EDUCATION AND CULTURE
The proudest claims of the Bolsheviki are education, art, and culture.
Communist propaganda literature and Bolshevik agents at home and abroad
constantly sing the praises of these great achievements.
To the casual observer it may indeed appear that the Bolsheviki have
accomplished wonders in this field. They have organized more schools
than existed under the Tsar, and they have made them accessible to the
masses. This is true of the larger cities. But in the provinces the
existing schools met the opposition of the local Bolsheviki, who closed
most of them on the alleged ground of counter-revolutionary activities,
or because of lack of Communist teachers. While, then, in the large
centres the percentage of children attending schools and the number of
higher educational institutions is greater than in the past, the same
does not apply to the rest of Russia. Still, so far as quantity is
concerned, the Bolsheviki deserve credit for their educational work and
the general diffusion of education.
In the case of the theatres no reservations have been made. All were
permitted to continue their performances when factories were shut down
for want of fuel. The opera, ballet, and; Lunacharsky’s plays were
elaborately staged, and the _Proletcult_--organized to advance
proletarian culture--was generously subsidized even when the famine was
at its height. It is also true that the Government printing presses were
kept busy day and night manufacturing propaganda literature and issuing
the old classics. At the same time the imagists and futurists gathered
unmolested in Café Domino and other places. The palaces and museums were
kept up in admirable condition. In any other starved, blockaded, and
attacked country all this would have been a very commendable showing.
In Russia, however, two revolutions had taken place. To be sure, the
February Revolution was not far-reaching. Still, it brought about
political changes without which there might not have been an October. It
also released great cultural forces from the prisons and Siberia--a
valuable element without which the educational work of the Bolsheviki
could not have been undertaken.
It was the October Revolution which struck deepest into the vitals of
Russia. It uprooted the old values and cleared the ground for new
conceptions and forms of life. Inasmuch as the Bolsheviki became the
sole medium of articulating and interpreting the promise of the
Revolution, the earnest student will not be content merely with the
increase of schools, the continuation of the ballet, or the good
condition of the museums. He will want to know whether education,
culture, and art in Bolshevik Russia symbolize the spirit of the
Revolution, whether they serve to quicken the imagination and broaden
the horizon; above all, whether they have released and helped to apply
the latent qualities of the masses.
Critical inquiry in Russia is a dangerous thing. No wonder so many
newcomers avoided looking beneath the surface. To them it was enough
that the Montessori system, the educational ideas of Professor Dewey,
and dancing by the Dalcroze method have been “adopted” by Russia. I do
not contend against these innovations. But I insist that they have no
bearing whatever on the Revolution; they do not prove that the
Bolshevik educational experiment is superior to similar efforts in other
countries, where they have been achieved without a revolution and the
terrible price it involves.
State monopoly of thought is everywhere interpreting education to suit
its own purpose. Similarly the Bolsheviki, to whom the State is supreme,
use education to further their own ends. But while the monopoly of
thought in other countries has not succeeded in entirely checking the
spirit of free inquiry and critical analysis, the “proletarian
dictatorship” has completely paralysed every attempt at independent
investigation. The Communist criterion is dominant. The least divergence
from official dogma and opinion on the part of teachers, educators, or
pupils exposes them to the general charge of counter-revolution,
resulting in discharge and expulsion, if nothing more drastic.
In a previous chapter I have mentioned the case of the Moscow University
students expelled and exiled for protesting against Tcheka violence
toward the political prisoners in the Butyrki. But it was not only such
“political” offences that were punished. Offences of a purely academic
nature were treated in the same manner. Thus the objection of some
professors to Communist interference in the methods of instruction was
sternly suppressed. Teachers and students who supported the professors
were severely punished. I know a professor of sociology and literature,
a brilliant scholar and a Revolutionist, who was discharged from the
Moscow University because, as an Anarchist, he encouraged the critical
faculty of his pupils. He is but one instance of the numerous cases of
non-Communist intellectuals who, under one pretext or another, are
systematically hounded and finally eliminated from Bolshevik
institutions. The Communist “cells” in control of every classroom have
created an atmosphere of distrust and suspicion in which real education
cannot thrive.
It is true that the Bolsheviki have striven to carry education and
culture into the Red Army and the villages. But here again the same
conditions prevail. Communism is the State religion and, like all
religions, it discourages the critical attitude and frowns upon
independent inquiry. Yet without the capacity for parallelism and
opportunity for verification education is valueless.
The _Proletcult_ is the pet child of the Bolsheviki. Like most parents,
they claim for their offspring extraordinary talents. They hold it up
as the great genius who is destined to enrich the world with new values.
Henceforth the masses shall no longer drink from the poisonous well of
bourgeois culture. Out of their own creative impulse and through their
own efforts the proletariat shall bring forth great treasures in
literature, art, and music. But like most child prodigies, the
_Proletcult_ did not live up to its early promise. Before long it proved
itself below the average, incapable of innovation, lacking originality,
and without sustaining power. Already in 1920 I was told by two of the
foremost foster-fathers of the _Proletcult_, Gorki and Lunacharsky, that
it was a failure.
In Petrograd, Moscow, and throughout my travels I had occasion to study
the efforts of the _Proletcult_. Whether expressed in printed form, on
the stage, in clay or colour, they were barren of ideas or vision, and
showed not a trace of the inner urge which impels creative art. They
were hopelessly commonplace. I do not doubt that the masses will some
day create a new culture, new art values, new forms of beauty. But these
will come to life from the inner necessity of the people themselves, and
not through an arbitrary will imposed upon them.
The mechanistic approach to art and culture and the _idée fixe_ that
nothing must express itself outside of the channels of the State have
stultified the cultural and artistic expression of the Russian people.
In poetry and literature, in drama, painting, and music not a single
epic of the Revolution has been produced during five years. This is the
more remarkable when one bears in mind how rich Russia was in works of
art and how close her writers and poets were to the soul of the Russian
people. Yet in the greatest upheaval in the world’s history no one has
come forward with pen or brush or lyre to give artistic expression to
the miracle or to set to music the storm that carried the Russian people
forward. Works of art, like new-born man, come in pain and travail.
Verily the five years of Revolution should have proved very rich
spiritually and creatively. For in those years the soul of Russia has
gone through a thousand crucifixions. Yet in this regard Russia was
never before so poor and desolate.
The Bolsheviki claim that a revolutionary period is not conducive to
creative art. That contention is not borne out by the French Revolution.
To mention only the Marseillaise, the great music of which lives and
will live. The French Revolution was rich in spiritual effort, in
poetry, painting, science, and in its great literature and letters. But,
then, the French Revolution was never so completely in the bondage of
one dogmatic idea as has been the case with Russia. The Jacobins indeed
strove hard to fetter the spirit of the French Revolution and they paid
dearly for it. The Bolsheviki have been copying the destructive phases
of the French Revolution. But they have done nothing that can compare
with the constructive achievements of that period.
I have said that nothing outstanding has been created in Russia. To be
exact, I must except the great revolutionary poem, “Twelve,” by
Alexander Blok. But even that gifted genius, deeply inspired by the
Revolution, and imbued with the fire that had come to purify all life,
soon ceased to create. His experience with the Tcheka (he was arrested
in 1919), the terrorism all about him, the senseless waste of life and
energy, the suffering and hopelessness of it all depressed his spirit
and broke his health. Soon Alexander Blok was no more.
Even a Blok could not create with an iron band compressing his
brain--the iron band of Bolshevik distrust, persecution, and censorship.
How far-reaching the latter was I realized from a document the Museum
Expedition had discovered in Vologda. It was a “very confidential,
secret” order issued in 1920 and signed by Ulyanova, the sister of Lenin
and chief of the Central Educational Department. It directed the
libraries throughout Russia to “eliminate all non-Communist literature,
except the Bible, the Koran, and the classics”--including even
Communistic writings dealing with problems which were being “solved in a
different way” by the existing régime. The condemned literature was to
be sent to paper mills “because of the scarcity of paper.”
Such edicts and the State monopoly of all material, printing machinery,
and mediums of circulation exclude every possibility of the birth of
creative work. The editor of a little coöperative paper published a
brilliant poem, unsigned. It was the cry of a tortured poet’s soul in
protest against the continued terror. The editor was promptly arrested
and his little shop closed. The author would probably have been shot had
his whereabouts been known. No doubt there are many agonized cries in
Russia, but they are muffled cries. No one may hear them or interpret
their meaning. The future alone has the key to the cultural and artistic
treasures now hidden from the Argus eyes of the Department of Education
and the numerous other censorial institutions.
Russia is now the dumping ground for mediocrities in art and culture.
They fit into the narrow groove, they dance attendance on the
all-powerful political commissars. They live in the Kremlin and skim the
cream of life, while the real poets--like Blok and others--die of want
and despair.
The void in literature, poetry, and art is felt most in the theatres,
the State theatres especially. I once sat through five hours of acting
in the Alexandrovsky Theatre in Petrograd when “Othello” was staged,
with Andreyeva, Gorki’s wife, as Desdemona. It is hard to imagine a play
more atrociously presented. I saw most of the other plays in the State
theatre and not one of them gave any hint of the earthquake that had
shaken Russia. There was no new note in interpretation, scenery, or
method. It was all commonplace and inadequate, innocent even of the
advancement made in dramatic art in bourgeois countries, and utterly
inconsequential in the light of the Revolution.
The only exception was the Moscow Art Theatre. Its performance of
Gorki’s “Night’s Lodging” was especially powerful. Real art was also
presented in the Stanislavsky Studio. These were the only oases in the
art desert of Russia. But even the Art Theatre showed no trace of the
great revolutionary events Russia was living through. The repertoire
which had made the Art Theatre famous a quarter of a century before
still continued night after night. There were no new Ibsens, Tolstois,
or Tchekovs to thunder their protest against the new evils, and if there
had been, no theatre could have staged them. It was safer to interpret
the past than to voice the present. Yet, though the Art Theatre kept
strictly within the past, Stanislavsky was often in difficulties with
the authorities. He had suffered arrest and was once evicted from his
studio. He had just moved into a new place when I visited him with
Louise Bryant who had asked me to act as her interpreter. Stanislavsky
looked forlorn and discouraged among his still unpacked boxes of stage
property. I saw him also on several other occasions and found him almost
hopeless about the future of the theatre in Russia. “The theatre can
grow only through inspiration from new works of art,” he would say;
“without it the interpretive artist must stagnate and the theatre
deteriorate.” But Stanislavsky himself was too much the creative artist
to stagnate. He sought other forms of interpretation. His newest venture
was an attempt to bring singing and dramatic acting into coöperative
harmony. I attended a dress rehearsal of such a performance and found it
very impressive. The effect of the voice was greatly enhanced by the
realistic finesse which Stanislavsky achieved in dramatic art. But these
efforts were entirely the work of himself and his little circle of art
students; they had nothing to do with the Bolsheviki of the
_Proletcult_.
There are some other innovations, begun long before the advent of the
Bolsheviki and permitted by them to continue because they have no
bearing on the Russian actuality. The Kamerney Theatre registers its
revolt against the imposition of the play upon the acting, against the
limitation of expression involved in the orthodox interpretation of
dramatic art. It achieves noteworthy results by the new mode of acting,
complemented by original scenery and music, but mostly in plays of a
lighter genre.
Another unique attempt is essayed by the Semperante Theatre. It is based
on the conception that the written drama checks the growth and
diversity of the interpretive artist. Plays should therefore be
improvised, thereby affording greater scope to spontaneity, inspiration,
and mood of the artist. It is a novel experiment, but as the improvised
plays must also keep within the limits of the State censorship, the work
of the Semperantists suffers from a lack of ideas.
The most interesting cultural endeavour I met in Kiev was the work of
the Jewish _Kulturliga_. Its nucleus was organized in 1918 to minister
to the needs of pogrom victims. They had to be provided for, sheltered,
fed, and clothed. Young Jewish literary men and an able organizer
brought the _Kulturliga_ to life. They did not content themselves with
ministering only to the physical needs of the unfortunates. They
organized children’s homes, public schools, high schools, evening
classes; later a seminary and art school were added. When we visited
Kiev the _Kulturliga_ owned a printing plant and a studio, besides its
other educational institutions, and had succeeded in organizing 230
branches in the Ukraina. At a literary evening and a special performance
arranged in honour of the Expedition we were able to witness the
extraordinary achievements of the _Kulturliga_.
At the literary evening Perez’s poem “The Four Seasons” was rendered by
recitative group singing. The effect was striking. Nature at the birth
of spring, birds sending forth their joyous song of love, the mystery
and romance of mating, the ecstasy of renewing and becoming, the
rumbling of the approaching storm, the crash of the mighty giants struck
by lightning, rain softly falling, the leaves fluttering to earth, the
somberness and pathos of autumn, the last desperate resistance of Nature
against death, the trees shrouded in white--all were made vivid and
alive by the new form of collective recitative. Every nuance of Nature
was brought out by the group of artists on the improvised little stage
of the _Kulturliga_.
The next day we visited the art school. The children’s classes were the
more interesting. There was no discipline, no rigid rules, no
mechanistic control of their art impulses. The children did drawing,
painting, and modelling--mostly Jewish motifs: a pogromed city, by a boy
of fourteen; a devout Jew in his _tales_ praying in the synagogue,
mortal fear of the pogrom savages written in his every feature; an old
Jewish woman, the tragic remnant of a whole family slaughtered; and
similar scenes from the life of the Russian Jew. The efforts were often
crude, but there was about them nothing of the stilted manner
characteristic of the _Proletcult_. There was no attempt to impose a
definite formula on art expression.
Later we attended the studio. In a bare room, without scenery, lighting,
costumes, or make-up, the artists of the _Kulturliga_ gave several
one-act plays and presented also an unpublished work found among the
effects of a playwright. The performance had an artistic touch and
finish I had rarely seen before. The play is called “The End of the
World.” The wrath of God rolls like thunder across the world, commanding
man to prepare for the end. Yet man heeds not. Then all the elements are
let loose, pursuing one another in wild fury; the storm rages and
shrieks, and man’s groans are drowned in the terrific hour of judgment.
The world goes under, and all is dead.
Then something begins to move again. Black shadows symbolizing half
beast, half man, with distorted faces and hesitating movements, crouch
out of their caves. In awe and fear they stretch their trembling hands
toward one another. Haltingly at first, then with growing confidence,
man attempts in common effort with his fellows to lift himself out of
the black void. Light begins to break. Again a thunderous voice rolls
over the earth. It is the voice of fulfilment.
It was a stirring artistic achievement.
When the _Liga_ was first organized the Bolsheviki subsidized its work.
Later, when they returned to Kiev after its evacuation by Denikin, they
gave very scanty support to the educational institutions of the
_Kulturliga_. This unfriendly attitude was due to the _Yevkom_, the
Jewish Communist Section, which intrigues against every independent
Jewish cultural endeavour. When we left Kiev the ardent workers of the
_Liga_ were much worried about the future of the organization. I am not
in a position to say at this writing whether the _Liga_ was able to
continue its work or was closed altogether. However, laudable as were
the innovations of the _Kulturliga_ and the attempts of the Kamerney and
Semperante at new modes of expression, they could not be considered as
having any bearing on the Revolution.
State support to so-called art is given mostly to Lunacharsky’s dramatic
ventures and other Communist interpretations of culture. When I first
met Lunacharsky I thought him much less the politician than the artist.
I heard him lecture at the Sverdlov University before a large audience
of workingmen and women, popularizing the origin and development of art.
It was done splendidly. When I met him again he was so thoroughly in the
meshes of Party discipline and so completely shorn of his power that
every effort of his was frustrated. Then he began to write plays. That
was his undoing. He could not employ the material of the actual reality,
and the February Revolution, Kerensky, and the Constituent Assembly had
already been caricatured to a thread. Lunacharsky turned to the German
Revolution. He wrote “The Smith and the Councillor,” a sort of
burlesque. The play is so amateurish and commonplace that no theatre
outside of Russia would have cared to present it. But Lunacharsky was in
control of the theatres--why not exploit them for his own works? The
play was staged at great cost, at a time when millions on the Volga were
starving. But even that could have been forgiven if the play had any
meaning or contained anything suggestive of the tragedy of Russia.
Instead, it lacked all life and was rich only in vulgar scenes
portraying Ludendorff, the renegade Social Democratic President, a
degenerate aristocrat, and a princess of the _demimonde_. The drunken
men frantically scramble for the possession of the woman, literally
tearing her clothing off her back. A revolting scene, yet in the whole
audience of teachers and members of the Department of Education not a
single protest was voiced against the affront to the taste and
intelligence of revolutionary Russia. On the contrary, they applauded
the playwright, for those sycophants depended on Lunacharsky for their
rations. They could not afford to be critical.
Vanity and power break the strongest character, and Lunacharsky is not
strong. It is his lack of will which makes him submit, against his
better judgment, to the galling discipline and espionage placed over
him. Perhaps he avenges himself by forcing upon the public at large and
the actors under his charge his dramatic works.
After a careful analysis of the educational and cultural efforts of the
Bolsheviki the earnest student will come to the following conclusions:
first, there is quantity rather than substance in the education of
Russia to-day; secondly, the theatres, the ballet, and the museums
receive generous support from the Government, but the reason for it is
not so much love of art as the necessity of finding some outlet for the
checked and stifled aspirations of the people.
The political dictatorship of the Bolsheviki with one stroke suppressed
the social phase of life in Russia. There was no forum even for the most
inoffensive social intercourse, no clubs, no meeting places, no
restaurants, not even a dance hall. I remember the shocked expression of
Zorin when I asked him if the young people could not occasionally meet
for a dance free from Communist supervision. “Dance halls are gathering
places for counter-revolutionists; we closed them,” he informed me. The
emotional and human needs of the people were considered dangerous to the
régime.
On the other hand, the dreadful existence--hunger, cold, and
darkness--was sapping the life of the people. Gloom and despair by day,
congestion, lack of light and heat at night, and no escape from it all.
There was, of course, the political life of the Communist Party--a life
stern and forbidding, a life without colour or warmth. The masses had no
contact with or interest in that life, and they were not permitted to
have anything of their own. A people bottled up is a menace. Some outlet
had to be provided, some relief from the black despair. The theatre, the
opera, and the museum were that relief. What if the theatres gave
nothing new? What if the opera had bad singing? And the ballet
continued to move in the old toe circles? The places were warm; they had
light. They furnished the opportunity for human association and one
could forget the misery and loneliness--one might even forget the
Tcheka. The theatre, the opera, the ballet, and the museum became the
safety valve of the Bolshevik régime. And as the theatres gave nothing
of protest, nothing new or vital, they were permitted to continue. They
solved a great and difficult problem and furnished excellent copy for
foreign propaganda.