Leon Trotsky

Class and Art

Culture Under the
Dictatorship
(May 1924)

Delivered: May 9, 1924. Speech during discussion at the

Press Department of the Central Committee of the RCP(B)
on Party Policy in the Field of Imaginative Literature.
Publisher: New Park, London, September 1974, ISBN 0
902030 10 8. Reprinted from Fourth International of
July 1967.
Source: Voprosy Kul’tury Pri Diktatura
Proletariata [Problems of Culture under the
Dictatorship of the Proletariat] (1925), pp.93-110.
Translated: Brian Pearce.
Online Version: Marxists Internet Archive, 2002.
Transcribed: Robert Barrois.
HTML Markup: David Walters.

Trotsky: It seems to me that it is Comrade

Raskolnikov who has given most distinctive
expression here to the point of view of the Na
Postu group – you can’t get away from that,
comrades of the Na Postu group! After a long
absence, Raskolnikov spoke here with all the
freshness of Afghanistan, whereas the other Na
Postu people, having tasted a little of the tree of
knowledge, tried to cover their nakedness – except
Comrade Vardin, however, who goes on living the
way he was born. (Vardin: “Why, you didn’t hear
what I said here!”) True, I arrived late. But, first, I
read your article in the last issue of Na Postu;
secondly, I have just glanced through the verbatim
record of your speech; and, thirdly, it must be said
that one can tell beforehand, without listening to
you, what you are going to say. (Laughter)
 But to return to Comrade Raskolnikov. He says:
they recommend the “fellow-travellers” to us, but
did the old, pre-war Pravda or Zvezda print the
words of Artsybashev, Leonid Andreyev and others
whom now they would certainly call “fellow-
travellers”? There is an example of a fresh
approach to the question, not spoilt by any
reflections. What are Artsybashev and Andreyev
doing here? So far as I know, nobody has called
them “fellow-travellers”. Leonid Andreyev died in a
state of epileptic hatred of soviet Russia.
Artsybashev was not so long ago simply pushed
over the frontier. One can’t muddle things up in
such a shameless way! What is a “fellow-traveller”?
In literature as in politics we call by this name
someone who, stumbling and staggering, goes up
to a certain point along the same road which we
shall follow much further. Whoever
goes against us is not a fellow-traveller but an
enemy, whom if necessary we will deport, for the
well-being of the revolution is our highest law.
How can you mix up Leonid Andreyev in this
question of “fellow-travellers”?
(Raskolnikov: “Well, but what about Pilnyak?”)
If you are going to talk about Artsybashev when
you mean Pilnyak, there’s no arguing with you.
(Laughter. A shout: “But aren’t they the same
thing?”) What do you mean: aren’t they the same
thing? If you name names, you must stick to them.
Pilnyak may be good or bad, in this way or that he
may be good or he may be bad – but Pilnyak is
Pilnyak, and you must talk about him as Pilnyak,
and not as Leonid Andreyev. Knowledge in general
begins with distinguishing between things and
appearances, and not with chaotic confusion .
Raskolnikov says: “We didn’t invite ‘fellow-
travellers’ into the pages of Zvezda and Pravda,
but sought and found poets and writers in the
depths of the proletariat.” Sought and found! In
the depths of the proletariat! But what did you do
with them? Why have you hidden them from us?
(Raskolnikov: “There is, for instance, Demyan
Bedny.”) Oh, well now, that I didn’t know, I must
confess – that we discovered Demyan Bedny in the
depths of the proletariat. (General laughter) You
see with what methods we are approaching the
problem of literature: we speak of Leonid
Andreyev, and we mean Pilnyak, we boast that we
have found writers and poets in the depths of the
proletariat, and then when we call the roll, out of
these “depths” there answers only Demyan Bedny.
(Laughter) This won’t do. This is frivolity. Much
more seriousness is needed in considering this
matter.

Let us try, indeed, to look more seriously at those

pre-revolutionary workers’ publications,
newspapers and periodicals, which have been
mentioned here. We all remember that they used
to carry some verses devoted to the struggle, to
May Day, and so on. All these verses, such as they
were, constituted very important and significant
documents in the history of culture. They
expressed the revolutionary awakening and
political growth of the working class. In this
cultural-historical sense their importance was no
less than that of the works of all the Shakespeares,
Molières and Pushkins in the world. In these feeble
verses was the pledge of a new and higher human
culture which the awakened masses will create
when they have mastered the elements of the old
culture. But, all the same, the workers’ verses
in Zvezda and Pravda do not at all signify the
rise of a new, proletarian literature. Inartistic
doggerel in the Derzhavin (or pre-Derzhavin) style
cannot be regarded as a new literature, although
those thoughts and feelings which sought
expression in these verses also belong to a writer
who is beginning to appear from the working-class
milieu. It is wrong to suppose that the
development of literature is an unbroken chain, in
which the naïve, though sincere, doggerel of young
workers at the beginning of this century is the first
link in the coming “proletarian literature”. In
reality, these revolutionary verses were a political
event, not a literary one. They contributed not to
the growth of literature but to the growth of the
revolution. The revolution led to the victory of the
proletariat, the victory of the proletariat is leading
to the transformation of the economy. The
transformation of the economy is in process of
changing the cultural state of the working masses.
And the cultural growth of the working people will
create the real basis for a new art. “But it is
impossible to permit duality,” Comrade
Raskolnikov tells us. “It is necessary that in our
publications political writing and poetry should
form one whole; Bolshevism is distinguished by
monolithicity,” and so on. At first sight this
reasoning seems irrefutable. Actually, it is an
empty abstraction. At best it is a pious but unreal
wish for something good. Of course it would be
splendid if we had, to supplement our Communist
political writing, the Bolshevik world-outlook
expressed in artistic form. But we haven’t, and that
is not accidental. The heart of the matter is that
artistic creativity, by its very nature, lags behind
the other modes of expression of a man’s spirit,
and still more of the spirit of a class. It is one thing
to understand something and express it logically,
and quite another thing to assimilate it organically,
reconstructing the whole system of one’s feelings,
and to find a new kind of artistic expression for
this new entity. The latter process is more organic,
slower, more difficult to subject to conscious
influence – and in the end it will always lag behind.
The political writing of a class hastens ahead on
stilts, while its artistic creativity hobbles along
behind on crutches. Marx and Engels were great
political writers of the proletariat in the period
when the class was still not really awakened.
(From the meeting: “Yes, you’re right there.”) I
am very grateful to you. (Laughter) But take the
trouble to draw the necessary conclusions from
this, and understand why there is not this
monolithicity between political writing and poetry,
and this will in turn help you to understand why in
the old legal Marxist periodicals we always found
ourselves in a bloc, or semi-bloc, with artistic
“fellow-travellers”, sometimes very dubious and
even plainly false ones. You remember, of
course, Novoye Slovo, the best of the old legal
Marxist periodicals, in which many Marxists of the
older generation collaborated including Vladimir
Ilyich. This periodical, as everyone knows, was
friendly with the Decadents. What was the reason
for that? It was because the Decadents were then a
young and persecuted tendency in bourgeois
literature. And this persecuted situation of theirs
impelled them to take sides with our attitude of
opposition, though the latter, of course, was quite
different in character, in spite of which the
Decadents were temporarily fellow-travellers with
us. And later Marxist periodicals (and the semi-
Marxist ones, it goes without saying), right down
to Prosveshcheniye, had no sort of “monolithic”
fiction section, but set aside considerable space for
the “fellow-travellers”. Some might be either more
severe or more indulgent in this respect, but it was
impossible to carry on a “monolithic” policy in the
field of art, because the artistic elements needed
for such a policy were lacking.

But Raskolnikov at bottom doesn’t want this. In

works of art he ignores that which makes them
works of art. This was most vividly shown in his
remarkable judgement on Dante’s Divine Comedy,
which in his opinion is valuable to us just because
it enables us to understand the psychology of a
certain class at a certain time. To put the matter
that way means simply to strike out the Divine
Comedy – from the realm of art. Perhaps the time
has come to do that, but if so we must understand
the essence of the question and not shrink from the
conclusions. If I say that the importance of
the Divine Comedy lies in the fact that it gives me
an understanding of the state of mind of certain
classes in a certain epoch, this means that I
transform it into a mere historical document, for,
as a work of art, the Divine Comedy must speak in
some way to my feelings and moods. Dante’s work
may act on me in a depressing way, fostering
pessimism and despondency in me, or, on the
contrary, it may rouse, inspire, encourage me. This
is the fundamental relationship between a reader
and a work of art. Nobody, of course, forbids a
reader to assume the role of a researcher and
approach the Divine Comedy as merely an
historical document. It is clear, though, that these
two approaches are on two different levels, which,
though connected, do not overlap. How is it
thinkable that there should be not an historical but
a directly aesthetic relationship between us and a
medieval Italian book? This is explained by the fact
that in class society, in spite of all its changeability,
there are certain common features. Works of art
developed in a medieval Italian city can, we find,
affect us too. What does this require? A small
thing: it requires that these feelings and moods
shall have received such broad, intense, powerful
expression as to have raised them above the
limitations of the life of those days. Dante was, of
course, the product of a certain social milieu. But
Dante was a genius. He raised the experience of his
epoch to a tremendous artistic height. And if we,
while today approaching other works of medieval
literature merely as objects of study, approach
the Divine Comedy as a source of artistic
perception, this happens not because Dante was a
Florentine petty bourgeois of the 13th century but,
to a considerable extent, in spite of that
circumstance. Let us take, for instance, such an
elementary psychological feeling as fear of death.
This feeling is characteristic not only of man but
also of animals. In man it first found simple
articulate expression, and later also artistic
expression. In different ages, in different social
milieux, this expression has changed, that is to say,
men have feared death in different ways. And
nevertheless what was said on this score not only
by Shakespeare, Byron, Goethe, but also by the
Psalmist, can move us. (Exclamation by Comrade
Libedinsky) Yes, yes, I came in at the very moment
when you, Comrade Libedinsky, were explaining to
Comrade Voronsky in the terms of elementary
political instruction (you yourself put it like that)
about the variation in feelings and states of mind
in different classes. In that general form it is
indisputable. However, for all that, you won’t deny
that Shakespeare and Byron somehow speak to
your soul and mine. (Libedinsky: “They will
soon stop speaking.”) Whether it will be soon, I
don’t know, but undoubtedly a time will come
when people will approach the works of
Shakespeare and Byron in the same way as we
approach most poets of the Middle Ages, that is,
exclusively from the standpoint of scientific-
historical analysis. Even sooner, however, will
come the time when people will stop seeking in
Marx’s Capital for precepts for their practical
activity, and Capital will have become merely an
historical document, together with the program of
our party. But at present we do not yet intend to
put Shakespeare, Byron, Pushkin in the archives,
and we will continue to recommend them to the
workers. Comrade Sosnovsky, for instance,
strongly recommends Pushkin, declaring that he
will undoubtedly last another fifty years. Let us not
speak of periods of time. But in what sense can we
recommend Pushkin to a worker? There is no
proletarian class viewpoint in Pushkin, not to
speak of a monolithic expression of Communist
feelings. Of course, Pushkin’s language is
magnificent – that cannot be denied – but, after
all, this language is used by him for expressing the
world-outlook of the nobility. Shall we say to the
worker: read Pushkin in order to understand how a
nobleman, a serf-owner and gentleman of the bed
chamber, encountered Spring and experienced
Autumn? This element is, of course, present in
Pushkin, for Pushkin grew up on a particular social
basis. But the expression that Pushkin gave his
feelings is so saturated with the artistic, and
generally with the psychological, experience of
centuries, is so crystallized, that it has lasted down
to our times and, according to Comrade Sosnovsky,
will last another fifty years. And when people tell
me that the artistic significance of Dante for us
consists in his expressing the way of life of a
certain epoch, that only makes one spread one’s
hands in helplessness. I am sure that many, like
me, would, after reading Dante, have to strain their
memories to remember the date and place of his
birth, and yet none the less, this would not have
prevented us from getting artistic delight, if not
from the whole of the Divine Comedy then at least
from some parts of it. Since I am not a historian of
the Middle Ages, my attitude to Dante is
predominantly artistic. (Ryazanov: “That’s an
exaggeration. ‘To read Dante is to take a bath in
the sea’, said Shevyryev, who was also against
history, replying to Byelinsky.”) I don’t doubt that
Shevyryev did express himself as Comrade
Ryazanov says, but I am not against history –
that’s pointless. Of course the historical approach
to Dante is legitimate and necessary and affects
our aesthetic attitude to him, but one can’t
substitute one for the other. I remember what
Kareyev wrote on this point, in a polemic with the
Marxists: let them, the Marxides (that was how
they ironically spoke of the Marxists in those days)
tell us, for instance, what class interests dictated
the Divine Comedy. And from the other side, the
Italian Marxist, old Antonio Labriola, wrote
something like this: “Only fools could try to
interpret the text of the Divine Comedy as though
it were made of the cloth that Florentine
merchants provided for their customers.” I
remember this expression almost word for word
because in the polemic with the subjectivists I had
occasion to quote these words more than once, in
the old days. I think that Comrade Raskolnikov’s
attitude not only to Dante but to art in general
proceeds not from the Marxist criterion but from
that of the late Shulyatikov, who provided a
caricature of Marxism in this connection. Antonio
Labriola also made his vigorous comment on this
sort of caricature.

“By proletarian literature I understand literature

which looks at the world with the eyes of the
vanguard,” and so on, and so on. This is the
opinion of Comrade Lelevich. Splendid, we are
ready to accept his definition. Give us though, not
only the definition but, also the literature. Where is
it? Show us it! (Lelevich:“Komsomolia – there
is the best of recent times.”) What times? (A
voice: “The last year.”) Well, all right, the last
year. I don’t want to speak polemically. My attitude
to Bezymensky has nothing in it that can be called
negative, I hope. I praised Komsomolia highly
when I read it in manuscript. But regardless of
whether we can on this account proclaim the
appearance of proletarian literature, I can say that
Bezymensky would not exist as an artist if we did
not have Mayakovsky, Pasternak and even Pilnyak.
(A voice: “That proves nothing.”) This does
prove, at least, – that the artistic creativity of a
given epoch is a very complex web which is not
woven automatically, by discussion groups and
seminars, but comes into being through complex
interrelations, in the first place with the different
fellow-travelling groups. You can’t get away from
that; Bezymensky doesn’t try to, and he does well
not to. In some of his works, the influence of
“fellow-travellers” is even too noticeable. But this
is an unavoidable phenomenon of youth and
growth. And here we have Comrade Libedinsky,
the enemy of “fellow-travellers”, and himself an
imitator of Pilnyak and even Byely. Yes, yes,
Comrade Averbach must excuse me; I see him
shaking his head, though without, much
conviction. Libedinsky’s last
story, Zavtra [Tomorrow] is like the diagonal of a
parallelogram, one side of which is Pilnyak and the
other Andrei Byely. In itself that’s no misfortune –
Libedinsky can’t be born in the land of Na
Postu as a ready-made writer. (Voice: “It’s a very
barren land.”) I have already spoken about
Libedinsky, after the first appearance of
his Nedelya [The Week]. Bukharin then, as you
will recall, fervently praised it, out of the
expansiveness and kindness of his nature, and this
praise alarmed me. Meanwhile I was obliged to
observe the extreme dependence of Comrade
Libedinsky on those very writers – “fellow-
travellers” and semi-fellow-travellers – whom he
and his co-thinkers all curse in Na Postu. You see
once more that art and political writing are not
always monolithic. I have no intention of giving up
Comrade Libedinsky as a bad job on that account. I
think that it is clear to all of us that our common
duty is to show the greatest concern for every
young artistic talent ideologically close to us, and
all the more when it is a matter of someone who is
our brother-in-arms. The first condition of such an
attentive and considerate attitude is not to give
premature praise, killing the young writer’s self-
criticism; the second condition is not to wash one’s
hands of the man at once if he stumbles. Comrade
Libedinsky is still very young. He needs to learn
and to grow. And in this connection it turns out
that Pilnyak fulfils a need. (A voice: “For
Libedinsky or for us?”) First of all, for Libedinsky.
(Libedinsky: “But this means that I’ve been
poisoned by Pilnyak.”) Alas, the human organism
can be nourished only by taking poison and
producing internal resources that combat the
poison. That’s life. If you let yourself go dry, like a
Caspian roach, that won’t mean you’re poisoned,
but you won’t be nourished either; indeed, it will
mean nothing at all will happen. (Laughter)

Comrade Pletnev, speaking here in defence of his

abstractions about proletarian culture and its
constituent part, proletarian literature, quoted
Vladimir Ilyich against me. Now there’s something
that’s really to the point! We must give that proper
consideration. Not long ago an entire booklet
appeared, written by Pletnev, Tretiakov and Sizov,
in which proletarian literature was defended by
means of quotations from Lenin against Trotsky.
This method is very fashionable nowadays. Vardin
could write a whole thesis on the subject. But the
fact is, Comrade Pletnev, that you know very well
how matters stood, because you yourself appealed
to me to save you from the thunders of Vladimir
Ilyich, who was going, you thought, on account of
this very “proletarian culture” of yours, to close
down Proletkult altogether. And I promised you
that I would defend the continued existence
of Proletkult, on certain grounds, but that as
regards Bogdanov’s abstractions about proletarian
culture I was entirely opposed to you and your
protector Bukharin, and entirely in agreement with
Vladimir Ilyich.

Comrade Vardin, who speaks here as nothing

less than the living embodiment of Party tradition,
does not shrink from trampling in the crudest way
on what Lenin wrote about proletarian culture. As
we know, there is plenty of empty piety around:
people “firmly agree” with Lenin and then preach
the absolute opposite to his views. In terms that
leave room for no other interpretation, Lenin
mercilessly condemned “chatter about proletarian
culture”. However, there is nothing simpler than
getting away from this evidence: why, of course,
Lenin condemned chatter about proletarian
culture, but, don’t you see, it was only chatter that
he condemned, and we are not chattering but
seriously getting down to work, and even standing
with our arms akimbo. They only forget that
Lenin’s sharp condemnation was aimed precisely
at those who are now referring to him. Empty
piety, I repeat, is available in plenty: refer to Lenin
and do the contrary.

The comrades who have spoken here under the

sign of proletarian culture approach different ideas
according to the attitude of the authors of those
ideas to their Proletkult groups. I have tested this
and found it true as regards my own fate. My book
on literature, which caused so much alarm among
certain comrades, appeared originally, as some of
you may perhaps recall, in the form of articles
in Pravda. I wrote this book over a period of two
years, during two summer breaks. This
circumstance, as we see today, is of importance in
relation to the question that interests us. When it
appeared, in the form of newspaper articles, the
first part of the book, dealing with “non-October”
literature, with the “fellow-travellers”, with the
“peasant-singers”, and exposing the limitedness
and contradictions of the ideological-artistic
position of the fellow-travellers, the Na
Postu comrades hailed me with enthusiasm –
everywhere you cared to look you found quotations
from my articles on the fellow-travellers. At one
stage I was quite depressed by it. (Laughter) My
estimation of the “fellow-travellers”, I repeat, was
regarded as practically faultless; even Vardin made
no objections to it. (Vardin: “And I don’t object to
it now.”) That is just what I say. But why then do
you now obliquely and insinuatingly argue against
me about the “fellow-travellers”? What is going on
here? At first sight it’s quite incomprehensible. But
the solution is a simple one: my crime is not that I
incorrectly defined the social nature of the fellow-
travellers or their artistic significance – no,
Comrade Vardin even now, as we heard, “does not
object” to that – my crime is that I did not bow
before the manifestos of Oktyabr or Kuznitsa,
that I did not acknowledge these groups as the
monopolist representatives of the artistic interests
of the proletariat – in short, that I did not identify
the cultural-historical interests and tasks of the
class with the intentions, plans and pretensions of
certain literary groups. That was where I went
wrong. And when this became clear, then there
arose the howl, unexpected by its belatedness:
Trotsky is on the side of the petty-bourgeois
“fellow-traveller”! Am I for the “fellow-travellers”,
or against them? In what sense am I against them?
You knew that nearly two years ago, from my
articles on the “fellow-travellers”. But then you
agreed, you praised, you quoted, you gave your
approval. And when, a year later, it turned out that
my criticism of the “fellow-travellers” was not at all
just an approach to the glorification of some
amateurish literary group or other, then the
writers and defenders of this group, or rather of
these groups, began to bring forward philosophical
arguments against my allegedly incorrect attitude
to the “fellow-travellers”. Oh, strategists! My
offence was not that I estimated incorrectly
Pilnyak or Mayakovsky – the Na Postu group
added nothing to what I had said, but merely
repeated it in vulgarized form – my offence was
that I knocked their own literary factory! In the
whole of their peevish criticism there is not the
shadow of a class approach. What we find is the
attitude of one literary group engaged in
competition with others, and that’s all.

I mentioned the “peasant-singers”, and we have

heard here that the Na Postu group especially
approved of that chapter. It’s not enough to
approve, you should understand. What is the point
here regarding the “peasant-singing” fellow-
travellers? It is that this is a phenomenon which is
not accidental, is not of minor importance and is
not ephemeral. In our country, please don’t forget,
we have the dictatorship of the proletariat in a
country which is inhabited mainly by peasants.
The intelligentsia is placed between these two
classes as between two millstones, is ground up
little by little and arises anew, and cannot be
ground up completely, that is, it will remain as an
“intelligentsia” for a long time yet, until the full
development of socialism and a very considerable
rise in the cultural level of the entire population of
the country. The intelligentsia serves the workers’
and peasants’ state and subordinates itself to the
proletariat, partly from fear, partly from
conviction; it wavers and will continue to waver in
accordance with the course of events, and it will
seek ideological support for its waverings in the
peasantry – this is the source of the Soviet
literature of the “peasant-singers”. What are the
prospects of this school? Is it basically hostile to
us? Does its path lead towards us or away to us?
And this depends on the general course of events.
The task of the proletariat consists in retaining all-
round hegemony over the peasantry and leading it
to socialism. If we were to suffer a setback on this
road, that is, if there were to be a break between
the proletariat and the peasantry, then the
“peasant-singing” intelligentsia, or, more correctly,
99 per cent of the entire intelligentsia, would turn
against the proletariat. But this eventuality is not
at all inevitable. We are, on the contrary, following
a course aimed at bringing the peasantry, under
the leadership of the proletariat, to socialism. This
is a very, very long road. In the course of this
process both the proletariat and the peasantry will
bring forward their own intelligentsia. It need not
be supposed that the intelligentsia arising from the
proletariat will be a 100 per cent proletarian
intelligentsia. The very fact that the proletariat is
obliged to promote from its ranks a special stratum
of “cultural workers” inevitably means a more or
less considerable cultural disconnection between
the remainder of the class as a whole and the
proletarians promoted from it. This applies even
more in the case of the peasant intelligentsia. The
peasants’ road to socialism is not at all the same as
the proletariat’s. And in so far as the intelligentsia,
even an arch-Soviet intelligentsia, is unable to
merge its road with the road of the proletarian
vanguard, to that degree it tries to find a political,
ideological, artistic support for itself in the
peasant, whether real or imagined. This appears all
the more in the sphere of fiction, where we have an
old Populist tradition. Is this for us or against us? I
repeat: the answer entirely depends on the entire
future course of development. If we draw the
peasant, towed by the proletariat, to socialism –
and we confidently believe that we shall draw him
– then the creative work of the “peasant-singers”
will evolve by complex and tortuous paths into the
socialist art of the future. This complexity of the
problems involved, and at the same time their
reality and concreteness, is completely beyond the
understanding of the Na Postu group, and not
only of them. This is their fundamental mistake.
Talking about the “fellow-travellers” regardless of
this social basis and prospect means simply
wagging one’s tongue.

Allow me, comrades, to say a little more about

Comrade Vardin’s tactics in the field of literature,
in relation to his last article in Na Postu. In my
view this is not tactics but a disgrace! An amazingly
supercilious tone, but deadly little knowledge or
understanding. No understanding of art as art, that
is, as a particular, specific field of human
creativity; nor any Marxist understanding of the
conditions and ways of development of art.
Instead, an unworthy juggling of quotations from
White-Guard publications abroad which, do you
see, have praised Comrade Voronsky for
publishing the works of Pilnyak, or ought to have
praised him, or said something against Vardin and,
maybe, for Voronsky, and so on, and so on – in
that spirit of “circumstantial evidence” which has
to make up for the lack of knowledge and
understanding. Comrade Vardin’s last article is
built on the idea that a White-Guard newspaper
supported Voronsky against Vardin, writing that
the whole conflict came down to the point that
Voronsky approached literature from the literary
point of view. “Comrade Voronsky, by his political
behaviour,” says Vardin, “has fully deserved this
White-Guard kiss.” But this is an insinuation, not
an analysis of the question! If Vardin disagrees
with the multiplication table, while Voronsky finds
himself in this matter on the same side as a White
Guard who knows arithmetic, Voronsky’s political
reputation has nothing to fear from that. Yes, art
has to be approached as art, literature as literature,
that is, as a quite specific field of human
endeavour. Of course we have a class criterion in
art too, but this class criterion must be refracted
artistically, that is, in conformity with the quite
specific peculiarities of that field of creativity to
which we are applying our criterion. The
bourgeoisie knows this very well, it likewise
approaches art from its class point of view, it
knows how to get from art what it needs, but only
because it approaches art as art. What is there to
wonder at if an artistically-literate bourgeois has a
disrespectful attitude to Vardin, who approaches
art from the standpoint of political “circumstantial
evidence”, and not with a class-artistic criterion?
And if there is anything that makes me feel
ashamed it is not that in this dispute I may find
myself formally in the same boat with some White
Guard who understands art, but that, before the
eyes of this White Guard I am obliged to explain
the first letters in the alphabet of art to a Party
publicist who writes articles about art. What a
cheapening of Marxism this is: instead of making a
Marxist analysis of the question, one finds a
quotation from Rul or Dyen and around it piles
up abuse and insinuations!

One cannot approach art as one can politics, not

because artistic creation is a religious rite or
something mystical, as somebody here ironically
said, but because it has its own laws of
development, and above all because in artistic
creation an enormous role is played by
subconscious processes – slower, more idle and
less subjected to management and guidance, just
because they are subconscious. It has been said
here that those writings of Pilnyak’s which are
closer to Communism are feebler than those which
are politically further away from us. What is the
explanation? Why, just this, that on the
rationalistic plane Pilnyak is ahead of himself as an
artist. To consciously swing himself round on his
own axis even only a few degrees is a very difficult
task for an artist, often connected with a profound,
sometimes fatal crisis. And what we are
considering is not an individual or group change in
creative endeavour, but such a change on the class,
social scale. This is a long and very complicated
process. When we speak of proletarian literature
not in the sense of particular more or less
successful verses or stories, but in the
incomparably more weighty sense in which we
speak of bourgeois literature, we have no right to
forget for one moment the extraordinary cultural
backwardness of the overwhelming majority of the
proletariat. Art is created on the basis of a
continual everyday, cultural, ideological inter-
relationship between a class and its artists.
Between the aristocracy or the bourgeoisie and
their artists there was no split in daily life. The
artists lived, and still live, in a bourgeois milieu,
breathing the air of bourgeois salons, they received
and are receiving hypodermic inspirations from
their class. This nourishes the subconscious
processes of their creativity. Does the proletariat of
today offer such a cultural-ideological milieu, in
which the new artist may obtain, without leaving it
in his day-to-day existence, all the inspiration he
needs while at the same time mastering the
procedures of his craft? No, the working masses
are culturally extremely backward; the illiteracy or
low level of literacy of the majority of the workers
presents in itself a very great obstacle to this. And
above all, the proletariat, in so far as it remains a
proletariat, is compelled to expend its best forces
in political struggle, in restoring the economy, and
in meeting elementary cultural needs, fighting
against illiteracy, lousiness, syphilis, etc. Of course,
the political methods and revolutionary customs of
the proletariat can also be called its culture; but
this, in any case, is a sort of culture which is
destined to die out as a new, real culture develops.
And this new culture will be culture all the more to
the extent that the proletariat has ceased to be a
proletariat, that is, the more successfully and
completely socialist society develops.

Mayakovsky wrote a very powerful piece

called The Thirteen Apostles, the revolutionariness
of which was still rather cloudy and formless. And
when this same Mayakovsky decided to swing
himself round to the proletarian line, and
wrote 150 Million, he suffered a most frightful
rationalistic downfall. This means that in his logic
he had outrun his real creative condition. With
Pilnyak, as we have said already, a similar disparity
is to be observed between his conscious striving
and the unconscious processes of creation. To this
must be added merely this, that arch-proletarian
works also do not in themselves provide the writer
in present-day conditions with any guarantees that
his creativity will prove to be organically linked
with the class. Nor do groupings of proletarian
writers provide this guarantee, precisely because
the writer, by devoting himself to artistic work, is
compelled, in existing conditions, to separate
himself from the milieu of his own class and
breathe an atmosphere which, after all, is the same
as that breathed by the “fellow-travellers”. This is
just one literary circle among other literary circles.

And as regards future prospects, as they are

called, I wanted to say something, but my time is
long since up. (Voices: “Please go on!”) “Give us,
at least, some view of the way ahead,” comrades
come back at me. What does this mean? The Na
Postu comrades and their allied groups are
steering towards a proletarian literature created by
the circle method, in a laboratory, so to speak. This
way forward I reject absolutely. I repeat once more
that it is not possible to put in one historical
category feudal, bourgeois and proletarian
literature. Such a historical classification is
radically false. I spoke about this in my book, and
all the objections I have heard seem to me
unconvincing and frivolous. Those who talk about
proletarian literature seriously and over a long
period, who make a platform of proletarian
culture, are thinking, where this question is
concerned, along the line of a formal analogy with
bourgeois culture. The bourgeoisie took power and
created its own culture; the proletariat, they think
having taken power, will create proletarian culture.
But the bourgeoisie is a rich and therefore
educated class. Bourgeois culture existed already
before the bourgeoisie had formally taken power.
The bourgeoisie took power in order to perpetuate
its rule. The proletariat in bourgeois society is a
propertyless and deprived class, and so it cannot
create a culture of its own. Only after taking power
does it really become aware of its own frightful
cultural backwardness. In order to overcome this it
needs to abolish those conditions which keep it in
the position of a class, the proletariat. The more we
can speak of a new culture in being, the less this
will possess a class character. This is the
fundamental problem – and the principal
difference, in so far as we are arguing about the
way forward. Some, starting from the principle of
proletarian culture, say: we have in mind only the
epoch of transition to socialism – those twenty,
thirty, fifty years during which the bourgeois world
will be transformed. Can the literature, intended
and suitable for the proletariat, which will be
created in this period, be called proletarian
literature? In any case, we are giving this term
“proletarian literature” a totally different meaning
from the first, broad meaning we spoke of. But this
is not the main problem. This basic feature of the
transition period, taken on the international scale,
is intense class struggle. Those twenty to thirty
years of which we speak will be first and foremost a
period of open civil war. And civil war, though
preparing the way for the great culture of the
future, is in itself extremely unfavourable in its
effect on contemporary culture. In its immediate
effect October more or less killed literature. Poets
and artists fell silent. Was this an accident? No.
Long ago it was said: when the sound of weapons is
heard, the Muses fall silent. A breathing-space was
needed if literature was to revive. It began to revive
in our country at the same time as NEP began.
Reviving, it at once took on the colouring of the
fellow-travellers. It is impossible not to reckon
with the facts. The tensest moments, that is, those
in which our revolutionary epoch finds its highest
expression, are unfavourable for literary, and in
general for artistic creation. If revolution begins
tomorrow in Germany or in all Europe, will this
bring an immediate flowering of proletarian
literature? Certainly not. It will weaken and
destroy, not expand, artistic creation, for we shall
again have to mobilize and arm one and all. And
amid the clash of arms, the Muses are silent.
(Cries: “Demyan wasn’t silent.”) Yes, you keep
harping on Demyan, but it won’t do. You begin by
proclaiming a new era of proletarian literature, you
create circles, associations, groups for this
literature, you again and again refer to Demyan.
But Demyan is a product of the old, pre-October
literature. He has not founded any school, nor will
he found any. He was brought up on Krylov, Gogol
and Nekrasov. In this sense he is the revolutionary
last-born child of our old literature. The very fact
of your referring to him is a refutation of your
theory.

What is the way forward? Fundamentally, it is

the growth of literacy, education, special courses
for workers, the cinema, the gradual
reconstruction of everyday life, the further advance
in the cultural level. This is the fundamental
process, intersecting with new intensifications of
civil war, on an all-European and world scale. On
this basis, the line of purely literary creation will be
an extremely zigzag one. Kuznitsa, Oktyabr and
other such groups are in no sense landmarks along
the road of the cultural class creativity of the
proletariat, but merely episodes of a superficial
nature. If from these groups a few good young
poets or writers emerge, this won’t give us
proletarian literature, but it will be useful. But if
you try to transform MAPP and VAPP into
factories of proletarian literature, you will certainly
fail, just as you have failed up to now. A member of
one of these associations regards himself as, in one
way, a representative of the proletariat in the world
of art, in another way as a representative of art in
the world of the proletariat. Membership of VAPP
confers a sort of title. It is objected that VAPP is
only a Communist circle in which a young poet
obtains the necessary inspiration, and so on. Well,
and what about the Party? If he is a real poet and a
genuine Communist, the Party in all its work will
give him incomparably more inspiration than
MAPP and VAPP. Of course, the Party must and
will pay very great attention to every young artistic
talent that is akin or ideologically close to it. But its
fundamental task in relation to literature and
culture is raising the level of literacy – simple
literacy, political literacy, scientific literacy – of the
working masses, and thereby laying the foundation
for a new art.

I know that this prospect does not satisfy you. It

seems insufficiently definite. Why? Because you
envisage the further development of culture in too
regular, too evolutionary a way: the present shoots
of proletarian literature will, you think, grow and
develop, becoming continually richer, and so
genuine proletarian literature will be created,
which later will change into socialist literature. No,
things won’t develop like that. After the present
breathing-space, when a literature strongly
coloured by the “fellow-travellers” is being created
– not by the Party, not by the state – there will
come a period of new, terrible spasms of civil war.
We shall inevitably be drawn into it. It is quite
possible that revolutionary poets will give us
martial verses, but the continuity of literary
development will nevertheless be sharply broken.
All forces will be concentrated on the direct
struggle. Shall we then have a second breathing-
space? I do not know. But the result of this new,
much mightier period of civil war, if we are
victorious, will be the complete securing and
consolidation of the socialist basis of our economy.
We shall receive fresh technical and organizational
help. Our development will go forward at a
different rate. And on that basis, after the zigzags
and upheavals of civil war, only then will begin a
real building of culture, and, consequently, also the
creation of a new literature. But this will be
socialist culture, built entirely on constant
intercourse between the artist and the masses who
will have come of age culturally, linked by ties of
solidarity. You do not proceed in your thinking
from this vision of the future: you have your own,
the vision of a group. You want our party, in the
name of the proletariat, to officially adopt your
little artistic factory. You think that, having planted
a kidney-bean in a flower pot, you are capable of
raising the tree of proletarian literature. That is not
the way. No tree can be grown from a kidney-bean.