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The Left School (; ''Levaya shkola'') – a
clandestine Clandestine may refer to: * Secrecy, the practice of hiding information from certain individuals or groups, perhaps while sharing it with other individuals * Clandestine operation, a secret intelligence or military activity Music and entertainmen ...
radical left organization, founded in
Moscow Moscow is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Russia by population, largest city of Russia, standing on the Moskva (river), Moskva River in Central Russia. It has a population estimated at over 13 million residents with ...
in December 1972 - January 1973. Left School is seen by modern researchers as one of the first organizations of the
New Left The New Left was a broad political movement that emerged from the counterculture of the 1960s and continued through the 1970s. It consisted of activists in the Western world who, in reaction to the era's liberal establishment, campaigned for freer ...
in 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 ...
.


Origins and early years

The group was founded by
Natalia Magnat Natalia Yakovlevna Magnat (; November 5, 1954 – October 18, 1997) was a Soviet and Russian translator of English, author of works on literary criticism and aesthetics, leader of underground leftist organizations "Left School" (Russian: Лева ...
, Olga Barash and Inna Okup, and consisted almost completely of the students of
Moscow State Pedagogical University Moscow State Pedagogical University or Moscow State University of Education is an educational and scientific institution in Moscow, Russia, with eighteen faculties and seven branches operational in other Russian cities. The institution had under ...
. Natalia Magnat was a recognized
theorist A theory is a systematic and rational form of abstract thinking about a phenomenon, or the conclusions derived from such thinking. It involves contemplative and logical reasoning, often supported by processes such as observation, experimentation, ...
of the group, while Olga Barash was in charge of organizational work. Left School did not have a formal leadership, but objectively, its three founders took the lead. As the group grew, its members were planning to hold a congress or a conference in the second half of 1976. It had been expected that the congress would elect the group's leaders, discuss and adopt the
charter A charter is the grant of authority or rights, stating that the granter formally recognizes the prerogative of the recipient to exercise the rights specified. It is implicit that the granter retains superiority (or sovereignty), and that the ...
and the
program Program (American English; also Commonwealth English in terms of computer programming and related activities) or programme (Commonwealth English in all other meanings), programmer, or programming may refer to: Business and management * Program m ...
, as well as, possibly, choose a new name (the name "Left School" was seen as temporary and chosen, mainly, for reasons of secrecy). The organization's members planned to publish an underground magazine to be called ''Left School'', but this project had not been implemented. In the summer of 1973 members of the Left School made an attempt to create subsidiary groups in
Ukraine Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the List of European countries by area, second-largest country in Europe after Russia, which Russia–Ukraine border, borders it to the east and northeast. Ukraine also borders Belarus to the nor ...
, but it was unsuccessful. In September 1973 Left School established contact with another underground radical left organization called The Party of New Communists (PNC) (
Russian Russian(s) may refer to: *Russians (), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *A citizen of Russia *Russian language, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages *''The Russians'', a b ...
: Партия новых коммунистов (ПНК)), whose
ideological An ideology is a set of beliefs or values attributed to a person or group of persons, especially those held for reasons that are not purely about belief in certain knowledge, in which "practical elements are as prominent as theoretical ones". Form ...
principles and political goals were extremely close to those of the Left School. After long negotiations both groups had come to a merger agreement, which was formally executed in September 1974. The merged organization was called the
Neo-Communist Party of the Soviet Union The Neo-Communist Party of the Soviet Union (NCPSU; ; ''Neokommunisticheskaya partiya Sovetskogo Soyuza'', ''NKPSS'') was a Secrecy, clandestine Far-left politics, far-left group, which existed in the Soviet Union between September 1974 and Janua ...
(NCPSU; Russian: Неокоммунистическая партия Советского Союза, НКПСС). Natalia Magnat and Olga Barash joined the group of NCPSU's informal leaders. At the same time Natalia Magnat had surrendered the role of the primary ideological theorist to a former member of PNC
Alexander Tarasov Alexander Nikolaevich Tarasov (; born March 8, 1958) is a Soviet and Russian left-wing sociologist, political scientist, culturologist, publicist, writer, and philosopher. Up until the beginning of the 21st century he referred to himself as a ...
. As of now she was mainly concentrating on questions of
esthetics Aesthetics (also spelled esthetics) is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature of beauty and taste, which in a broad sense incorporates the philosophy of art.Slater, B. H.Aesthetics ''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy,'' , acces ...
.


Later years

In spite of the formal integration with PNC, viable joint activities were not established in the beginning. As a consequence, when Moscow group of PNC (including its leaders) was arrested by the
KGB The Committee for State Security (, ), abbreviated as KGB (, ; ) was the main security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 to 1991. It was the direct successor of preceding Soviet secret police agencies including the Cheka, Joint State Polit ...
in January 1975, the unaffected former members of the Left School led by N. Magnat and O. Barash, managed to preserve NCPSU from complete breakdown through increased secrecy. They successfully kept the organization alive deep underground up until 1977, when arrested NCPSU leaders were released to freedom and began to revive the party. Thus, although formally ceased to exist in September 1974, in reality the Left School acted as an independent clandestine group right up to January 1977.


Political theory

Theoretic foundations of the Left School combined elements of classic
Marxism 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 conflict, ...
,
Leninism Leninism (, ) is a political ideology developed by Russian Marxist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin that proposes the establishment of the Dictatorship of the proletariat#Vladimir Lenin, dictatorship of the proletariat led by a revolutionary Vangu ...
,
Trotskyism Trotskyism (, ) is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Russian revolutionary and intellectual Leon Trotsky along with some other members of the Left Opposition and the Fourth International. Trotsky described himself as an ...
, and French
atheist existentialism Atheistic existentialism is a kind of existentialism which strongly diverged from the Christian existential works of Søren Kierkegaard and developed within the context of an atheistic world view. The philosophies of Søren Kierkegaard and Frie ...
(primarily,
Jean-Paul Sartre Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (, ; ; 21 June 1905 – 15 April 1980) was a French philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary criticism, literary critic, considered a leading figure in 20th ...
,
Albert Camus Albert Camus ( ; ; 7 November 1913 – 4 January 1960) was a French philosopher, author, dramatist, journalist, world federalist, and political activist. He was the recipient of the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature at the age of 44, the s ...
and
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Antoine Marie Jean-Baptiste Roger, vicomte de Saint-Exupéry (29 June 1900 – 31 July 1944), known simply as Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (, , ), was a French writer, poet, journalist and aviator. Born in Lyon to an French nobility, aristocratic ...
). The
political regime In politics, a regime (also spelled régime) is a system of government that determines access to public office, and the extent of power held by officials. The two broad categories of regimes are democracy, democratic and Autocracy, autocratic. A ...
which existed in the Soviet Union was seen by the Left School as
anti-socialist Criticism of socialism is any critique of socialist economics and socialist models of organization and their feasibility, as well as the political and social implications of adopting such a system. Some critiques are not necessarily directed ...
and
petty bourgeois ''Petite bourgeoisie'' (, ; also anglicised as petty bourgeoisie) is a term that refers to a social class composed of small business owners, shopkeepers, small-scale merchants, semi-autonomous peasants, and artisans. They are named as such ...
(
philistine Philistines (; Septuagint, LXX: ; ) were ancient people who lived on the south coast of Canaan during the Iron Age in a confederation of city-states generally referred to as Philistia. There is compelling evidence to suggest that the Philist ...
and
bureaucratic Bureaucracy ( ) is a system of organization where laws or regulatory authority are implemented by civil servants or non-elected officials (most of the time). Historically, a bureaucracy was a government administration managed by departments ...
by nature). A power grab by
Joseph Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Dzhugashvili; 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician and revolutionary who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until Death and state funeral of Joseph Stalin, his death in 1953. He held power as General Secret ...
's faction within the
All-Union Communist Party (bolsheviks) The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU),. Abbreviated in Russian as КПСС, ''KPSS''. at some points known as the Russian Communist Party (RCP), All-Union Communist Party and Bolshevik Party, and sometimes referred to as the Soviet ...
and the
Soviet government The Government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was the executive and administrative organ of the highest body of state authority, the All-Union Supreme Soviet. It was formed on 30 December 1922 and abolished on 26 December 199 ...
in the late 1920s and early 1930s was thought to be the reason this regime was established. Stalin's supporters expressed the interests of
counter-revolutionary A counter-revolutionary or an anti-revolutionary is anyone who opposes or resists a revolution, particularly one who acts after a revolution has occurred, in order to try to overturn it or reverse its course, in full or in part. The adjective "c ...
forces and its regime was seen by the Left School as socially futile, condemning the country to cultural and social stagnation, holding back personal development of the Soviet citizens, imposing primitivism, depriving people of political initiative and the right to participate in public affairs, driving the most talented people to
escapism Escapism is mental diversion from unpleasant aspects of daily life, typically through activities involving imagination or entertainment. Escapism also may be used to occupy one's self away from persistent feelings of depression or general s ...
(alcoholism, religion) and, ultimately, to emigration. Left School never questioned the socialist nature of the USSR's economy; consequently, the social order of the Soviet Union was defined as "perverse socialism". To rectify the situation it would be enough to perform a
political revolution In political science, a revolution (, 'a turn around') is a rapid, fundamental transformation of a society's class, state, ethnic or religious structures. According to sociologist Jack Goldstone, all revolutions contain "a common set of elemen ...
which would bring the political order in line with the economic order, thus eliminating "the perversion". Such revolution was viewed by the members of the Left School as a "socialist democratic revolution" by analogy with bourgeois-democratic revolutions. The organization's members believed that the sociocultural dead-end, brought upon the USSR by the ruling bourgeois bureaucracy, would inevitably result in economic crisis in the context of scientific and technical revolution. This would be due to antagonism between bourgeois bureaucracy and creativity that would lead to a
revolutionary situation In Marxist terminology, a revolutionary situation is a political situation indicative of a possibility of a revolution. The concept was introduced by Vladimir Lenin Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov ( 187021 January 1924), better known as Vladimir ...
. It was Natalia Magnat's
projection Projection or projections may refer to: Physics * Projection (physics), the action/process of light, heat, or sound reflecting from a surface to another in a different direction * The display of images by a projector Optics, graphics, and carto ...
that this would happen by the end of the 20th century. For the revolution to be successful it would be crucial that a revolutionary party would be formed in the country, a party which could take the lead in the revolution. Left School saw itself as an "embryo" of such a party.
Intelligentsia The intelligentsia is a status class composed of the university-educated people of a society who engage in the complex mental labours by which they critique, shape, and lead in the politics, policies, and culture of their society; as such, the i ...
and, in particular, students, were thought fit to become the revolutionary subject of the "socialist democratic revolution". But it was the
working class The working class is a subset of employees who are compensated with wage or salary-based contracts, whose exact membership varies from definition to definition. Members of the working class rely primarily upon earnings from wage labour. Most c ...
which was deemed to be the grassroots basis of the revolution, being a class, that suffered most from the alienation, a class that would be most afflicted by the future economic crisis.


References


Literature

* Тарасов А. Н., Черкасов Г. Ю., Шавшукова Т. В., ''Левые в России: от умеренных до экстремистов''. — М.: Институт экспериментальной социологии, 1997. (Tarasov, A., Cherkasov, G., Shavshukova, T., ''The Left Wing in Russia: From Moderate to Extremists''. — Moscow: Institute of Experimental Sociology, 1997). * Тарасов А. Н., ''Революция не всерьёз. Штудии по теории и истории квазиреволюционных движений''. — Екатеринбург: "Ультра.Культура", 2005. (Tarasov, A., ''Not A Serious Revolution. Study of the Theory and History of Quasi-Revolutionary Movements''. — Yekaterinburg: "Ultra.Culture" Publishing House, 2005). {{ISBN, 5-9681-0067-2 * Roßbach K., ''Kontrkulttuuri Neuvostoliittossa: hippien ja neokommunistien välillä.'', Sosiaalinen arkkisto, 1995, No.1. * Fäldin H., Neokommunistiska partiet. ''Okänd sida av Sovjetunionens vänster oppositions historiens''. Medborgaren, 1994, No.12.


External links


Тарасов А.Н. "Леворадикалы. История возникновения и развития леворадикального движения в СССР/России в 80-е — 90-е гг. XX в. Предшественники". (Tarasov, A. "Radical Left. The History of the Emergence and Development of Radical Left Movement in USSR/Russia in 1980s-1990s. Predecessors").

(Tarasov, A. "KGB's April Fool's Joke: How I was a "Terrorist").


Soviet opposition groups Communist parties in the Soviet Union New Left Left-wing politics in Russia Political repression in the Soviet Union Clandestine groups 1972 establishments in the Soviet Union Anti-Stalinist left Political parties disestablished in 1977