstasies of the Gothic, and the stormy cheerfulness of the Renaissance"; that the people will be able to be shocked by the “crushing wrath of Achilles” and plunge “into the bottomless profundity of Faust.” In short, if an ordinary Proletkult member were offered a choice of these two positions, there is no doubt that he would have armed himself with the “anti-aesthetics” of Count L.N. Tolstoy.
All the more revealing are the striking, sometimes textual, similarities between Lunacharsky and Tolstoy in the understanding and purpose of art. future(“good” in Tolstoy and the art of the victorious proletariat in Lunacharsky). The art of the future, Tolstoy believed, would not “consist of conveying feelings accessible only to some people of the rich classes, as is happening now,” it “will only be the art that realizes the highest religious consciousness of the people of our time.” “Only those works that will convey feelings that attract people to fraternal unity, or such universal human feelings that will be able to unite all people,” he continued, “will be considered art.” And here are Lunacharsky’s forecasts: “to promote the growth of people’s faith in their strengths, in a better future” - “this is the task of man,” “to unite hearts in a common feeling” - “this is the task of the artist.” “The faith of an active person is faith in the future of humanity, his religion is a set of feelings and thoughts that make him involved in the life of humanity,” “faith - hope - this is the essence of the religion of humanity; it obliges us to promote, to the best of our ability, the meaning of life, that is, its improvement or, what is the same, beauty, which contains goodness and truth as necessary conditions and prerequisites for its triumph.”
Lunacharsky declares aesthetics the “science of assessments” not only from the usual “point of view” - beauty, but also from two others - truth and goodness. The fact that “aesthetics, unified in principle,” was forced to distinguish “theory of knowledge and ethics” from itself is explained by the unjust structure of human society, which constantly violates the ideal of “maximum life”, in which the three named “points of view” should coincide. Lunacharsky considers his definition of the subject of aesthetics “unusual,” but he is not entirely right. (31) For the first time, the idea of a “uniform existence” - that is, a synthesis of truth, goodness and beauty - was put forward by V. S. Solovyov, however, not as an aesthetic system, but as an ontological basis for “free theosophy”. The difference in terminology cannot hide the obvious similarity in the approach of Solovyov and Lunacharsky to the main value categories of human existence - goodness, truth and beauty. Although before, as Lunacharsky rightly notes, it was not in vain that philosophers and aestheticians spoke “about the eternal beauty of truth and the morally beautiful,” they persistently separated these spheres. Now people have polar worldviews, different social attitudes, different philosophical predilections (so Solovyov, unlike the positivist Lunacharsky, was guided by the line - Schelling, Hegel, Schopenhauer), the opposite socio-cultural orientation (“Slavophile” Soloviev and “Westernizer” Lunacharsky) converge on the identity of goodness, truth and beauty. Vl. Soloviev: “Goodness and beauty are the same as truth, but only in the mode of will and feeling, and not in the mode of representation.” A. Lunacharsky: “Everything that contributes to life is truth, goodness and beauty”, “everything that destroys or belittles life and limits it is a lie, evil and ugliness”: “in this sense, assessments from the point of view of truth, goodness and beauties must coincide.”
For L. N. Tolstoy, the attempt to place goodness, beauty and truth “at the same height” was highly offensive; he did not find anything in common between these concepts (“the more we surrender to beauty, the more we move away from goodness”, “itself in itself, truth is neither good nor beauty." But having dissolved beauty and truth in the basic concept of good, “metaphysically constituting the essence of our consciousness,” he, almost in the same way as Solovyov and Lunacharsky, contributed to the synthesis of previously separated value orientations of man, for he recognized only that art that infects a person with feelings of goodness, and only that science that conveys knowledge aimed at affirming goodness. In other words, Russian aesthetics at the turn of the century took on the solution of the fundamental problems of human life through the spiritual refraction of social practice, and although these claims of its not only went beyond the boundaries of previous teachings about the beautiful, but were generally are not entirely solid, the cultural pathos revealed here (theosophical - in Solovyov, moral - in Tolstoy, social - in Lunacharsky) embraced an entire era - not only the pre-October decades, but also the first years of the revolution - the time of “war communism”.
It is significant, for example, that Tolstoy’s “roll call” with the Proletkult concept, which we have already noticed, is also developed in (32) such a cardinal moment for the Proletkult ideology as the denial of professionalism (specialization). Tolstoy wrote about this completely in the spirit of Bogdanov: “The art of the future will not be produced by professional artists who receive compensation for their art and will no longer do anything else but their art.” And further: “The art of the future will be produced by all people from the people who will engage in it when they feel the need for such activity.” According to Tolstoy, the “division of labor” (his expression!) is very beneficial “for the production of boots or buns,” but not for art, because the transfer to others of “experienced feelings” (the essence of art according to Tolstoy) is possible only when the artist “lives by all aspects of the natural life characteristic of people,” and therefore “the artist of the future will live the ordinary life of people, earning his living by some kind of labor.” This is a proletcult thesis.
It must be said that Lunacharsky never shared such views; for him the specificity of art remained inviolable - it is no coincidence that in his aesthetics, unlike Tolstoy, goodness and truth dissolve in beauty. Here is also a significant difference between Lunacharsky and Bogdanov, who was more than indifferent to the “beautiful”. It is no coincidence that there is little actual “Bogdanovsky” in “Fundamentals of Positive Aesthetics”. But it is there. Lunacharsky comes into contact with Bogdanov’s concept in two aspects. The first is clearly not significant for him and is introduced without any comment, as if in a tongue twister - “the development of art is most directly related to the development of technology, which is self-evident,” the second is much more fundamental: “Each class, having its own ideas about life and its own ideals, puts its own stamp on art, giving it certain forms, then a different meaning.<…>Growing up with a certain culture, science and class, art falls with it.” It was this thesis, repeated in other works of Lunacharsky, including those of the Soviet era, that allowed the Proletkultists, not without reason, to consider Lunacharsky “one of their own.” However, in “Fundamentals of Positive Aesthetics” next to this thesis there is another one, commenting on it: “It would, however, be superficial to assert that art does not have its own law of development.” This comment is much more significant than the thesis itself and is also characteristic of many of Lunacharsky’s works. Moreover, it is he who is fundamental to Lunacharsky’s aesthetics and his future activities as People’s Commissar of Education.
(33) The fact that Lunacharsky maintained both positions during Soviet times explains the ambivalence of his attitude towards Proletkult. Thus, the abstracts of Lunacharsky’s report at the First All-Russian Proletkult Conference, published without editorial comment in the journal “Proletarian Culture,” contain thoughts that are directly opposite to Proletkult concepts. For example, this: art “can be called universal insofar as everything valuable in the works of centuries and peoples is an integral content of the treasury of culture.” But here is another thesis, where the “proletkult” vocabulary carries a content alien to the proletkult ideology: we are talking about the “independence of proletarian creativity,” which, according to Lunacharsky, should be expressed “in originality, not at all artificial,” suggesting “familiarization with all the fruits of the previous culture " Or a look at the intelligentsia, already playing “a certain role in the birth of proletarian art by creating a number of works of a transitional nature.” It is obvious that in Lunacharsky’s ideas there are much less similarities with orthodox prolet-cult attitudes than differences. Proletkult, as we remember, did not exclude “familiarization with the fruits.” But the People's Commissar, seemingly without encroaching on the autonomy of proletarian culture, at the edge of the cliff, where the Proletkultists opened up the abyss between “familiarization” and “independent” creativity, paved a saving path: so that originality would not be artificial, and familiarization would not be idle. A subtle difference with Proletkult is also noticeable in the above thesis about the intelligentsia. The term “transitional” used in it can be interpreted in a Proletkultist way - transitional, which means not yet truly proletarian; but it is probably fairer to evaluate its dialectical meaning, which characterizes the situation of all art in the first years of October.
However, along with this, Lunacharsky also makes statements of a completely different nature. “The great proletarian class,” wrote the People’s Commissar, “will gradually renew culture from top to bottom. He will develop his own majestic style, which will be reflected in all areas of art, he will put into it a completely new soul: the proletariat will also modify the very structure of science. It is now possible to predict in which direction his methodology will develop.” Lunacharsky also warmly supported the attempt to engage in the laboratory development of “new cultural values.”
The contradictory position of the People's Commissar, his undoubted infection with the Proletkult virus prevented him from being completely consistent in his attitude towards Proletkult. This caused, on the one hand (34), fair criticism from V.I. Lenin, and on the other, constant attacks from Proletkult.
From all Lunacharsky’s statements in the 1920s about Proletkult, which took place after the death of V.I. Lenin, it is obvious that he tried to slightly retouch the essence of Lenin’s criticism of Proletkult ideology, because in some important way it seemed unfair to him. “Lenin was afraid of Bogdanovism,” said the People’s Commissar in 1924, “he was afraid that Proletkult might develop all sorts of philosophical, scientific, and, in the end, political deviations. He did not want a competing workers' organization to be created next to the party. He warned against this danger. In this sense, he gave me personal directives to bring Proletkult closer to the state, to subordinate it to its control. But at the same time, he emphasized that it was necessary to provide a certain breadth to the artistic programs of Proletkult. He directly told me that he considered Proletkult’s desire to nominate its own artists to be completely understandable. Vladimir Ilyich did not have a sweeping condemnation of proletarian culture.”
The dialectic of Lenin's view of Proletkult, presented here, is, of course, imaginary. From the fact that Lenin considered it natural for the proletarian milieu to promote his own artists and did not stop their searches, it did not at all follow that he was not inclined towards complete (Lunacharsky, I think, it is no coincidence that he uses the phrase “sweeping condemnation”, which emotionally incites the audience to support Proletkult) condemnation the ideology of Proletkult, an irreconcilable attitude towards the theory of proletarian culture by A. A. Bogdanov, and, consequently, to all the “artistic programs” arising from it.
Lunacharsky could not help but feel that this was also about his “artistic program,” but with all the greater tenacity he defended it. This is understandable - the “deification of man” became “the sublime music of the proletarian revolution, raising the enthusiasm of its participants.” Moreover, Lunacharsky’s “program” was not his personal invention, but was the reality of the artistic practice of the era of “war communism”. The concept of “creative theater”, implicated in Lunacharsky’s aesthetics, turned out to be so powerful and all-encompassing that it was simply unthinkable to reduce it only to proletkult theory.
Lunacharsky’s ability to respond “to the diverse calls of life,” to “the real content of history, to absorb its dynamic charge,” played a significant role in the fact that his personality became “a kind of screen of the revolutionary era.”
(35) “We have now all been brought onto the stage, the ramp has been illuminated, and the entire human race is a spectator. There is not only a great theater of military operations, but also a small theater of work and life.” This is how the People's Commissar of Education described the era.
The fact that Lunacharsky’s words were just a metaphor for the revolutionary time, and not an expression of its real essence, was difficult to comprehend speculatively. First, this era had to be lived and experienced.
The phenomenality and uniqueness of the Proletcult movement cannot be understood without studying its practical experience. Proletkults in a short time were able to develop diverse work in a variety of organizational forms using a wide range of methods and work techniques. In addition to the comprehensive cultural education of the masses, Proletkult strived in every possible way to develop the creative, creative abilities of ordinary residents of the country. “In all areas of work, Proletkult will lay the foundation for the creative principle of amateur performances. He will have to create for the proletariat... complete opportunity to create and work freely” Kerzhentsev V. “Proletkult” - an organization of proletarian amateur performances // Proletarian Culture. 1918.№1.С.8..
Literary studios of proletkults united around themselves professional and aspiring poets and writers of the proletarian movement. Proletkult became the first organization that sought to bring order and organization into the spontaneous stream of creations of proletarian literary “masters”.
The studio received people delegated by local proletkults, provincial and city trade unions, and workers' literary circles. Students of the capital's proletkults were provided with housing, board and a stipend.
The studios had a two-tier structure. The first stage is general education, which set itself the task of introducing future masters to the culture of the past. The second is a special one, with the goal of teaching studio students the techniques of literary creativity. A good practice for aspiring writers was to analyze their own works at seminars.
The program of Proletkult literary studios provided for three compulsory elements of training: 1) correspondence to newspapers and magazines; 2) creation and publication by studio students of their own newspapers and magazines, starting with the simplest forms (oral and wall), then professional mastery of the editorial and publishing business; 3) joint work of young writers with theater and music studios of Proletkult, writing for them plays, dramatizations, scripts, fables, materials for “living newspapers”, etc.
The works of proletkult authors are characterized by a “devaluation” of the individual as such: the masses, the collective, began to play a primary role. The idea of “conscious collectivism” by A. Bogdanov provided for the identification of “not the individual in itself, but the creative collective.” This idea rejected the lyrical and individual principles in poetry. Instead of “I,” the word “we” reigned in proletkult poetry. V. Mayakovsky was ironic about this:
“Proletkult members don’t say
not about “I”
not about personality.
“I” for a proletkult member -
it’s the same as indecency” Quoted from: Pinegina L.A. Soviet working class and artistic culture (1917-1932). S.100..
The most widespread were the theater studios of Proletkult, which were present in 260 of the 300 proletkults that existed in 1920. Already at the First Petrograd Conference of proletarian cultural and educational organizations in 1917, the issue of building a proletarian theater was comprehensively discussed.
The Proletkultists saw their main duty as follows: “To unite the activities of proletarian dramatic circles, to help playwrights from the working class to look for new forms for the coming socialist theater..., to create for the proletariat an environment in which everyone who wants to show their creative instinct in the field of theater, will be able to find full opportunity to freely create and work in a friendly, comradely environment,” stated the Proletkult magazine in 1918. 1918. No. 1. P.8.. That is, proletkults encouraged the writing of proletarian plays, which were staged in studios.
Access to the theater studios was open to everyone. Let us turn to the words of one of the main theater theorists of Proletkult, P. Kerzhentsev: “It goes without saying that the studio accepts not only members of circles, but also everyone who wants to.” Thus, the elitism of theaters characteristic of the tsarist regime was moving away: representatives of the broadest strata of the population received a real opportunity to play on stage. All theatrical creative searches, and simply acting on the stage, found the widest response among the masses.
The theater teaching system at Proletkult was multi-stage. The studios were preceded by workers' theater clubs, which were numerous in workers' clubs. Club members received basic knowledge in the field of theater. The most talented of them were selected and sent to the regional theater studios of Proletkult, where training was conducted according to a more extensive program. A special examination commission, having familiarized itself with the capabilities of applicants, formed junior and senior groups from them. Students of the junior group studied according to a program in which general education and social disciplines predominated. Along with this, they mastered the art of expressive reading, diction, plasticity, rhythm and a number of other special disciplines. The older groups studied special subjects according to a more in-depth program. They took courses in the history of theater, art history, learned acting technique, the art of makeup, and so on. The most gifted students, having graduated from regional studios, could continue their studies at the central studios of Proletkult. Here the work took place at the level of vocational educational institutions. Much attention was paid to the direction, design and musical accompaniment of the performance, the history of costume, pantomime, and the art of props.
Proletkult figures considered amateur theaters of amateur workers, as well as mass performances and festivals, to be the main forms of the new theater.
In the country at that time, under the influence of Proletkult, many theater troupes created. Particularly popular were the Proletkult Arena in Petrograd and the Central Theater Studio in Moscow (since 1920 - the 1st Workers' Theater of Proletkult), which emerged in 1918, which staged many interesting plays and had a noticeable influence on the formation of Soviet theatrical culture. These were mass theaters. For example, the First Workers' Theater of Proletkult included 256 workers from Moscow factories and factories and the most talented worker-actors sent by local proletkults.
The question of the repertoire of the emerging proletarian theater was quite complex. A special list of plays was developed that were allowed to be staged in proletarian theaters. It included plays and dramatizations by proletkult authors (V. Pletnev “Lena”, “Flengo”, “Avenger”, V. Ignatov “Red Corner”, “Rough Work”, P. Bessalko “Commune”, A. Arsky “Slave” ), the classical (N. Gogol “Marriage”, A. Ostrovsky “Poverty is not sometimes”, A. Chekhov “Anniversary”) and the repertoire of foreign authors was extensive (D. London “The Iron Heel”, “The Mexican”, R. Rolland “The Taking of the Bastille”, P. Verhaeren “October”), the main themes of which were the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat (less often than other oppressed classes) against capital and the philistinism. The plays were made accessible in content and for visiting: “We must ensure that our best theaters stage simple plays that are understandable to workers, travel with productions to factories, adapt their theaters to the working masses, equal them in terms of location, start time of performances, language and content of plays, simplicity of productions.” Working viewer. Theater and art weekly MGSPS. 1924. No. 19. S.5. Productions of their own works, created as a result of collective creativity, had predominantly propaganda significance.
Important for revealing the problem of proletarian culture is the analysis of theatrical productions of proletarian directors. For example, S. Eisenstein staged A. Ostrovsky’s play “Simplicity is enough for every wise man.” “The fast pace of the performance, the abundance of acrobatism... made the performance more lively and the very idea of the play more understandable and significant for the general public... Suddenly, but in full connection with the text, the ramp darkened, and a cinematograph flashed on the screen above the stage.” Thus, in order to enhance the effect and clarity of the author's idea, acrobatic, cinematic and other techniques were used in the production. However, such free handling of the texts of the classics caused mixed assessments from theater critics. Some pointed out: “Well-made by the proletkult team, “The Sage” ... aroused great interest in Moscow and was imprinted in the memory” Ogonyok. Weekly illustrated magazine. 1923. No. 14. P.13.. There were also other assessments: “I consider myself theatrically literate; but, nevertheless, when I watched "The Sage" I could not find my way around. I didn’t understand what was happening there, what the point was.”
Lope de Vega’s play “The Gardener’s Dog” was recommended for production in the club’s theater studios, since: “In it, the workers will especially clearly see the falsehood that permeated the old world, the bonds that bind people and prevent the manifestation of the fullness of life.” Weekly of the Moscow Proletcult. 1919. No. 3. P. 22.. Thus, classical plays were allowed to be staged if they contained a revolutionary and instructive meaning: it was necessary not only to glorify the socialist system, but also to debunk the previous ones, especially the capitalist one.
As a rule, costumes and designs for theatrical productions were made by the studio members themselves, or were expropriated from the royal theaters. They often dispensed with scenery and costumes: “Here, in this First Workers’ Theatre, everything is truly modest and frank in a worker’s way. No stage, no curtain, no backstage. The action takes place on the floor,” a review is given of one of the Proletkult productions, Krasnaya Niva. Literary and artistic magazine. 1923. No. 48. P.25..
At this time, there was a search for new forms, the most striking means of expression. “In the initial period of work here, from morning to night, we enthusiastically practiced the art of expressive speech, polyphonic recitation, rhythm, plasticity, Swedish gymnastics, acrobatics, and circus training. The working theater went through even more experiments than exercises.” The favorite method of theater workers was improvisation. It happened that the authors of the play turned out to be all the participants in the performance.
The principle of collective creativity in the workers' theater was actively supported by the ideologists of Proletkult. Its main provisions were formulated in P. Kerzhentsev’s work “Creative Theater”, which went through five reprints. The theater was democratic; in the process of writing a play script and staging, everyone could become a co-author, expressing their opinions and comments. Individualistic art faded into the background; the collective came first.
An interesting idea is the mass involvement of workers in active creative activity, when spectators, being involved in the action, became actors in crowd scenes. Mass events have gained enormous popularity. The first mass action took place on May 1, 1919 in Petrograd. The theatrical performance was full of poetry, choral recitation, revolutionary songs, and so on. Soon they began to be staged with the participation of all the amateur circles of the city, military units, combined orchestras using artillery, pyrotechnics, and the navy. Vast areas, usually city blocks and districts, became theater venues.
The most impressive spectacle was “The Storming of the Winter Palace,” staged in 1920 to mark the third anniversary of the October revolutionary events. “Hundreds and thousands of people moved, sang, went on the attack, rode horses, jumped on cars, rushed, stopped and swayed, illuminated by military searchlights to the incessant sound of several brass bands, the roar of sirens and the hooting of guns,” the newspaper wrote in those days “ News".
For some time, the ideas of “machinism” and “biomechanics” were popular among the proletkult community. Supporters of these trends unceremoniously distorted works of classical literature, passing them off as proletarian creativity. Allegorical costumes and masks were widely used here. Another direction of the Proletkult theater was the traveling troupe “Peretru”, organized by left-wing experimenters of the Moscow Proletkult. She contrasted the “theater of experience” with the theater of “organized movement, organized muscle tension”: theatrical production, in their opinion, became akin to a circus performance.
In addition to the diverse work of theater troupes of Proletcult clubs, film workshops were opened in some central studios. Films of the first Soviet years were distinguished by the great drama of crowd scenes, the brightness and accuracy of details, the strict composition of shots, the impersonality of the main characters, and the absence of a clearly defined script.
Moreover, cinema was initially included in the ideological apparatus (hence V. Lenin’s close attention to the film industry). The magazine “Proletkino” states: “Film in the Soviet state has lost its significance as a source of entertainment after a hearty dinner and before “spicy pleasures”; film is being ennobled, fulfilling a service cultural role.” Proletkino. M., 1924. No. 4-5. C.2.. Movies, as a rule, are made on revolutionary themes in order to increase the pathos of the proletariat’s struggle for a just cause. Indicative in this regard are the films of the famous proletkult director S. Eisenstein “Battleship Potemkin”, “Strike”, V. Pudovkin “Mother”. For example, the film “Strike” by S. Eisenstein was conceived as the first in a series of films under the general title “Towards Dictatorship,” which were supposed to show various methods of revolutionary struggle: demonstrations, strikes, the work of underground printing houses, and the like.
Through the proletkult studios, such famous filmmakers came to the Soviet theater and cinema - G. Alexandrov, I. Pyryev, E. Garin, Y. Glizer, M. Strauch, A. Khamov; V. Smyshlyaev, M. Tereshkovich, I. Loiter, A. Afinogenov and a number of others worked in the theater. Thus, Proletkult was able not only to win its audience, but also allowed a number of outstanding figures of national culture to demonstrate their talent.
In general, the activities of the Proletcult theater and film studios played a huge role in the first post-revolutionary years in the matter of cultural construction: new forms of work were found and the widest sections of the population were attracted to creativity.
