NOTE TO M. N. POKROVSKY
August 1920. To Pokrovsky
1) What is the legal status of Proletkult?***
2) What is its governing center, and by whom was it appointed?
3) How much funding do you allocate to it from the People’s Commissariat for Education?
4) What else is significant about Proletkult’s position, role, and outcomes?
Lenin
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The telegram requested the allocation of manufactured goods, footwear, and household utensils for 345 families of railway workers in Saratov who had suffered losses in a fire.
* * The People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs, G. V. Chicherin, responded as follows: “We have transmitted our peace proposals to the Poles; we are awaiting their reply. The Poles state that, given the importance of our proposals, they cannot yet say when they will provide a response.”
* * * Proletkults—so‑called “proletarian cultural and educational organizations”—were established in the early years of Soviet power by individuals hailing from the bourgeois intelligentsia.
Proletkulturists proclaimed the creation of a distinct, supposedly “proletarian culture,” one that was purportedly unconnected to the classical cultural heritage passed down from preceding generations.
In its letter “On Proletkults,” published in Pravda on December 1, 1920, the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party pointed out that these organizations, “under the guise of ‘proletarian culture,’ were presenting bourgeois philosophical views to workers (Machism). And in the realm of art, they were instilling in workers absurd, perverted tastes.” See also the draft of Lenin’s resolution “On Proletarian Culture” (Collected Works, Volume XXV, pp. 409–410). An outline of this resolution is published below.
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