Proletarskaya Kul'tura

Proletarskaya Kul'tura (English: Proletarian Culture) was a magazine published by Proletkult.

It was an important political and cultural publication in Russia following the Bolshevik seizure of power. It was edited by Pavel Lebedev-Polianskii and Fedor Kalinin. They published such writers as Alexander Bogdanov and Aleksei Gastev.

In summer 1919, Rogozinsky's proposal to turn the Proletarian University into the Sverdlov Proletarian University, a proposal accompanied by restrictions in scope limited to creating a training school for government and party officials. That was backed up by an article in Izvestiya distinguishing between a 'proletarian' and 'communist' university, which would mean focusing on training party activists. Research into proletarian science, or producinga "Workers' Encyclopedia" would be set aside. When Maria Smit, a professor at the Proletarian University, submitted a response which said that it was necessary to train leaders as well as organisers Izvestiya declined to publish it, and it appeared in Proletarskaya Kul'tura.[1]

Selected articles

No. 1 (July 1918)

Bogdanov A. 'Proletarian Poetry' (Chto takoe proletarskaya poeziya), English translation: Labour Monthly, Vol IV, No. 5-6, May–June 1923 & Vol V, No. 6, December 1923

No. 2 (July 1918)

Bogdanov A. Science and the Working Class

No. 4 (September, 1918)

Bogdanov A. (Metody truda i metody poznaniya)
Lebedev-Polianskii Editorial: Comrade Lenin (Tov. N. Lenin (V.I.Ul'yanov))

No. 5 (November, 1918)

Lebedev-Polianskii (God proletarskoi diktatury)

No. 7/8 (April–May, 1919)

Bogdanov A. Essays in Organisation Science Очерки организационной науки (Ocherki organizatsionnoi nauki)

No. 9/10 (April–May, 1919)

"Tendencies of Proletarian Culture" (pp 35–40) by Alexei Gastev. This article argues that the psychology of the proletariat is largely determined by the conditions of industrial life in the factory. The consequence of this would be, according to Gastev increasing conformity as the processes of production become increasingly standardised:

"From one end of the earth to the other, powerful, weighty psychological currents are in motion for which there are no longer millions of heads, but one global head."[2]

This view was criticised as "technological fetishism" by Kalinin who argued that everyday life outside the factory also had significant impact on the psychology of every individual proletarian.[2]

References

Sheila Fitzpatrick (2002), The Commissariat of Enlightenment: Soviet Organization of Education and the Arts under Lunacharsky, October 1917-1921, Cambridge: Cambridge Russian, Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies
Naiman, Eric (2019). The%20Proletariat%20and%20Creativity&f=false Sex in Public: The Incarnation of Early Soviet Ideology. Princeton University Press. ISBN 9780691194516.