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Utopianism versus Revolutionary Heroism in Bolshevik Policy: The Proletarian Culture Debate

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

James C. Mc Clelland
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Extract

Art … is a most powerful weapon for the organisation of collective forces and, in a class society, of class forces.

A. A. Bogdanov

The place of art is in the rear of the historic advance.

L. D. Trotsky

The statements in the epigraph reflect contrasting attitudes toward the question of the possibility, desirability, and urgency of creating a "proletarian culture" during the years immediately following the Bolshevik seizure of power. Even more, they reflect basically opposing priorities concerning the most important and immediate steps to be taken in order to promote the revolutionary transformation of Soviet society as a whole.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 39 , Issue 3 , September 1980 , pp. 403 - 425
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1980

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References

1. Daniels, Robert V., The Conscience of the Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1960Google Scholar).

2. Ibid., pp. 3-8, and appendix 3, pp. 434-38.

3. S. V., Utechin, “Bolsheviks and Their Allies after 1917: The Ideological Pattern,” Soviet Studies, 10, no. 2 (October 1958): 113–35 Google Scholar.

4. Richard Lowenthal, “Development vs. Utopia in Communist Policy,” in Chalmers, Johnson, ed., Change in Communist Systems (Stanford, 1970), pp. 33-116, especially pp. 54-60, 73–78 Google Scholar.

5. Cohen, Stephen F., Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution: A Political Biography, 1888-1938 (New York, 1973), especially pp. 129–32 Google Scholar.

6. Although in a general sense my use of the terms “utopianism” and “revolutionary heroism” follows that of Lowenthal and Cohen, respectively, I have endowed each term with additional specific content for which Lowenthal and Cohen are not responsible.

7. In a preface to his major economic treatise, Preobrazhenskii wrote, “not to see the tenseness of the entire situation and the never-ending struggle of one system against the other means in fact to lull the vigilance of … the working class, … means to weaken its will with Potemkin villages of childish optimism at the very time when it is necessary to continue the heroic struggle of October … on the economic front, under the slogan of the crash industrialization of the country” (E. A. Preobrazhenskii, Novaia ekonomika, 2nd ed. [Moscow, 1926], pp. 45-46). See also Trotskii, L. D., Sochineniia, 21 vols. (Moscow, 1924-27), 15: 10–14 Google Scholar; Carr, E. H., The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-1923, 3 vols. (Baltimore, 1966), 2: 213–18 Google Scholar; and Trotsky, L. D., Literature and Revolution (Ann Arbor, 1960), pp. 249–56 Google Scholar.

8. For an analysis of the two positions as they related to the question of higher education, see James C., McClelland, “Bolshevik Approaches to Higher Education, 1917-1921,” Slavic Review, 30, no. 4 (December 1971): 818–31 Google Scholar.

9. There is a small but growing Western literature on Bogdanov: Dietrich, Grille, Lenins Rivale: Bogdanov itnd seine Philosophic (Cologne, 1966)Google Scholar ; Avraham Yassour, “Bogdanov et son oeuvre: Bibliographic,” Cahiers du monde russe et sovietique, 10, no. 3-4 (July-December 1969): 546-84; Alexander, Vucinich, Social Thought in Tsarist Russia: The Quest for a General Science of Society, 1861-1917 (Chicago and London, 1976), pp. 206–30 Google Scholar; Karl G., Ballestrem, “Lenin and Bogdanov,” Studies in Soviet Thought, 9, no. 4 (December 1969): 283-310Google Scholar; S. V. Utechin, “Philosophy and Society: Alexander Bogdanov,” in Leopold, Labedz, ed., Revisionism: Essays on the History of Marxist Ideas (New York, 1962), pp. 117–25 Google Scholar; Kendall E. Bailes, “Lenin and Bogdanov: The End of an Alliance,” in Andrew, Cordier, ed., Columbia Essays in International Affairs, vol. 2 (New York, 1967), pp. 107–33 Google Scholar. For biographical data, see “Deiateli SSSR i Oktiabr'skoi revoliutsii,” in Granat, Entsiklopedichcskii slovar’ Russkogo bibliograficheskogo instituta Granat, 7th ed., 58 vols. (Moscow, 1910-48), 41: 1, columns 29-33. Jensen, K. M., Beyond Marx and Mach: Aleksandr Bogdanov's “Philosophy of Living Experience” (Dordrecht, 1978CrossRefGoogle Scholar), came to my attention after this article was completed.

10. On Bogdanov's expulsion from the Bolshevik Center in 1909, see “Iz neizdannykh protokolov rasshirennoi redaktsii ‘Proletariia’ (Bor'ba Lenina s bogostroitel'stvom),” Literatumoc nasledstvo, no. 1 (Moscow, 1931), pp. 17-38; and the more complete Protokoly soveshchaniia rasshirennoi redaktsii “Proletariia” iiun’ 1909 g. (Moscow, 1934). For the Vpered program, see Sovremennoe poloshenie i sadachi partii: Platforma vyrabotannaia gruppoi bol'shevikov (Paris, 1910).

11. V. I. Lenin, “O proletarskoi kul'ture” (1920), in Lenin, V. I., Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 5th ed., 55 vols. (Moscow, 1958-65), 41: 336–37 Google Scholar (hereafter cited as PSS).

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16. Ibid., 3: 119-28; Utechin, “Philosophy and Society,” p. 122.

17. Bogdanov, A. A., O proletarskoi kul'ture, 1904-1924 (Moscow-Leningrad, 1924), p. 208 Google Scholar.

18. Utechin, , “Philosophy and Society,” p. 124, citing Bogdanov, Voprosy sotsializma (Moscow, 1918)Google Scholar.

19. Proletarskaia kul'tura, no. 3 (August 1918), p. 36 (hereafter cited as PK). See also PK, no. 1 (July 1918), p. 27; and PK, no. 6 (February 1919), p. 26.

20. Protokoly pervoi Vserossiiskoi konjerentsii proletarskikh kul'turno-prosvetitel'nykh organisatsii 15-20 scntiabria 1918 g. (Moscow, 1918), p. 31.

21. Ibid.

22. Bogdanov, , O prolctarskoi kid'Hire, pp. 200–204Google Scholar.

23. Protokoly pervoi Vserossiiskoi konjerentsii, p. 42.

24. Ibid. See also pp. 34-36.

25. Quoted in A. A. Bogdanov, “Nasha kritika: Kritika proletarskogo iskusstva,” PK, no. 3 (August 1918), p. 21.

26. A. A. Bogdanov, “Nasha kritika: O khudozhestvennom nasledstve,” PK, no. 2 (July 1918), pp. 4-13. See also Bogdanov's editorial in the first issue of PK, reprinted in Bogdanov, , 0 proletarskoi kul'ture, pp. 100–103Google Scholar.

27. M. N. Smit, “Blizhaishie etapy proletarizatsii nauki,” PK, no. 17-19 (August- December 1920), p. 32.

28. M. N. Smit, “Proletarizatsiia nauki,” PK, no. 11-12 (December 1919), pp. 31-32.

29. A. A. Bogdanov, “Proletarskii universitet,” PK, no. 5 (November 1918), pp. 10-11.

30. V. F., Pletnev, “Na ideologicheskom fronte,” Pravda, no. 217 (September 27, 1922), pp. 2-3Google Scholar.

31. Quoted by Vucinich, , Social Thought in Tsarist Russia, p. 224 Google Scholar.

32. Bogdanov, , 0 proletarskoi kul'ture, pp. 215–16Google Scholar. See also Bogdanov, A. A., Elementy proletarskoi kul'tury v rasvitii rabochego klassa (Moscow, 1920), pp. 29-31, 83–88 Google Scholar; and Bogdanov, , Empiriomonism, 3: 140CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33. Bogdanov, A. A., Tektologiia: Vseobshchaia organisatsionnaia nauka (Berlin, St. Petersburg, Moscow, 1922Google Scholar). The first part was originally published in St. Petersburg in 1913; additional chapters appeared in Proletarskaia kul'tura in 1919-20. Recent commentators have noted that in this work, Bogdanov anticipated many of the principles of cybernetics and general systems theory (see Vucinich, , Social Thought in Tsarist Russia, pp. 229–30Google Scholar; and Utechin, “Philosophy and Society,” p. 122).

34. For a different view emphasizing Lunacharskii's cautious moderation, see V. T. Ermakov,” ‘Voennyi kommunizm’ i kul'turnoe stroitel'stvo vo vtoroi polovine 1918-nachale 1921 goda,” Istoriia SSSR, 1974, no. 6, pp. 136-49; and V. T. Ermakov, “Ideinaia bor'ba na kul'turnom fronte v pervye gody Sovetskoi vlasti,” Voprosy istorii, 1971, no. 11, pp. 16-31. On Lunacharskii, see Sheila, Fitzpatrick, The Commissariat of Enlightenment: Soviet Organisation of Education and the Arts under Lunacharsky (Cambridge, 1970)Google Scholar ; Sheila Fitzpatrick, “ Lunacharsky, A. V.: Recent Soviet Interpretations and Republications,” Soviet Studies, 18, no. 3 (January 1967): 267–89 Google Scholar; Sheila, Fitzpatrick, “Lunacharsky,” Soviet Studies, 20, no. 4 (April 1969): 527–35 Google Scholar; Howard R., Holter, “The Legacy of Lunacharsky and Artistic Freedom in the USSR,” Slavic Review, 29, no. 2 (June 1970): 262–82 Google Scholar; Williams, Robert C., Artists in Revolution: Portraits of the Russian Avant-garde, 1905-1925 (Bloomington, Ind. and London, 1977), pp. 23–58 Google Scholar; and Kendall E., Bailes, “Sur la ‘Theorie des Valeurs’ de A. V. Lunacarskij,” Cahiers du monde russe et sovietique, 8 (1967): 223–43Google Scholar.

35. Lunacharskii, A. V., Religiia i sotsializm, 2 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1908, 1911), 1: 10Google Scholar.

36. Ibid., pp. 46-47.

37. Ibid., p. 40.

38. Ibid., pp. 48-49.

39. Ibid., 2: 395.

40. Ibid., pp. 324-26, 348-50, 371.

41. “Iz neizdannykh protokolov,” pp. 28-30.

42. V. I. Lenin, “A. M. Gor'komu” (1913), PSS, 48: 226-29.

43. A. V. Lunacharskii, “Pis'ma o proletarskoi literature,” in Lunacharskii, A. V., Sobranie sochinenii v vos'mi tomakh: Literaturovedenie, kritika, estetika (Moscow, 1963- 67), 7: 169–71 Google Scholar, quotation on p. 171 (hereafter cited as SS).

44. A. V. Lunacharskii, “Kul'turnye zadachi rabochego klassa” (1917), in A. V. Lunacharskii, Idealism i materialism—kul'tura burshuasnaia, perekhodnaia, i sotsialisticheskaia, 2nd ed. (Moscow-Leningrad, 1924), pp. 86-102; A. V. Lunacharskii, “O proletarskoi kul'- ture” (1918), in Lunacharskii, A. V., Tretii front: Sbornik statei (Moscow, 1925), pp. 83–89 Google Scholar; A. V. Lunacharskii, “Proletariat i iskusstvo” (1918), in SS, 7: 201; A. V. Lunacharskii, “Problemy sotsialisticheskoi kul'tury” (1919), in Idealism i materialism, pp. 113-18; A. V. Lunacharskii, “Proletarskaia kul'tura,” in Idealism i materialism, pp. 119-23. Bogdanov believed that proletarian culture comprised values that were basically universal, and that the full flowering of proletarian culture would itself be the socialist ideal ( Bogdanov, , Element's proletarskoi kul'tury, pp. 89–91Google Scholar).

45. A. V. Lunacharskii, “Eshche o proletkul'te i sovetskoi kul'turnoi rabote,” Isvestiia, no. 80 (632) (April 13, 1919), p. 2. Indeed, Lunacharskii temporarily disobeyed Lenin's explicit orders by defending continued Proletkul't autonomy in the fall of 1920 (see the account of his speech and the editors’ notes in Lunacharskii, 6 “6” , 7: 233-35, 655-59).

46. A. V. Lunacharskii, “Sovetskoe gosudarstvo i iskusstvo” (1922), 56” , 7: 268.

47. A. V. Lunacharskii, “Eshche k voprosu o kul'ture” (1922), in ibid., pp. 288-90. For an article which gives even more than his usual emphasis to the need to borrow from bourgeois culture, see A. V., Lunacharskii, “V. I. Lenin o nauke i iskusstve,” in Narodnoe prosveshchenie, 1925, no. 1, pp. 13–32Google Scholar.

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50. A. V. Lunacharskii, 55, 7: 648. For Lunacharskii's theses, see ibid., p. 201.

51. On Lebedev-Polianskii, see “Deiateli SSSR i Oktiabr'skoi revoliutsii,” 41: 1, columns 285-89. On Kerzhentsev, see ibid., columns 185-86. See also Fitzpatrick, , The Commissariat of Enlightenment, pp. 95–98Google Scholar.

52. Literaturnoe nasledstvo, no. 80: V. I. Lenin i A. V. Lunacharskii: Perepiska, doklady, dokumenty (Moscow, 1971), pp. 60 and 72.

53. Tsentral'nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Oktiabr'skoi Revoliutsii, fond 2306, opis’ 18, edinitsa khraneniia 24, pp. 48-49.

54. Ibid., pp. 59-59rev. See also the vague but stern call for reform of higher education in the official newspaper of the union, Severnaia kommuna, no. 178 (December 13, 1918), P. 1.

55. Kol'tsov, A. V., Lenin i stanovlenie Akademii nauk kak tsentra sovetskoi nauki (Leningrad, 1959), p. 61 Google Scholar.

56. Ibid., pp. 61-63.

57. Literatumoe nasledstvo, no. 80: V. I. Lenin i A. V. Lunacharskii, p. 60.

58. For Bukharin's objection to what he considered to be ignorant and ill-informed criticism of Bogdanov's views, see Leninskii sbornik, 36 vols. (Moscow, 1924-59), 12: 384-85.

59. Nikolai, Bukharin, “Mstitel1,” Pravda, no. 282 (December 16, 1919), p. 1Google Scholar; Nikolai, Bukharin, “Pervaia lastochka,” Pravda, no. 7 (January 12, 1923), p. 1Google Scholar.

60. Nikolai, Bukharin, “Problema kul'tury v epokhu proletarskoi revoliutsii,” Izvestiia, October IS, 1922, p. 3Google Scholar.

61. See the 192S Central Committee resolution on literary policy, of which Bukharin was the main author, in Pravda, July 1, 1925, reprinted in Brown, Edward J., The Proletarian Episode in Russian Literature, 1925-1932 (New York, 1953), pp. 235–40 Google Scholar. For useful discussions of party debates concerning the concept of proletarian literature, see Herman, Ermolaev, Soviet Literary Theories, 1917-1934: The Genesis of Socialist Realism (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1963), especially pp. 27–54 Google Scholar; and Brown, The Proletarian Episode in Russian Literature. For Bukharin's relations with Bogdanov and attitudes toward proletarian culture, see Cohen, , Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution, pp. 14-15, 205-6Google Scholar.

62. For recent Western scholarship on Kollontai, see Clements, Barbara Evans, Bolshevik Feminist: The Life of Aleksandra Kollontai (Bloomington, Ind., 1979Google Scholar) ; and Farnsworth, Beatrice Brodsky, “Bolshevism, the Woman Question, and Aleksandra Kollontai,” American Historical Review, 81, no. 2 (April 1976): 292–316 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

63. Kollontai, A. M., Novaia moral’ i rabochii klass (Moscow, 1919), p. 57 Google Scholar.

64. Ibid., p. 60.

65. Kollontai, A. M., Rabochaia oppozitsiia (Moscow, 1921), pp. 10–22 Google Scholar.

66. Carr, , The Bolshevik Revolution, 2: 215Google Scholar; Daniels, , Conscience of the Revolution, pp. 125–26Google Scholar.

67. Kollontai, , Rabochaia oppozitsiia, pp. 22-35, especially p. 33Google Scholar.

68. Trotskii, , Sochineniia, 15: 10-14Google Scholar. For a discussion of the labor armies that resulted, see Carr, , Bolshevik Revolution, 2: 213-18Google Scholar.

69. McClelland, “Bolshevik Approaches to Higher Education,” pp. 826-28.

70. Trotsky, L. D., The Revolution Betrayed, trans. Eastman, Max (New York, 1970), p. 10 Google Scholar.

71. Trotsky was sympathetic to Kollontai's hopes concerning the woman question. But here too he thought that little could really be achieved until an expanded economy would be able to create the resources needed for communal housekeeping and child care (see ibid., pp. 144-58).

72. Bailes, “Lenin and Bogdanov,” pp. 127-28.

73. Trotsky, , Literature and Revolution, p. 9 Google Scholar; emphasis added.

74. Ibid., pp. 189-90.

75. Ibid., p. 236.

76. Ibid., p. 14.

77. Ibid., pp. 184-86.

78. Ibid., pp. 191-93, 200-205.

79. Ibid., pp. 197-99.

80. Daniels, , Conscience of the Revolution, pp. 5–7, 138-43Google Scholar. Daniels shows quite effectively, however, that Lenin occupied a position that was essentially distinct from both.

81. For Trotsky's Promethean view of the future socialist culture, see Trotsky, Literature and Revolution, pp. 249-56.

82. V. I. Lenin, “Zametki publitsista” (1910), PSS, 19: 249-52; V. I. Lenin, “Zadachi soiuzov molodezhi” (1920), PSS, 41: 304-5. See also the Central Committee resolution, “O proletkul'takh” (December 1, 1920), approved, though not written, by Lenin, in Direktivy VKP(b) po voprosam prosveshcheniia, 2nd ed. (Moscow-Leningrad, 1930), pp. 251-52. In “Kriticheskie zametki po natsional'nomu voprosu” (1913), Lenin stated that there were two cultures within every national culture, but was imprecise concerning the class nature of the two cultures (see Lenin, PSS, 24: 113-50).

83. V. I. Lenin, “O proletarskoi kul'ture” (1920), PSS, 41: 336-37; V. I. Lenin, “Predislovie k knige I. I. Stepanova” (1922), PSS, 45: 51-52; and V. I. Lenin, “O znachenie voinstvuiushchego materializma” (1922), PSS, 45: 33.

84. V. I. Lenin, “O politekhnicheskom obrazovanii” (1920), PSS, 42: 228-30.

85. Farnsworth, “Bolshevism, the Woman Question, and Aleksandra Kollontai,” pp. 295-96.

86. V. I. Lenin, “Privetstvennaia rech'” and “Rech’ ob obmane naroda lozungami svobody i ravenstva” (1919), PSS, 38: 330 and 368; V. I. Lenin, “Rech’ na III Vserossiiskom soveshchanii zaveduiushchikh vneshkol'nymi podotdelami” (1920), PSS, 40: 164; V. I. Lenin, “N. I. Bukharinu” (1922), PSS, 54: 291; V. I. Lenin, “Stranichki iz dnevnika” (1923), PSS, 45: 363-64; and V. I. Lenin, “Luchshe men'she, da luchshe” (1923), PSS, 45: 398.

87. Leonard, Schapiro, The Origin of the Communist Autocracy (London, 1955), pp. 253–313 Google Scholar; Isaac, Deutscher, Soviet Trade Unions (London, 1950), pp. 42–52 Google Scholar.

88. V. I. Lenin, “O kooperatsii” (1923), PSS, 45: 369-77.

89. Trotsky, , The Revolution Betrayed, p. 179 Google Scholar.

90. I. V., Stalin, “Tovarishch Stalin o politicheskikh zadachakh universiteta narodov vostoka,” Pravda, no. 115 (May 22, 1925), pp. 2-3Google Scholar.