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Collective Immortality: The Syndicalist Origins of Proletarian Culture, 1905-1910

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Robert C. Williams
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Extract

This pamphlet ivas written iviih an eye to the tsarist censorship. Hence, I was not only forced to confine myself strictly to an exclusively theoretical, particularly economic, analysis of facts, but to formulate the few necessary observations on politics with extreme caution, by hints, in allegorical language—in that accursed Aesopian language— to which tsarism compelled all revolutionaries to have recourse whenever they took up their pens to write a "legal" work.

V. I. Lenin

Collectivism was a Utopian dream that flourished in Soviet Russia in the 1920s and later became part of Soviet ideology. Eisenstein's early films, conductorless orchestras, and mass workers' choruses all aimed at inculcating the view that a collective—be it the party, the proletariat, or the masses—was to replace the individual as the determinant of social and political values. The popular "proletarian culture" movement that flourished during the civil war (1918-21) was one form of collectivism, but there were many others. Yet, as a body of ideas, collectivism in Russia preceded the 1917 Revolution by a decade or more and made a crucial contribution to bolshevism. Indeed, in the years after 1905, collectivism had as much a claim to bolshevism as did the party-centered authoritarianism of Lenin.

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Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 39 , Issue 3 , September 1980 , pp. 389 - 402
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1980

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References

1. Discussion of bolshevism in 1907-10 has focused on either philosophy or politics, without linking them together. The philosophical issues are considered in David, Joravsky, Soviet Marxism and Natural Science 1917-1932 (London, 1961), pp. 31–42 Google Scholar; D., Grille, Lenins Rivalc: Bogdanov und seine Philosophic (Cologne, 1966)Google Scholar ; and Alexander, Vucinich, Social Thought in Tsarist Russia: The Quest for a General Science of Society, 1861-1917 (Chicago and London, 1976), pp. 206–30 Google Scholar. On god-building, see Jutta Scherrer, “La crise de ['intelligentsia Marxiste avant 1914: A.V. Lunačarskij et le bogostroitel'stvo,” Revue des études slaves, 51, no. 1-2 (1978): 207-15; Jutta Scherrer, “'Ein gelber und ein blauer Teufel': Zur Entstehung der Begriffe ‘bogostroitel'stvo’ und ‘bogoiskatel'stvo, '” Forschungen sur Osteuropaischen Geschichte, vol. 25 (Berlin, 1978), pp. 319-30; George, Kline, Religious and Anti-religious Thought in Russia (Chicago and London, 1968), pp. 103–26 Google Scholar; and Kendall E., Bailes, “Sur la Theorie des Valeurs’ de A. V. Lunačarskij,” Cahicrs du monde russe et soviétique, 8, no. 2 (April-June 1967): 223–43 Google Scholar. Politically, Machism and god-building have been characterized as the “sophomoric mumblings” of a “philosophical heresy” caused by a “wave of deserters from the Bolshevik Center” whose “left-wing resistance” was one of the “political quarrels of the emigration” that “challenged Lenin's control of the party faction” (see Adam, Ulam, The Bolsheviks [New York, 1965], p. 273Google Scholar; Merle, Fainsod, How Russia is Ruled [Cambridge, Mass., 1963], p. 46Google Scholar; D., Shub, Lenin: A Biography [New York, 1948], p. 131Google Scholar; Robert, Daniels, The Conscience of the Revolution [New York, 1969], pp. 21–23 Google Scholar; and B., Souvarine, Stalin, trans. C. L. R. James [New York, 1939], p. 129Google Scholar). For a suggestion that the Lenin-Bogdanov quarrel also involved money, see L., Schapiro, The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (New York, 1960), pp. 110–11 Google Scholar. In general, Lenin's labels have been accepted as if they described real ideas, positions, and groupings among the Bolsheviks. But double meanings were common in the Bolshevik underground as protection against censorship and police. “Lenin” and “Bogdanov” were, in fact, aliases, and the “editorial board of Proletarii” was really another name for the Bolshevik Center. In the language of the day, it appears that “philosophy” also implied “politics,” “matter” signified the “proletariat,” “materialism” meant “Marxism,” “idealism” suggested “liberalism,” “motion” denoted “revolution,” “energy” implied “violence,” and so forth. To establish the precise nature of this Aesopian code is beyond the purposes of this article, and demands further study. The main convenience of Aesopian language, which translated philosophy into politics, was that it enabled political messages to pass the censorship inside Russia, minimized police surveillance of the emigration, and observed socialist etiquette while vilifying one's rivals and enemies.

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25. Leninskii sbornik, vol. 25, pp. 112-21.

26. Lenin to Lunacharskii, November 11, 1907, in Literatumoe nasledstvo, no. 80: V. I. Lenin i A. V. Lunacharskii: Pcrepiska, doklady, dokumenty (Moscow, 1971), pp. 33-34.

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43. Ibid., p. 118.

44. Ibid., p. 133.

45. Ibid., p. 138.

46. Ibid., p. 326.

47. Ibid., p. 357.

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49. Ibid., p. 263.

50. Ibid., p. 265.

51. Ibid., p. 310.

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