Bolshevik model of culture (20-30s of XX century)

Abstract

At the beginning of the last century, Marxist ideas were popular. Georgian Social-Democrats also advocated the class division and antagonism of the nation, which was the main difference between them and the "Tergdaleulebi".The understanding of culture as a phenomenon and its essence from the Bolshevik point of view was peculiar and different. In this regard, the "theories" of Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, Lunacharsky, Bogdanov about culture and cultural life stood out.

During the First World War, Lenin formulated the concept of the existence of "two cultures" in every national culture. In the Bolshevism Combat Manifesto on Cultural Issues, Lenin formulated the basic principles of totalitarian culture. Compared to Lenin, Stalinist cultural propaganda is more contrasting. Especially since there is a certain heredity between them - between cultural concepts and types of cultural politics.Stalin created a monolithic concept of a totalitarian culture that would be classless and national Soviet socialist culture only in form.Anatoly Lunacharsky, the Commissar of Public Education of Soviet Russia and then the Soviet Union, formed the concept of culture in the pre-revolutionary period, when he joined Bogdanov's group, which, among other things, put forward the idea of "proletarian culture". According to Bogdanov, the "proletarian culture" is the starting point of the collectivist society - it is true, still imperfect, distorted by bourgeois relations, but potentially free from the "fetish of power" which forms a new type of labor and makes new forms and production relations universal.It was believed that art is a means of educating a new person and transforming social reality. In their aesthetic system, art is considered not only as a means of perceiving reality, but also as a means of changing and transforming it. The term "social engineering" was introduced by Gastev, a prominent figure of the Proletkult. He considered it possible through art to radically transform not only social life, but also the human psyche.

Social-democrats (Bolsheviks), and more so their party leaders, created the concept of the nature and role of culture, which after they came to power, was raised to the rank of state policy. The views of the creators of the revolution played an important role in the cultural policy of the Soviet state.