RESOLUTION ON A TELEGRAM FROM SARATOV*
August 31, 1920
To the Small Council: it is necessary to centralize and combine
assistance, distributing it correctly.
Lenin
2 5 2 G 8
NOTE ON THE MEMORANDUM OF G. K. ORJONIKIDZE
August 1920
To Comrade Lenin
Please report on the state of peace with Poland.
Please
Chicherin
Orjonikidze answer**.
ON "PROLETKULT" AND PROLETARIAN CULTURE
39625
NOTE TO M. N. POKROVSKY
August 1920
To Comrade Pokrovsky
1) What is the
legal status of Proletkult?***
2) What is and 3) who appointed its leading center?
4) How much funding do you give it from the People's Commissariat of Education?
5) What else is important about the situation, role, and results
of Proletkult's work.
Lenin
*
The telegram outlined a request for the release of manufactured goods, shoes,
and household utensils for 345 families of railway workers in Saratov, who
suffered from a fire.
* * People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs G. V. Chicherin gave the following answer: "Our peace proposals have been given to the Poles; we are awaiting a response. The Poles state
that, in view of the importance of our proposals, they cannot say when
they will give an answer."
* * * Proletkults—so-called "proletarian
cultural and educational organizations"—were created by people from the
bourgeois intelligentsia in the early years of Soviet power.
Proletkultists proclaimed the creation of some kind of special, supposedly
"proletarian culture" that was not connected with the classical
cultural heritage received from previous generations.
The Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party, in its letter
"On Proletkults," published in "Pravda" on December 1, 1920,
indicated that these organizations "under the guise of 'proletarian culture' presented bourgeois views on philosophy (Machism) to workers. And in the field
of art, workers were instilled with ridiculous, distorted tastes." See also
the draft of Lenin's resolution "On Proletarian Culture" (Collected Works,
volume XXV, pages 409–410). A draft of this resolution is published below.
10*