Proletkult
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Proletkult is an portmanteau of "proletarskaya kultura" (пролетарская культура), Russian for "proletarian culture". It was a movement active in the Soviet Union from 1917 to 1925 to provide the foundations for what was intended to be a truly proletarian art devoid of bourgeois influence.
In the first half of 1918 Proletkult was allocated 9,200,000 rubles of the Narkompros budget. The Petrograd offices were set up in the Palace of Proletarian Culture (Ulitsa Proletkul'ta), a large and luxurious building, off Nevsky Prospect. The street was renamed "Proletkult Street". In Moscow the former mansion of the industrialist and theatre-lover Savva Timofeyevich Morozov was used as offices The Tambov branch occupied the former building of the Land Bank.[1]
Its main theoretician was Alexander Bogdanov (1873–1928) who saw the proletkult as a third part of a trinity of revolutionary socialism. Whereas the unions would attend to the proletariat's economic interests and the communist party, their political interests, the Proletkult would look after their cultural and spiritual life. Other influential figures include Anatoli V. Lunacharsky (1875-1933), Aleksei Gastev, Fedor Kalinin, Platon Kerzhentsev and Mikhail Gerasimov. The plastic arts were influenced initially by constructivism, literature and music by futurism; with reference to Lenin ("On proletarian culture" 1920[2]) experimental art was disapproved.[3]
Leon Trotsky and Aleksandr Voronsky fought against the proletarian culture movement, labeling it self-contradictory and antithetical to the Marxist position on bourgeois art and science. Trotsky and Voronsky argued that the proletariat must hold aloft the highest technical, artistic, and scientific achievements of the bourgeoisie, as they had value for all of humanity. In addition, Trotsky argued that it would be impossible for the proletariat to develop its own artistic forms, since by the time the proletariat succeeds in its historical mission of overthrowing the international bourgeoisie it will cease to exist as a social class.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Culture of the Future: The Proletkult Movement in Revolutionary Russia by Lynn Mally, University of California Press 1980
- ^ V. I. Lenin: On Proletarian Culture
- ^ Oliver Stallybrass, and Alan Bullock (et al.) (in English) (Paperback). The Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought. Fontana press. p. 918 pages. ISBN 0-00-686129-6.
[edit] External links
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