CULTURE UNDER LENIN

CHURCH

  • Marx described religion as the ‘opium of the people’ and claimed it was used to justify the power of the upper classes over the people

  • But, Lenin had allowed freedom of religious worship while destroying much of the ‘earthly’ power of the russian orthodox church

  • Church lands were seized, births, marriages, deaths and schools were secularised, priests persecuted and atheistic propaganda circulated.

  • 1927 - Sergius (the patriach of the Orthodox church) made a promise to stay out of politics in return for state recognition of the Orthodox Church.

  • 1018- priests lost the right to vote

  • - Lenin passed a decree on the seperation of the church and the state in 1918 which prevented the church from owning property or having control over education

  • 1921 the league of the militant godless was established and in 1922 a fierce attackon church launched (experienced a revival under the NEP) and the Cheka was used to strip the church of their precious items which often led to violent clashes.

  • bolshevik sponsored the league of the militant godless

  • by the end of 1918, the Patriach of the Orthodox church) Tikhon was under house arrest

  • due to the famine of the civil war, attacks on ch increased and valuable objects seized

  • In smolensk they decided that belief in God was not incompatible with the party (so severity depended on location

WOMEN

  • Lenin extolled the new ‘liberation’ of women where sex discrimination was outlawed, divorce and abortions made easier with the family regarded as a relic of bourgoisie society and women took jobs alongside men.

  • Women were presented as muscular and plainly dressed, as builders of the new Soviet Russia

  • only 15% of women joined the communist party

  • by the mid-1920s the USSR had the highest divorce rate in europe and in some areas the number of abortions exceeded the number of births

  • The Zhenotdel (communist party set ip a womens branch of the central committee) was established, it was led by Aleksandra Kollontai and Inessa Armand, representatives of the Bureau toured factories to make sure that legislation to protect the rights of women was being enforced. They also believed that education was the key to women improving their staus, therefore childcare facilities were provided to allow women to study in their spare time.

  • two thirds of marriages ended upon divorce in 1927

  • wedding rings were banned in 1928

  • wives encouraged to refuse obedience to their husbands

  • communal living was encouraged, to break down the family unit

  • To young, radical bolsheviks ‘free love’ was taken to mean causal sex, and amny conisdered this a right

  • Bolsheviks family code of 1918 made divorce easier, abortion legal and creches encouraged

EDUCATION

  • exams were abandoned, students from a prolterian background were given higher priority on higher education courses but some students were of poor quality and there was a high drop out rate, more tradititional teachers were driven out and replaced with committed socialists, ideology was more important that education and children were expected to do socially useful work

  • free education was offered at all levels in co-educational schools in the 1920s

  • children under the age of six were taught by babushkas or their grandmothers and the responsability for providing schools was handed to the collective farms and industrial enterprises, some even spoke of the need for schools ‘withering away’

  • Traditional teaching methods were abandoned, instead they were taught by ‘metod proektov’ (the one and only maxist democratic method of teaching), this involved sending children into factories where they worked alongisde workers, afterwards they prepared reports on what they had seen and done.

YOUTH ORGANISATION

  • From 1926 the youth organisation ‘Komsomol’ catered for those aged 10-28 years

  • Lenin introduced a three tier system: The young Oktobrists (up to 9 yrs and named after october rev), The Young Pioneers (9-14yrs) and the Komsomol (14-28yrs)

  • the Komsomol had 400,000 members by 1922 and they formed a part of the red guard during the civil war, after this they became a youth group nut their numbers declined (included mena nd women but taught different curriculums)

  • Membership was exclusive and not guaraenteed, and used to enforce terror

  • Youth groups were encouraged to attack the ‘capitalist' tyranny’ of parents

MEN

  • establishment of the soviet state had been undertaken in the name of the proleteriat and in general urban working class men were enthusiastic about Stalin’s policy of rapid industrialisation, hoping this would bring more jobs and raise the standards of living.

LITERATURE

  • In the 1920s, writers wishing to get their works published had to join the Association of Proleterian Writers (RAPP), urged writers to concentrate on the lives and achievements of the proletariat and the needs of socialism.

  • Akhamatov, Sholokhov and Zamyatin were prominent

ART AND ARCHITECTURE

  • In 1920, Lenin proclaimed himself to be a barbarian who disliked, expressionism, futurism, cubism and all other isms.

  • When referring to the limited appeal of art he said ‘art belongs to the people’

  • For a while after the revolution, a modernistic movement amongst artists was allowed to flourish in Russia

  • Lenin’s cultural tastes were conservative with a liking for classical, russian culture

  • seizure of power was to create a commissariat of enlightenment, a ministry of culture to support and encourage artists

  • Artists were labelled by Trotsky as ‘fellow travellers’

  • Bogdanov believed a new group of prolterian artists should be assembled (to promote proleterian culture) to serve a social and political purpose. This group became known as rhetorical constructivists and were a direct challenge to high culture and was popular for a time but by the early 1920s the gov was concerned by the variety of viewpoints so began to impsoe restrictions. eg Tatlin produced art which focused on the machines of the future and ordinary objects which represented the noblity of labour

  • Parades through the red square in Moscow were to be organised on such a scale that they became xamples of street theatre

MUSIC

  • In 1917 many of the leading composers left Russia (eg Medtner, Rachmanivov, Stravinsky, Tcherepin and Profokiev.

  • The assosciation of Contemporary music (est 1923) supported experimentation and modern music

  • broadcast the revolution by radio in 1917 in morse code and by 1921 programmes were being broadcast

THE CINEMA

  • Lenin quickly recognised the propaganda value of the cinema in indoctrinating the largely illiterate masses with socialist principles. Films were in black and white but Lenin still described cinema as ‘the most important art’ (eg the battleship Potemkin in 1925)

  • Bolsheviks gained power quickly by seizing all possible means of communication

  • Eisenstrain made strike by 1924

THE RADIO

  • By 1922 Moscow had the most powerful broadcasting station in the world

  • Control of radio communications was centralised by the commissiart for posts and telegraphs

  • broadcast the news of the october revolution in morse code in 1917

  • by 1921 programmes were being broadcast