The cultural revolution was a set of activities carried out in Soviet Russia and the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

, aimed at a radical restructuring of the cultural and ideological life of society. The goal was to form a new type of culture as part of the building of a socialist society,Cultural Revolution // Great Russian Encyclopedia – Volume 16 – Moscow, 2010 including an increase in the proportion of people from proletarian classes in the social composition of the intelligentsia. The cultural revolution in the Soviet Union as a focused program for the transformation of national culture in practice often stalled and was massively implemented only during the first five-year plans. As a result, in modern historiography there is a traditional, but contested, correlation of the cultural revolution in the Soviet Union only with the 1928–1931 period. The cultural revolution in the 1930s was understood as part of a major transformation of society and the national economy, along with

industrialization Industrialisation (British English, UK) American and British English spelling differences, or industrialization (American English, US) is the period of social and economic change that transforms a human group from an agrarian society into an i ...

and

collectivization Collective farming and communal farming are various types of "agricultural production in which multiple farmers run their holdings as a joint enterprise". There are two broad types of communal farms: agricultural cooperatives, in which member- ...

. Also, in the course of the cultural revolution, the organization of scientific activity in the Soviet Union underwent considerable restructuring and reorganization.

Terminology

Institute of Philosophy, Russian Academy of Sciences writes that the term "cultural revolution" in Russia appeared in the "Anarchism Manifesto" of the Gordin brothers in May 1917, and was introduced into the Soviet political language by

Vladimir Lenin Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov ( 187021 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin, was a Russian revolutionary, politician and political theorist. He was the first head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 until Death and state funeral of ...

in 1923 in the paper " On Cooperation": "This cultural revolution would now suffice to make our country a completely socialist country; but it presents immense difficulties of a purely cultural (for we are illiterate) and material character (for to be cultured we must achieve a certain development of the material means of production, we must have a certain material base)". However, many scholars attribute the idea to Alexander Bogdanov and consider his cultural movement Proletkult to be the beginning of the Cultural Revolution in the Soviet Union.

Cultural revolution in the early years of Soviet power

The Cultural Revolution as a change in the ideology of society was launched soon after the

October Revolution The October Revolution, also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution (in Historiography in the Soviet Union, Soviet historiography), October coup, Bolshevik coup, or Bolshevik revolution, was the second of Russian Revolution, two r ...

. On January 23, 1918, a Decree on Separation of Church from State and School from Church appeared. Items related to religious education were removed from the education system:

theology Theology is the study of religious belief from a Religion, religious perspective, with a focus on the nature of divinity. It is taught as an Discipline (academia), academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itse ...

ancient Greek Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek ...

, and others. The main task of the cultural revolution was the introduction of the principles of Marxist ideology into the personal convictions of Soviet citizens. To implement the program in the first months of Soviet power, a network of organs of the party-state administration of the cultural life of society was created:

Agitprop Agitprop (; from , portmanteau of ''agitatsiya'', "agitation" and ''propaganda'', "propaganda") refers to an intentional, vigorous promulgation of ideas. The term originated in the Soviet Union where it referred to popular media, such as literatu ...

(department of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)), Glavpolitprosvet, Narcompros, Glavlit and others. The institutions of culture were nationalized: publishing houses, museums, film factories; freedom of the press was abolished. The 1918 RSFSR Constitution, for its part, proclaimed that the workers and peasants should have the means to print and publish: In the field of ideology, atheistic propaganda was widely developed, religion began to be persecuted, clubs, warehouses, production facilities were organized in churches, and strict

censorship Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information. This may be done on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient". Censorship can be conducted by governmen ...

was introduced. Most of the masses were uneducated and illiterate: for example, from the results of the census of the 1920 population, it followed that only 41.7% of the population over 8 years old could read in Soviet Russia.Literacy
Russian Pedagogical Encyclopedia. Volume 1. Moscow, 1993; The cultural revolution primarily involved the fight against illiteracy, which was necessary for the subsequent scientific and technological development. Cultural work was deliberately limited to elementary forms, because, according to some researchers, the Soviet regime needed a performing culture, but not a creative one. However, the rate of elimination of illiteracy for a variety of reasons was unsatisfactory.

Universal primary education The second of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals focuses on achieving Universal Primary Education. This goal aims to ensure global access to complete primary education for all children, regardless of gender, by 2015. Education plays a ...

in the

was de facto introduced in the 1930. Mass illiteracy was eliminated after

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

. At this time, national

alphabet An alphabet is a standard set of letter (alphabet), letters written to represent particular sounds in a spoken language. Specifically, letters largely correspond to phonemes as the smallest sound segments that can distinguish one word from a ...

s of several nationalities (the Far North, Dagestan, Kyrgyz, Bashkir, Buryat, etc.) were created. A wide network of working faculties was developed to prepare working youth for admission to universities, to which the path of youth of proletarian origin was first opened regardless of the availability of primary education. In order to educate the new intellectual elite, the Communist University, Istpart, the Communist Academy, and the Institute of Red Professors were established. To attract the "old" scientific personnel, commissions were created to improve the life of scientists, and relevant decrees were issued. At the same time, repressive measures were taken to eliminate intellectual political opponents: for example, more than 200 prominent representatives of Russian science and culture were expelled from the country on the Philosophical Steamship. Since the end of the 1920s, bourgeois specialists were "crowded out": " Academic Trial", " Shakhty Trial", " Industrial Party Trial", etc. Since 1929, " sharashki" began to operate – special technical bureaus of prisoners organized by the internal affairs bodies for carrying out important research and design works. In the 1920s, discussions took place in Soviet public and party organizations about the methods and direction of the cultural revolution. For example, in the summer of 1923, a campaign to discuss "issues of life" was initiated by

Leon Trotsky Lev Davidovich Bronstein ( – 21 August 1940), better known as Leon Trotsky,; ; also transliterated ''Lyev'', ''Trotski'', ''Trockij'' and ''Trotzky'' was a Russian revolutionary, Soviet politician, and political theorist. He was a key figure ...

, who spoke in print with a series of articles published in the eponymous brochure (three editions were published). Ideological hegemony in carrying out the cultural revolution has always remained with the party. The Komsomol played a major role in fulfilling the tasks of the

party A party is a gathering of people who have been invited by a Hospitality, host for the purposes of socializing, conversation, recreation, or as part of a festival or other commemoration or celebration of a special occasion. A party will oft ...

in carrying out the cultural revolution.

Results of the cultural revolution in the Soviet Union

The successes of the cultural revolution include raising the literacy rate to 87.4% of the population (according to the census of 1939), creating an extensive system of secondary schools, and significant development of science and the arts. At the same time, an official culture was formed, based on

Marxist Marxism is a political philosophy and method of socioeconomic analysis. It uses a dialectical and materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to analyse class relations, social conflic ...

-class ideology, "communist education", mass culture and education, which was necessary for the formation of a large number of production personnel and the formation of a new "Soviet intelligentsia" from the working-peasant environment. According to one of the points of view, during this period, the means of

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, ...

ideologization made a break with the traditions of the centuries-old historical cultural heritage.Socialist Cultural Revolution // Great Encyclopedia "Terra". Volume 24. Moscow, «Terra», 2006 On the other hand, a number of authors have challenged this position and come to the conclusion that the traditional values and worldviews of the Russian intelligentsia, petty bourgeoisie and the peasantry were only slightly transformed during the cultural revolution, and the Bolshevik project of creating a new type of person, that is, the " new man", should be considered largely failed.Hoffmann, David L
Cultivating the Masses. Modern State Practices and Soviet Socialism, 1914—1939
Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011.

References

Sources

* Fitzpatrick, S
Education and Social Mobility in the Soviet Union 1921—1934

Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press was the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted a letters patent by King Henry VIII in 1534, it was the oldest university press in the world. Cambridge University Press merged with Cambridge Assessme ...

, 2002 * * Fitzpatrick, S
Cultural Revolution Revisited
The Russian Review. Volume 58, Issue 2, pages 202—209, April 1999 * David-Fox, M
What Is Cultural Revolution?
The Russian Review. Volume 58, Issue 2, pages 181—201, April 1999 * Fitzpatrick, S
The Cultural Front: Power and Culture in Revolutionary Russia

Cornell University Press The Cornell University Press is the university press of Cornell University, an Ivy League university in Ithaca, New York. It is currently housed in Sage House, the former residence of Henry William Sage. It was first established in 1869, maki ...

, 1992 * * * * {{cite book, author = Mikhail Gerandokov, Gerandokova , url = https://books.google.com/books?id=ZoYjAQAAIAAJ&q=культурная+революция , title = Cultural Revolution in National Regions: Myth or Reality , date = 2003 , publisher= El-fa , isbn = 9785881955649 *

Nikolai Bukharin Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin (; rus, Николай Иванович Бухарин, p=nʲɪkɐˈlaj ɪˈvanəvʲɪdʑ bʊˈxarʲɪn; – 15 March 1938) was a Russian revolutionary, Soviet politician, and Marxist theorist. A prominent Bolshevik ...

. Leninism and the Problem of the Cultural Revolution – in the Book: Nikolai Bukharin. Selected Works – Moscow: Politizdat, 1988 – p. 368–390

External links

"Cultural Revolution"
in the ''

Great Soviet Encyclopedia The ''Great Soviet Encyclopedia'' (GSE; , ''BSE'') is one of the largest Russian-language encyclopedias, published in the Soviet Union from 1926 to 1990. After 2002, the encyclopedia's data was partially included into the later ''Great Russian Enc ...