Proletkult

also: Proletcult · Proletarian Culture movement

movement 1917-1920 Russia Soviet Union

Proletkult - a contraction of 'proletarian culture' - was an experimental network of workers' cultural societies that sprang up with the Russian Revolution of 1917 and reached its height in 1920, when it claimed 84,000 members in some 300 studios, clubs, and factory groups. Led intellectually by philosopher Alexander Bogdanov and sheltered by Commissar of Education Anatoly Lunacharsky, it set out to build a wholly new working-class aesthetic from the experience of industrial modernity rather than inherit 'bourgeois' art. Its studios taught literature, theatre, music, and the visual arts; its journals and its theatres in Petrograd and Moscow experimented freely, drawing on futurism and constructivism. The state grew suspicious: in October 1920 the national congress was forced to accept absorption into Narkompros, and a December decree stripped the movement's autonomy. Local groups and periodicals lingered into the early 1920s, and its ethos shaped early Soviet film, notably Eisenstein's.

A cover for the Moscow Proletkult journal Create! (Tvori!) by the proletarian artist Aleksandr Zugrin. The top caption reads "Proletarians o
A cover for the Moscow Proletkult journal Create! (Tvori!) by the proletarian artist Aleksandr Zugrin. The top caption reads "Proletarians oPublic domain (credit: Aleksandr Zugrin) · source

Defining characteristics

  • Deliberate break with classical 'bourgeois' forms in favor of new, experimental techniques
  • Futurist and constructivist influence: machine-age imagery and technological optimism
  • Photography, cinematography, and collage embraced inside 'proletarian art'
  • Collective, mass forms: agitational stagings, public processions, festivals and social drama
  • Cheap mass media - journals, posters, and studio prints - over gallery-bound art
  • Industrial subject matter celebrating factory labor and collective working-class life

Key figures

  • Alexander Bogdanov (1873-1928) — Philosopher who led Moscow Proletkult and theorized proletarian culture
  • Anatoly Lunacharsky (1875-1933) — Commissar of Education who patronized Proletkult while serving the state
  • Maxim Gorky (1868-1936) — Writer who championed proletarian culture in the movement's founding years

Example works

Sources

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