Kultintern was an international organization set up to enable the Russian
Proletkult
Proletkult ( rus, Пролетку́льт, p=prəlʲɪtˈkulʲt), a portmanteau of the Russian words "proletarskaya kultura" ( proletarian culture), was an experimental Soviet artistic institution that arose in conjunction with the Russian Revol ...
organization to work with an international network of contacts alongside the
Comintern
The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern and also known as the Third International, was a political international which existed from 1919 to 1943 and advocated world communism. Emerging from the collapse of the Second Internatio ...
. Its goal was to spread "proletarian culture". It was first proposed in an issue of ''Gorn'', publication of Proletkult, during the
First Congress of the Communist International, March 1919, but practical steps were only taken during the
Second Congress of the Communist International.
Provisional International Bureau
This was set up on 12 August 1920 following the Comintern Congress. The president was
Anatoly Lunacharsky
Anatoly Vasilyevich Lunacharsky (, born ''Anatoly Aleksandrovich Antonov''; – 26 December 1933) was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and the first Soviet People's Commissariat for Education, People's Commissar (minister) of Education, as well ...
and the General Secretary
Pavel Lebedev-Polianskii.
The Bureau included several international delegates:
;Executive Committee
*
Wilhelm Herzog
Wilhelm Herzog (12 January 1884 in Berlin – 4 April 1960 in Munich), alias Julian Sorel, René Kestner and Junius III, was a German publisher, historian of literature and culture, dramatist, encyclopedist, and pacifist.
Life
He studied economi ...
(Germany)
*
Jules Humbert-Droz
Jules-Frédéric Humbert-Droz (23 September 1891, La Chaux-de-Fonds – 16 October 1971) was a Swiss pastor, journalist, socialist and communist. A founding member of the Communist Party of Switzerland, he held high Comintern office through the 1 ...
(Switzerland)
*
Nicola Bombacci
Nicola Bombacci (24 October 1879 – 28 April 1945) was an Italian Marxist revolutionary and later a fascist politician. He began in the Italian Socialist Party as an opponent of the reformist wing and became a founding member of the Communist Par ...
(Italy)
*
William McLaine
William McLaine (1891–1960) was an engineer, Marxist and trade union activist.
McLaine worked as a mechanic and joined the Amalgamated Engineering Union (AEU) in 1912. He became secretary of the Manchester No.2 branch in 1916. Opposed to World ...
(Great Britain)
*
Raymond Lefebvre (France)
;Others
*
Max Barthel (Germany)
*
John Reed (USA)
*
Tom Quelch
Thomas Quelch (1886–1954) was a British journalist and the son of veteran Marxist Harry Quelch. a member of the British Socialist Party in the early part of the 20th century, becoming a communist activist in Great Britain in the 1920s.
Quelch ...
(Great Britain)
*
Karl Toman (Austria)
*
War Van Overstraeten (Belgium)
*
Haavard Langseth (Norway)
*
Walther Bringolf (Switzerland)
Criticism
Leo Pasvolsky was one of the first people to criticize the formation of Kultintern. First he portrayed the movement as generally exhibiting a heavy monotony with poetry which was both facile and pretentious. However he further claimed that the foundation of Kultintern would reduce the Proletkult movement "not primarily, but exclusively" to a weapon to promote the
Bolshevik
The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, were a radical Faction (political), faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) which split with the Mensheviks at the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, ...
view of
communism
Communism () is a political sociology, sociopolitical, political philosophy, philosophical, and economic ideology, economic ideology within the history of socialism, socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a ...
.
See also
* ''
Akasztott Ember
''Akasztott Ember'' (Hanged Man) was a Hungarian language avant-garde art magazine published in Vienna by Sándor Barta. Five issues appeared between November 1922 and February 1923. It was subtitled "The Organ of Universal Socialist Culture".
Bar ...
'', a
Hungarian avant-garde
In the arts and literature, the term ''avant-garde'' ( meaning or ) identifies an experimental genre or work of art, and the artist who created it, which usually is aesthetically innovative, whilst initially being ideologically unacceptable ...
arts magazine which advocated "the formation of an "International Cultural Revolutionary Internationale to be realized through the Proletkult network" in 1922.
References
{{reflist
International cultural organizations
Organizations established in 1920
Comintern