Proletkult

Born with the Russian Revolution in 1917, Petrograd (St Petersberg)

Soviet Cultural Institution laying down the foundations for a proletarian art
and culture.

An art for proletarians, free from bourgois culture.

Died 1920, although its influence reaches far further.

Cover of Gorn (Furnace), an official organ of Proletkult, designed by Aleksandr Zugrin The presidium of the national Proletkult organization
elected at the first national conference, September 1918.
 No artistic center

core ideas
A culture to reflect the proletariat

Art as a means to bring about socialism

Artistic Institutions are organized locally by people

Art into Life

No national culture

Everyone should be an artist:

Artists as amateurs/Art is not a Job:

Theatre

Local participation

Art as education

Publishing
No artistic center
artistic priorities were not imposed by any “center,” but
responded to the specific needs of people—education,
health, equality, poverty, and existing networks

Delegates to the first national Proletkult conference sitting under a banner that reads "Long Live the International Proletkult."
a culture to reflect the proletariat
Proletkult was organized to create socialist form of thought
feeling and daily life.

A culture that would reflect the values and aspirations of the

proletariat.

In order to challenge the hegemony of bourgeois values,

the proletariat had to develop its own culture in order to
establish intellectual and ideological hegemony.

art as a means to bring about socialism

Art was to become a weapon for the active and aesthetic
transformation of the worker’s life, and a fundamental step
towards the creation of a truly human, classless culture.

A sketch of a banner for the Moscow Province Textile Workers' Union designed by
members of the Moscow Proletkult art studios.

An example of production art, the banner was to be made from materials characteristic of
the textile trade and to have moving parts that evoked the workings of spinning machines.
artistic institutions
organized locally by
people
all artistic institutions were to be local,
decentralized, human-controlled,
created by and existing for real people
as they actually exist

A scene from Valerian Pletnev's play Lena, which is about the strike that led to the Lena Massacre.
Staged by the First Workers' Theater in Moscow.

art into life

sought to reject the bourgeois institutions of art and
transfer it’s values to the domain of living praxis

A draft of a panel by the artist Ia. M. Guminer to decorate the Smolnyi Institute in Petrograd
for the first anniversary of the revolution. The caption reads: "Proletkult-Proletarian Creation
Guarantees the World Commune."
 No national culture
localism combined with
internationalism

an art of the oppressed, a

proletarian culture over national
culture

1925 poster for Sergei Eisenstein’s film ‘Battleship Potempkin’, a film which
embodies the key ethics and philosophies of Proletkult
Everyone should be an artist
Proletkult aimed quite explicitly to realize
Novalis’s dream that everyone should be an

Artists as amateurs
Art is not a job
It aimed to dismantle the infrastructure for the
creation of heroic, monumental figures

Redirect social investment towards what had

previously been dismissed as “amateurs

Reversal of notion that art should be anything

like a job

Reimagine the very notions of “museum” and Members of the Petrograd Proletkult drama studio performing a collective reading
“archive” nonhierarchically of Walt Whitman's poem "Europe."
Theater
Major focus on theater which brought together visual
art, design, poetry, and music—effectively all branches
of art in a single collective product

One of first proletkult theatres in Moscow A scene from Ostrovsky's play Enough Simplicity for Every Wise Man.

The play was radically revised by Sergei Eisenstein and Sergei Tretiakov for the
First Workers' Theater. The poster reads: "Religion is the Opiate of the People."
Local participation
At its height in 1920 proletkult
involved over 500,000 members

Participation was so widespread

that even a relatively small city
might have dozens of different
theatrical collectives operating at a
given time.

Art as education
Collapse the boundaries between
academia, popular education,
science, and the arts.

A Baltic sailors' cultural and educational club (proletkult) in Petrograd, 1919.

 Publishing
The movement involved the publishing of nummerous journals
such as Gorn [The furnace] 1918-22, Proletarskaia kultura
[Proletarian culture] 1918-21, and Griadushchee [The future]
1918-21.

Presented a unified view of art based on Alexander Bogdanov’s

Marxist theory: the cultural struggle is as important as the political
and econonmic fight in the aim of socialism.

Alexander Bogdanov, ‘Proletariat

i iskusstvo’ (Proletariat and Art),
Proletarskaia Kultura, no. 5 (1919)

A cover for the Moscow Proletkult journal Create! (Tvori! ) by the proletarian artist Aleksandr Zugrin.
The top caption reads "Proletarians of all lands, unite!"

(Image source: Lynn Mally: Culture of the Future The Proletkult Movement in Revolutionary Russia)
Alexander Bogdanov

Alexander Bogdanov, born 1873, was a Russian physician,

science fiction writer, philosopher and Bolshevik revolutionary,
founded Proletkult together with Lunacharsky after the October
Revolution.

Bogdanov argued that there were three paths to socialism:

economics, politics and culture and that Proletarian culture was
a prerequisite for the victory of socialism.

Chapioning the role of art as the most powerful weapon of

class power. Bogdanov belived in proletkult prophesising a
utopia that socialism would bring (rather than depicting the
culture that socialism produced).

For Bogdanov, the realization of a world where everyone

could become an artist was communism. This destruction of
hierarchies was precisely the end that the Revolution aimed to
achieve.

Bogdanov in 1904
End of Proletkult
In 1920, Lenin imposed state control over the project, insisting that the proletariat had a right to be
“enriched” by the highest forms of what he called “classical culture”

The reimposition of the values of the Hermitage, and of museums in general, corresponded exactly to
the transfer of power to the secret police (large statues of Lenin were to begin going up slightly later).

Popular theater and education did continue, but under the control of Lunacharsky’s Ministry of Culture it
was either censored or reduced to propaganda.

Vladimir Lenin (right) plays chess against Alexander Bogdanov (left)

during a visit to Maxim Gorky, 1908
Proletkult today

While proletkult ceased to exist infrastructure

itself was not disbanded

Even now almost every small town in Russia

and much of the former Eastern Bloc still has
a so-called “House of Culture”

Re-professionalisation of arts meant Houses

of Culture were reduced to “amateur” status

The philosophy and ambitions of proletkult

live on

23.4.1976, Palast der Republik Berlin

Skatepark Tempelhofer Feld, Berlin, built from stones of destroyed

“Palast der Republik” (hosted parliament of east germany (1976-
1990)
 Further Questions

Can ideas of Proletkult contribute to the creation

of an inclusive art world, counteracting state-
security and control ?

What is the role of theater today?

Where is the documentation of the activities of the

Proletkult? Is there substantive documentation?
Why can we not access it?

How do we now relate to cultural monuments of

the past from a “revolutionary perspective”?

What purpose do we want art to have ?