Laying the Foundations of Cultural Power

There is a widespread tendency among historians to think of the 1920s in Russia as a period of toleration and cultural achievement. The decade has been called a ‘golden age of Marxist thought’. 1 A ‘soft’ line on culture has been identified. 2 The period has been referred to as ‘NEP in culture’. 3 Compared with what came after, the 1920s were more tolerant — it would have been hard for them to be less so — but compared with the civil war the picture is rather different. The foundations of cultural policy in the 1920s were laid down in 1920–2 and the major interventions in those years included the virtual closing down of Proletkul’t; the ending of university autonomy; the forcible deportation of scores of intellectuals; the bankruptcy of numerous small-scale cultural institutions as a result of NEP taxation; the constraining of remaining private publishing; and the setting up of a constantly expanding censorship apparatus. Cultural and agitational/propaganda issues played a much more prominent role in Party Congress and Conference decisions in this period. It is clear that a revolution in cultural policy was taking place in these two years and the objective of this chapter is to try to throw some light on the processes behind it.