Proletkult and the Avant-Garde, 1917–29 (Edexcel A-Level History): Revision Notes
Proletkult and the Avant-Garde, 1917–29
Introduction: Art and the Soviet state
After the October Revolution of 1917, Soviet leaders recognised that art could be a powerful tool to motivate people and build support for socialism. Stalin later described artists as 'engineers of the human soul', acknowledging art's ability to shape public opinion. This power meant the government needed to control artistic expression to prevent it being used against the regime.
The early years of the Soviet Union (1917-29) witnessed remarkable creative experimentation as avant-garde artists worked to develop a new revolutionary art. However, this period was marked by tensions between artistic freedom and state control. Party officials often struggled to understand or approve of experimental styles, and as Communist power consolidated, control over artists tightened significantly.
The term avant-garde comes from French, meaning 'advance guard' or 'vanguard'. In early twentieth-century art, it referred to artists at the cutting edge of experimental art and culture, who experimented with various influences including chance, geometric shapes, technology and dreams to create innovative art forms.
The debate over proletarian art
Competing visions
Communist leaders agreed that art was crucial to the revolution's future, but disagreed fundamentally about what revolutionary art should look like. This debate centred on whether the new society needed an entirely new proletarian culture or whether workers should learn from existing bourgeois culture.
Lenin's perspective: Lenin believed the best culture was universal – it transcended class boundaries and reflected the human spirit. He argued that workers should study and learn from the finest bourgeois artists who had created universal culture. Lenin was particularly enthusiastic about cinema, which he considered the art form of the future with enormous potential for revolutionary purposes.
Bukharin's support: Bukharin, a leading figure in Soviet politics during the mid-1920s, championed artistic expression and freedom. His position as editor of Pravda (the Communist Party newspaper) gave him significant influence in promoting experimental art.
Lunacharsky and Proletkult
Anatoly Lunacharsky, appointed as People's Commissar of Enlightenment, held a radically different view. He argued that just as capitalism had been dominated by bourgeois culture, the new revolutionary society should be dominated by proletarian culture – art made by working people that reflected their concerns and experiences.
Lunacharsky's vision rested on several key principles:
- Workers should create their own art rather than imitating bourgeois models
- Revolutionary society should foster artistic talent among working people
- Artistic expression was an essential part of a fulfilling life
- Proletarian culture would naturally focus on collective experience rather than individualism
- It would involve a wide range of people, not just an artistic elite
To realise this vision, Lunacharsky supported Proletkult (the proletarian culture movement). This organisation had been established before the October Revolution but grew dramatically from 1918 to 1920, becoming a national movement with branches across Russia.
Proletkult's independence and vulnerability
Proletkult operated as an independent organisation, free from direct Communist Party control. This independence was both Proletkult's strength and ultimately its vulnerability, as it worried Lenin who believed all organisations should be subordinate to Party control.
Proletkult's activities and reach:
- By 1920, approximately 84,000 members worked in over 300 studios across Russia
- Working people could access local studios to paint, sculpt, rehearse plays and stage exhibitions
- The organisation published Gorn (Furnace), a monthly magazine showcasing proletarian artists' work
- The movement flourished despite the chaos of the Civil War, demonstrating remarkable resilience and popular appeal
Lenin's concerns about Futurism
Lenin opposed Proletkult partly because he believed it encouraged Futurism, an artistic style he detested. He described Futurism as degenerate and argued it represented the worst kind of bourgeois art because it celebrated individual self-expression and was incomprehensible to most working people.
Futurism was an international artistic movement inspired by urbanisation, youth and modern technology. It influenced painting, sculpture and literature, often featuring:
- Angular industrial shapes
- Attempts to capture the experience of high-speed travel
- Association with modern technologies like cars and aeroplanes
- Abstract and experimental techniques
Kazimir Malevich, best known for his painting 'Black Square' (1915), was Russia's most famous Futurist artist. His Suprematist work used geometric shapes and abstract forms to create a new visual language that rejected traditional representation.
The dissolution of Proletkult
Despite flourishing from 1917 to 1920 – a remarkable achievement during the Civil War – Proletkult faced growing opposition from Lenin. His concerns were multiple:
- He believed Proletkult was dominated by socialists associated with opposition movements like anarchism
- He thought working people needed basic education more than opportunities for artistic expression
- He feared the organisation's continued independence posed a danger to the revolution
- He wanted all organisations under Party control
At the National Congress of Proletkult in October 1920, Lenin sent representatives who appealed for the organisation to support the Communist Government. Following this intervention, the Congress voted to voluntarily merge with the Commissariat of Education. Artists who wanted to remain independent faced criticism in the Soviet press.
The end of artistic independence
After the merger, government funding was redirected away from local artistic activities towards supporting traditional arts such as ballet. This marked a significant shift away from experimental proletarian culture towards more conventional forms, signalling the beginning of tighter state control over all artistic expression.
Agitprop: Art as propaganda
Lenin and Trotsky believed art could inspire people to support the new government. In 1920, this led to the establishment of the Department of Agitation Propaganda (agitprop), a department within the Communist Party. The Commissar of Enlightenment simultaneously established a similar department called Glavpolitprosvet. These departments organised propaganda designed to build government support, building on propaganda work ongoing since the revolution.
Avant-garde artists often produced agitprop while working for the government. This meant early agitprop was highly experimental – much more so than Lenin preferred, and far more experimental than anything produced after 1929.
The government's use of avant-garde artists for propaganda created an interesting paradox: Lenin disapproved of experimental art styles, yet the most effective early propaganda was created by the very artists whose work he criticised. This tension would eventually be resolved by suppressing experimental styles entirely.
Painting and sculpture
El Lissitzky
Russian avant-garde artists collaborated with the government to create posters, sculptures and paintings supporting the regime. El Lissitzky, a graphic designer and photographer, created one of the Civil War's most famous experimental posters: 'Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge' (1918).
'Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge' (1918)
This poster used geometric shapes to represent the Red Army and White Army, with a style reminiscent of abstract art, particularly Malevich's Suprematist work. The design featured:
- A dynamic red wedge representing the Red Army piercing through white geometric shapes representing the White Army
- Bold, angular composition suggesting movement and revolutionary force
- Minimal text, allowing the visual symbolism to communicate the message
Lissitzky also created a sculpture based on this design, featuring a red wedge splitting white stone. The sculpture was unveiled in Moscow in October 1918 to celebrate the October Revolution's anniversary.
'Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge' was one of over 100 agitprop posters produced during the Civil War. The Russian Telegraph Agency (ROSTA) worked with artists to produce posters displayed in shop windows or on agitprop trains. Vladimir Mayakovsky, a poet and designer, created simple graphic posters reminding Russians of Tsarism's horrors and encouraging Red Army support.
Vladimir Tatlin
Vladimir Tatlin used sculpture to support the new regime. His 'Monument for the Third International' was designed as the world's tallest monument, composed of geometric shapes moving at different rates so the monument's appearance continually shifted. A ten-foot (3 metre) model was completed in 1920, though the final monument was never constructed.
Tatlin's Monument was intended to be taller than the Eiffel Tower and would have contained rotating glass chambers housing different governmental functions. The spiralling structure symbolised the dynamism of the revolution and the forward momentum of communist society. Its failure to be built reflected the economic realities facing the Soviet Union during the Civil War.
Revolutionary photography
Alexander Rodchenko was the most prominent avant-garde photographer collaborating with the Soviet Government in the early years. He used techniques like photomontage to create posters celebrating the revolution. Rodchenko was one of Constructivism's founders – a Russian artistic movement seeking to produce art with a clear purpose. During the NEP (New Economic Policy) period, Rodchenko even created advertising posters for companies, demonstrating the practical applications of his talents.
Constructivism represented a radical departure from traditional art by emphasising:
- Function over decoration
- Industrial materials and techniques
- Art serving social and political purposes
- Integration of art with everyday life
- Rejection of 'art for art's sake'
Constructivist artists believed art should be useful and contribute directly to building the new Soviet society.
Revolutionary cinema
Lenin believed cinema was the twentieth century's most important art form and should inspire government support. Despite extreme scarcity of cinematic equipment (cameras, films, projectors) during the Civil War, Soviet cinema flourished in the 1920s. Experimental filmmakers like Dziga Vertov and Sergei Eisenstein created films supporting the regime.
Dziga Vertov
Vertov was an experimental filmmaker who rejected Hollywood conventions including scripts, sets and actors. He preferred making 'cinema of fact', simply filming people as they worked, shopped or enjoyed themselves. His documentary series was called Kino-Pravda (film-truth).
Vertov's experimental techniques included:
- Using mirrors for unusual angles
- Speeding up or slowing down film
- Running film backwards
- Creating montages
- Mounting cameras on cars and trains to capture the feeling of speed (influenced by Futurism)
- Extensive filming of machines
His most famous film, A Man with a Movie Camera (1929), was filmed in several of the Soviet Union's largest cities, telling the story of a day in Soviet city life. His films were so experimental that the Soviet newspaper Pravda described them as 'insane', 'puzzling' and 'laughable'.
The paradox of Vertov's work
Despite creating propaganda supporting the Soviet regime, Vertov's highly experimental techniques made his films incomprehensible to many ordinary workers and peasants – the very audience they were meant to inspire. This contradiction highlighted the fundamental tension between avant-garde experimentation and effective mass communication.
Sergei Eisenstein
Unlike Vertov, Eisenstein used actors, scripts and sets, telling clear stories while combining revolutionary messages with experimental filmmaking. In the mid-1920s, he designed a series of seven films entitled Towards Dictatorship of the Proletariat, telling the story leading to the October Revolution.
Eisenstein's Revolutionary Films
Strike (1925) was the first part of the series, depicting a 1903 strike. The film was influenced by Futurism and abstract art, containing many scenes dominated by circles or grids. Eisenstein used special effects to combine human faces with animal faces, creating powerful symbolic imagery.
Battleship Potemkin told the story of a naval mutiny during the 1905 Revolution. The film's famous Odessa Steps sequence revolutionised film editing and remains one of cinema's most influential scenes.
October: Ten Days That Shook the World (1928) dramatised the October Revolution's events, though it later faced censorship to remove references to Trotsky.
By the late 1920s, Eisenstein's experimental techniques faced criticism for being incomprehensible to workers and peasants. In the 1930s, his films were edited to remove references to Trotsky. Eisenstein continued making films in a more traditional style under Stalin.
Art under the NEP
During the NEP period, there was relatively large creative freedom. However, as the 1920s progressed, the Communist Party asserted greater artistic control.
Tightening control
From 1918 to late 1920, Lenin and senior Communists were preoccupied with winning the Civil War, resulting in relatively loose control of artists. Consequently, Proletkult and avant-garde artists flourished. However, as the Civil War ended, Lenin began enforcing tighter control of artistic expression. Proletkult was the first victim. By the decade's end, the Communist Party firmly controlled art.
Why the Party opposed avant-garde art
Most senior Communists believed workers and peasants simply could not understand avant-garde art. Therefore, as the 1920s progressed, the avant-garde became less influential. Artists were forced to change their style, and artistic institutions faced attacks, with some closing.
Examples of repression:
- Kazimir Malevich sent his most radical paintings to Germany in 1927 and adopted a more conventional style at his life's end
- The Petrograd State Institute of Artistic Culture was forced to close in 1926 following a campaign against avant-garde art in Pravda, which claimed the art school used government money to encourage individualism and debauchery
Concerns about popular culture
Official concerns about contemporary art forms also extended to popular culture. From the mid-1920s, the government criticised American fashion and music's influence on young people. Fashion from the USA, particularly the flapper style, and jazz were extremely popular with young people in Soviet cities.
Party leaders claimed these influences encouraged:
- Sexual promiscuity
- Drunkenness
- Prioritising dancing over attending lectures on revolutionary politics
From the mid-1920s, Communist Party bosses used the OGPU (secret police) to break up parties where jazz was played.
Cultural control beyond high art
The Party's concern with American popular culture reveals how comprehensive their vision of control was. They sought to regulate not just avant-garde art in galleries and museums, but also the everyday cultural choices of ordinary Soviet citizens, from the music they listened to to the clothes they wore.
The rise of traditional artists
A new group of artists emerged in the late 1920s: members of the Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia. These artists painted in the traditional style of nineteenth-century painters and produced pictures obviously celebrating Soviet Government achievements. Works such as Aleksandr Deyneka's 'The Defence of Petrograd' won Party officials' praise, signalling the direction Soviet art would take in the following decades.
Key Points to Remember:
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Artistic freedom flourished in the early years after the October Revolution (1917-20) as avant-garde artists experimented with revolutionary art forms, but this freedom was gradually restricted as the Communist Party consolidated power.
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The Proletkult debate revealed fundamental disagreements between Lenin and Lunacharsky about revolutionary culture: Lunacharsky wanted workers to create their own proletarian culture, while Lenin believed they should learn from the best bourgeois culture. Lenin's view ultimately prevailed.
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Proletkult grew to 84,000 members working in over 300 studios by 1920, but was dissolved that same year when Lenin forced it to merge with the Commissariat of Education, ending its independence and marking the beginning of tighter state control over art.
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Avant-garde artists like El Lissitzky, Vladimir Tatlin and Alexander Rodchenko created experimental propaganda (agitprop) supporting the regime, using techniques from Futurism, Constructivism and Suprematism, while filmmakers Dziga Vertov and Sergei Eisenstein pioneered revolutionary cinema.
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By the late 1920s, the Communist Party had firmly established control over artistic expression, criticising experimental art as incomprehensible to workers, suppressing American cultural influences like jazz and flapper fashion, and promoting traditional artistic styles that would develop into Socialist Realism under Stalin.