Red Letter Days: Bolshevik Visions of Soviet Culture, 1917-1924

An Honors Thesis for the Department of History

Jeramey Evans

Tufts University, 2016 ii

Contents

Introduction 1

Chapter 1: Marxism, Culture, and Art 14

Chapter 2: Bolshevik Aesthetics and Literary Criticism 27

Chapter 3: Censorship in Lenin’s Revolutionary Praxis 45

Chapter 4: The Proletarian Culture Debate 59

Chapter 5: Conclusions 81

Works Cited 86

Bibliography 91

1

Red Letter Days: Bolshevik Visions of Soviet Culture, 1917-1924 Introduction

In the following work, I will argue that Lenin, Trotsky, Lunacharsky, and Bogdanov— four of the most prominent and influential early Bolsheviks—were consistently guided by

Marxist theory in their approach to major cultural issues, such as literary criticism, censorship, and the concept of “proletarian culture.” I assert that, with regard to these three topics in culture, the views of Marx and Engels were ambiguous, vacillating, and even contradictory. As a result, the Bolsheviks were left without an orthodox Marxist method for understanding these important cultural issues. Consequently, the Bolsheviks reproduced in their own views of literary criticism, censorship, and proletarian culture the contradictions and ambiguities first introduced by Marx and Engels. I contend that the differing literary critiques offered by Lenin, Trotsky, Lunacharsky, and Bogdanov expose the fractures within the Marxist aesthetic paradigm that they inherited. I demonstrate that Lenin’s shifting stance on freedom of the press mirrors his shifting Marxist analysis of Russian society. Finally, I argue that the divide between Lenin and Bogdanov over the notion of proletarian culture reflects a dialectic within Marxism itself—a dialectic between culture as something created, and culture as something that creates.

1. Reviewing the Literature: Soviet Culture in the 1920s

From 1917 through the 1920s, the Soviet Union experienced a period of intense cultural ferment, a spirit of experimentation and liberation gripping the creative arena. This ‘long decade’ of electric, dynamic cultural development has, appropriately, attracted much scholarly attention, 2 particularly from the Western revisionist historians of the 1970s and 1980s.1 Still, the literature has not yet sufficiently considered the actual, expressed viewpoints of prominent Bolsheviks such as Lenin, Trotsky, Lunacharsky, and Bogdanov on a range of cultural matters; what is more, scholarship has almost wholly neglected to analyze the views of these Bolsheviks in the broader context of Marxist theory.

I. The 1970s: The Emergence of Revisionist Scholarship

The topic of culture during the Soviet 1920s first emerged as a major focus of Western scholarship in the early 1970s, as the field of Soviet history experienced a major paradigm shift.

Prior to the 1970s, “totalitarian-model scholarship” had dominated the field of Sovietology, generally portraying the Soviet Union as a monolithic, “completely top-down entity.”2 However, during the early seventies, a new generation of “revisionist” scholars, emphasizing “bottom-up rather than top-down” social relations, increasingly challenged proponents of the “totalitarian- model.”3

One of the most influential revisionists was Sheila Fitzpatrick, who made a lasting contribution to the literature on the Soviet 1920s with The Commissariat of Enlightenment. In her 1970 study, Fitzpatrick conveys the institutional history of the titular Commissariat, arguing

1 Following the release of Katerina Clark’s The Soviet Novel: History as Ritual in 1985, scholarship has generally fixated on the culture of the 1930s and Socialist Realism. Examples of this recent tendency include Thomas Lahusen, How Life Writes the Book: Real Socialism and Socialist Realism in Stalin’s Russia (1997); E.A. Dobrenko, The Making of the State Reader: Social and Aesthetic Contexts of the Reception of Soviet Literature (1997) and The Making of the State Writer: Social and Aesthetic Origins of Soviet Literary Culture (2001); and Petre M. Petrov, Automatic for the Masses: The Death of the Author and the Birth of Socialist Realism (2015). 2 Fitzpatrick, “Revisionism in Soviet History,” 80. 3 Ibid., 81. Examples of this new revisionist scholarship include Alex Rabinowitch, Prelude to Revolution: The Petrograd Bolsheviks and the July 1917 Uprising (1968); Ronald Grigor Suny, The Baku Commune, 1917-1918: Class and Nationality in the Russian Revolution (1972); Stephen F. Cohen, Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution: A Political Biography, 1888-1938 (1973); and William G. Rosenburg, Liberals in the Russian Revolution: The Constitutional Democratic Party, 1917-1921 (1974). 3 that it should be recognized for attempting to create an enlightened, revolutionary educational system.4 In many regards, The Commissariat of Enlightenment is an extremely successful work.

One of its major achievements is its unique methodology, which merges institutional and personal history. Studying the interaction between individuals and institutions, Fitzpatrick reveals both how personal visions can be crushed by institutional pressures, and how unique actors can influence institutional developments. The Commissariat of Enlightenment’s second major accomplishment lies in its use of source material. Whereas previous Western studies of the

Soviet Union scoured “Pravda and Lenin’s and Stalin’s Works,” often in an effort to provide

“anti-Communist propaganda,” Commissariat blends selected Bolshevik writings with archival sources, letters, newspapers, and official documents.5 However, Fitzpatrick slightly overcorrects in this regard; assuming ideological pronouncements were typically a “mask for what was really going on,” she pays insufficient attention to the way theory informed Bolshevik practice.6

Emerging simultaneously with this school of Soviet revisionism was a new breed of

Russian studies expert. While not revisionist historians themselves, these Russianists similarly challenged “totalitarian-model scholarship” in the study of culture.7 This movement in Russian studies began in 1968 with Robert A. Maguire’s Red Virgin Soil, which chronicled the rise and fall of the literary journal Red Virgin Soil and its chief editor Alexander Voronsky during the

1920s. Slightly anticipating the trend towards revisionism in the field of history, Maguire argues that Voronsky and his journal declined not only due to interference from above, but also due to

4 Fitzpatrick, The Commissariat of Enlightenment, xiv, 290. 5 Fitzpatrick, “Revisionism in Soviet History,” 80–81; Fitzpatrick, The Commissariat of Enlightenment, 362–363. 6 Fitzpatrick, “Revisionism in Soviet History,” 81. 7 Examples of this “revisionist” trend within Russian cultural studies include Edward J. Brown, The Proletarian Episode in Russian Literature, 1928-1932 (1971) and Russian Literature Since the Revolution (1982); Gleb Struve, Russian Literature Under Lenin and Stalin, 1917-1953 (1971); and Herman Ermolaev, Soviet Literary Theories, 1917-1934: The Genesis of Socialist Realism (1977). 4 adverse cultural conditions, namely a “real competition” from literary groups jealous of RVS’s success.8 Red Virgin Soil remains, to this day, the only detailed study of the eponymous journal—a journal which, Maguire argues, was not only “the most decisive single influence” on all subsequent Soviet literature, but was also the “most serious and most developed” expression of Marxist aesthetics.9 What is more, Maguire’s study is notable for devoting serious attention to the theoretical pronouncements of its subjects, describing how Marxism shaped their opinions of aesthetics, censorship, and proletarian culture.

II. The 1980s: Bogdanov and the Proletarian Culture Debate

In the decade following 1980, the literature on early Soviet culture made great strides in regard to two critical topics—the character of Bogdanov, and the dissent among Bolsheviks regarding proletarian culture. Accepting the revisionist focus on social history and archival research, the scholars of the 1980s found themselves newly attracted to political matters, and even to theory. In fact, during the 1980s, scholarship approached the threshold of a detailed analysis of Bolshevik thought, ultimately stopping just short.

James C. McClelland ushered in the decade with his 1980 article, “Utopianism versus

Revolutionary Heroism in Bolshevik Policy: The Proletarian Culture Debate.” In this work,

McClelland argues that early Bolshevik theorists were split into two rival “visionary trends,” and that each trend differently approached the debate on proletarian culture. 10 McClelland’s article is a success in many respects. First, it explicitly highlights the plurality of Bolshevik views on “the nature of proletarian culture.”11 Second, while some earlier studies, including The Commissariat

8 Maguire, Red Virgin Soil, 411, 150. 9 Ibid., x. 10 McClelland, “Utopianism versus Revolutionary Heroism in Bolshevik Policy,” 405. 11 Ibid. 5 of Enlightenment, considered Bogdanov in passing, “Utopianism versus Revolutionary Heroism” clearly recognizes Bogdanov’s importance, identifying him as “the most profound theorist of proletarian culture.”12 Most importantly, McClelland’s article engages extensively with the works produced by the Bolsheviks themselves. In classifying each Bolshevik as a “utopian” or a

“revolutionary-heroic,” McClelland provides a clear explanation of his or her major ideas, drawn directly from his or her books and articles. Yet, McClelland never sufficiently explains how the

Bolsheviks, in “hazy agreement” about their socialist goals, could develop such strikingly different strategies, especially in light of their shared Marxist theoretical approach.13

The early Soviet cultural scholarship of the 1980s received its fullest expression at the end of the decade, in Zenovia Sochor’s 1988 work, Revolution and Culture: The Bogdanov-

Lenin Controversy. In this text, Sochor argues that the split between Lenin and Bogdanov not only “challenged any coupling of Leninism with Bolshevism,” but also revealed “Bogdanovism” as Leninism’s “sound,” “non-authoritarian” alternative.14 In many ways, Sochor’s book is a high point in the literature on the culture of the Soviet 1920s. To begin with, her work encapsulates both of the main developments of the 1980s scholarship—it raises Bogdanov’s influence (surely excessively) to the level of Lenin, and devotes nearly its full length to analyzing the differences between the two thinkers regarding proletarian culture. Moreover, Revolution and Culture works extensively with both Lenin and Bogdanov’s theoretical output, and is generally successful in describing their respective views; typical of this is Sochor’s concise interpretation of Bogdanov’s theory of Tektology, which is abstruse even by Marxist standards.15 Still, Sochor’s work is not without its faults. Despite its generally robust analysis, Revolution and Culture would benefit

12 Ibid., 407. 13 Ibid., 405. 14 Sochor, Revolution and Culture, 4, 170, 183. 15 Ibid., 44. 6 from studying Lenin’s and Bogdanov’s rival theories within the broader framework of Marxism, as both thinkers claimed to draw from its ideas and traditions.

III. “Whither the Soviet Scholarship?” Contributions of the Present Work

Since the 1970s, Western literature has consistently failed to analyze major Bolsheviks’ opinions on culture within the context of their Marxist theoretical assumptions. In the following work, I will attempt to fill this gap, examining what four leading Bolsheviks—Lenin, Trotsky,

Lunacharsky, and Bogdanov—thought about pressing cultural issues, such as literary criticism, censorship, and proletarian culture, and how their perspectives derived from their understanding of Marxist analysis.

Investigating Bolshevik views on cultural matters, and how these views relate to the method of Marxism, is important for several reasons. First, studying Bolshevik viewpoints on key cultural issues in the context of Marxist theory can greatly inform our understanding of the

Bolsheviks themselves. Often, Bolshevik ideas about culture, as expressed in essays, speeches, and pamphlets, can seem to be contradictory or inconsistent. Lenin can write in November of

1910 that Tolstoy’s heritage belongs to the Russian proletariat, pointing the way to “a new society,” and then argue in December of 1910 that Tolstoy’s works reveal the weaknesses of “the whole Russian people.”16 By considering these statements as part of the Marxist tradition, we can resolve these apparent incongruities.17 Just as importantly, studying Bolshevik views on cultural matters can help us better understand Marxism. By treating Bolshevik cultural theories as

Marxist cultural theories, we can begin to answer a number of enormous questions—how can

Marxism approach major cultural issues? How did early Bolshevik Marxism(s) differ from the

16 Lenin, On Literature and Art, 52, 57. 17 See Red Letter Days Chapter 2, “Bolshevik Aesthetics and Literary Criticism.” 7

Marxism of Marx and Engels? What possibilities exist within the Marxist paradigm for the study of culture?

2. “Revolutionary Silhouettes:” Introducing the Dramatis Personae

Over the course of the following work, I focus my attention on four early, leading

Bolsheviks—Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, Anatoly Lunacharsky, and Alexander Bogdanov.

By far the best known of these four revolutionaries is Vladimir Lenin, or Vladimir Ilyich

Ulyanov (1870-1924). Lenin was born into a middle class family in Simbirsk, or modern

Ulyanovsk, in 1870.18 In 1887, Lenin’s older brother Alexander was executed for attempting to assassinate the Tsar. In the following year, Lenin first began to study revolutionary politics and

Marxism.19 Moving to St. Petersburg in 1893, Lenin quickly emerged as a leading figure within the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP).20 After two years of clandestine activity,

Lenin was arrested and exiled to Siberia, where he remained until 1900.21 Upon completing his term of exile, Lenin departed Russia for Munich, where he founded the Marxist newspaper Iskra

(The Spark) alongside fellow Russian Social Democrats Georgi Plekhanov and Julius Martov.22

In 1902, Iskra moved its headquarters to London.23 In 1903, at the Second Party Congress of the

RSDLP, the Social Democratic group split into two factions, and Lenin became the leader of the

“Bolshevik,” or “majority,” sect.24 Following the failure of the 1905 revolution, Lenin spent years fighting to maintain the cohesion of the Bolshevik faction.25 Lenin returned to Russia in

18 Harding, Lenin’s Political Thought, Volume 1: Theory and Practice in the Democratic Revolution, 10. 19 Ibid., 10–12, 15–17. 20 Ibid., 63. 21 Ibid., 139. 22 Ibid., 145. 23 Service, Lenin: A Biography, 147. 24 Ibid., 156. 25 Ibid., 183, 190. 8

April 1917, and led the Bolshevik party in its opposition to the bourgeois-democratic Provisional

Government.26 In October of 1917, Lenin stood at the head of the proletarian uprising, and emerged from the victorious revolution as Chairman of the new Soviet government.27

Leon Trotsky (1879-1940), or Lev Davidovich Bronstein, was born in Yanovka (modern

Bereslavka, Ukraine) to a hard-working, peasant father and a middle-class, well-educated mother, both of whom were Jewish.28 In 1896, Trotsky was first converted to the socialist cause by one of his schoolmates; within a year, Trotsky had become a fervent adherent of Marxism.29

In early 1898, Trotsky was arrested for organizing workers in Nikolayev, and subsequently sent to prison for nearly two years.30 In 1902, following several years of exile in Siberia, Trotsky fled

Russia for London, where he was introduced to Lenin.31 After a year of writing for Lenin’s paper

Iskra, Trotsky sided with the Menshevik faction of the RSDLP in 1903, initiating a split between himself and Lenin.32 In 1905, Trotsky returned to Russia, acting as a leading orator and organizer for the St. Petersburg Soviet.33 Trotsky was then arrested and exiled to Siberia for a second time, and a second time he escaped abroad. In 1917, and after several months of collaborating with the

Bolsheviks, he officially joined Lenin’s organization, and was even elected to the Party’s Central

Committee.34 Alongside Lenin, Trotsky led the October Revolution, chairing the Military

Revolutionary Committee that laid the groundwork for the uprising.35 Trotsky played a crucial

26 Ibid., 262. 27 Ibid., 315. 28 Deutscher, The Prophet Armed, 6–7. 29 Ibid., 26–27. 30 Ibid., 31. 31 Ibid., 50–53. 32 Ibid., 67. 33 Ibid., 108–111, 118. 34 Ibid., 214, 238. 35 Ibid., 257. 9 role in the new Soviet government, first as the People’s Commissar of Foreign Affairs, and then as Commissar of War, founding and leading the Red Army.

Likely the most obscure of these four Bolsheviks is Alexander Bogdanov (1873-1928).

Bogdanov, or Alexander Alexandrovich Malinovsky, was born into a schoolteacher’s family in

Tula.36 In the 1890s, while studying medicine at the University of Kharkov, Bogdanov became increasingly active in Social Democratic revolutionary circles; in 1894 and 1899, he was arrested for propagandizing among Russian workers.37 Bogdanov joined the RSDPL in 1899, and in

1903, he became a member of Lenin’s Bolshevik party faction. In 1904, Bogdanov left Russia for Switzerland, where he met Lenin. Bogdanov’s influence in the Bolshevik camp grew rapidly, and by 1909, he was second in prominence only to Lenin himself. However, due to both political and philosophical differences, the two men became increasingly bitter rivals, and in July of 1909,

Lenin ousted Bogdanov from the Bolshevik center.38 Uniting with other left intellectuals, like

Lunacharsky, Bogdanov consolidated a new Social Democratic faction called Vpered, and began articulating his vision of a new “proletarian culture.”39 Although he never rejoined the Bolshevik party, Bogdanov continued to have a significant effect upon its development as a member of the post-revolutionary Socialist Academy of Arts and Sciences and as the intellectual inspiration of the Proletkult movement.40

Anatoly Vasilyevich Lunacharsky (1875-1933) was born in Poltava, the son of a senior civil servant.41 While still a student at the First Kiev Gymnasium, Lunacharsky joined a Marxist revolutionary circle. Barred from the Tsarist university system on account of his radical politics,

36 Sochor, Revolution and Culture, 6. 37 Ibid.; McClelland, “Utopianism versus Revolutionary Heroism in Bolshevik Policy,” 407. 38 Harding, Lenin’s Political Thought, Volume 1: Theory and Practice in the Democratic Revolution, 281. 39 McClelland, “Utopianism versus Revolutionary Heroism in Bolshevik Policy,” 407. 40 Ibid., 408. 41 Fitzpatrick, The Commissariat of Enlightenment, 2. 10

Lunacharsky chose to study at the University of Zurich with Richard Avenarius, a philosopher of empirio-criticism. Lunacharsky returned to Russia in 1898, where he was almost immediately arrested for connecting with a Social Democratic group in Moscow. Sent into exile in Vologda,

Lunacharsky met Bogdanov, and the two formed an intellectual partnership.42 Lunacharsky met

Lenin for the first time in 1904, and in that same year he entered into the Bolshevik fold.43 In

1909, Lunacharsky partnered with Bogdanov in forming Vpered, and remained a leader of the clique until it dissolved in 1912.44 As World War I broke out in 1914, Lunacharsky joined Lenin in calling for international proletarian revolution, a fact that led the two to reconcile.45 In May of

1917, Lunacharsky arrived in Petrograd, where he was arrested in July after the Russian workers began armed demonstrations against the Provisional Government. In prison, Lunacharsky was formally readmitted to the Bolshevik party, and after the October Revolution, he was appointed the People’s Commissar of Education—a position he used to support universities, theaters, libraries, museums, experimental schools, research institutes, and kindergartens.46

A number of factors led me to focus on the four particular Bolsheviks mentioned above.

First, as we have just seen, Lenin, Trotsky, Lunacharsky, and Bogdanov were all leading figures within the Bolshevik Party. Their ideas were important to other Bolsheviks, and thus, must be at the center of any attempt to understand how “Bolsheviks” thought about culture. Second, when assembling a group of Bolsheviks, I attempted to select figures with contrasting views, in order to reflect a broad spectrum of opinion within the Party. This especially shaped my decision to include Bogdanov, whose ideas about proletarian culture were so far from the Party line that he

42 Ibid., 2–3. 43 Ibid., 3. 44 Ibid., 7. 45 Ibid., 8. 46 Ibid., 9, xiv–xv. 11 was ousted from the Bolshevik group altogether. Finally, for obvious reasons, I chose to consider the Bolsheviks who had written the most extensively on literature, culture, and art.

It should be noted that a few other Bolsheviks met these criteria, but were ultimately not included. Perhaps the most notable figure to “fit the bill” and yet still wind up outside the present study is Nikolai Bukharin (1888-1938). Indeed, I initially intended to include Bukharin in my research. However, I quickly found that many of his works discussing culture, literature, and art have yet to be translated into English. What is more, Bukharin’s few cultural studies that have received English translation, such as Philosophical Arabesques and Socialism and Its Culture, date almost exclusively from the late 1930s.47 While these texts are extremely interesting, they ultimately fall well beyond both the chronological and thematic parameters of this work.

3. Methodology

In my research, I have, by design, relied very heavily upon primary sources. Collections such as Lenin’s On Literature and Art and Lunacharsky’s On Literature and Art, articles like

Bogdanov’s “On Proletarian Poetry,” and longer texts, including Trotsky’s Literature and

Revolution, have formed the core of my source base. What is more, although many scholarly works helped shape my views, certain studies were particularly influential on my thinking.

Morawski’s article “Lenin as a Literary Theorist” has provided me with a productive, convincing model for understanding Marxist aesthetics. Neil Harding’s two-volume study, Lenin’s Political

Thought, has greatly informed my conception of Lenin’s revolutionary praxis. Zenovia Sochor’s

Revolution and Culture has notably impacted my appreciation of the Bolshevik Party debate on proletarian culture; her argument that Leninism and Bogdanovism presented differing theoretical options for the Party led me to evaluate the Marxist underpinnings of their respective positions

47 Bukharin, Philosophical Arabesques; Bukharin, The Prison Manuscripts. 12 with regard to proletarian culture.48 Since I am unable to read in Russian, I have limited my investigation to the wide array of sources available in English translation.

Throughout the text, I frequently refer to “culture.” Since the exact meaning of this term is often not readily apparent, I will briefly attempt to clarify it here. Typically, I employ the term

“culture” in its broader sense; in this meaning, “culture” includes not only literature and art, but also familial relations, religion, philosophy, education, and even the natural sciences and politics.

This more expansive definition of “culture” is not dissimilar from the Marxist concept of the

“ideological superstructure,” which encompasses everything in society other than the “economic base,” or the mode of production of material life.

4. “One Step Forward:” An Outline of the Text

In the following work, I argue that, in their consideration of several major cultural issues,

Lenin, Trotsky, Lunacharsky, and Bogdanov were consistently guided by their understanding of

Marxist theory. In Chapter 1, I begin with a discussion of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. I assert that, with regard to three important topics in culture—aesthetics, censorship, and base- superstructure theory—the views of Marx and Engels were ambiguous, vacillating, and even contradictory. In Chapter 2, I explore the aesthetics and literary criticism developed by Lenin,

Trotsky, Lunacharsky, and Bogdanov. I contend that each of these four Bolsheviks utilized the aesthetic paradigm handed down to them by their Marxist forebears in different ways, and that their literary critiques reflect the fractures in Marx and Engels’ aesthetic model. In Chapter 3, I focus exclusively on Lenin and his approach to freedom of the press. I claim that Lenin’s censorship policies directly emerge from his Marxist analysis of Russian society. In Chapter 4, I describe the 1909-1922 Bolshevik Party debate on proletarian culture, and the central roles

48 Sochor, Revolution and Culture, 13. 13 played by Lenin and Bogdanov. I contend that the theoretical divides between Lenin and

Bogdanov on the topic of proletarian culture reveal a dialectic within Marxism itself—a dialectic between culture as something created, and culture as something that creates. Finally, in Chapter

5, I briefly summarize my findings, and suggest some broader implications of this work.

14

Red Letter Days Chapter 1: Marxism, Culture, and Art

Throughout their lives, Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels were fascinated with cultural topics, ranging from poetry to visual art, from familial relations to the history of science.1 Yet, despite their enthusiasm, the two men never detailed a single, orthodox Marxist method for considering culture. With regard to three particularly important issues—aesthetics, censorship, and the relationship between base and superstructure—Marx and Engels were often ambiguous, contradictory, and vacillating, leaving their views open to a variety of interpretations.

1. An Introduction: Critical Perspectives on Marxism and Culture

For over a century, critics have analyzed the works of Marx and Engels, examining the connection between Marxism and culture. While many scholars have explored the rich and varied realm of Marxist cultural studies, one analyst in particular—the Polish philosopher Stefan

Morawski—will guide my discussion of Marx, Engels, and aesthetics.

Many scholars have provided detailed studies of Marxism and culture.2 One of the earliest investigations was carried out by William Morris (1834-1895), an English poet, novelist, and Marxist. In his works, Morris developed “the first application of the Marxist theory of labor

1 Consider, among other works, Marx’s own Book of Verse (1837), or Engels’s Dialectics of Nature (1883) and The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State (1884). 2 In addition to those discussed here, many others have made substantial contributions to the field of Marxist cultural studies. Such major figures as Franz Mehring, Georgi Plekhanov, Maxim Gorky, Antonio Gramsci, Walter Benjamin, Jean-Paul Sartre, and many others have, by necessity, been omitted. For a survey of the literature, see Solomon, Marxism and Art (1973). 15 to art.”3 Morris argued that art was “man’s expression of joy in his labor.”4 Throughout history, man saw in his work the “hope of creation, and the self-respect which comes from a sense of usefulness.”5 As a result, all men had been “more or less artists,” creating objects of great beauty.6 Only during the era of capitalism, when man became alienated from the object of his toil, did “art-lacking or unhappy labor” proliferate.7 Drawn into “mechanical and feelingless handiwork,” the worker made commodities that “could have no pretense to artistic qualities.”8 In the early twentieth century, Marxist cultural theory was further developed by the Hungarian aesthetician Georg Lukács (1885-1971). While Lukács discussed many topics over the course of his career, one of his more important efforts was his attempt to precisely define “art.” Scholars have contended that, according to Lukács’ definition, a work of art needed to be both

“anthropomorphic” and “evocative;” art was “anthropomorphic” if it contained all the “typical relations of human life,” “evocative” if it intentionally produced strong feelings in its beholder.9

Over the course of the twentieth century, the field of Marxist cultural studies increasingly shifted its focus away from applying Marxism to cultural problems, and towards examining the thought of Marx and Engels themselves. One particularly important exponent of this trend was

Marx, Engels, and the Poets by Peter Demetz, Professor of German literature at Yale. In his

1967 work, Demetz considered Marx and Engels’ perspectives on literary phenomena in the context of their respective biographies.10 Demetz asserted, like some of his contemporaries, that

Marx and Engels were better understood as separate intellectuals than as essentially united co-

3 Solomon, Marxism and Art, 79. 4 Morris, “Art, Labor, and Socialism,” 85. 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid., 87. 7 Ibid., 85. 8 Ibid. 9 Parkinson, “Lukács on the Central Category of Aesthetics,” 118–121. 10 Demetz, Marx, Engels, and the Poets, 228. 16 thinkers. In Demetz’s telling, Marx placed the artist in a subordinate position to economic life;

Engels, by contrast, relaxed “the rigid dogmatism of his friend,” releasing “the poet into other spheres.”11 Still more influential was the work of Raymond Williams, Professor of Drama at

Jesus College and New Left intellectual. In his 1977 text Marxism and Literature, Williams laid out his theory of “cultural materialism,” which interpreted “literature” as a concept emergent from bourgeois society.12 According to Williams, new technologies, such as “the electronic transmission and recording of speech,” were in the process of fundamentally altering “the specialized concept of ‘literature.’”13

However, while many scholars produced important examinations of Marxism and culture, the work of one academic in particular—Stefan Morawski—will help guide our discussion, especially with regards to Marxist aesthetics. Born in Krakow in 1921, Morawski taught aesthetics at the University of Warsaw from 1954 to 1968, when he was denounced as a revisionist and ousted from the Communist Party. Following his expulsion, Morawski emigrated from Poland, lecturing as a guest professor in West Germany and the United States before returning to the University of Warsaw in the late 1980s. Despite his break with the Party,

Morawski remained a committed Marxist. Throughout his work, Morawski used his “Marxist methodology” to investigate the “fundamental problems of aesthetics,” including “the genesis and function of artistic values.”14 Morawski has been recognized as a leading scholar of aesthetics and Marxism, which, he contends, was “a virtually untouched region of inquiry” prior to some of his first essays.15

11 Ibid., 229. 12 Williams, Marxism and Literature, 52. 13 Ibid., 54. 14 Morawski, Inquiries Into the Fundamentals of Aesthetics, x. 15 Ibid., xvii. 17

In his article “Lenin as a Literary Theorist,” Morawski lays out a productive, compelling paradigm that I will use in my consideration of Marx, Engels, and the Bolsheviks. Morawski contends that Marxist aesthetics comprises three distinct forms of analysis, which he terms

“genetic,” “mimetic,” and “functional.” “Genetic” analyses focus on the genesis of art in certain social classes; “mimetic” analyses describe the mimesis, or reflection, of class society in art; and

“functional” analyses emphasize a work of art’s class function.16 This framework’s clear strength is its ability to convincingly explain why Marx, Engels, and their Russian acolytes often evaluated works of literature and art very differently at different times. Rather than assume that these otherwise rigorous thinkers were simply being careless or contradictory, Morawski argues that there were multiple ways to understand art from a Marxist perspective. While all three forms of Marxist analysis produce “a class (ideological) interpretation of the art work,” concentrating on a work’s class genesis, mimesis, or function could lead to very different conclusions indeed.17

2. Aesthetics: Three Modes of Marxist Criticism

Throughout their letters, books, and articles, Marx and Engels often ventured into the realm of aesthetic criticism. Yet, despite their frequent commentaries on literature and art, Marx and Engels never clearly elucidated a single “correct” method of analysis, instead evaluating art and literature in at least three different ways over the course of their careers.

On many occasions, Marx and Engels offered “genetic” interpretations of artwork.18 In such genetic analyses, the two philosophers sought to demonstrate how pieces of art reflected the

“ideological allegiances” of their creator.19 In some cases, artists expressed the interests of the

16 Morawski, “Lenin as a Literary Theorist,” 4. 17 Ibid. 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid., 5. 18 class they were “born into.”20 For example, Goethe, the son of a “Frankfurt alderman,” and a

“privy councilor” himself, staunchly supported the nobility throughout his writings.21 Despite sporadic outbursts against the “society of his time,” Goethe generally celebrated the feudal order in his prose, and even poured scorn on the encroaching bourgeoisie.22 In other instances, “the ideological posture” of an artist derived from a class “related,” or even “hostile,” to the class of his origin.23 Indeed, a class and its “literary representatives” could be “as far apart as heaven from earth” in terms of their “social position.”24 For instance, while the poet Ferdinand

Freiligrath had a bourgeois upbringing, Marx regarded him as “a real revolutionary,” and felt that his poetry aided the proletarian cause.25 In truth, Marx and Engels themselves were in much the same position; originally members of the bourgeoisie, the two thinkers recognized the plight of the proletariat and achieved working class consciousness.26

However, just as frequently, Marx and Engels employed a “mimetic” paradigm to assess literature and art.27 According to the mimetic school of criticism, a work of art could reflect not merely the viewpoint of a single class, but in fact, the “contradictions” of an entire “historical period.”28 Engels utilized this mode of critique in his commentary on the Oresteia, which he argued was “a dramatic depiction” of declining matrilineal society during the “Heroic age.”29

After murdering his mother, Orestes was attacked by the Erinyes, “demonic defenders” of the

20 Ibid. 21 Engels, “German Socialism in Verse and Prose,” 80. 22 Ibid. 23 Morawski, “Lenin as a Literary Theorist,” 5. 24 Marx, “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte,” 85. 25 Marx, “Letter to Joseph Weydemeyer, January 16, 1852,” 120. 26 Marx, “The Communist Manifesto,” 253. 27 Morawski, “Lenin as a Literary Theorist,” 5. 28 Ibid. 29 Engels, “Preface to The Origin of the Family,” 91. 19 traditional “mother right.”30 While the established order regarded matricide as “the most heinous and inexpiable of crimes,” Apollo and Athena—gods of “a junior lineage”—ultimately spared

Orestes, and so signaled the triumph of a new, patrilineal world.31 Thus, in Engels’ view, the

Oresteia chronicled the fall of ancient women from a position of heightened “social status,” into a form of “limited surrender” and eventual slavery.32 Engels provided a similarly mimetic reading of Balzac’s La Comédie humaine. Although Balzac was “politically a Legitimist,” his novel was nonetheless a “wonderfully realistic history of French society,” describing the rise of the bourgeoisie and the decline of the nobility in great detail. 33 Indeed, Engels considered La

Comédie humaine far more useful in understanding French society than “all the professed historians, economists, and statisticians of the period” put together.34

Finally, Marx and Engels repeatedly produced “functional” interpretations of literature and art.35 In their functional analyses, Marx and Engels focused on the work of art’s “class function”—how a work’s “system of conceptions,” or “ideology per se,” supported a particular class.36 Engels noted that during the mid-eighteenth century, “every literary production teemed with” tendentiousness, as the “moneyed and industrial classes” hurried to express their political interests in print.37 Chaffing under the constraints of feudal society, the bourgeoisie promoted “a crude Constitutionalism” in its novels, poems, and dramas, while the working class propagated

“a still cruder Republicanism.”38 Marx and Engels also appraised individual authors from a functional perspective. In Engels’ opinion, Henrik Ibsen’s dramas reflected “the world of the

30 Ibid. 31 Ibid. 32 Ibid., 92. 33 Engels, “Letter to Margaret Harkness,” 115. 34 Ibid. 35 Morawski, “Lenin as a Literary Theorist,” 4. 36 Ibid., 4, 11–12. 37 Engels, “The New York Daily Tribune, October 28, 1851,” 119. 38 Ibid. 20 petty and middle bourgeoisie,” and their ideological content encouraged “careerism” more than authentic female liberation.39 By contrast, Engels lauded Georg Weerth as “the first and most important poet of the German proletariat” and as a staunch advocate of communism.40 By depicting the everyday struggles of working class life—for instance, how a “lousy innkeeper” sold poor travelers acrid beer, rotten meat, and lodgings full of bedbugs—Weerth exposed the plight of the workers to public attention, and thus strengthened the socialist cause.41

3. Censorship: Irrepressible Truth, Inevitable Class Struggle

Throughout their lives, Marx and Engels also contended with notions of political, artistic, and literary censorship. While Marx and Engels often condemned censorship in the harshest possible terms, on multiple occasions they apparently altered their stance, arguing instead for checks on freedom of expression.

Time and again, Marx and Engels vigorously denounced censorship. To begin with, both men clearly rejected overt, government-sponsored suppression of communication. Marx argued that “truth” was the common property of all people, not the private possession of a select few.42

Therefore, when the state employed censorship to keep people “from the truth,” it committed an act of violence against the population, infringing upon the mass’ “universal,” collective rights.43

Marx was similarly incensed by attempts to legislate authorial style. While truth itself could never “belong to” an individual, authors certainly possessed their own unique styles.44 According

39 Engels, “Letter to Paul Ernst, June 5, 1890,” 87–89. 40 Marx, “Recollections of Mohr (1895),” 124–5. 41 Ibid., 124. 42 Marx, “Comments on the Latest Prussian Censorship Instructions,” 71. 43 Ibid. 44 Ibid. 21 to Marx, a writer’s style was his “spiritual identity,” the very “profile of [his] mind.”45 When the law compelled an author to “write in a style different from” his own, it robbed him of his own personality.46 Every work of art, in its “infinite play of colors,” affirmed the singular identity of its creator, whose mind had “refracted” the light of the world in an original way; censorship forced every artist to adopt “only the official color,” replacing his innate brilliance with the drab conformity of “grey on grey.”47 In the last analysis, Marx contended that any legislated censorship was doomed to failure—after all, truth could be “as little restrained as light.”48

Marx and Engels were just as fervent in condemning the censorship of the marketplace, which compelled artists to kowtow to the demands of their clients.49 Neither Marx nor Engels disputed that a writer had to “earn a living to exist and be able to write.”50 However, in order to write what he honestly desired, an author had to pursue his works as an “ends in themselves,” not as a “means” of securing a wage.51 To bring forth his artistic vision without compromise, an author had to behave like a devoted servant, placing the requirements of his work above all else.

In extreme cases, even his own “human needs and desires” had to submit to the “God” of unfettered creativity.52 Yet, the moment that art debased “itself and [became] a business,” the artist in turn became a slave to his customer, catering to his whims.53 In many respects, the censorship of the marketplace was even more reprehensible than that of the state. While bureaucrats might dismiss a novel as too “humorous” or too “forward,” an author could still

45 Ibid. 46 Ibid. 47 Ibid. 48 Ibid. 49 Marx, “Debating the Freedom of the Press,” 60–1. 50 Ibid., 60. 51 Ibid., 61. 52 Ibid. 53 Ibid. 22

“write freely,” presenting finished products to the “liberal censorship.”54 By contrast, the demands of the customer ruled the artist from the outset—a tailor could not design a “Roman toga” if his customer ordered “a Parisian frock coat.”55 Only one thing could free the artist from the despotism of the market, ending private property’s “appropriation” of human creativity—the communist revolution.56

Nevertheless, Marx and Engels believed that censorship could also play a “revolutionary role” in overthrowing the existing “system of exploitation.”57 According to the Marxist worldview, capitalism would be immediately followed, not by communism, but by “a period of revolutionary transformation.”58 During this “dictatorship of the proletariat,” the working class would have to use “coercive means” in its struggle against the “capitalist class,” which, for a time, would continue to threaten its hold on political power.59 As it sought to impose its will upon the former ruling classes, the proletariat would have no choice but to employ “authoritarian means,” including the use of arms and the suspension of certain rights.60 While “rifles, bayonets, and canons” would suppress counter-revolutionary uprisings, strict control of the “means of communication” would halt any bourgeois attempt at organization or propaganda.61 Marx and

Engels believed that, in the struggle of the “armed people against the bourgeoisie,” every form of violence was potentially of use—censorship was certainly no exception.62

54 Marx, “Comments on the Latest Prussian Censorship Instructions,” 73. 55 Marx, “Debating the Freedom of the Press,” 61. 56 Marx, “The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844,” 70. 57 Engels, Anti-Dühring, 203. 58 Marx, “Critique of the Gotha Programme,” 611. 59 Marx, “On Bakunin’s Statism and Anarchy,” 606. 60 Engels, “On Authority,” 733. 61 Marx, “The Communist Manifesto,” 262. 62 Engels, “On Authority,” 733. 23

4. Base-Superstructure Theory

Few ideas were as essential to Marx and Engels’s work as base-superstructure theory.

Indeed, major studies like The German Ideology and Capital rested upon the assertion that a society’s economic base ultimately determined its ideological superstructure. However, even here, Marx and Engels proved to be contradictory, insisting that the base determined the superstructure while simultaneously suggesting that the superstructure could alter the base.

Marx and Engels almost always maintained that, in the relationship between economic base and ideological superstructure, the base played the defining role. Marx and Engels argued that societies began when men entered into “relations of production” with one another in order to produce the necessities of life.63 The earliest communities, in their view, were formed to meet shared, basic material needs—hunting, farming, building shelters, and producing goods and tools.64 Cumulatively, these “relations of production” formed “the real foundation” of society, namely, its “economic structure.”65 Yet, from these material “roots,” “legal relations as well as forms of state” quickly emerged.66 As the “tribe” developed, its population expanded, and it began to trade with neighboring communities.67 Eventually, the tribe gave way to the town, a

“municipality” that required “administration, police, taxes,” and other forms of government.68

Conditioned by the material “life process,” men also began to produce their own “conceptions” and “ideas,” including “morality, religion,” and “metaphysics.”69 For instance, many early peoples, unable to explain the “forces of nature” that ruled their lives, assigned these powers to

63 Marx, “Preface to A Critique of Political Economy,” 425. 64 Marx and Engels, The German Ideology, 9, 28, 43. 65 Marx, “Preface to A Critique of Political Economy,” 425. 66 Ibid. 67 Marx and Engels, The German Ideology, 43. 68 Ibid. 69 Ibid., 14. 24 supernatural beings like Apollo, Zeus, and Poseidon.70 Over time, religion increasingly represented the “equally alien” social forces that dominated the common man, explaining away the power of emperors, kings, and capital.71

Still, throughout their writings, Marx and Engels repeatedly implied that the ideological superstructure could at least shape, and perhaps even determine, the material foundations of society. While artistic, intellectual, political, and religious advancements were all “based on economic development,” these superstructural elements could nonetheless “react upon one another,” transforming and recombining in the process.72 For instance, although Christianity, existential philosophy, and the modern novel all derived from material life, only the dynamic interaction of these three forces could produce Crime and Punishment. What is more, while the economic basis was “ultimately decisive” in directing the “course of historical struggles,” the

“various elements of the superstructure” also played a major part in shaping history.73 The class struggle could be hindered or advanced by decades, if not centuries, thanks to the promulgation of a new constitution or the revival of an ancient set of dogmas. Finally, the superstructure could, in certain circumstances, directly impact the base. The communist movement itself proved the point; in the hands of the masses, “radical” theory became an unstoppable weapon, capable of abolishing “all relations” that had “debased, enslaved,” and “abandoned” man—capable of overthrowing capitalism.74

70 Engels, Anti-Dühring, 344. 71 Ibid., 344–345. 72 Engels, “Letter to J. Bloch,” 33. 73 Ibid., 30. 74 Marx, “A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right,” 53. 25

5. Conclusions: The Cultural Testament of Marx and Engels

Marx and Engels were men of expansive intellect, constantly investigating far-flung topics in economics, German philosophy, politics, history, natural science, and even mathematics. Given the great number of issues touched upon throughout their collected works, it is completely unsurprising that the revolutionary theorists never systematized their views on culture, literature, and art. As voracious readers, Marx and Engels frequently drifted into the world of aesthetic criticism. Yet, the philosophers failed to develop an integrated Marxist paradigm for evaluating artistic merit, instead employing three distinct modes of analysis over the course of their careers. In keeping with their most libertarian impulses, Marx and Engels often passionately opposed censorship, castigating both state-imposed and market-driven restrictions on freedom of expression. Nevertheless, the ardent revolutionaries insisted that censorship would be a necessary weapon in the struggle for working class freedom. Finally, with regard to base-superstructure theory, Marx and Engels were intentionally ambiguous, stressing the importance of the economic base while carving out an active role for the ideological superstructure.

Both Marx and Engels would die without resolving any of these contradictions, cursing their disciples to decades of frustrated debate about what the prophets had “really meant” in their books, pamphlets, and letters. As the first Marxists to achieve political power, it was left up to the Bolsheviks to untie these theoretical knots. In their attempt to evaluate literature and art from a Marxist perspective, Lenin, Trotsky, Lunacharsky, and Bogdanov all built upon the aesthetics developed by Marx and Engels. However, each Bolshevik interpreted these aesthetics differently, variously emphasizing genetic, mimetic, or functional analysis as the most correct way of appraising art. In his approach to the freedom of the press, Lenin would mirror Marx and Engels 26 almost exactly, preserving the tension at the heart of their stance; while condemning bourgeois censorship, Lenin advocated censorship in the hands of the proletarian dictatorship. Finally, the ambiguous relationship between economic base and ideological superstructure would play a central role in fomenting the proletarian culture debate between Lenin and Bogdanov. Yet, it very well may be that the two original Marxists preferred it all this way. As Eleanor Marx fondly recalled, her father was always teaching her “where to look for what was best and finest” in what she read—teaching her, in truth, “to try and think, to try and understand for herself.”75

75 Marx, “Recollections of Mohr (1895),” 147. 27

Red Letter Days Chapter 2: Bolshevik Aesthetics and Literary Criticism

Once, during the 1905 revolution, Lenin had to stay overnight at the home of a comrade who had an exceptional personal library. The collection, which included every major work of world literature, instantly fascinated Vladimir Ilyich. As Russia stood on the brink of proletarian upheaval, the ardent revolutionary spent his evening leafing through books, only falling asleep near morning. The next day, Lenin was enthused. “What a wonderful thing is the history of art!

The amount of work there is here for a Marxist!”1

Although it is seldom acknowledged, the Bolsheviks were a highly literary group, despite their reputation for hardheaded realism and their Spartan disdain for bourgeois luxuries. Indeed,

Lenin, Trotsky, Lunacharsky, and Bogdanov, were all extremely interested in literature, as demonstrated by the fact that they each wrote extensively on literary criticism. In their literary criticism, each of these Bolsheviks built upon the aesthetics developed by Marx and Engels; however, each Bolshevik approached the complex, tri-partite Marxist aesthetic system very differently, and to vastly different effect. Whereas Bogdanov embraced the “genetic” mode of analysis, his peers generally dismissed that line of interpretation. Instead, Lenin, Trotsky, and

Lunacharsky favored the “mimetic” method of inquiry, only rejoining Bogdanov to approve of the “functional” perspective. 2 What is more, one Bolshevik—Lunacharsky—diverged further still from his Marxist co-thinkers, as he emphasized the role of non-class factors in literary production, as well as the aesthetics of formal composition.

1 Lenin, On Literature and Art, 256. 2 Morawski, “Lenin as a Literary Theorist,” 4. 28

1. Aesthetics in the 1920s: The Avant-Garde and the Bolsheviks

During the Soviet 1920s, aesthetics was an unusually heated issue, as each of the many avant-garde groups sought out new ways to evaluate art. One of the most important of these literary factions was The Left Front of Arts, or LEF. Founded in March 1923 by Russian

Futurists, LEF was a literary journal “noisy, interesting, and influential all out of proportion to” its size, which never exceeded more than twenty five members.3 According to LEF theorists, genuine art was dialectical. By presenting reality as it was becoming, rather than as it currently existed, art prepared the proletariat for the next stage in the class struggle.4 LEF’s aesthetic paradigm was challenged by October, another leading literary association. Formed in December

1922, October was a disciplined collective of working class writers dedicated to strengthening

“the Communist line in proletarian literature.”5 In its members’ view, true art “infected” its audience with “the values of a specific class.”6 Good art, therefore, transmitted ‘good’ (i.e., proletarian) class values to its consumer. A third prominent circle, Red Virgin Soil, opposed both

LEF and October. Launched by the Party in February 1921, RVS was a literary journal intended to attract the best Soviet writers, and ultimately, to win them over to the Bolshevik cause.7 RVS contended that good art expressed universal “humanistic ideals,” such as “justice, truth, freedom.”8 Since Communism represented the highest intensification of these humanistic ideals,

Communist art would, correspondingly, be of the highest aesthetic value.9

3 Maguire, Red Virgin Soil, 150, 156. 4 Ibid., 190. 5 Ibid., 159; Ermolaev, Soviet Literary Theories, 1917-1934, 27. 6 Maguire, Red Virgin Soil, 191. 7 Ibid., 22. 8 Ibid., 243. 9 Although LEF, October, and RVS were three of the most significant literary groups of the 1920s, they were far from the only such organizations. The 1920s avant-garde also included groups like the Smithy, VAPP, RAPP, the Serapion Brothers, Pereval, and Proletkult. 29

Enticed by the tumult of the 1920s, many scholars have examined the aesthetics of the avant-garde.10 Yet, few have considered the literary criticism conducted by the most influential party of the period—the Bolsheviks themselves. One academic who devoted serious attention to the Bolsheviks’ literary activities was Stefan Morawski. In his 1965 article “Lenin as a Literary

Theorist,” Morawski argues that Lenin’s aesthetic views directly reflected “postulates established at one time by Marx and Engels.”11 Morawski contends that Marx and Engels had developed “a many sided interpretation of the work of art,” comprised of what he termed

“genetic, mimetic, and functional” analyses.12 “Genetic” inquiries considered the class genesis of a particular work of art; “mimetic” inquires emphasized the mimesis, or representation, of the real world in a work of art; “functional” inquires stressed the function of the work in class society.13 According to Morawski, Lenin adopted Marx and Engels’ multi-faceted aesthetic paradigm, using “genetic, mimetic, and functional” interpretations as the basis for his own literary criticism. However, Lenin was not the only Bolshevik to draw from the aesthetic tradition of Marx and Engels; Trotsky, Lunacharsky, and Bogdanov were also recipients of the

Marxist inheritance. Ultimately, each of these Bolshevik leaders employed genetic, mimetic, and functional analyses in his attempts to evaluate the class content of literary works.

2. The Class Content of the Work of Art: Genetic Interpretations

Of the three methods of aesthetic analysis developed by Marx and Engels, the genetic mode, which evaluated art as an expression of particular class interests, was perhaps the most

10 For a detailed study of the 1920s literary factions, see Maguire, Red Virgin Soil (1968); Ermolaev, Soviet Literary Theories, 1917-1934 (1977); or Emerson, “Literary Theory in the 1920s” (2011). 11 Morawski, “Lenin as a Literary Theorist,” 24. 12 Ibid., 4. 13 Morawski, Inquiries Into the Fundamentals of Aesthetics, 42–46, 64, 315–316; Morawski, “Lenin as a Literary Theorist,” 4. 30 basic. While Bogdanov made frequent use of the genetic paradigm in his literary criticism, his peers typically urged caution, suggesting that an overreliance on the genetic approach could lead to false conclusions.

Throughout his work, Bogdanov regularly offered genetic interpretations of literature. In

Bogdanov’s view, literary works expressed the ideology of their author; the author’s ideology, in turn, very often stemmed from his class origins. Bogdanov demonstrated this connection between an author’s class origins and the ideological content of his literary output in an analysis of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Bogdanov noted that “the author of Hamlet…was either an aristocrat himself or a fervent adherent of the aristocracy.”14 As a result, Shakespeare drew “the greater part of the material” for Hamlet from the world of the nobility—the world that he himself was a part of, the world that he knew best.15 This is reflected in the drama’s narrative of palace intrigue and political scheming. What is more, since Shakespeare’s own class interests were aristocratic,

Hamlet conveyed a correspondingly aristocratic ideology, bearing “the seal of the feudal monarchical ideal.”16 In Hamlet, “a traitor and a fratricide has seized the throne,” disrupting the rightful succession of the royal family.17 This assault on the divine right of kings causes “the decline of the old good customs” throughout Denmark and the reign of “hypocrisy, intrigue, and licentiousness” at court.18 By killing his murderous uncle, Hamlet ensures that “crime is punished, the lawful order is restored, the fate of Denmark is entrusted to firm hands.”19 Thus,

Hamlet demonstrates “the holiness and infallibility of the order which has been established since ancient times,” in which kings are “by their very birth destined to manage and rule” and all

14 Bogdanov, “The Workers’ Artistic Inheritance,” 4. 15 Ibid. 16 Ibid. 17 Ibid., 3. 18 Ibid., 3, 2. 19 Ibid., 4. 31 others are fit only for “subordination.”20 According to Bogdanov’s genetic reading, Hamlet was an aristocratic play, written by an aristocrat, expressing an aristocratic ideology.

In contrast with Bogdanov, Lenin, Trotsky, and Lunacharsky generally argued against over-depending on the genetic mode of aesthetic analysis. Certainly, Lenin was not shy about acknowledging the ideological allegiances present in literary works. Indeed, he is well known for supporting “the principle of party literature,” which frankly asserted that all literary works—and by extension, all authors—were objectively partisan.21 However, Lenin warned against mechanically identifying the ideological content of a work with the class origin, or even the class position, of its creator. For instance, he argued that although Tolstoy “belonged to the highest landed nobility in Russia” according to his “birth and education,” a peasant ideology clearly manifested in his art.22 Lenin asserted that, while the Russian nobility and bourgeoisie attempted to depict Tolstoy as “the voice of civilized mankind” and an ally of the established order, his works actually voiced fierce criticism of the “state, church, social and economic institutions” which oppressed “the peasants and the petty proprietors.”23

Lunacharsky was even more wary of narrowly genetic interpretations of literature. Like

Bogdanov and Lenin, Lunacharsky believed that “a work of literature will always reflect, whether consciously or unconsciously, the psychology of the class which the writer represents.”24 In fact, Lunacharsky considered analyzing “the social essence” of a work, and so revealing “its connection with these or those social groups,” to be one of the primary tasks of

Marxist literary criticism.25 However, while every writer certainly spoke “for one class or

20 Ibid. 21 Lenin, On Literature and Art, 23. 22 Ibid., 54. 23 Ibid., 51, 54. 24 Lunacharsky, On Literature and Art, 13–14. 25 Ibid., 14. 32 another,” it did not follow that every writer was “the spokesman for his own particular class,” encapsulating all of its “traditions, cultures and interests.”26 He argued that, some writers stood on the “periphery” of their class, making them “more subject to the influence of other classes;” other authors represented classes “nearing their prime, or on the decline.”27 For instance,

Alexander Blok was a “spokesman of the nobility” at the “nadir of its disintegration.”28 On the one hand, Blok hated “the bourgeois world,” which had ruined the landed gentry.29 On the other hand, Blok “feared an end of the bourgeoisie,” which he himself was “rapidly becoming indistinguishable from.”30 As a result, Blok’s ideology fluctuated between the aristocracy and the peasantry, ultimately expressing “confused” sympathy for the coming revolution.31 Clearly, only the most simplistic Marxism—“or, more exactly, anti-Marxism”—could lead one to automatically identify Blok with an “indivisible and unchanging” aristocratic class interest.32

Trotsky was perhaps the most sophisticated, as well as the most vociferous, in objecting to underdeveloped genetic literary analyses. In accord with his fellow Bolsheviks, Trotsky mocked the notion that “an artist could ever be ‘without a tendency,’ without a definite relation to social life, even though unformed or unexpressed in political terms.”33 According to Trotsky, art was “always a social servant;” Marxism could uncover “the social roots of the ‘pure’ art” and of the “tendentious” art with equal precision.34 Still, Trotsky insisted that works of literature could not be robotically linked with the class position of their author. Trotsky emphasized that individual authors, and even entire genres, could alter their class character over time. For

26 Ibid., 159. 27 Ibid. 28 Ibid., 160. 29 Ibid., 162. 30 Ibid. 31 Ibid. 32 Ibid., 159. 33 Trotsky, Literature and Revolution, 71. 34 Ibid., 142–143. 33 example, Trotsky asserted that Russian Futurism “originated in an eddy of bourgeois art.”35 Yet, since Futurism was still in its childhood when it “fell into” the revolution, it faced “the possibility of rebirth” as an “important component part” of the “new art” expressing a proletarian ideology.36 More importantly, Trotsky suggested that “certain common features” of art cut across class lines. While “Dante was, of course, the product of a certain social milieu,” he was, through the genius of his artistic ability, able to express ideas in his Divine Comedy that extended beyond

“the limitations of the life” of his time.37 Some basic ideas, such as the “fear of death,” had no ideological allegiance, proletarian, bourgeois, or otherwise.38

3. The Class Content of the Work of Art: Mimetic Interpretations

The mimetic method of analysis, which saw in literature the reflection of entire historical periods, was likely the subtlest mode of interpretation produced by Marx and Engels. Although

Bogdanov typically eschewed the mimetic paradigm, Lenin, Trotsky, and Lunacharsky often conducted mimetic investigations into the class content of literature and art.

Lenin was especially skilled at producing mimetic interpretations of literary works. Lenin argued that, in many instances, an artist could not be “treated as the representative of (or as expressing the interests of) merely his own class.”39 Rather, great artists often “represented all the reality of the time, bringing out its internal contradictions.”40 Lenin demonstrated this in an extended mimetic critique of Tolstoy’s works. In Lenin’s view, Tolstoy’s literary output was characterized by a number of deep, glaring contradictions. Tolstoy often produced the most

35 Ibid., 113. 36 Ibid., 116. 37 Trotsky, “Class and Art: Culture Under the Dictatorship,” 4. 38 Ibid. 39 Morawski, “Lenin as a Literary Theorist,” 11. 40 Ibid. 34

“merciless criticism of capitalist exploitation,” revealing “the growth of poverty, degradation, and misery among the working masses;” at the same time, he coaxed the Russian workers into

“submission” with his doctrine of non-violence.41 Tolstoy’s work was marked by “the most sober realism;” yet, he also preached “one of the most odious things on earth, namely, religion.”42

According to Lenin, these contradictions reflected “the contradictory conditions of Russian life” in the late nineteenth century.43 After an epoch “of feudal oppression,” the peasantry wanted nothing more than to sweep away “the official church, the landlords, and the landlord government.”44 However, while grasping at “new ways of life,” the peasantry remained mired in

“patriarchal, semi-religious” dogma.45 Thus, Tolstoy mirrored the contradictions of Russia’s incipient “peasant bourgeois revolution,” sharing in “its strengths and its weaknesses.”46

Like Lenin, Lunacharsky frequently employed the mimetic method of analysis in his literary criticism. Whereas Tolstoy had been the subject of Lenin’s investigation, Lunacharsky turned to Russia’s other great nineteenth century novelist, Dostoevsky. Lunacharsky contended that Dostoevsky’s art reflected the “violent eruption” of “capitalist social relationships into pre- reform Russia.”47 Unlike in the West, the Russian peasantry and aristocracy had not “suffered a slow sapping of their individual exclusiveness” during “the gradual evolution of a capitalist system.”48 Rather, capitalism appeared in Russia with “almost catastrophic suddenness.”49 As the bourgeoisie began to set up shop, it was confronted by “a multitude of unchanged social worlds

41 Lenin, On Literature and Art, 29. 42 Ibid. 43 Ibid., 30. 44 Ibid. 45 Ibid., 31. 46 Ibid., 49. 47 Lunacharsky, On Literature and Art, 107. 48 Ibid. 49 Ibid. 35 and groups,” which “resisted all attempts” to be folded quietly into a new class hierarchy.50

Dostoevsky’s novels provided “an adequate reflection of all this complexity.”51 Like Bakhtin,

Lunacharsky emphasized the “polyphonous” nature of Dostoevsky’s art, which contained “a multiplicity of independent and unfused voices.”52 According to Lunacharsky, each of these distinct voices spoke for one of Russia’s many social groupings. Lunacharsky insisted that, like

Russia itself, Dostoevsky was unable to choose between his own “materialist socialism” and the

“altars of heaven,” or religious belief.53 Thus, every character—peasant, revolutionary, noble, or priest—was allowed “to prove his own thesis,” exactly reflecting the “confusion” of the age.54

In keeping with Lenin and Lunacharsky, Trotsky enthusiastically developed mimetic interpretations of literary works. For example, Trotsky used the mimetic paradigm in order to assess the literary output of the “fellow traveler” Boris Pilnyak. According to Trotsky, “life in

Revolution” was “camp life.”55 As the proletariat, “in endless gropings and experiments,” sought out the best forms of the new society, everything remained “unusual, temporary, transitional.”56

Through his work, Pilnyak reflected this “disorder of the Revolution,” capturing the “agony of birth” for the emerging epoch.57 To begin with, Pilnyak expressed “this episodic character” in the very forms of his art.58 His narratives brimmed over with “parallel and perpendicular crosscuts in different places,” showing only “samples of life taken at random.”59 Pilnyak rarely developed a single idea in any of his stories, instead suggesting “a hint of two, three, or even more themes

50 Ibid. 51 Ibid. 52 Ibid., 101. 53 Ibid., 133. 54 Ibid., 133, 134. 55 Trotsky, Literature and Revolution, 76. 56 Ibid., 76, 77. 57 Ibid. 58 Ibid., 76. 59 Ibid., 78. 36 that are drawn in all directions.”60 Even the subjects of his writing were isolated “bits of discussion, of life, of speeches, of sausages, and of anthems,” each exposing “something of the

Revolution.”61 Pilnyak’s work revealed the chaos of the October days, when the “district council of the Soviets” mixed with the rural village, when pro-Bolshevik peasants spit on Marx “because he was German, and therefore a fool.”62 While Pilnyak did not “know what is being born” in the revolutionary tumult, he was nonetheless able to clearly represent life “in the midst of the

October storm.”63

4. The Class Content of the Work of Art: Functional Interpretations

No mode of literary analysis was more politically important than the functional method of interpretation. Through this form of inquiry, the Bolsheviks demonstrated how literary works objectively impacted the class struggle—how literature either aided in the domination of the bourgeoisie, or challenged the dictatorship of capitalism. Ultimately, Bogdanov, Lenin,

Lunacharsky, and Trotsky were united in developing functional evaluations of literary works.

Bogdanov was the most dedicated to creating functional interpretations of literature.

According to Bogdanov, the entire literary canon produced by the societies of the past—the ancient, feudal, and bourgeois modes of production—objectively assisted in the preservation of

“the authoritarian world,” which, most recently, had taken the form of capitalism.64 Bogdanov contended that every work of literature produced by “the bourgeois world” was imbued with

“authoritarian consciousness,” promoting “elements of authoritarian collaboration, of authority

60 Ibid., 77. 61 Ibid., 79. 62 Ibid., 83. 63 Ibid., 81. 64 Bogdanov, “Religion, Art and Marxism,” 7. 37 and subordination.”65 Therefore, whenever someone read bourgeois literature, they risked absorbing “the old ways of thinking and feeling, and the whole attitude towards the world based upon those ways.”66 The proletariat would only be able to “master the culture of the past,” and thus alter the class function of aristocratic and bourgeois literature, by forging “its own attitude towards the world, its own way of thinking, its own all-embracing viewpoint.”67 Bogdanov illustrated this assertion through a comparison with religious scholarship. Without a unified proletarian philosophy to guide his studies, a worker reading Shakespeare was like a Christian studying Buddhism, constantly struggling “against the ‘temptation’ of a strange religion.”68

However, once he was informed by his own “proletarian viewpoint,” the worker could approach

Hamlet like a “freethinker,” “standing above his subject,” capable of appreciating Buddhism without the threat of conversion.69

Functional analyses were also central to Lenin’s literary criticism. Although Lenin repeatedly employed the mimetic paradigm in examining Tolstoy’s literary output, he also considered Tolstoy’s works through the lens of the functional mode. In his functional inquiries,

Lenin focused on the “way in which Tolstoy’s works were received by the working class, and what they gave to that class.”70 Unquestionably, Tolstoy was an artistic genius; however, he was also “a thinker,” an “educator of the working and peasant masses.”71 Of course, Tolstoy’s works were not devoid of progressive content. Tolstoy’s criticism of the “enslavement of the masses” was spoken with unparalleled “passion, convincingness, freshness, sincerity, and fearlessness.”72

65 Bogdanov, “Proletarian Poetry,” 1. 66 Bogdanov, “Religion, Art and Marxism,” 3. 67 Ibid. 68 Ibid., 2. 69 Ibid. 70 Morawski, “Lenin as a Literary Theorist,” 11. 71 Ibid., 12. 72 Lenin, On Literature and Art, 55. 38

Tolstoyanism was even “socialistic,” and had provided “valuable material for the enlightenment of the advanced classes” during the final decades of the nineteenth century.73 Yet, following the

Russian revolution of 1905, Tolstoy’s teachings could only be considered “reactionary in the most precise and most profound sense of the word.”74 Tolstoyanism was “an ideology of

Oriental, an Asiatic order,” an ideology born of despotic oppression and social stagnation.75 In

Tolstoy, the workers would find only “pessimism, non-resistance, appeals to the Spirit,” anti- intellectualism, and quietism.76 Tolstoyanism had failed the laboring masses in 1905, its message of submission leading the people away from a true overthrow of the autocracy. Its sole use now was to show “the whole Russian people where their own weaknesses” were.77

Lunacharsky was unambiguous about the importance of conducting functional analyses of literature. In his view, all literary works could be evaluated according to one ultimate criterion, namely, “everything that aids the development and victory of the proletariat is good; everything that harms it is evil.”78 Of course, Lunacharsky recognized that applying this benchmark was a complicated matter. To begin with, one could not favor works “devoted to topical problems” over literature that “at first sight appear[ed] too general and remote,” since these compositions also exerted “an influence on social life.”79 Furthermore, one could never

“dismiss this writer or that writer with a wave” simply because they were petite-bourgeois or aristocratic, as their works could still be of “potential use in our constructive effort.”80 With regard to both of these issues, the example of Mayakovsky was instructive. Although

73 Ibid., 61. 74 Ibid. 75 Ibid., 59. 76 Ibid., 60. 77 Ibid., 57. 78 Lunacharsky, On Literature and Art, 17. 79 Ibid. 80 Ibid., 19. 39

Mayakovsky “asserted quite definitely that one must produce useful things,” his works were not merely “utilitarian.”81 Instead, Mayakovsky provided the “stimuli or methods or instructions for producing these useful things” through the emotional and thematic impact of his poetry.82 What is more, although Mayakovsky was a bourgeois intellectual by his class background, he nonetheless became, “as far as possible, a true proletarian poet,” a great spiritual leader of the proletarian cause. 83

Trotsky, like his fellow Bolshevik revolutionaries, consistently offered functional critiques of literature. Trotsky put the functional method of analysis to especially good use in his discussion of Blok’s poem “The Twelve.” For Trotsky, it went almost without saying that “Blok belonged entirely to the pre-October literature.”84 Everything about Blok’s work—its “starry, stormy, and formless lyrics,” its “tempestuous mysticism,” its “romantic symbolism”—reflected

“the culture of old Russia, of its landlords and intelligentsia.”85 However, Blok “entered into the sphere of October when he wrote ‘The Twelve,’” a poem that “expressed his acceptance of the revolution.”86 To be clear, “The Twelve” did not lionize the revolution. At its core, the poem was

“a cry of despair from the dying past,” as Blok realized that he too would fade away with the collapse of the old world.87 According to Trotsky, “The Twelve” was not even “a poem of the revolution,” since Blok was unable to truly express the revolution’s “inner meaning.”88 Still, in

“The Twelve,” Blok welcomed the revolution and all its excesses, ensuring that “the bridges

81 Ibid., 239. 82 Ibid. 83 Ibid., 240. 84 Trotsky, Literature and Revolution, 105. 85 Ibid. 86 Ibid., 107. 87 Ibid. 88 Ibid., 109. 40 behind him” were burned.89 Even as he watched Red guardsmen murder women and raid houses,

Blok heard “the dynamics of events, and the music of the storm,” ultimately sanctifying “all this provocatively with the blessing of Christ.”90 Through its tremendous faith in the revolution, “The

Twelve” aided the proletariat in its class struggle.

5. Class in Context and An Analysis of Form

Like Lenin, Trotsky, and Bogdanov, Lunacharsky grounded his literary criticism in the practices of Marx and Engels, employing genetic, mimetic, and functional analyses to determine the class content of poetry and prose. However, in his aesthetic scholarship, Lunacharsky diverged from his Marxist co-thinkers in two crucial respects. Throughout his writings,

Lunacharsky explored the significance of non-class factors in literary production, as well as the aesthetics of formal composition.

Lunacharsky departed most clearly from the Marxist critical tradition by emphasizing the role of extra-class influences on artistic creation. To be sure, no leading Marxist—neither Marx nor Engels, Lenin nor Trotsky—had ever claimed that class exclusively determined the content, or even the aesthetic value, of a work of literature. Indeed, Marx himself had asserted that human aesthetic preferences were shaped by certain universal factors, such as man’s biological and psychological composition. For instance, the desire for “company, association, and conversation” extended beyond any single class, as did “human joy at the beauty of nature.”91 However, in

Lunacharsky’s view, biology and psychology were far more than underlying influences acting obliquely upon an artist. Rather, biological, psychological, sociological, and cultural elements directly impacted each and every author. Lunacharsky demonstrated the importance of non-class

89 Ibid., 107. 90 Ibid., 111, 107. 91 Marx and Engels, Marx & Engels on Literature & Art, 133. 41 factors in his analysis of Blok. While conceding that class “was the determining factor of Blok’s general platform as a citizen, as a political thinker…and as a philosopher,” Lunacharsky suggested that Blok’s success as a poet “was, to a considerable extent, the result of his own strictly individual qualities.”92 Blok inherited from his family “a heightened nervosity [sic] and pathological attacks,” a genetic make-up which fueled Blok’s “profoundly morbid dreams.”93

Personally, Blok was “extraordinarily sensitive,” and his own “subjective awareness of things” caused him to turn away from reality and towards Symbolism.94 Ultimately, while “Blok’s psycho-biological predispositions” broadly reflected the position of the Russian nobility, his

“purely personal traits” were essential to his enduring popularity.95

Lunacharsky further strayed from his fellow Marxists by developing an aesthetic of literary form. In the literary criticism conducted by Lunacharsky’s cothinkers, the question of formal aesthetics was almost always overshadowed by concern over artistic content. While Marx and Engels occasionally debated how to best craft tendentious literature, generally speaking, they focused overwhelmingly on content rather than form.96 The Bolsheviks were no more interested in formal aesthetics than Marx and Engels. For instance, Trotsky mocked the idea that “form determines content,” and while he acknowledged that “the counting of repetitive vowels and consonants” was “undoubtedly necessary and useful,” he considered such an analysis “partial, scrappy, subsidiary, and preparatory” on its own.97 By contrast, Lunacharsky was extremely drawn towards formal scholarship. Studying the works of Chernyshevsky, Lunacharsky argued that properly materialist art should be realistic, but also beautiful, lyrical, and emotional. On the

92 Lunacharsky, On Literature and Art, 163. 93 Ibid., 167. 94 Ibid., 164. 95 Ibid., 167, 166. 96 Morawski, “Introduction,” 37. 97 Trotsky, Literature and Revolution, 139, 140. 42 one hand, materialists loved reality, and looked “upon it as the raw material for their struggles and creative activity.”98 Only “classes, groups, and individuals” that were “completely cut off from life”— aristocrats, whose “nerves and stomachs” were “in shreds”—cast “off from the shores of reality and headed for an imaginary world.”99 At the same time, materialists were so

“passionately…in love with Nature, with reality, with life,” that they were compelled to write about “the heart, of love and sex,” of “beauty and radiant joy.”100 Life was precious to the materialist; he could not but capture it in passionate, evocative prose.

6. Conclusions

Aesthetics and literary criticism were of tremendous interest to many of the leading

Bolsheviks, including Lenin, Trotsky, Lunacharsky, and Bogdanov. The literary analyses of

Marx and Engels provided a foundation for each of these theorists, offering, I have argued, three distinct modes of interpretation—genetic, mimetic, and functional—with which to consider works of art. While Bogdanov wholeheartedly adopted the genetic method of inquiry, Lenin,

Lunacharsky, and Trotsky were more hesitant, cautioning that genetic evaluations could quickly become simplistic or even anti-Marxist. Instead, Lenin, Lunacharsky, and Trotsky favored the mimetic mode of analysis, often assessing literary works as artistic reflections of entire historical epochs. The four Bolsheviks were united in their application of the functional method of interpretation, as each sought to determine how literature objectively impacted the class struggle.

Finally, Lunacharsky went beyond his fellow Marxists, investigating the role of non-class factors in literary production and studying the aesthetics of formal composition.

Thus, the contradiction introduced into Marxist aesthetics by Marx and Engels persisted throughout the 1920s. During their lifetimes, the two philosophers had failed to assemble an

98 Lunacharsky, On Literature and Art, 48. 99 Ibid., 48, 49. 100 Ibid., 38. 43 integrated, cohesive paradigm for evaluating literature and art; indeed, they almost certainly had not intended to. Instead, they bequeathed three distinct modes of analysis unto their Bolshevik inheritors. While Lenin, Trotsky, Lunacharsky, and Bogdanov were undeniably fascinated by literature and aesthetics, they, like their teachers, never had the opportunity to weld the three dispirit strands of Marxist aesthetics into a single, incisive critical tool. In fact, one from their ranks—Lunacharsky—split the Marxist school of criticism even further, as he pulled previously ignored subjects well within theoretical reach. Nevertheless, in doing so, Lunacharsky and his peers had one clear accomplishment—they were behaving like perfect Marxists. 44

Red Letter Days Chapter 3: Censorship in Lenin’s Revolutionary Praxis

Throughout his career, Lenin’s approach to censorship was consistently guided by his

Marxist analysis of Russian society. Prior to the outbreak of the First World War, Lenin believed that Russia was only prepared for a capitalist revolution; consequently, he supported “bourgeois” freedom of the press. At the same time, Lenin insisted that both the bourgeois revolution and bourgeois press freedoms be radically democratic, incorporating as much of the workers’ and peasants’ programs as possible. After 1914, Lenin’s analysis convinced him that Russia was ripe for socialist revolution. As a result, he argued that the proletariat would have to use censorship to achieve and maintain class power. However, by 1921, Lenin’s analysis had deteriorated. As the expected preconditions for Russian socialism failed to materialize, Lenin was forced to abandon more and more of his libertarian vision, until he was left only with a system of permanent, mass censorship—a situation neither he nor Marx had anticipated or desired.

1. Censorship in the Democratic Revolution: 1896-1914

Prior to 1914, Lenin’s Marxist analysis of Russian society led him to believe that any coming revolution could be only bourgeois-democratic in character. Consequently, he welcomed the institution of bourgeois press freedoms, which he believed would aid the working class. At the same time, Lenin argued that the proletariat should push the bourgeois revolution to be as radically democratic as possible. As a result, Lenin insisted on a radically democratic Party press, free not only from political repression, but also from the power of money. 45

Before the outbreak of the First World War, Lenin asserted that Russia was prepared solely for a bourgeois-democratic revolution. In his works, Marx had clearly stated that all societies in human history tend to pass through several “progressive epochs” of “economic formation.”1 According to Marx, these distinct, sequential eras of development were known as the “Asiatic, ancient, feudal, and modern bourgeois modes of production.”2 Each of these modes of production was defined by peculiar “relations of production,” or forms of legal property.3 For example, during the Asiatic mode of production, emperors appeared as the sole owners of all wealth, while the remainder of the population was left propertyless.4 The subsequent ancient mode of production was characterized by the fracture of society “into two classes: masters and slaves, exploiters and exploited,” as people were permitted to own other people.5 Over each historical era, new “material productive forces” developed, eventually coming into conflict “with the existing relations of production” and spawning “an epoch of social revolution.”6 No mode of production ever perished “before all the productive forces for which there [was] room in it” had developed,” and “new, higher relations of production never appear[ed] before the material conditions of their existence” had “matured in the womb of the old society itself.”7

Applying Marx’s analysis to contemporary Russia, Lenin determined that the impending revolution would usher in capitalism and bourgeois democracy. According to Lenin, there was no question that Russia was in the midst of capitalist development. Even in the vast Russian countryside, capitalist economic relations were beginning to take hold, as the “rural bourgeoisie or the well-to-do peasantry” increasingly exploited the “rural proletariat,” relegating these wage

1 Marx, “Preface to A Critique of Political Economy,” 426. 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid., 425. 4 Marx, Grundrisse, 472–473. 5 Engels, “Chapter IX: Barbarism and Civilization.” 6 Marx, “Preface to A Critique of Political Economy,” 425. 7 Ibid., 426. 46 workers to “a state of utter ruin” and an “extremely low standard of living.”8 Yet, there could be equally little doubt that Russian capitalism was still at an early stage of its evolution, still in the process of transforming “the wooden plough and the flail…the water mill and the hand loom” into “the iron plough and the threshing machine…the steam mill and the power loom.”9 Russian capitalism had far from exhausted its creative potential; in fact, the progress of capitalism in

Russia was greatly impeded by “an abundant survival of ancient institutions incompatible with” bourgeois development.10 Furthermore, Russian capitalism had not yet created the preconditions for socialism, such as the “enormous concentration of production, the disappearance of all forms of personal dependence and patriarchalism in personal relationships, the mobility of the population.”11 Thus, in Lenin’s view, the advancing revolution would be “inevitably a bourgeois revolution”—a fact he considered “absolutely irrefutable” from the Marxist standpoint.12

Certain that the approaching revolution would be bourgeois-democratic, Lenin argued in favor of the institution of bourgeois political liberties, such as the freedom of the press. Lenin did not deny that the political rights won in the coming revolution would immediately “strengthen and organize the bourgeoisie” against the proletariat.13 In the hands of capital, political liberties became tools of class power, doled out to the masses “in moderate and meticulous bourgeois doses” to provide the appearance of freedom, mixed with “the most subtle suppression of the revolutionary proletariat” to prevent revolt.14 Nonetheless, Lenin contended, in the long run, the working class benefited from bourgeois political liberties “more than anyone else.”15 Under

8 Lenin, “The Development of Capitalism in Russia,” 176–177. 9 Ibid., 597. 10 Ibid., 600. 11 Ibid., 599. 12 Ibid., 32. 13 Lenin, “Two Tactics of Social Democracy,” 139. 14 Ibid. 15 Ibid. 47

Tsarism, the proletariat—as well as the Social Democratic movement expressing the proletariat’s class interests—had been bereft of all political rights. For instance, the socialist press, intended to “fan every spark of class struggle and of popular indignation into a conflagration,” was either restricted to the underground or consigned to “Aesopian language, literary bondage, slavish speech, and ideological serfdom.”16 By ending such conditions of illegality, freedom of the press, as well as the other liberties brought by the revolution, would greatly strengthen the proletariat in its struggle for emancipation and ultimately for socialism.17

However, while Lenin accepted the capitalist nature of the coming revolution, he insisted that the working class push for the most radical extension of bourgeois democracy possible. It was clear, Lenin stated, that it was “to the advantage of the bourgeoisie for the bourgeois revolution not to sweep away all the remnants of the past too resolutely.”18 To begin with, certain elements of feudalism, including “the monarchy” and “the standing army,” were very attractive to capital as a means of controlling the toiling masses.19 Even more importantly, the “more slowly, more gradually, more cautiously, less resolutely” democratic changes occurred, the less the “independent revolutionary activity, initiative, and energy of the common people” would begin to emerge.20 By contrast, Lenin contended, the proletariat directly benefited from a “more complete, determined, and consistent” bourgeois revolution.21 Rather than the painfully slow road of reformism, the working class favored “the revolutionary path,” which quickly amputated all the “abominable, vile, rotten, and noxious institutions” of the old world.22 In Lenin’s view,

16 Lenin, “What Is To Be Done?,” 105; Lenin, “The Party Organization and Party Literature,” 148. 17 Lenin, “Two Tactics of Social Democracy,” 125. 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid., 124. 20 Ibid., 125. 21 Ibid., 124. 22 Ibid., 125. 48

“the people, i.e., the proletariat and the peasantry” had to join together to gain “a decisive victory over Tsarism” and so “establish full and consistent democracy.”23

Consequently, Lenin demanded a comparably militant approach to bourgeois freedom of the press. According to Lenin, any notion of “absolute freedom” during the epoch of capitalism was absurd.24 In his view, it was impossible to live in “a society based on the power of money,” to exist day to day on the basis of earning a wage, and still remain independent from the desires of one’s employer.25 Not only was “Mr. Writer” a servant to his “bourgeois publisher,” he was also a slave to the “bourgeois public,” which demanded “pornography in frames and paintings, and prostitution as a ‘supplement’ to ‘sacred’ scenic art.”26 Left to its own devices, bourgeois freedom of the press meant nothing more than “dependence on the money-bag, on corruption, on prostitution.”27 Bought and sold by ruling class, the bourgeois press catered only to interests and tastes of “the bored ‘upper ten thousand’ suffering from fatty degeneration,” ignoring the plight of the working masses.28 Lenin insisted that socialists oppose this undemocratic, bourgeois press with a genuinely democratic “Party press.”29 Liberated “not simply from the police, but also from capital, from careerism,” the Party press would not submit to the wishes of the rich and the powerful.30 Instead, the Party press would be “openly linked to the proletariat,” a “component of organized, planned and integrated Social-Democratic Party work.”31 By serving “the millions and tens of millions of working people,” the Party press would be truly, radically democratic.32

23 Ibid., 130. 24 Lenin, “The Party Organization and Party Literature,” 151. 25 Ibid. 26 Ibid. 27 Ibid. 28 Ibid., 152. 29 Ibid., 148, 151. 30 Ibid., 150. 31 Ibid., 149. 32 Ibid., 152. 49

2. Censorship in the Socialist Revolution: 1914-1921

Following the outbreak of the First World War, Lenin’s Marxist analysis dramatically shifted, leading him to believe that the coming Russian revolution would be socialist, rather than bourgeois, in character. Consequently, Lenin altered his prescription for freedom of the press, arguing that censorship could play a vital role in establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat— a role that Lenin insisted would be very temporary.

As World War I ravaged Europe, Lenin became increasingly convinced that the only possible course for Russia was that of socialist revolution. According to Lenin, international capitalism had entered into a new stage in its evolution, a stage that he termed “imperialism.”

Historically, capitalism had been characterized by “free competition between manufacturers, scattered and out of touch with one another,” all “producing for an unknown market.”33 Yet, as the nineteenth century came to a close, this traditional form of capitalist competition had almost wholly vanished. Instead, bourgeois economies were more and more dominated by cartels, trusts, and other “gigantic monopolist associations.”34 Indeed, these monopolies were so enormous that they effectively socialized the production process, buying up “the means of transport,” controlling “skilled labor” and “the best engineers,” even merging with the biggest financial institutions.35 Swelling to such fantastic proportions, monopoly capitalism penetrated “into every sphere of public life,” including the sphere of government, which became a tool in the hands of the financial oligarchy.36 Having “divided the home market among themselves,” the monopolists looked to the “world market,” where land, labor, and raw materials were all available at

33 Lenin, “Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism,” 213. 34 Ibid. 35 Ibid., 213, 217. 36 Ibid., 222. 50 extremely low cost.37 For the benefit of the financiers, capitalist countries expanded their colonial possessions until the globe was “completely divided up.”38 Scrambling to further increase their profits, imperialist nations ultimately launched a campaign of constant war for “the redivision of the world”—a struggle at the heart of the “annexationist, predatory” First World

War.39

Based on his assessment of imperialist monopoly capitalism, Lenin contended that the

Russian revolution not only could be, but also must be, a socialist revolution. Imperialism, Lenin asserted, “intensified all the contradictions of capitalism” beyond their limits.40 To begin with,

“the tyranny of the cartels” precipitated a “high cost of living” at home, driving more and more workers into poverty and starvation.41 Still more intolerable was the unending war—war paid for with the blood of the masses. However, Lenin argued, because imperialist capitalism was able to squeeze such extraordinarily high profits out of the colonial world, it was “economically possible to bribe the upper strata of the proletariat” in “a handful of very rich countries.”42 By buying off the most privileged workers, the bourgeoisie in Great Britain, France, Germany, and the United

States was able to cause the “temporary decay” of the socialist movement and thus forestall the outbreak of a proletarian uprising.43 As a result, “the honor and the good fortune of being the first to start the revolution” fell upon the Russian masses, which, living under a less advanced stage of imperialism, had been less thoroughly embourgeoisified.44 Overthrowing the bourgeois regime, the Russian workers would spark a worldwide war “of the toilers and the oppressed

37 Ibid., 229, 226. 38 Ibid., 234. 39 Ibid., 271, 206. 40 Ibid., 271. 41 Ibid. 42 Ibid., 255. 43 Ibid., 257. 44 Lenin, “The Revolution in Russia and the Tasks of the Workers of All Countries,” 350. 51 against their oppressors, against tsars and kings, landowners and capitalists”45 In the context of this international revolution, Russia would be rescued from her backwardness, and the ceaseless wars of imperialism would be brought to a permanent end.46

As Lenin began to call for a socialist revolution, he insisted that censorship, like other forms of suppression, was justified in the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Lenin asserted that, following the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, the Russian working class would be forced to “struggle against the enemies of proletarian power.”47 In order to successfully

“become the ruling class and defeat the bourgeoisie for good,” the proletariat would have to

“ferret out its enemies from their last nook and corner, to pull up the roots of their domination, and to cut the very ground” that bred “wage-slavery, mass poverty,” and other forms of exploitation.48 Every form of coercion was acceptable in subduing “the rich, the crooks, the idlers and hooligans.”49

Consequently, once the Bolshevik party achieved power, Lenin did not hesitate to employ press censorship in suppressing adversaries of the workers’ state. In the earliest days of the

October revolution, the Council of People’s Commissars issued “an order closing all hostile newspapers,” including “not only the bourgeois press,” but also “newspapers close to other socialist parties.”50 According to the declaration, an unrestricted press was “one of the most powerful weapons of the bourgeoisie.”51 Drawing on their vast reserves of wealth, “the richer class” could buy up “the lion’s share of the whole press,” using it to “poison the minds and bring

45 Ibid., 351. 46 Ibid., 350. 47 Lenin, “On Revolutionary Violence and Terror,” 425. 48 Ibid., 426. 49 Ibid., 428. 50 Farber, Before Stalinism, 93. 51 Lenin, “Decree on Suppression of Hostile Newspapers,” 67. 52 confusion into the consciousness of the masses.”52 As a result, Lenin stated, “the counter- revolutionary press of all shades” would be subject to “temporary and extraordinary measures” restricting its freedom.53 Any organ “inciting to open resistance or disobedience towards the

Workers’ and Peasants’ Governments,” “sowing confusion,” or “inciting to acts of a criminal character” would be closed, temporarily, or even permanently.54

Yet, even as Lenin instituted strict press controls, he maintained that censorship was explicitly temporary. Following Marx, Lenin described the dictatorship of the proletariat as a

“transitional period between bourgeois and socialist society.”55 Like any other state form, the dictatorship of the proletariat was a “special system of organized coercion” used by the ruling class to impose its will on subjugated, hostile social classes.56 However, unlike every previous ruling class, the proletariat used its dictatorship to “abolish all class distinctions and class antagonisms.”57 Consequently, the proletarian dictatorship eliminated the precondition of its own existence; without social classes, there was no need for “a special coercive force.”58 As a result, the state would instantly begin “withering away,” until the authoritarian apparatus had vanished and freedom was absolute.59 In Lenin’s eyes, all forms of state power, including censorship, were emergency measures, carried out in midst of class war.60 Once “the proletariat of the West

European countries” helped the Russian workers “achieve a complete and lasting victory for the cause of socialism,” censorship would quickly become unnecessary.61

52 Ibid. 53 Ibid. 54 Ibid., 68. 55 Lenin, “On Revolutionary Violence and Terror,” 425. 56 Ibid. 57 Lenin, “The State and Revolution,” 321. 58 Ibid. 59 Ibid. 60 Farber, Before Stalinism, 93. 61 Lenin, “Alliance Between the Workers and Exploited Peasants,” 241. 53

3. Censorship and the Deterioration of Lenin’s Analysis: 1921-1924

During the early 1920s, Lenin’s Marxist analysis of Russian society faced mounting challenges. Confronted by the failure of proletarian revolution abroad and the reality of a mass peasant population at home, Lenin’s revolutionary theory and revolutionary practice increasingly diverged, eventually leading to the establishment of permanent, mass censorship.

As proletarian revolution failed to overtake the advanced capitalist countries of Western

Europe, Lenin’s major precondition for socialism in Russia disappeared. In his original estimation, socialism had only been possible in Russia in the context of a complementary, international workers’ upheaval. Lenin argued that imperialism, as a global system, had clearly revealed its tendency towards “stagnation and decay.”62 Not only had imperialism exhausted its constructive capacities, it was, in many ways, actually retarding human progress.63 What is more, imperialism had objectively created the “material conditions” for “higher relations of production.”64 Mammoth imperialist enterprises planned production “on the basis of mass data,” delivered raw materials “in a systemic and organized manner,” and delivered commodities

“according to a single plan”—clear evidence of “socialization of production.”65 According to

Lenin, imperialist capitalism was “moribund,” rotten, over-ripe for socialist revolution.66

However, when considered in isolation, Russia was no more capable of sustaining socialism in 1917 than in 1905. Lenin maintained that Russia was still “most backwards economically” when compared to other capitalist countries.67 While Great Britain, Germany, and the United States had all shed their last vestiges of feudalism, Russia remained “enmeshed” in “a

62 Lenin, “Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism,” 251. 63 Harding, Lenin’s Political Thought, Volume 2: Theory and Practice in the Socialist Revolution, 147. 64 Marx, “Preface to A Critique of Political Economy,” 426. 65 Lenin, “Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism,” 273. 66 Ibid., 272. 67 Ibid., 238. 54 particularly close network of pre-capitalist relations.”68 Since Russian capitalism had not yet fully developed its “productive forces”, any attempt at socialism would still be catastrophically premature.69 Consequently, without the support of the advanced, industrialized West, the Russian dictatorship of the proletariat would be unable to proceed with the abolition of class society.

Remaining “an organ of class rule, an organ for the oppression of one class by another,” the dictatorship of the proletariat would necessarily continue to utilize all forms of violence— including censorship—in pursuit of its class interests.70

Furthermore, Lenin was increasingly forced to contend with the reality of exercising a proletarian dictatorship in a nation comprised mainly of peasants. One of the most fundamental premises in the entire corpus of Marxist theory was the idea that during “the epoch of the bourgeoisie,” society split into “two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other: bourgeoisie and proletariat.”71 Thus, when the working class won political power and organized itself into a dictatorship, it did so as “the real representative of the whole of society,” enforcing the will of the overwhelming, vast majority.72

However, in underdeveloped Russia, peasants, not proletarians, constituted the “vast majority” of society. Under the framework of a socialist revolution, this discrepancy was unproblematic. In Lenin’s view, the proletariat and “the working and exploited peasantry” could certainly form “an honest alliance” in pursuit of socialist goals.73 In fact, Lenin argued, only socialism was “able to meet the interests of both” classes, ensuring “the introduction of workers’

68 Ibid. 69 Marx, “Preface to A Critique of Political Economy,” 426; Harding, Lenin’s Political Thought, Volume 2: Theory and Practice in the Socialist Revolution, 146. 70 Lenin, “The State and Revolution,” 315. 71 Marx, “The Communist Manifesto,” 246. 72 Lenin, “The State and Revolution,” 321. 73 Lenin, “Alliance Between the Workers and Exploited Peasants,” 333. 55 control” as well as “equal land tenure.”74 Yet, as the international revolution failed to rescue

Russia from her backwardness, and so diminished the prospects for an immediately socialist society, the differences between the proletariat and the peasantry asserted themselves with mounting force. Instead of representing a united, mass working class, the dictatorship of the proletariat increasingly reflected the interests of only a small, industrial minority, employing censorship and coercion to maintain its class power.

Ultimately, these two factors—the absence of an international proletarian revolution and the minority status of the industrial working class in Russia—resulted in the institution of permanent, mass censorship. So long as Lenin and the Bolsheviks believed that socialism was on the horizon, they abstained from systemic, consistent mass censorship.75 From the first days of the October revolution through the Civil War period, the Party was “somewhat tentative” in its use of press censorship.76 Many political parties, including the Mensheviks, the anarchists, the

Right Socialist Revolutionaries, and the Left Socialist Revolutions, were intermittently allowed to publish newspapers from 1917 until as late as 1921.77 However, as it became increasingly clear that socialism would not arrive from the industrial West, control of the press slowly began to tighten. Realizing that “the Party could not possibly grant” press freedoms and “still retain its undivided power over the state and the economy,” Lenin presided over the elimination of oppositional media outlets and the establishment of a “one-party press.”78

74 Ibid., 333, 335. 75 Farber, Before Stalinism, 92. 76 Ibid., 99. 77 Ibid. 78 Harding, Lenin’s Political Thought, Volume 2: Theory and Practice in the Socialist Revolution, 275; Farber, Before Stalinism, 99. 56

4. Conclusions

Over the course of his career, Lenin consistently grounded his views on censorship and the freedom of the press in his Marxist analysis of Russian society. From the earliest days of his political activity until the start of World War I, Lenin’s understanding of Marxism led him to believe that Russia was fit only for a bourgeois revolution. As a result, Lenin defended the importance of achieving bourgeois press freedoms, which he believed would assist the Russian socialist movement. However, as Lenin insisted on fighting for the most radically democratic version of bourgeois government, he likewise argued in favor of a radically democratic approach to bourgeois freedom of the press. Following the outbreak of the First World War, Lenin experienced a major theoretical shift, convinced by his analysis of imperialism that the coming

Russian revolution would be socialist rather than bourgeois-democratic. Lenin correspondingly altered his stance on freedom of the press, arguing that censorship would be necessary in establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat. Still, Lenin maintained that censorship was explicitly temporary, a policy that would “whither away” along with the state and class society.

However, as Lenin’s expected preconditions for Russian socialism failed to materialize, his analysis deteriorated, leading him to oversee the institution of prolonged, mass censorship.

Like Marx, Lenin had never anticipated or advocated for the permanent suppression of freedom of the press. Few things could have been further apart from Lenin’s vision of a society in which there was “nobody to be suppressed,” no “special machine for suppression,” no

“exploiting minority” ruling an “exploited majority.”79 Like Marx, Lenin had spent his life attempting to abolish “the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms,” its wage-slavery and exploitation; he had spent his life in pursuit of a society in which “the free development of each” would be “the condition for the free development of all,” a society of truly

79 Lenin, “The State and Revolution,” 375. 57 absolute freedom.80 That his vision for a genuinely democratic press, in a genuinely democratic society, collapsed in the last years of his life was as tragic as it was avoidable. No analysis, however rigorous, is set in stone.

80 Marx, “The Communist Manifesto,” 262. 58

Red Letter Days Chapter 4: The Proletarian Culture Debate

From 1909 to 1922, a debate raged within the Bolshevik Party over the question of proletarian culture. While the debate, at its peak, involved much of the Bolshevik Party, the two opposing visions of proletarian culture offered by Lenin and Bogdanov dominated from the outset. Although Lenin and Bogdanov shared many basic Marxist assumptions about cultural change, they had drastically different understandings of the dialectic and of the relationship between base and superstructure. Ultimately, these theoretical differences between Lenin and

Bogdanov reflected a contradiction latent within Marxism itself—the contradiction between culture as something created, and culture as something that creates.

1. The Proletarian Culture Debate: A Short Course

The later dispute over proletarian culture originated in 1904, when Bogdanov met Lenin in Switzerland and joined the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Workers’

Party (RSDLP).1 A writer, thinker, and politician of considerable caliber, Bogdanov quickly became a valuable asset to the Bolsheviks. With mass arrests and summary executions strangling the Party inside Russia, Bogdanov, only recently exiled, helped build fresh contacts between the

Bolsheviks and Russian workers.2 What is more, Bogdanov’s admittance to the Party drew notable talents towards Lenin’s camp; many left intellectuals, such as Lunacharsky and Bazarov,

1 McClelland, “Utopianism versus Revolutionary Heroism in Bolshevik Policy,” 407. 2 Harding, Lenin’s Political Thought, Volume 1: Theory and Practice in the Democratic Revolution, 249; Sochor, Revolution and Culture, 6. 59 held Bogdanov in high esteem, and followed him into the Bolshevik fold.3 By 1905, Bogdanov had been elected to the Party’s Central Committee; in the same year, he served as a Bolshevik representative to the St. Petersburg Soviet of Workers’ Deputies.4 As hostilities renewed between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks after the failure of the 1905 revolution, Bogdanov lent his pen to the Bolshevik cause.5 By 1907, Bogdanov had emerged as the Bolshevik faction’s “second most prominent figure,” his “prestige and authority” nearly equal to Lenin’s own.6

Yet, as Bogdanov’s standing within the Party increased, his disagreements with Lenin intensified. Philosophically, Bogdanov was unorthodox. While maintaining a basically Marxist world-view, Bogdanov also drew upon the findings of contemporary philosophy, and attempted to synthesize Marx with modern epistemology in his magnum opus, Empiriomonism. Although

Lenin supported a policy of “Party neutralism” regarding such abstract inquiries, he nonetheless saw Empiriomonism as potentially “revisionist,” a dangerous trend that could lead one away from Marxism altogether.7 Politically, Bogdanov was a radical. He was closely associated with the otzovists, an “extreme left” Bolshevik tendency that favored boycotting the Tsarist parliament, or Duma, in order to “expose its hollowness” to the masses.8 Lenin, by contrast, considered otzovism to be a move “towards syndicalism and anarchism,” an expression of petty- bourgeois instability in the face of political reaction.9 Despite these differences, Lenin had little

3 Sochor, Revolution and Culture, 6. 4 Ibid. 5 Harding, Lenin’s Political Thought, Volume 1: Theory and Practice in the Democratic Revolution, 249, 277. 6 McClelland, “Utopianism versus Revolutionary Heroism in Bolshevik Policy,” 407; Harding, Lenin’s Political Thought, Volume 1: Theory and Practice in the Democratic Revolution, 278. 7 Sochor, Revolution and Culture, 7. 8 Ibid.; Harding, Lenin’s Political Thought, Volume 1: Theory and Practice in the Democratic Revolution, 273–4. 9 Harding, Lenin’s Political Thought, Volume 1: Theory and Practice in the Democratic Revolution, 276. 60 choice but to maintain a truce; the condition of the Bolshevik faction was dire, and without a firm footing in Russia, the Party could ill-afford a split.10

However, by 1908, the break between Lenin and Bogdanov had become unavoidable. At a Party Conference the previous year, fourteen out of fifteen Bolshevik delegates—all but

Lenin—supported the otzovist platform, at least partially thanks to Bogdanov’s influence.11 The delegates then went on to name Bogdanov, rather than Lenin, as the chief representative of the

Bolshevik faction.12 Perhaps even more significantly, as Bogdanov consolidated his authority among the Bolsheviks in exile, he simultaneously attempted to win over the Party faction in

Russia.13 Joining with Lunacharsky, Gorky, and others, Bogdanov formed an independent group, called Vpered (Forward), and founded a “party school” in Capri, where he planned to initiate workers into his version of Bolshevism.14 To regain his hold on the Party, Lenin began an assault against Bogdanov. In a scathing book, entitled Materialism and Empiriocriticism, he denounced

Bogdanov’s theoretical ventures, arguing that they would necessarily lead to religious belief.15 In

July of 1909, Lenin dealt the final blow, declaring otzovism and Empiriomonism “incompatible with membership in the Bolshevik faction.”16

In the ensuing years, the Lenin-Bogdanov conflict took on a consequential new form—a debate over the concept of proletarian culture. Bogdanov, having been ousted from the Bolshevik center, refocused his attention on the workers’ schools, first in Capri, and then, following a move in 1910, in Bologna.17 It was there that he first promulgated his vision of proletarian culture.18

10 Ibid., 277. 11 Ibid., 278. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid. 14 Sochor, Revolution and Culture, 8. 15 Harding, Lenin’s Political Thought, Volume 1: Theory and Practice in the Democratic Revolution, 278. 16 Ibid., 281. 17 Sochor, Revolution and Culture, 8. 61

Bogdanov now insisted that, in order to lead the class struggle, the workers would need their own

“socialist worldview” to steel them against bourgeois influences.19 Bogdanov believed that workers could develop such a “socialist worldview,” or proletarian culture, by attending

Vpered’s party school, where they would receive a “full and complete socialist education” from

Social Democratic intellectuals.20 Lenin reacted almost immediately, forming his own orthodox

Party institute near Paris to counter Bogdanov’s influence.21 There, Lenin developed his own version of proletarian culture, arguing that, first and foremost, the Bolsheviks must continue to agitate for socialist revolution. Within a few years, the entire issue of proletarian culture had apparently been laid to rest; in 1912, Vpered dissolved completely, leaving Bogdanov, devoid of political affiliation, to quietly fade into history.22

Following the October Revolution, the proletarian culture debate revived dramatically.

As unrest swept through Russia in 1917, nearly all the former Vperedists—all, that is, save

Bogdanov—returned to the Bolshevik Party.23 Arriving in Russia, these Vperedists formed

Proletkult, an institution dedicated to pursuing Bogdanov’s vision of proletarian culture.24 In

1918 Bogdanov joined Proletkult’s Central Committee, and by 1920, Proletkult claimed more than four hundred thousand members.25 What is more, a strong base of support developed within the Communist Party itself for Proletkult and its attempts to create a “socialist worldview.”26

Recognizing the enthusiasm for Bogdanov’s position, and recalling the threat Bogdanov had

18 McClelland, “Utopianism versus Revolutionary Heroism in Bolshevik Policy,” 407. 19 Marot, The October Revolution in Prospect and Retrospect, 199–200; Sochor, Revolution and Culture, 32. 20 Marot, The October Revolution in Prospect and Retrospect, 199–200. 21 Sochor, Revolution and Culture, 36. 22 Marot, The October Revolution in Prospect and Retrospect, 200. 23 Mally, Culture of the Future: The Proletkult Movement in Revolutionary Russia, 25. 24 Ibid., 30. 25 Ibid., 68; Sochor, Revolution and Culture, 127. 26 Mally, Culture of the Future: The Proletkult Movement in Revolutionary Russia, 202. 62 posed in 1908, Lenin began a polemic against Bogdanovist proletarian culture. The conflict came to a head in the late summer of 1922, in a series of essays written in Pravda. In a ghostwritten article, Lenin settled the dispute for good, condemning Bogdanov’s idea of proletarian culture as bourgeois, and insisting that Proletkultists militantly struggle against any similarly bourgeois elements in their ranks.27 Yet, while the day seemed won, Lenin could not rest easy; even in his final article, he warned responsible Communists against chattering “flippantly on ‘proletarian’ culture.’”28

2. Visions of Proletarian Culture: Lenin and Bogdanov

Throughout its duration, the Bolshevik debate on proletarian culture was largely defined by two distinct, opposing visions. Bogdanov, who was widely regarded as the foremost theorist on the subject, offered the first major conception of proletarian culture.29 He began with the

Marxist assumption that all cultures are the products of particular classes. Deeply imbued with particular class content, culture—for example, art, science, or religion, which, even in their

“origins and methods,” express class interests—acts as “a tool for the domination of one class over others.”30 Therefore, Bogdanov argued, if the proletariat hoped to lead a successful revolution, it would need to oppose bourgeois culture with a culture of its own.31 The Bolsheviks would have to assist the working class in devising its new cultural paradigm; the mentorship of so-called bourgeois experts was to be scorned, and the cultural products of capitalism, for the moment, were to be cast aside.32 Bogdanov believed that, having received a Bolshevik-led

27 Ibid., 225. 28 Lenin, “Better Fewer, But Better,” 734. 29 McClelland, “Utopianism versus Revolutionary Heroism in Bolshevik Policy,” 407. 30 Ibid., 410. 31 Sochor, Revolution and Culture, 41. 32 Ibid., 37; McClelland, “Utopianism versus Revolutionary Heroism in Bolshevik Policy,” 410. 63

“socialist education,” workers would rise up from the bench, transformed into intellectual leaders, armed with a purely proletarian culture, and ultimately, prepared to lead the struggle for socialist revolution.33

In offering the Bolsheviks an alternative vision of proletarian culture, Lenin proved to be

Bogdanov’s antipode. Lenin agreed with Bogdanov’s assertion that culture was essentially partisan, inevitably reflective of peculiar class interests.34 However, Lenin claimed that a new culture would not “drop from the skies” or be “born of pious wishes.”35 Only a profound change in the “material conditions” of society—the institution of a socialist mode of production—could produce a proletarian cultural model.36 Thus, Lenin argued, instead of wasting precious time and resources on experiments in “socialist education,” the Bolsheviks should fight for socialism itself.37 What is more, Lenin rejected Bogdanov’s plan to jettison the cultural achievements of capitalism. Lenin declared that the only conceivable path to proletarian culture was through the intense, diligent study of the entire reservoir of mankind’s artistic, scientific, and philosophical knowledge.38 Any attempt to abrogate this cultural heritage, Lenin contended, would only retard the proletariat’s cultural development.39 Even in power, Lenin did not deviate from his position.

He insisted that the Bolsheviks implement the “measures which the people need urgently” rather than chatter about “supernatural and incongruous” theories.40 In Lenin’s view, only constant advancement in the bread-and-butter issues of literacy and education could generate a proletarian culture.

33 Marot, The October Revolution in Prospect and Retrospect, 199–200. 34 Lenin, “The Party Organization and Party Literature,” 149. 35 Sochor, Revolution and Culture, 115. 36 Ibid. 37 Ibid., 99. 38 Lenin, On Literature and Art, 144. 39 Mally, Culture of the Future: The Proletkult Movement in Revolutionary Russia, 135. 40 Lenin, On Literature and Art, 129–130. 64

3. Visions of Proletarian Culture: Points of Intersection

In developing their respective theories of proletarian culture, both Lenin and Bogdanov began from a set of common Marxist assumptions about cultural change. They both rested their conception of proletarian culture upon three basic propositions—that culture is fundamentally class-based, that the dominant culture is the culture of the ruling class, and that the ideological superstructure has the capacity to act upon the economic base.

Underlying both Lenin and Bogdanov’s understandings of proletarian culture was the assumption that culture essentially reflects partisan class interests. As Marxists, both Lenin and

Bogdanov took it absolutely for granted that all societies, throughout history, have been composed of “contending classes,” standing in “constant opposition to one another.”41 Each of these classes consists of “real, active men,” engaged in the same form of “material intercourse,” receiving the same type of revenue from the same basic source.42 As a result, every class shares some “common,” or “general,” interests.43 For instance, since all capitalists derive their income from “profit,” which they gain through the “shameless, direct, brutal exploitation” of their “paid wage-laborers,” it is in the “general interest” of capitalists as a class to pay only what “is absolutely requisite” to prolong the “bare existence” of their workers.44 Arising out of the

“material life-process,” these “general interests” directly influence a class’s “production of ideas, of conceptions, of consciousness.”45 In turn, the ideas, conceptions, and consciousness of a class are expressed through its culture—its “politics, laws, morality, religion,” not to mention its art and its literature.46

41 Marx, “The Communist Manifesto,” 246. 42 Marx and Engels, The German Ideology, 14; Marx, “Capital,” 544. 43 Marx, “The German Ideology,” 198. 44 Marx, “Capital,” 544; Marx, “The Communist Manifesto,” 248, 251, 257. 45 Marx and Engels, The German Ideology, 14. 46 Ibid. 65

Both Lenin and Bogdanov consistently employed the concept that culture always conveys the interests of a particular class. This idea is especially pronounced in Lenin’s writings, which frequently consider the way bourgeois culture expresses the interests of capitalists. After reading a Jack London novel, in which a ship captain “sacrifices his life in order to keep” a promise to get a “good price” for his cargo, Lenin found the moral to be so overtly bourgeois that he

“laughed and waved” the novel away.47 More famously—or perhaps infamously—Lenin also

“laughed at” the idea of any “absolute” freedom of the press, which he regarded as a “slogan” of the “progressive bourgeoisie.”48 In his view, “absolute” freedom of the press meant freedom for the bourgeoisie to “buy up newspapers, to buy writers, to bribe, buy, and fake ‘public opinion,’” all for the benefit of its own class power.49 Ultimately, as a political, legal, and moral product of capital, freedom of the press enshrined the bourgeois ideal that money should be “absolutely free” to dominate society. Lenin counterpoised this “anti-proletarian slogan” with a proletarian press, which would be free “from capital, from careerism, and what is more, free from bourgeois individualism.”50

Throughout his own work, Bogdanov similarly recognized the fundamentally partisan nature of culture. In Bogdanov’s view, the basic purpose of “a work of art” was to organize the

“sum total” of life experience in a way that was useful “for a certain community.”51 Since bourgeois society was predicated on relationships of “authority and subordination”—not only in the subjugation of the worker to the capitalist, but also in the worker’s domination of his own

“iron slave”—bourgeois culture preserved a correspondingly “authoritarian consciousness.”52

47 Lenin, On Literature and Art, 238. 48 Ibid., 215. 49 Ibid., 215–216. 50 Ibid., 219; Lenin, “The Party Organization and Party Literature,” 150. 51 Bogdanov, “The Workers’ Artistic Inheritance,” 1. 52 Bogdanov, “Proletarian Poetry,” 1. 66

While bourgeois poems manifested a “variety of forms and subject matter,” “all of them” conformed to a “basic type,” which promoted a spirit of “authoritarian collaboration.”53 Religion, likewise, was “a perfect organizational tool” for the bourgeoisie, as it assigned man “a definite place” in a cosmic, authoritarian system, and disciplined him “for the execution” of his designated role.54 What is more, Bogdanov believed that partisanship was not a trait of merely bourgeois culture. Looking further back into “the old cultural heritage,” Bogdanov argues that

Hamlet, written by “a fervent adherent of the aristocracy,” was defined by “feudal conceptions.”55 As Hamlet struggles to uphold his “sacred duty” to avenge “the disgrace of his family,” he must also contend with the feudal contradiction between aestheticism and violence.56

A second crucial premise shared by Lenin and Bogdanov was that, in every epoch, the dominant culture is the culture of the ruling class. Once again, the concept clearly derives from

Marxist thought. Having conquered for itself political power, the ruling class is compelled to

“represent its interest” as the “general interest” of society.57 While every dominated class continues to seek out its own “particular interest,” the rulers disguise their class interest as a

“general good,” which is embodied in “the form of the State.”58 Since the State appears to the masses as “an alien force existing outside of them,” with the power to govern “the will and actions of man,” they accept the illusion of the “general good.”59 To further propagate the myth of the “general good,” the ruling class takes command of the “means of mental production,” including the press, the schools, the church, and the arts.60 Utilizing the “means of mental

53 Ibid. 54 Bogdanov, “Religion, Art and Marxism,” 7. 55 Bogdanov, “The Workers’ Artistic Inheritance,” 4. 56 Ibid., 3. 57 Marx and Engels, The German Ideology, 23. 58 Ibid., 24. 59 Ibid. 60 Ibid., 39. 67 production,” the ruling class regulates “the production and distribution of ideas,” ensuring that its own ideas are “the ruling ideas”—its own culture, the ruling culture.61

Both Lenin and Bogdanov accepted the concept that the prevailing culture in a society originates with the ruling class. Lenin presupposed that “all over the world, wherever there are capitalists,” the norms and ideals of the bourgeoisie prevailed.62 The culture “created by capitalism” was “molded under bourgeois conditions,” and so, inevitably, was “imbued with the bourgeois mentality.”63 Furthermore, Lenin acknowledged the manner in which, “under the reign” of the Tsars, the bourgeoisie dominated the means of mental production.64 By recruiting

“all the agronomists, engineers, and school-teachers” from “the propertied class,” and by excluding peasants and proletarians from “university education,” the bourgeoisie saturated culture with its own ideas.65 Yet, after the proletariat had seized power in the October

Revolution, Lenin believed that a new culture would eventually come to prevail. For instance, while rejecting bourgeois ethics, which were based “on God’s commandments,” the workers would create new “communist ethics,” based on the “unity” of the masses and “the interests of the proletariat’s class struggle.”66

Bogdanov was equally fervent in identifying the ruling class’s cultural dominance. He argued that under capitalism, bourgeois culture was so predominant that the worker initially took it “to be merely culture, culture in general.”67 Although workers might observe certain

“blunderings” in science or “false motives” in art, they always considered these to be “faults,

61 Ibid. 62 Lenin, On Literature and Art, 216. 63 Ibid., 120. 64 Ibid., 122. 65 Ibid. 66 Ibid., 144–145. 67 Bogdanov, “Religion, Art and Marxism,” 3. 68 deviations, imperfections,” not part of the culture’s true “essence.”68 Even those workers who perceived the “interests of the ruling classes” in the culture around them did not suspect that the culture itself was inherently “bourgeois” or “aristocratic.”69 Living day-to-day within the culture of the bourgeoisie, the proletarian absorbed “the old ways of thinking and feeling,” the ideas of capital.70 Only when the worker heard “the imperious voice of class interest speaking” was he able to challenge the culture of the ruling class and reveal the glimmerings of his “own proletarian class viewpoint.”71 Yet, like Lenin, Bogdanov was adamant that the dictatorship of the proletariat would usher in a new ruling culture as well. Bogdanov claimed that, following the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, a “spirit of fellowship,” developed by the “proletarian masses,” would come to define culture, ultimately propelling art into its “highest phase.”72

Perhaps most importantly, both Lenin and Bogdanov acknowledged that the ideological superstructure could influence the economic foundation of society. In the Marxist tradition, few concepts are more elementary—or better known—than the assertion that changes in “the economic conditions of production” cause the “entire ideological superstructure” to “rapidly” transform.73 However, both Marx and Engels repeatedly stressed that the relationship between economic base and ideological superstructure was, in fact, a reciprocal one. Although material conditions certainly formed “the basis” of society, the superstructure powerfully influenced “the course of the historical struggles,” often “determining” the particular “form” which these struggles took on—for instance, clothing the rise of the European bourgeoisie in the guise of

68 Ibid. 69 Ibid. 70 Ibid. 71 Ibid. 72 Bogdanov, “Proletarian Poetry,” 3. 73 Solomon, Marxism and Art, 29. 69 religious warfare.74 While “economic necessity…ultimately always” asserted itself as the foundation upon which all else rests, “political, juridical, philosophical, religious, literary,” and

“artistic,” factors—in short, elements of the superstructure—could still “react upon” the economic base, altering its development.75

Lenin and Bogdanov both grappled with this complex interplay of base and superstructure. Lenin was acutely aware of the fact that culture could decisively influence economic, and consequently, political, progress. As a Marxist revolutionary, Lenin, almost by definition, recognized the extreme importance of ideology, since the entire purpose of his own activity was to bring “ideas of socialism and political consciousness” to the working class.76

Leading the Soviet state, Lenin repeatedly stressed that if a conquered people, such as the

Russian bourgeoisie, “possessed a higher culture” than its conquerors, “the vanquished” would inevitably impose its culture “on the victor.”77 In Lenin’s view, winning control of “the fundamental economic forces” was not enough; Communist militants also had to surpass the

“miserable, paltry” level of culture possessed by the bourgeoisie, or else face “absolute ruin,” backsliding into capitalist paradigms.78 What is more, Lenin believed that “the creation of a communist society” would only result from “radically remolding” the system of education, along with other elements of the Soviet superstructure.79 Only by “mobilizing the literate to combat illiteracy,” by teaching people to struggle “for emancipation from exploiters,” would communism cease to be a slogan and become a reality.80

74 Ibid., 30. 75 Ibid., 33. 76 Harding, Lenin’s Political Thought, Volume 1: Theory and Practice in the Democratic Revolution, 166. 77 Lenin, “Lenin at the Eleventh Congress: A Speech to Russian Communists, March 1922.” 78 Ibid. 79 Lenin, On Literature and Art, 138. 80 Ibid., 130, 149. 70

In much the same way, Bogdanov understood that the ideological superstructure could profoundly impact the economic base. Like Lenin, Bogdanov thought that the working class had to master the culture created by capitalism in order to protect itself from bourgeois domination.

By studying bourgeois culture, the working class would come to know “the very depths” of capitalist “life and thought,” including its “conservatism,” its “inherent narrowness,” and its

“weakness.”81 This insight would become “one of the most precious tools” in the construction of socialism, since, once the proletariat understood bourgeois culture, there would be “no more danger of submitting to” its “influence.”82 Moreover, by becoming “thoroughly and seriously” familiar with bourgeois culture, the workers would be able to recognize its remnants “in present- day society,” and thus defeat it more completely.83 Bogdanov also went much further than Lenin, claiming that “every task in technique, in economics” was “an organizational,” or ideological,

“task.”84 In Bogdanov’s view, the proletariat organized its life experience into “class consciousness” through “its creative work,” or culture.85 Class consciousness, in turn, directly impacted the “class struggle,” and even affected the “struggle against nature”—the very beginning of economics.86

4. Visions of Proletarian Culture: Points of Departure

While Lenin and Bogdanov based their respective theories of proletarian culture on shared Marxist assumptions about cultural change, they departed drastically in their analysis of

81 Bogdanov, “The Workers’ Artistic Inheritance,” 4. 82 Ibid. 83 Bogdanov, “Religion, Art and Marxism,” 7. 84 Ibid., 5. 85 Ibid. 86 Ibid. 71 the dialectic and of the exact relationship between economic base and ideological superstructure.

Ultimately, these divergences reflected a contradiction latent in the writings of Marx himself.

To begin with, Lenin and Bogdanov fundamentally differed in their understandings of dialectical change. Lenin based his theoretical model on the proposition that historical development occurs in a series of successive stages.87 Like all Marxists, Lenin believed that societies pass through several “progressive epochs” during the course of their evolution, including the “Asiatic, ancient, feudal, and modern bourgeois modes of production.”88 Each mode of production also spanned several shorter phases of development—capitalism included periods of “handicraft,” “manufacture,” “large-scale industry,” and “imperialism,” according to

Lenin’s estimation.89 Particular features defined every phase of every mode of production, signifying each as a distinct, coherent stage. However, in Lenin’s analysis, societies were emphatically dynamic, compelled by internal contradictions to constantly evolve.90 As societies developed, their properties altered, thus producing the preconditions for the next phase of their evolution.91 For instance, during its imperialist stage, “capitalist free competition” transformed into “capitalist monopoly,” ending the old “anarchy of production” and paving the way for “a higher system”—socialism.92 Ultimately, in Lenin’s theoretical framework, advancing to a new era of development was always predicated on the unfolding of the preceding age.

Consequently, Lenin concluded that the prerequisite to any socialist, or proletarian, culture would necessarily be the completion of the bourgeois cultural phase. Lenin insisted that proletarian culture could not be “clutched out of thin air,” or invented by “those who call

87 Harding, Lenin’s Political Thought, Volume 1: Theory and Practice in the Democratic Revolution, 37. 88 Marx, “Preface to A Critique of Political Economy,” 426. 89 Marx, “Capital”; Lenin, “Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism.” 90 Harding, Lenin’s Political Thought, Volume 1: Theory and Practice in the Democratic Revolution, 37. 91 Ibid. 92 Lenin, “Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism,” 243, 273–4. 72 themselves experts.”93 Only “the logical development of the store of knowledge” accumulated by capitalist, feudal, and ancient societies could possibly result in a new stage of culture.94

Proletarian culture could only grow out of the material created by “bloodstained, sordid, rapacious” capitalism; it could not be “reared in special hothouses and cucumber frames.”95 In practice, this meant that the proletariat must obtain a “precise knowledge” of “the culture created by the entire development of mankind.”96 Unfortunately, because capitalist society had been based on “the division of people into…exploiter and exploited,” such cultural knowledge had been provided “only to the children of the bourgeoisie.”97 Consequently, the first task of the proletariat was to complete the cultural tasks of capitalism. Lenin roused the masses to the challenge, calling for the “literate to combat illiteracy,” for the “organization of a network of libraries,” and for “millions of people” to be taught “how to spell their names and to count.”98

Bogdanov, conversely, deemphasized the progressive nature of historical development.

To be sure, Bogdanov did not disregard the concept of progressive, dialectical change altogether.

Like Lenin, Bogdanov recognized that the “fundamental contradictions” of capitalism were

“deeply undermining it,” “creating the basis for a new system.”99 In fact, Bogdanov often described the emergence of socialism from capitalism in terms strikingly similar to Lenin’s own; for instance, Bogdanov regarded the “sphere of banking and credit” created by late capitalism, in which “committees of experts” managed the economy, as a “prototype” for a “future harmonious system of distribution.”100 Bogdanov even accepted that emerging cultures were intimately

93 Lenin, On Literature and Art, 141. 94 Ibid. 95 Ibid., 120. 96 Ibid., 144. 97 Ibid., 139. 98 Ibid., 130, 251. 99 Bogdanov, “Socially Organized Society: Socialist Society,” 1. 100 Ibid., 7. 73 connected with the conditions of their preceding epoch. In his view, the “machine production” invented by capitalism caused “sharp distinctions between workers” to “disappear,” leading to

“mutual understanding” and cooperation between proletarians.101 As workers “discussed and solved” problems in common, executing decisions based on the “collective will,” they developed a spirit of “fellowship collaboration,” the “highest phase” of culture.102

Yet, unlike Lenin, Bogdanov believed that particular phases of cultural development not only could be, but indeed, must be skipped over. According to Bogdanov, the proletariat was the

“legal heir to the whole of past culture,” destined to “master the artistic treasures created in the past and assimilate all that was great and beautiful in them.”103 However, Bogdanov feared that, in “acquiring its inheritance,” the working class might “submit to the spirit of the past which reigns in these works,” becoming a slave to the class interests “reflected” in bourgeois culture.104

Therefore, Bogdanov argued, the proletariat must acquire “its own all-embracing viewpoint,” its own proletarian culture, prior to claiming its artistic birthright from the bourgeoisie.105 Instead of focusing on the cultural projects left unfinished by Russian capitalism—universal literacy, managerial technique, widespread education—Bogdanov argued that proletarian culture would emerge directly from the economic life of the working class. Arising from the material life process, the proletariat’s “spirit of fellowship” would become “the actual creator” of the new culture, expressing in artistic form the working class’s “strivings, ideals, and its ways of thinking,” “its joys,” “its sorrows,” and “its consciousness.”106

101 Bogdanov, “Proletarian Poetry,” 1–2. 102 Ibid., 2–3. 103 Ibid., 6; Bogdanov, “Religion, Art and Marxism,” 1. 104 Bogdanov, “Proletarian Poetry,” 6; Bogdanov, “Religion, Art and Marxism,” 1. 105 Bogdanov, “Religion, Art and Marxism,” 3. 106 Bogdanov, “Proletarian Poetry,” 3–4. 74

Lenin and Bogdanov departed even more profoundly in their analysis of the relationship between the economic base and the ideological superstructure. Lenin, while accepting the fact that the superstructure could react upon the economic base, maintained that the material foundation of society ultimately determined its superstructural framework. In Lenin’s Marxist worldview, capitalism as an economic system was predicated on inequality and exploitation. It was an “absolute, general law” of capitalist material relations that, as the bourgeoisie accumulated tremendous wealth, the proletariat accumulated only “misery, agony of toil slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation.”107 In its daily life, the working class was almost wholly deprived of cultural activity, as the rich monopolized science, technology, education, music, and art, directing each towards its own class interests.108 Moreover, since “social consciousness reflects social being,” capitalist material relations asserted themselves in ideology as well.109 Women inevitably became “household slaves” and “concubines,” just as all people were condemned to the “darkness, ignorance, and superstition” of religion.110 So long as the capitalist mode of production continued, culture would be bound to the bourgeoisie.

According to Lenin, only a proletarian revolution, and the resulting socialist economic infrastructure, could lead to the development of a proletarian culture. As “social being” shifted from capitalist to socialist material relations, “social consciousness” would accordingly alter.

Yet, as Lenin constantly stressed, the Soviet Union was only beginning its journey “towards socialism;” it was not, at least immediately, socialist per se. Therefore, just as the Soviet people would require a “whole historical epoch” of economic advancement and experimentation to arrive at socialist production, so too would they need a “period of cultural development” to

107 Marx, “Capital,” 520. 108 Lenin, On Literature and Art, 122, 130. 109 Lenin, “Materialism and Empiriocriticism.” 110 Lenin, “Capitalism and Female Labor,” 682; Lenin, On Literature and Art, 159. 75 achieve a new socialist culture.111 Proletarian culture would no more result from “ridiculous phrases which remain on paper” during the transition to socialism than during the era of capitalism itself.112 While the Soviet workers and peasants labored in the economic arena to build on and surpass capitalism, constructing the NEP mixed economy and organizing cooperative enterprises, they would simultaneously struggle in the realm of culture to eclipse the accomplishments of the bourgeoisie.113 Where capitalism had introduced mass education, the goal was now to “abolish illiteracy;” where capitalism had spread popular entertainment, art must now belong “to the people” altogether.114 Only as the economic foundations of society evolved into socialism would a truly proletarian culture materialize.

In marked contrast to Lenin, Bogdanov contended that the ideological superstructure could exert a defining, or even determining, influence on the economic base. Unlike Lenin,

Bogdanov was adamant that a proletarian culture could be developed during the epoch of capitalist production. Certainly, the “bourgeois world” was overwhelmingly dominated by a bourgeois ideology, as the exploitative nature of capitalist economics gave rise to spirits of

“authority” and “individualism.”115 However, Bogdanov believed that, just as the material requirements for socialism appeared under capitalist auspices, proletarian culture would likewise emerge in the midst of a prevailing bourgeois ideology. Throughout history, “the germs of fellowship collaboration,” or proletarian culture, had been sown by the masses, growing “to the extent that” the workers “gathered in the cities.”116 As capitalism increased the “concentration of the proletariat in the cities and factories,” “fellowship collaboration” became, for the first time,

111 Lenin, “On Cooperation,” 709. 112 Lenin, On Literature and Art, 130. 113 Lenin, “On Cooperation,” 709. 114 Lenin, On Literature and Art, 150, 251. 115 Bogdanov, “Religion, Art and Marxism,” 3; Bogdanov, “Proletarian Poetry,” 3. 116 Bogdanov, “Proletarian Poetry,” 2. 76 the “primary type of organization” for the working class.117 Thus, with bourgeois culture still flourishing, proletarian culture entered its “embryo stages.”118

Still more radically, Bogdanov insisted that a fully-fledged proletarian culture was in fact a prerequisite for an economic and political socialist revolution. In Bogdanov’s view, the evolution of capitalism naturally ushered proletarian culture into its “childhood.”119 It was the task of Social Democracy to raise the proletariat’s “consciousness of fellowship” to maturity.120

Under the guidance of Social Democratic mentors, workers would be transformed into

“independent ideologues,” armed with their own class “viewpoint.”121 By means of intensive study, the proletariat would define the “basis” of its culture, the “all-organizational…standpoint of collective labor.”122 Equipped with its “all-organizational” ideology, the working class would embark on its “historical mission of organizing harmoniously the whole life of humanity.”123

Ultimately, this ideological advancement would be “crowned with socialist revolution,” as the proletariat seized power, altering the economic foundations of society to reflect its “spirit of fellowship.”124 However, implied in Bogdanov’s analysis was a warning—if the proletariat was culturally unprepared, its revolution could be disastrously “regressive,” falling back into the

“spirit of authoritarianism.”125

In the last analysis, these striking theoretical differences between Lenin and Bogdanov reflected a dialectic latent within Marxism itself—a dialectic between culture as a created substance, and culture as a creative force. In his approach to dialectical change, Lenin closely

117 Ibid. 118 Ibid., 6. 119 Ibid. 120 Ibid., 2; Marot, The October Revolution in Prospect and Retrospect, 199–200. 121 Sochor, Revolution and Culture, 37; Bogdanov, “Religion, Art and Marxism,” 5–6. 122 Bogdanov, “Religion, Art and Marxism,” 6. 123 Ibid. 124 Sochor, Revolution and Culture, 41. 125 Ibid., 76. 77 followed Marx, who on many occasions described how all progress, including cultural growth, was the consequence of preceding developments. Marx claimed that, while particular circumstances may have a “momentary existence,” it was important to simultaneously recognize the “transient nature” of all things.126 All societies—economically and ideologically—were in constant “fluid motion,” compelled by inherent contradictions towards moments of crisis, whereupon new political, productive, or cultural forms might emerge.127 Only out of this

“inevitable breaking-up” of obsolescent paradigms could evolution occur; new models did not appear in a vacuum.128 Lenin’s conception of base-superstructure relations was similarly well grounded in Marx’s work. In Marx’s view, only the “existence of a revolutionary class,” created by material relations, could lead to “the existence of revolutionary ideas.”129 Still more explicitly,

Marx stated that the “idea of revolution,” without the appropriate material conditions, was

“absolutely immaterial”—as was clearly evident from “the whole history of communism” itself.130

Yet, in elaborating his own conception of proletarian culture, Bogdanov drew upon equally legitimate, albeit more obscure, strains of Marxist thought. Bogdanov’s insistence that cultural development did not occur in a straightforward, progressive manner echoed several similar statements by Marx and Engels. Marx believed that, throughout history, societies were occasionally able to achieve levels of culture which stood “in no direct connection” with their

“general development” or “material basis.”131 In fact, Marx argued that “certain periods of the

126 Marx, “Capital,” 458. 127 Ibid. 128 Ibid.; Marx and Engels, The German Ideology, 72. 129 Marx and Engels, The German Ideology, 40. 130 Ibid., 30. 131 Solomon, Marxism and Art, 61. 78 highest development of art” could only occur in societies at a “low stage” of development.132 For instance, Marx suggested that when “the printer’s bar” ended the need for “singing and reciting” stories, it actually abolished “the prerequisites of epic poetry,” thus outmoding one of mankind’s great cultural achievements.133 Bogdanov’s contention that the ideological superstructure could exert a defining influence on the economic base also followed from a number of Marx’s own comments. Marx perhaps came closest to Bogdanov when he claimed that “theory also becomes a material force as soon as it has gripped the masses”—implying that ideological influences not only influenced economics, but also, under the proper circumstances, became economic factors in their own right.134

5. Conclusions

From 1909 to 1922, the Bolshevik Party, with Lenin and Bogdanov standing at the head, engaged in a serious debate on the nature of proletarian culture. As two brilliant, committed students of the Marxist tradition, Lenin and Bogdanov each set out from many of the same basic assumptions. In the estimation of both men, all cultures expressed particular class interests, and every epoch was dominated by the culture of the ruling class. Furthermore, unlike many vulgar

Marxists or economic determinists, both Lenin and Bogdanov recognized that the ideological superstructure could, in fact, act upon the economic base. However, in several crucial theoretical respects, Lenin and Bogdanov irreparably split. While Lenin emphasized dialectical, progressive cultural development, Bogdanov insisted on the necessity of skipping the bourgeois phase of culture; while Lenin claimed that economics determined ideology, Bogdanov asserted that the superstructure performed the decisive role.

132 Ibid. 133 Ibid., 62. 134 Ibid., 53. 79

Ultimately, no less an authority than Marx himself supported both positions. As a poet, philosopher, economist, revolutionary, and, occasionally, a utopian, Marx was often conflicted over the appropriate relationship between revolution and culture. A convinced materialist, Marx rested his entire analytical method on the belief that “life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life.”135 Yet, Marx was never completely able to relegate “consciousness” to a position of unimportance; nor, indeed, did her intend to. Thus, when Marx’s Bolshevik disciples turned their zealous eyes towards the realm of culture, the old dialectic—culture as created, culture as creator—returned, and instigated a decade long debate on proletarian culture. Of course, had he known, Marx would not have been surprised; he understood that all things move through contradiction.

135 Marx and Engels, Marx & Engels on Literature & Art, 15. 80

Red Letter Days Chapter 5: Conclusions

Buried deep in the middle of his 1924 book Literature and Revolution, Trotsky remarks,

“It is unquestionably true that the need for art is not created by economic conditions. But neither is the need for food created by economics. On the contrary, the need for food and warmth creates economics. It is very true that one cannot always go by the principles of Marxism in deciding whether to reject or to accept a work of art. A work of art should, in the first place, be judged but its own law, the law of art. But Marxism alone can explain why and how a given tendency in art has originated in a given period of history; in other words, who it was who made a demand for such an artistic form and not another, and why.”1

Here, Trotsky expresses the difficulty of his situation. As a sophisticated, educated individual appreciative and understanding of art’s manifold complexities, he admits, following

Marx and Engels, that art, literature, and culture more broadly, cannot be reduced to economics alone. Yet, Trotsky, like Marx, Engels, and his fellow Bolshevik theorists, desires to understand the major cultural issues of his time, and in his eyes, only one form of analysis is up to the task— the method of Marxism. As we have seen, Lenin, Trotsky, Lunacharsky, and Bogdanov were consistently guided by Marxist theory in their approach to major cultural issues, such as literary criticism, censorship, and the concept of proletarian culture.

1 Trotsky, Literature and Revolution, 150. 81

1. “Two Steps Back:” A Brief Summary

In their lifetimes, Marx and Engels were intensely interested in a variety of cultural matters, ranging from familial relations to the history of science, from the theory of math to ancient theater. Yet, despite their enthusiasm, the two original Marxists failed to develop a comprehensive, orthodox Marxist approach to major cultural problems. Instead, with regard to three central issues—aesthetics, censorship, and the precise relationship between economic base and ideological superstructure—Marx and Engels were alternately vacillating, contradictory, or ambiguous. First, the two philosophers neglected to produce an integrated Marxist paradigm for assessing artistic merit, instead utilizing three distinct modes of aesthetic analysis.2 Second, while both Marx and Engels condemned bourgeois censorship, whether it was state-sanctioned or economically imposed, they both simultaneously supported the use of censorship during the dictatorship of the proletariat. Finally, Marx and Engels were deliberately opaque on base- superstructure theory, emphasizing the determinative role of the economy while insisting that ideological factors, such as culture, could exert a powerful influence upon society. This complex, even contradictory theoretical framework was passed down to Marx and Engels’ inheritors.

In their attempt to understand major cultural issues, Lenin, Trotsky, Lunacharsky, and

Bogdanov were guided by the analysis developed by Marx and Engels. This was especially evident in the case of the Bolsheviks’ literary criticism. Each of these four Bolsheviks took Marx and Engels’ multifaceted aesthetic model as his starting point; however, the Bolsheviks were divided as to which modes of investigation were the most correct. While Bogdanov made heavy use of the “genetic” mode of analysis, Lenin, Lunacharsky, and Trotsky all cautioned against this lens as overly simplistic. It was the shared opinion of these three Bolsheviks that the “mimetic” approach was far more sophisticated, and consequently, far superior. All four of the Russian

2 Morawski, “Lenin as a Literary Theorist,” 4. 82

Marxists agreed to the importance of the more overtly political “functional” paradigm, while

Lunacharsky alone dared to explore the possibilities of studying literary form and the influence of non-class factors on the production of art. Thus, the cracks on the surface of the Marxist aesthetic model became full-blown fault lines in the hands of the Bolsheviks.

Lenin’s views on the freedom of the press were similarly rooted in his understanding of

Marxist analysis. From the publication of his first major theoretical treatise, The Development of

Capitalism in Russia, in 1896 until the outbreak of the First World War, Lenin was convinced that Russia was prepared only for a bourgeois-democratic revolution. As a result, Lenin demanded the institution of bourgeois press freedoms. However, just as Lenin insisted that the capitalist revolution be as radically democratic as possible, he similarly called for a radically democratic version of bourgeois freedom of the press. Following the beginning of World War I,

Lenin’s Marxist analysis of Russian society shifted, leading him to believe that Russia was ripe for socialist revolution. Consequently, Lenin asserted that censorship would become a necessary weapon in the struggle to establish a dictatorship of the proletariat. By 1921, as the preconditions for Russian socialism failed to appear, Lenin’s analysis crumbled. While censorship had been envisioned as a tool for ushering in freedom, it ossified into a pillar of oppression.

Finally, the Bolshevik Party debate on proletarian culture, led from 1909 to 1922 by

Lenin and Bogdanov, reflected schisms within Marxism with regard to dialectics and base- superstructure theory. As committed, serious Marxists, both Lenin and Bogdanov shared many basic theoretical assumptions. Both Bolsheviks agreed that all cultures expressed particular class interests, and that every historical epoch was dominated by the culture of the ruling class. What is more, both Lenin and Bogdanov accepted the notion—first expressed by Marx and Engels— that the ideological superstructure could indeed act upon the economic base. However, the two 83

Bolsheviks were irrevocably divided over several other points of theory. While Lenin stressed dialectical, progressive cultural development, Bogdanov claimed that certain phases of cultural growth could be skipped over. Whereas Lenin asserted that economics determined ideology,

Bogdanov insisted that ideology could decisively alter material development. Ultimately, both positions were grounded in Marxist theory, the drastically different interpretations reproducing contradictions first expressed by Marx and Engels.

2. Conclusions

In their attempt to engage with crucial cultural issues, such as aesthetics, censorship, and cultural change, Lenin, Trotsky, Lunacharsky, and Bogdanov, were consistently guided by their use of the Marxist method of analysis—a fact that greatly informs our understand of these

Bolsheviks and their mission. Certainly, many factors shaped the various Bolshevik approaches to cultural topics. Their literary criticism was clearly shaped, on some level, by their own personal tastes; perhaps Lenin’s preference for traditional, realistic fiction encouraged him to rescue Tolstoy from the dustbin of “genetic” determinism, while Lunacharsky’s openness to the avant-garde led him into the woods of formal experiment and scholarship. By his own admission,

Lenin’s acceptance of strict press controls was initially a response to the dangers facing the new

Soviet government, which was in the “process of consolidation,” and later to the challenges of the Civil War.3 Perhaps most clearly, while the debate on proletarian culture was a theoretical argument at its core, it was instigated at least in part by the personal dislike and political rivalry between Lenin and Bogdanov.

However, despite these many external influences, the Bolsheviks’ approach to cultural problems can and should be also considered as an extension of their thoughts and actions as

3 Lenin, “Decree on Suppression of Hostile Newspapers,” 67. 84

Marxists. With regard to literary criticism, censorship, and cultural change—not to mention the many other issues of art, music, literature, family, and religion that confronted the Bolsheviks on a near daily basis—Lenin, Trotsky, Lunacharsky, and Bogdanov behaved as serious Marxist theorists. Their efforts to resolve major cultural challenges were sustained, thoughtful, and frequently original explorations, yielding results that have yet to be fully appreciated. They were driven, not merely by political expediency or by the needs of the moment, but by a dedication to their intellectual, and ultimately political, cause. Lenin, Trotsky, Lunacharsky, and Bogdanov were each so committed to their role as Marxist thinkers and revolutionaries, as leaders of the oppressed, exploited working masses, that they followed their analysis wherever it led. Perhaps the key to the doors of utopia rested within the realms of aesthetics, censorship, or proletarian culture; perhaps it did not. But a new world did wait.

85

Red Letter Days: Works Cited

Introduction

Bukharin, Nikolai. Philosophical Arabesques. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2005. ———. The Prison Manuscripts: Socialism And Its Culture. London; New York: Seagull, 2006. Deutscher, Isaac. The Prophet Armed: Trotsky, 1879-1921. London: Verso, 2003. Fitzpatrick, Sheila. “Revisionism in Soviet History.” History and Theory 46, no. 4 (December 1, 2007): 77–91. ———. The Commissariat of Enlightenment: Soviet Organization of Education and the Arts Under Lunacharsky, October 1917-1921. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970. Harding, Neil. Lenin’s Political Thought, Volume 1: Theory and Practice in the Democratic Revolution. 2 vols. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1977. Lenin, Vladimir. On Literature and Art. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1970. Maguire, Robert A. Red Virgin Soil: Soviet Literature in the 1920s. Princeton, N. J: Princeton University Press, 1968. McClelland, James C. “Utopianism versus Revolutionary Heroism in Bolshevik Policy: The Proletarian Culture Debate.” Slavic Review 39, no. 3 (September 1, 1980): 403–25. Service, Robert. Lenin: A Biography. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000. Sochor, Zenovia A. Revolution and Culture: The Bogdanov-Lenin Controversy. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988.

Chapter 1: Marxism, Culture, and Art

Demetz, Peter. Marx, Engels, and the Poets: Origins of Marxist Literary Criticism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967. Engels, Friedrich. “German Socialism in Verse and Prose.” In Marx & Engels on Literature and Art, edited by Stefan Morawski and Lee Baxandall, 80–81. St. Louis: Telos Press, 1973. ———. Herr Eugen Dühring’s Revolution in Science (Anti-Dühring). Edited by C. P. Dutt. Translated by Emile Burns. New York: International Publishers, 1966. ———. “Letter to J. Bloch.” In Marxism and Art, edited by Maynard Solomon, 30. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1973. ———. “Letter to Margaret Harkness, Beginning of April 1888 (draft).” In Marx & Engels on Literature and Art, edited by Stefan Morawski and Lee Baxandall, 114–16. St. Louis: Telos Press, 1973. ———. “Letter to Paul Ernst, June 5, 1890.” In Marx & Engels on Literature and Art, edited by Morawski and Lee Baxandall, 86–89. St. Louis: Telos Press, 1973. ———. “On Authority.” In The Marx-Engels Reader, edited by Robert C. Tucker, Second., 730–33. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1978. ———. “Preface to the Fourth Edition of The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State (June 16, 1891).” In Marx & Engels on Literature and Art, edited by Stefan Morawski and Lee Baxandall, 91–92. St. Louis: Telos Press, 1973. 86

———. “The New York Daily Tribune, October 28, 1851.” In Marx & Engels on Literature and Art, edited by Stefan Morawski and Lee Baxandall, 119–20. St. Louis: Telos Press, 1973. Marx, Eleanor. “Recollections of Mohr (1895).” In Marx & Engels on Literature and Art, edited by Stefan Morawski and Lee Baxandall, 147–48. St. Louis: Telos Press, 1973. Marx, Karl. “A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right.” In Marxism and Art, edited by Maynard Solomon, 53. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1973. ———. “Comments on the Latest Prussian Censorship Instructions.” In Marxism and Art, edited by Maynard Solomon, 71–73. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1973. ———. “Critique of the Gotha Programme.” In Karl Marx: Selected Writings, edited by David McLellan, Second., 610–16. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. ———. “Debating the Freedom of the Press.” In Marx & Engels on Literature and Art, edited by Stefan Morawski and Lee Baxandall, 60–61. St. Louis: Telos Press, 1973. ———. “Letter to Joseph Weydemeyer, January 16, 1852.” In Marx & Engels on Literature and Art, edited by Stefan Morawski and Lee Baxandall, 120–21. St. Louis: Telos Press, 1973. ———. “On Bakunin’s Statism and Anarchy.” In Karl Marx: Selected Writings, edited by David McLellan, Second., 606–9. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. ———. “Preface to A Critique of Political Economy.” In Karl Marx: Selected Writings, edited by David McLellan, Second., 424–28. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. ———. “The Communist Manifesto.” In Karl Marx: Selected Writings, edited by David McLellan, Second., 245–72. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. ———. “The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844.” In Marx & Engels on Literature and Art, edited by Stefan Morawski and Lee Baxandall, 69–71. St. Louis: Telos Press, 1973. ———. “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.” In Marx & Engels on Literature and Art, edited by Stefan Morawski and Lee Baxandall, 84–85. St. Louis: Telos Press, 1973. Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. The German Ideology: Parts I & III. Edited by Roy Pascal. New York: International Publishers, 1965. Morawski, Stefan. Inquiries into the Fundamentals of Aesthetics. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1974. ———. “Lenin as a Literary Theorist.” Science & Society 29, no. 1 (January 1, 1965): 2–25. Morris, William. “Art, Labor, and Socialism.” In Marxism and Art, edited by Maynard Solomon, 83–90. New York: Knopf, 1973. Parkinson, G. H. R. “Lukács on the Central Category of Aesthetics.” In Georg Lukács; The Man, His Work, and His Ideas, edited by G. H. R. Parkinson, 109–46. New York: Random House, 1970. Solomon, Maynard, ed. Marxism and Art. New York: Knopf, 1973. Williams, Raymond. Marxism and Literature. Marxist Introductions. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977.

Chapter 2: Bolshevik Aesthetics and Literary Criticism

Bogdanov, Alexander. “Proletarian Poetry.” The Labour Monthly, June 1923. ———. “Religion, Art and Marxism.” The Labour Monthly, August 1924. ———. “The Workers’ Artistic Inheritance.” The Labour Monthly, September 1924. 87

Ermolaev, Herman. Soviet Literary Theories, 1917-1934: The Genesis of Socialist Realism. New York: Octagon Books, 1977. Lenin, Vladimir. On Literature and Art. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1970. Lunacharsky, Anatoly Vasilievich. On Literature and Art. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1965. Maguire, Robert A. Red Virgin Soil: Soviet Literature in the 1920s. Princeton, N. J: Princeton University Press, 1968. Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. Marx & Engels on Literature & Art: A Selection of Writings. Edited by Lee Baxandall and Stefan Morawski. St. Louis: Telos Press, 1973. Morawski, Stefan. Inquiries into the Fundamentals of Aesthetics. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1974. ———. “Introduction.” In Marx & Engels on Literature & Art: A Selection of Writings, by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, 3–48. edited by Lee Baxandall and Stefan Morawski. St. Louis: Telos Press, 1973. ———. “Lenin as a Literary Theorist.” Science & Society 29, no. 1 (January 1, 1965): 2–25. Trotsky, Leon. “Class and Art: Culture Under the Dictatorship.” In Problems of Culture Under the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, translated by Brian Pearce, 93–110. London: New Park, 1974. https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1924/05/art.htm. ———. Literature and Revolution. Edited by William Keach. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2005.

Chapter 3: Censorship in Lenin’s Revolutionary Praxis

Engels, Friedrich. “Chapter IX: Barbarism and Civilization.” In Origins of the Family. Accessed March 28, 2016. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin- family/ch09.htm. Farber, Samuel. Before Stalinism: The Rise and Fall of Soviet Democracy. London ; New York: Verso, 1990. Harding, Neil. Lenin’s Political Thought, Volume 2: Theory and Practice in the Socialist Revolution. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1978. Lenin, Vladimir. “Alliance Between the Workers and Exploited Peasants.” In Collected Works, Fourth., 26:333–35. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1972. ———. “Decree on Suppression of Hostile Newspapers October 27 [November 9], 1917.” In The Structure of Soviet History: Essays and Documents, edited by Ronald Grigor Suny, Second edition., 67–68. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. ———. “Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism.” In The Lenin Anthology, edited by Robert C. Tucker, 204–74. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1975. ———. “On Revolutionary Violence and Terror.” In The Lenin Anthology, edited by Robert C. Tucker, 423–32. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1975. ———. “The Development of Capitalism in Russia.” In Collected Works, Fourth., 3:21–608. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1964. ———. “The Party Organization and Party Literature.” In The Lenin Anthology, edited by Robert C. Tucker, 148–52. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1975. ———. “The Revolution in Russia and the Tasks of the Workers of All Countries.” In Collected Works, Fourth., 23:350–54. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1977. 88

———. “The State and Revolution: The Marxist Theory of the State and the Tasks of the Proletariat in the Revolution.” In The Lenin Anthology, edited by Robert C. Tucker, 311– 98. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1975. ———. “Two Tactics of Social Democracy.” In The Lenin Anthology, edited by Robert C. Tucker, 120–47. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1975. ———. “What Is To Be Done? Burning Questions of Our Movement.” In The Lenin Anthology, edited by Robert C. Tucker, 12–114. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1975. Marx, Karl. Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy (rough Draft). Translated by Martin Nicolaus. London: Penguin Books, 1993. ———. “Preface to A Critique of Political Economy.” In Karl Marx: Selected Writings, edited by David McLellan, Second., 424–28. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. ———. “The Communist Manifesto.” In Karl Marx: Selected Writings, edited by David McLellan, Second., 245–72. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Chapter 4: The Proletarian Culture Debate

Bogdanov, Alexander. “Proletarian Poetry.” The Labour Monthly, June 1923. ———. “Religion, Art and Marxism.” The Labour Monthly, August 1924. ———. “Socially Organized Society: Socialist Society.” In A Short Course on Economic Science, 10th ed., 1919. https://www.marxists.org/archive/bogdanov/1919/socialism.htm. ———. “The Workers’ Artistic Inheritance.” The Labour Monthly, September 1924. Harding, Neil. Lenin’s Political Thought, Volume 1: Theory and Practice in the Democratic Revolution. 2 vols. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1977. Lenin, Vladimir. “Capitalism and Female Labor.” In The Lenin Anthology, edited by Robert C. Tucker, 682–83. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1975. ———. “Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism.” In The Lenin Anthology, edited by Robert C. Tucker, 204–74. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1975. ———. “Lenin at the Eleventh Congress: A Speech to Russian Communists, March 1922.” New International VIII, no. 10 (November 1942): 305–8. ———. “Materialism and Empiriocriticism.” In Lenin’s Collected Works, translated by Abraham Fineberg, 14:17–362. Progress Publishers, 1972. ———. “On Cooperation.” In The Lenin Anthology, edited by Robert C. Tucker, 707–13. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1975. ———. On Literature and Art. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1970. ———. “The Party Organization and Party Literature.” In The Lenin Anthology, edited by Robert C. Tucker, 148–52. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1975. ———. “What Is To Be Done? Burning Questions of Our Movement.” In The Lenin Anthology, edited by Robert C. Tucker, 12–114. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1975. Mally, Lynn. Culture of the Future: The Proletkult Movement in Revolutionary Russia. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. Marot, John. The October Revolution in Prospect and Retrospect: Interventions in Russian and Soviet History. Historical Materialism, vol. 37. Boston: Brill, 2012. Marx, Karl. “Capital.” In Karl Marx: Selected Writings, edited by David McLellan, Second., 452–546. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. 89

———. “Preface to A Critique of Political Economy.” In Karl Marx: Selected Writings, edited by David McLellan, Second., 424–28. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. ———. “The Communist Manifesto.” In Karl Marx: Selected Writings, edited by David McLellan, Second., 245–72. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. ———. “The German Ideology.” In Karl Marx: Selected Writings, edited by David McLellan, Second., 175–208. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. Marx & Engels on Literature & Art: A Selection of Writings. Edited by Lee Baxandall and Stefan Morawski. St. Louis: Telos Press, 1973. ———. The German Ideology: Parts I & III. Edited by Roy Pascal. New York: International Publishers, 1965. McClelland, James C. “Utopianism versus Revolutionary Heroism in Bolshevik Policy: The Proletarian Culture Debate.” Slavic Review 39, no. 3 (September 1, 1980): 403–25. Sochor, Zenovia A. Revolution and Culture: The Bogdanov-Lenin Controversy. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988. Solomon, Maynard, ed. Marxism and Art. New York: Knopf, 1973.

Chapter 5: Conclusions

Lenin, Vladimir. “Decree on Suppression of Hostile Newspapers October 27 [November 9], 1917.” In The Structure of Soviet History: Essays and Documents, edited by Ronald Grigor Suny, second edition. 67–68. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. Morawski, Stefan. “Lenin as a Literary Theorist.” Science & Society 29, no. 1 (January 1, 1965): 2–25. Trotsky, Leon. Literature and Revolution. Edited by William Keach. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2005.

90

Red Letter Days: Bibliography

Biggart, John. “Bukharin and the Origins of the ‘Proletarian Culture’ Debate.” Soviet Studies 39, no. 2 (April 1, 1987): 229–46. Bogdanov, Alexander. “Proletarian Poetry.” The Labour Monthly, June 1923. ———. “Religion, Art and Marxism.” The Labour Monthly, August 1924. ———. “Socially Organized Society: Socialist Society.” In A Short Course on Economic Science, 10th ed., 1919. https://www.marxists.org/archive/bogdanov/1919/socialism.htm. ———. “The Criticism of Proletarian Art.” The Labour Monthly, December 1923. ———. “The Workers’ Artistic Inheritance.” The Labour Monthly, September 1924. Brown, Edward J. Russian Literature Since the Revolution. Rev. and enl. ed. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1982. ———. The Proletarian Episode in Russian Literature, 1928-1932. New York: Octagon Books, 1971. Bukharin, Nikolai. Philosophical Arabesques. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2005. ———. The Prison Manuscripts: Socialism And Its Culture. London; New York: Seagull, 2006. Calverton, V. F. “The Sociological Aesthetics of the Bolsheviki.” American Journal of Sociology 35, no. 3 (November 1, 1929): 383–92. Clark, Katerina. The Soviet Novel: History as Ritual. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981. Cohen, Stephen F. Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution: A Political Biography, 1888-1938. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1973. Demetz, Peter. Marx, Engels, and the Poets: Origins of Marxist Literary Criticism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967. Deutscher, Isaac. The Prophet Armed: Trotsky, 1879-1921. London: Verso, 2003. Deutscher, Tamara, ed. Not by Politics Alone: The Other Lenin. Allen & Unwin, 1973. Dobrenko, E. A. The Making of the State Reader: Social and Aesthetic Contexts of the Reception of Soviet Literature. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997. ———. The Making of the State Writer: Social and Aesthetic Origins of Soviet Literary Culture. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001. Emerson, Caryl. “Literary Theory in the 1920s: Four Options and a Practicum.” In A History of Russian Literary Theory and Criticism: The Soviet Age and Beyond, 64–89. Pitt Series in Russian and East European Studies. University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011. Engels, Friedrich. “Chapter IX: Barbarism and Civilization.” In Origins of the Family. Accessed March 28, 2016. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin- family/ch09.htm. ———. “Georg Weerth (1883).” In Marx & Engels on Literature and Art, edited by Stefan Morawski and Lee Baxandall, 124–27. St. Louis: Telos Press, 1973. ———. “German Socialism in Verse and Prose.” In Marx & Engels on Literature and Art, edited by Stefan Morawski and Lee Baxandall, 80–81. St. Louis: Telos Press, 1973. ———. Herr Eugen Dühring’s Revolution in Science (Anti-Dühring). Edited by C. P. Dutt. Translated by Emile Burns. New York: International Publishers, 1966. ———. “Letter to J. Bloch.” In Marxism and Art, edited by Maynard Solomon, 30. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1973. 91

———. “Letter to Margaret Harkness, Beginning of April 1888 (draft).” In Marx & Engels on Literature and Art, edited by Stefan Morawski and Lee Baxandall, 114–16. St. Louis: Telos Press, 1973. ———. “Letter to Paul Ernst, June 5, 1890.” In Marx & Engels on Literature and Art, edited by Morawski and Lee Baxandall, 86–89. St. Louis: Telos Press, 1973. ———. “Letter to W. Borgius.” In Marxism and Art, edited by Maynard Solomon, 33. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1973. ———. “On Authority.” In The Marx-Engels Reader, edited by Robert C. Tucker, Second., 730– 33. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1978. ———. “Preface to the Fourth Edition of The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State (June 16, 1891).” In Marx & Engels on Literature and Art, edited by Stefan Morawski and Lee Baxandall, 91–92. St. Louis: Telos Press, 1973. ———. “The New York Daily Tribune, October 28, 1851.” In Marx & Engels on Literature and Art, edited by Stefan Morawski and Lee Baxandall, 119–20. St. Louis: Telos Press, 1973. Ermolaev, Herman. Soviet Literary Theories, 1917-1934: The Genesis of Socialist Realism. New York: Octagon Books, 1977. Farber, Samuel. Before Stalinism: The Rise and Fall of Soviet Democracy. London ; New York: Verso, 1990. Fitzpatrick, Sheila. “Revisionism in Soviet History.” History and Theory 46, no. 4 (December 1, 2007): 77–91. ———. The Commissariat of Enlightenment: Soviet Organization of Education and the Arts Under Lunacharsky, October 1917-1921. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970. ———. The Cultural Front: Power and Culture in Revolutionary Russia. Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press, 1992. Harding, Neil. Lenin’s Political Thought, Volume 1: Theory and Practice in the Democratic Revolution. 2 vols. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1977. ———. Lenin’s Political Thought, Volume 2: Theory and Practice in the Socialist Revolution. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1978. Lahusen, Thomas. How Life Writes the Book: Real Socialism and Socialist Realism in Stalin’s Russia. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997. Lenin, Vladimir. “Alliance Between the Workers and Exploited Peasants.” In Collected Works, Fourth., 26:333–35. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1972. ———. “Better Fewer, But Better.” In The Lenin Anthology, edited by Robert C. Tucker, 734– 46. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1975. ———. “Capitalism and Female Labor.” In The Lenin Anthology, edited by Robert C. Tucker, 682–83. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1975. ———. “Decree on Suppression of Hostile Newspapers October 27 [November 9], 1917.” In The Structure of Soviet History: Essays and Documents, edited by Ronald Grigor Suny, Second edition., 67–68. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. ———. “Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism.” In The Lenin Anthology, edited by Robert C. Tucker, 204–74. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1975. ———. “Lenin at the Eleventh Congress: A Speech to Russian Communists, March 1922.” New International VIII, no. 10 (November 1942): 305–8. ———. “Materialism and Empiriocriticism.” In Lenin’s Collected Works, translated by Abraham Fineberg, 14:17–362. Progress Publishers, 1972. 92

———. “Meeting Of The Petrograd Soviet Of Workers’ And Soldiers’ Deputies.” In Collected Works, Fourth., 26:239–41. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1972. ———. “On Cooperation.” In The Lenin Anthology, edited by Robert C. Tucker, 707–13. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1975. ———. On Literature and Art. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1970. ———. “On Proletarian Culture.” In The Lenin Anthology, edited by Robert C. Tucker, 675–76. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1975. ———. “On Revolutionary Violence and Terror.” In The Lenin Anthology, edited by Robert C. Tucker, 423–32. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1975. ———. “Speech At the First All-Russia Congress of Communist Students.” In Collected Works, 4th ed., 29:324. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1972. ———. “Speech At The First All-Russia Congress Of Communist Students.” The Marxist Internet Archive. Accessed September 18, 2015. https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1919/apr/17a.htm. ———. “The Development of Capitalism in Russia: The Process of the Formation of a Home Market for Large-Scale Industry.” In Collected Works, Fourth., 3:21–607. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1972. ———. “The Party Organization and Party Literature.” In The Lenin Anthology, edited by Robert C. Tucker, 148–52. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1975. ———. “The Revolution in Russia and the Tasks of the Workers of All Countries.” In Collected Works, Fourth., 23:350–54. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1977. ———. “The State and Revolution: The Marxist Theory of the State and the Tasks of the Proletariat in the Revolution.” In The Lenin Anthology, edited by Robert C. Tucker, 311– 98. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1975. ———. “Two Tactics of Social Democracy.” In The Lenin Anthology, edited by Robert C. Tucker, 120–47. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1975. ———. “What Is To Be Done? Burning Questions of Our Movement.” In The Lenin Anthology, edited by Robert C. Tucker, 12–114. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1975. Lunacharsky, Anatoly Vasilievich. Lenin Through the Eyes of Lunacharsky. Moscow: Novosti Press Agency Pub. House, 1980. ———. On Education: Selected Articles and Speeches. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1981. ———. On Literature and Art. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1965. ———. Revolutionary Silhouettes. New York: Hill and Wang, 1968. ———. Three Plays of A. V. Lunacharski: Faust and the City, Vasilisa the Wise, The Magi. Edited by Leonard A. Magnus and Karl Walter. London, New York: G. Routledge & sons, ltd.; E. P. Dutton & co, 1923. Maguire, Robert A. Red Virgin Soil: Soviet Literature in the 1920s. Princeton, N. J: Princeton University Press, 1968. Mally, Lynn. Culture of the Future: The Proletkult Movement in Revolutionary Russia. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. Marot, John. The October Revolution in Prospect and Retrospect: Interventions in Russian and Soviet History. Historical Materialism, vol. 37. Boston: Brill, 2012. Marx, Eleanor. “Recollections of Mohr (1895).” In Marx & Engels on Literature and Art, edited by Stefan Morawski and Lee Baxandall, 147–48. St. Louis: Telos Press, 1973. Marx, Karl. “A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right.” In Marxism and Art, edited by Maynard Solomon, 53. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1973. 93

———. “Capital.” In Karl Marx: Selected Writings, edited by David McLellan, Second., 452– 546. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. ———. “Comments on the Latest Prussian Censorship Instructions.” In Marxism and Art, edited by Maynard Solomon, 71–73. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1973. ———. “Critique of the Gotha Programme.” In Karl Marx: Selected Writings, edited by David McLellan, Second., 610–16. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. ———. “Debating the Freedom of the Press.” In Marx & Engels on Literature and Art, edited by Stefan Morawski and Lee Baxandall, 60–61. St. Louis: Telos Press, 1973. ———. Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy (Rough Draft). Translated by Martin Nicolaus. London: Penguin Books, 1993. ———. “Letter to Joseph Weydemeyer, January 16, 1852.” In Marx & Engels on Literature and Art, edited by Stefan Morawski and Lee Baxandall, 120–21. St. Louis: Telos Press, 1973. ———. “On Bakunin’s Statism and Anarchy.” In Karl Marx: Selected Writings, edited by David McLellan, Second., 606–9. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. ———. “Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations.” The Marxist Internet Archive. Accessed March 28, 2016. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/precapitalist/ch01.htm. ———. “Preface to A Critique of Political Economy.” In Karl Marx: Selected Writings, edited by David McLellan, Second., 424–28. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. ———. “The Civil War in France.” In Karl Marx: Selected Writings, edited by David McLellan, Second., 584–603. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. ———. “The Communist Manifesto.” In Karl Marx: Selected Writings, edited by David McLellan, Second., 245–72. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. ———. “The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844.” In Marx & Engels on Literature and Art, edited by Stefan Morawski and Lee Baxandall, 69–71. St. Louis: Telos Press, 1973. ———. “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.” In Marx & Engels on Literature and Art, edited by Stefan Morawski and Lee Baxandall, 84–85. St. Louis: Telos Press, 1973. ———. “The German Ideology.” In Karl Marx: Selected Writings, edited by David McLellan, Second., 175–208. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. Marx & Engels on Literature & Art: A Selection of Writings. Edited by Lee Baxandall and Stefan Morawski. St. Louis: Telos Press, 1973. ———. The German Ideology: Parts I & III. Edited by Roy Pascal. New York: International Publishers, 1965. McClelland, James C. “Utopianism versus Revolutionary Heroism in Bolshevik Policy: The Proletarian Culture Debate.” Slavic Review 39, no. 3 (September 1, 1980): 403–25. Morawski, Stefan. Inquiries Into the Fundamentals of Aesthetics. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1974. ———. “Introduction.” In Marx & Engels on Literature & Art: A Selection of Writings, by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, 3–48. edited by Lee Baxandall and Stefan Morawski. St. Louis: Telos Press, 1973. ———. “Lenin as a Literary Theorist.” Science & Society 29, no. 1 (January 1, 1965): 2–25. ———. Review of Review of Marxism and Art: Essays Classic and Contemporary, by Maynard Solomon. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 33, no. 1 (1974): 97–101. ———. “The Aesthetic Views of Marx and Engels.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 28, no. 3 (April 1, 1970): 301–14. 94

Morris, William. “Art, Labor, and Socialism.” In Marxism and Art, edited by Maynard Solomon, 83–90. New York: Knopf, 1973. Parkinson, G. H. R. “Lukács on the Central Category of Aesthetics.” In Georg Lukács; The Man, His Work, and His Ideas, edited by G. H. R. Parkinson, 109–46. New York: Random House, 1970. Petrov, Petre M. Automatic For The Masses: The Death of the Author and the Birth of Socialist Realism. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015. Rabinowitch, Alexander. Prelude to Revolution: The Petrograd Bolsheviks and the July 1917 Uprising. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1968. Rosenberg, William G. Liberals in the Russian Revolution: The Constitutional Democratic Party, 1917-1921. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974. Service, Robert. Lenin: A Biography. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000. Sochor, Zenovia A. Revolution and Culture: The Bogdanov-Lenin Controversy. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988. Solomon, Maynard, ed. Marxism and Art. New York: Knopf, 1973. Struve, Gleb. Russian Literature Under Lenin and Stalin, 1917-1953. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1971. Suny, Ronald Grigor. The Baku Commune, 1917-1918: Class and Nationality in the Russian Revolution. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1972. ———. , ed. The Structure of Soviet History: Essays and Documents. Second edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. Tret’iakov, Sergei. “Art in the Revolution and the Revolution in Art (Aesthetic Consumption and Production).” October 118 (October 1, 2006): 11–18. Trotsky, Leon. “Class and Art: Culture Under the Dictatorship.” In Problems of Culture Under the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, translated by Brian Pearce, 93–110. London: New Park, 1974. https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1924/05/art.htm. ———. “Culture and Socialism.” Translated by Brian Pearce. Labour Review, Autumn 1962. https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2008/10/cult-o23.html?view=print. ———. Literature and Revolution. Edited by William Keach. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2005. ———. On Literature and Art. Edited by Paul N. Siegel. New York: Pathfinder Press, 1970. ———. Problems of Everyday Life, and Other Writings on Culture & Science. 1st ed. New York: Monad Press; distributed by Pathfinder Press, 1973. ———. The Revolution Betrayed: What Is the Soviet Union and Where Is It Going? 5th ed. New York: Pathfinder Press, 1972. Tucker, Robert C. “Lenin’s Bolshevism as a Culture in the Making.” In Bolshevik Culture: Experiment and Order in the Russian Revolution, edited by Abbott Gleason, Peter Kenez, and Richard Stites, 25–38. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985. Williams, Raymond. Marxism and Literature. Marxist Introductions. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977.