Кеңес Пролеткульт ұйымы: Революциялық өнер және идеологиялық күрес

Soviet cultural and artistic organization
the Soviet artistic organization

Proletkult , a portmanteau of the Russian words "proletarskaya kultura" (proletarian culture), was an experimental Soviet artistic institution that arose in conjunction with the Russian Revolution of 1917. This organization, a federation of local cultural societies and avant garde artists, was most prominent in the visual, literary, and dramatic fields. Proletkult aspired to radically modify existing artistic forms by creating a new, revolutionary working class aesthetic, which drew its inspiration from the construction of modern industrial society in backward, agrarian Russia. Although funded by the People's Commissariat for Education of Soviet Russia, the Proletkult organization sought autonomy from state control, a demand which brought it into conflict with the Communist Party hierarchy and the Soviet state bureaucracy. Some top party leaders, such as Lenin, sought to concentrate state funding and retain it from such artistic endeavors. He and others also saw in Proletkult a concentration of bourgeois intellectuals and potential political oppositionists. At its peak in 1920, Proletkult had 84,000 members actively enrolled in about 300 local studios, clubs, and factory groups, with an additional 500,000 members participating in its activities on a more casual basis.

The earliest roots of the Proletarian Culture movement, better known as Proletkult, are found in the aftermath of the failed 1905 1907 Revolution against Nicholas II of Russia. The censorship apparatus of the Tsarist regime had stumbled briefly during the upheaval, broadening horizons, but the revolution had ultimately failed, resulting in dissatisfaction and second guessing, even within Bolshevik Party ranks. In the aftermath of the Tsar's reassertion of authority a radical political tendency known as the "Left Bolsheviks" emerged, stating their case in opposition to party leader Lenin. This group, which included philosophers Alexander Bogdanov and Anatoly Lunacharsky and writer Maxim Gorky, argued that the intelligentsia dominated Bolsheviks must begin following more inclusive tactics and working to develop more working class political activists to assume leadership roles in the next round of anti Tsarist revolution. In addition, together with the celebrated Gorky, Lunacharsky hoped to found a "human religion" around the idea of socialism, motivating individuals to serve a greater good outside of their own narrow self interests. Working along similar lines simultaneously was Lunacharsky's brother in law Bogdanov, who even in 1904 had published a weighty philosophical tome called Empiriomonism which attempted to integrate the ideas of non Marxist thinkers Ernst Mach and Richard Avenarius into the socialist edifice. To the intellectually rigid Lenin, Bogdanov was not only a political rival, but also a positive threat to the ideology of Marxism. Lenin saw Bogdanov and the "god building" movement with which he was associated as purveyors of a reborn philosophical idealism that stood in diametrical opposition to the fundamental materialist foundation of Marxism. So disturbed was Lenin that he spent much of 1908 combing more than 200 books to pen a thick polemical volume in reply — Materialism and Empirio Criticism: Critical Comments on a Reactionary Philosophy. Lenin ultimately emerged triumphant in the struggle for hegemony of the Bolshevik faction. Relations between them in Western European exile remained tense. During the first decade of the 20th Century Bogdanov wrote two works of utopian science fiction about socialist societies on Mars, both of which were rejected by Lenin as attempts to smuggle "Machist idealism" into the radical movement. The second of these, a book called Engineer Menni (1913), was pronounced by Lenin to be "so vague that neither a worker nor a stupid editor at Pravda [a rival publication] could understand it." In 1913 Bogdanov, a student of the Taylor system of factory work flow rationalization, published a massive work on the topic, General Organizational Science, which Lenin liked no better. He would later be reinvigorated by the course of events to become a leading figure in the Moscow Proletkult organization — a fact which emphasizes the tension between that organization and state authorities.

Historically, the relationship between the Russian liberal intelligentsia and the working class was that of teacher and student. This situation presumed a "higher" level of culture on the part of the aristocratic teachers — an accepted premise of the Bolsheviks themselves during the pre revolutionary period. Under a workers' state, some Marxist theoreticians believed, the new proletarian ruling class would develop its own distinct class culture to supplant the former culture of the old ruling order.</blockquote>

Proletkult's theorists generally espoused a hardline economic determinism, arguing that only purely working class organizations were capable of advancing the cause of the dictatorship of the proletariat. An early editorial from the official Proletkult journal Proletarskaia Kultura (Proletarian Culture) demanded that "the proletariat start right now, immediately, to create its own socialist forms of thought, feeling, and daily life, independent of alliances or combinations of political forces." In the view of Alexander Bogdanov and other Proletkult theoreticians, the arts were not the province of a specially gifted elite, but rather were the physical output of individuals with a set of learned skills.

Despite its formal termination as an organization, the Proletkult movement continued to influence and inform early Soviet culture. Historian Peter Kenez has noted the heavy influence of the Proletkult ethic in the work of pioneer Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein, director of the classic films Strike (1925), The Battleship Potemkin (1926), and October: Ten Days That Shook the World (1927):

The intellectual content of [Eisenstein's] early films was profoundly influenced by his earlier association with Proletkult, a complex politicocultural movement that reached the height of its influence during the revolutionary period. [ ] [Its leaders] argued that the new, socialist culture would be profoundly different from what it replaced. In their view there could be no accommodation with the old world; the proletariat on the basis of its experience would create a new culture that would reflect the spirit of the collective. It followed that the new art had to emphasize not the accomplishments of individuals but those of the workers and peasants. Eisenstein was attracted to this movement because it justified the necessity of a complete break with the art of the 'bourgeois' world. All of his early films expressed, though in his own idiom, the ideology of Proletkult.

There was a resurgence of interest in Bogdanov and Proletkult in the 1960s and 1970's. Dietrich Grille's PhD thesis Lenins Rival submitted in 1964 and published in 1966 was acclaimed by Zenovia Sochor in 1988 as "the most thorough of the early works".

In 2018, the avant garde writing collective Wu Ming published the New Italian Epic novel Proletkult.