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About culture in the West and in our country

Edition "Nizhny Novgorod Commune" 1927

Printed in the printing house Nizhpoligraf, Varvarka, 32, in the amount of 2800 copies. Nizheyurodsk. gub-lit No. 1149. Order No. 3175.

By my very official position, I am forced to follow very carefully and closely what is being done in our new, post-revolutionary culture. Of course, my duties include a certain observation of how culture develops abroad: firstly, because we must borrow something from there, and secondly, it is very interesting to draw a parallel between what is being done in the West and what is happening we have. Besides, I, less than a year ago, was abroad specifically in order to take a closer look at the course of cultural development there. I had the opportunity to investigate, to some extent, these phenomena, I had occasions to speak with the greatest representatives of science and art in at least two countries: German and French. Therefore, I have accumulated a known number of observations, conclusions,

Even now we have the greatest respect for Western European culture, we quite definitely declare, in accordance with the instructions of our teacher comrade. Lenin that we consider it possible to build our own socialist proletarian culture only on the foundation of a firmly assimilated, critically perceived culture of Western European humanity. When I had to speak in Paris with some of the young communists who were grouping around the Klarte magazine, they began to tell me in almost the same terms as the reactionary, fairly well-known German philosopher Spengler said that Western European culture was dead or dying, that it fizzles out, precisely because it is based on the intellect - the human mind. "All this," said the young communists, "has taken its toll," "all this has turned out to be wrong." "We are you, Russian Bolsheviks, we regard as the vanguard of Asia, which will bring us new cultural foundations. You, they say, bring intuition to us, you, they say, bring instinct to us, such forces that contradict reason, which are deeper and which are stronger than integral reason. Therefore, down with all the cultural acquisitions that have hitherto been won in Europe, and long live a complete reform on the basis of new life principles "...

I was utterly horrified by such speeches, I said that we do not consider ourselves as Asiatics, carrying the extinguished fire of reason, but, on the contrary, as the vanguard of Europe, which brings to Asia the greatest acquisitions of European culture, only it does not carry along with opium, not in order to imperialistically suppress the Asiatic part of mankind, but in order to call for fraternal joint work with us on the basis of that great culture that has developed in Europe.

I partly understand why the young French communists fell into such heresy. And in our country, until Vladimir Ilyich sent a menacing cry in this direction, it was similar to this wandering of the minds of some communists, and especially of some intellectuals of the left front who quickly adapted to them, etc.

They liked to say this: we are Marxists, we believe that every culture is a class culture, the culture of Western Europe is the culture of the bourgeois class, we are overthrowing it, we have expelled the bourgeoisie from ourselves, and therefore its culture must be expelled; we will have a different culture, the culture of the proletarian class, it will not be like the old one, it will be in many ways the direct opposite of this old one - therefore, learn as little as possible from the old culture and suck the new culture out of your own fingers as much as possible.

Vladimir Ilyich growled with a lion's roar and declared that for the time being do not think too much about a new, independent culture. It will come to light when the time is ripe, and now we must say that the correct assimilation of Western European culture plus Soviet power is all that is needed in the near future.

Indeed, Western European culture is a vast collection of scientific and artistic achievements, to break away, to unhook from which means to plunge into barbarism for a considerable time. And to think that our far from insufficiently cultured proletariat could destroy the temple of Western European culture in some three days and create its own in some three days is the purest utopia and, moreover, a harmful utopia.

But as a result of this, we must not say this: yes, Western European culture is a gigantic value, and we prostrate ourselves before it, perceive everything and transfer everything to ourselves. This, of course, cannot be. Of course, this culture is under the pressure of the bourgeoisie and has therefore acquired a certain distorted form. Of course, our culture must correspond to the requirements of the proletariat. Vladimir Ilyich, when he spoke of the need to assimilate the old European culture, always added a little word that cannot be overlooked - "acquire critically."

We are of the opinion that culture itself has a class character, but consequently we do not at all think that this culture, which was built by the old class of landowners and capitalists, is devoid of any significance for us.

What is culture in a given age among a given people? The whole set of solving questions about the relationship to nature and the mutual relationship of mankind to each other. Culture is the totality of all decisions; how food and clothing are produced, how to distribute the results of work, how to work, how to defend oneself from an external enemy, how to establish order in oneself, how to pass on traditions from generation to generation, i.e. teach young people, etc. And if we imagine any society that has irrationally resolved these issues, it must collapse, either due to internal contradictions that have opened up, or under the blow of strong enemies.

When the ruling class in some Assyro-Babylonia or Egypt, or in the Middle Ages in France, when the feudal class was in its prime, it had to resolve all these questions more or less expediently, as far as the skill of the time allowed. That is why human culture from century to century passes from people to people, grows, rises, because, as Marx teaches us to understand the development of society: strong in order to get the maximum benefit from it, therefore it is necessary to organize the work more profitably, productively, to get more useful aspects of it; if he cares badly, he will fall.” Therefore, the ruling class, which is in the prime of life, leads society forward. For example, priests, feudal lords, or scientists, as was the case in bourgeois society, really mobilize all kinds of knowledge and apply them to make society flourish. True, at the same time they leave the vast majority of humanity in poverty, exploit it, but this is the other side of the matter, they care about their power, strength, they need to have a great strong army, a properly organized economy, the production of all kinds of products, ending with luxury products, therefore culture should go ahead. But it turns out, as Karl Marx teaches us, an internal contradiction. Take the feudal regime. Cities grow, the feudal lords first patronize them, because they are merchants, artisans, they contribute to the growth of this power. But as the city grows, it becomes clearer the importance of urban industry, the center of gravity shifts from the countryside led by the landlords to the city led by the capitalists, and as industry grows, the new importance of man in nature grows, new technical approaches to solving problems grow. . The new class, leading the new urban industrial labor, becomes more and more powerful, begins to shake the entire old system, a revolutionary situation arises, a class struggle, and the new class, overthrowing the old, leaving everything suitable for itself, creates a new one that has grown under new forms of labor. The bourgeoisie, at the same time, is a class of exceptional significance. If you read the Communist Manifesto written by Marx and Engels, you will think that this is a real enthusiastic serenade before the bourgeoisie: so much is said there that is pleasant, so much is said there for the glory of the bourgeoisie. And the bourgeoisie in the history of mankind was indeed a class of the deepest significance. Against the landlords and priests, it set the task of learning nature from experience, drawing technical conclusions from this knowledge, developing the maximum production goods on this basis, building wide world trade on these production goods; the world market is, after all, the core of bourgeois consciousness.

And when the bourgeoisie was young, powerful, juicy, marched in a revolutionary way against the ruling class and tried to attract all the masses of the people to cooperate with it, convincing them that this was being done in their interests, then it expanded its world outlook to the limit. She argued, contrary to priesthood and semi-priestry, that the world is a single whole, that everything is natural in it, that if you know matter and its properties well, then you can extract from it a huge amount of benefits through economics and scientifically organized labor, which will make everyone happy.

Has she deceived mankind or not? Half only. She developed the factory industry, she penetrated into the bowels of the earth, she furrowed the continents with railway lines, she created a new humanity. With the old, pre-bourgeois methods of work, mankind in its present numbers could not exist at all. But if in this sense it has expanded the knowledge of nature to extremely high limits, if the bourgeoisie has made technical conclusions of exceptional importance, if it has brought our strength over nature, our technical capabilities to a colossal limit, then at the same time it has deceived mankind, because all this technology and she left all this science in her own hands, in the hands of a small minority, and this small minority of big capitalists turned all the achievements in such a way that that humanity as a whole has remained almost as poor as in the Middle Ages. All the benefits of this new order, all the fruits of science and technology, the bourgeoisie itself absorbed, on the one hand, for the further expansion of their enterprises and, at the same time, for their insane luxury. It has become a parasitic, alien-eating ruling class. And the time was bound to come when it itself came into conflict with the growing new forms of labor.

What were these forms? It was a greater and greater socialization of labor, that production outgrew the boundaries of the interests of a given owner, even a given country.

Let us see how bourgeois science, the most important core of culture, has grown. I will talk about art as well, but most of all about science. Bourgeois science, in the spirit of those ideals that rushed before the bourgeoisie, in the spirit of the practical study of the means for overcoming forces, for developing the productive power of man, declared the unity of nature, the regularity of natural phenomena, began to drive out all sorts of ghosts of fantasies about the other world, starting with God and all the ghosts dependent on him. Having risen to such a point, she began to develop her worldview in this sense.

Already in the 17th century, Descartes drew the physical universe as a regular mass, and proved that mechanical laws dominate in it. Further, vast areas of chemistry were conquered, the individual properties of each type of matter and their relationships were revealed. Then the bourgeoisie invaded biology and proved that if life is a more complex phenomenon than physical and chemical phenomena, nevertheless, in principle, it is also natural, it must be investigated by experience, it can finally be reduced to the basic laws of physics and chemistry, although complicated, although given a new look. There was a fascination with too primitive materialism, but in any case, the fact is that bourgeois science, with Darwin, whom Marx considered the direct link to which Marxism should adjoin, extracted accidental secrets from the field of life, posed the question in principle in such a way that that if we cannot scientifically explain all the phenomena of life experimentally and naturally now, then we are still on an excellent path. It is worth working for several decades and everything will be clear, you just have to keep this lantern of science in your hands, which brightly illuminated physical and chemical phenomena. The bourgeoisie accepted this at first without much struggle, but then came Marxism.

What is Marxism from the point of view of science and culture? Marxism is the application of scientific materialistic methods to the study of society. What is a person? And what is man as a social animal? What is a society? What is the meaning of human history? What does the alternation of known forms of society mean? What does the bourgeoisie itself and its capitalist system mean? What is the future of man? All this is asked by the bourgeoisie to science, like an oracle. Tell me what are the heavenly bodies, what are minerals, plants, animals, and science answered. And then the bourgeoisie asked: “What is human society, its history, what am I myself, the bourgeoisie”? Science answered: “You bourgeoisie is a transient phenomenon, you created the capitalist system, which was progressive, and now it is dying out. You created a great proletarian class in parallel with yourself. He, he alone can take in strong hands the productive forces that you have developed; he will indeed put scientifically the question of how to plan human forces so that everyone is happy. And the proletariat will receive the following answer: "The bourgeoisie must be eliminated, all the instruments of production must be taken over by the proletariat itself, together with all mankind." Here the bourgeoisie suspected that the oracle was lying. Perhaps deep down the bourgeoisie was convinced that science was right, but it silenced it. An order was given, open and unspoken, to all academies, higher scientific institutions, to all scientific societies, to all scientific journals and the press, which penetrates everywhere and poisons everything, to keep silent about Marxism, to deny Marxism, to say that it is not scientific.

And all the professors will prove that the bourgeois system, with its lively capital, with the poverty of the masses, with periodic crises, is the ultimate limit of achievements, that it is scientific, that it is correct. How can this be proven? The only way to prove it is by lying.

And began the great kingdom of lies in social science. Social science turned out to be falsified. I do not mean to say that every bourgeois scholar knows that the Marxists are right, but for a good salary he claims that they are wrong. This is not how it happens in humans. Man is a flexible being. When a young scientist, who, perhaps, in his youth “became sick” of Marxism, knowing that if he told the truth, he would become a renegade, they would not give him a chair, let him go around the world with his family, etc., and the proletariat was a weak class, give he cannot be provided for, then he picks up such truths that do not harm his womb. It's like a well-known hypnosis. You know, if you hypnotize a person and say that when you wake up, you won't see Ivan Ivanovich's head, then he will wake up and won't see Ivan Ivanovich's head. Class interest, and in this case the interest of petty-bourgeois scientists who are afraid to enter into a struggle with their master, is constantly acting as such a hypnotist. But the matter is not limited to this. Marxism is a direct conclusion from all science, it is an inalienable part of science, and willy-nilly, if you want to deny Marxism, then you must also deny a lot in science itself, and the bourgeoisie would be ready to reject all science and plunge into the abyss of medieval darkness, recognize any kind of superstition, just not to recognize Marxism.But she cannot completely reject science - one cannot deny mathematics, mechanics, chemistry, conclusions are drawn from them in factories and plants, and the bourgeoisie grows rich on this. It is therefore compelled to abandon and preserve the exact sciences and technology, but to falsify all identification sciences, for example, the theory of knowledge. to a real worldview, they begin to prevaricate, do not draw the conclusions from science that should be drawn, they suffer with the ideas of infinity, eternity, build all sorts of sophisms and so messed up in the end that some timid mind will say - this is not our business , we are human trifles, we can’t know the work of the Lord’s hands in any way, there is inscrutable providence and the light of our mind will never illuminate this eternity and infinity. And especially in the field of biology, i.e., the science of life, which comes closest to sociology, to the question that Marxism is concerned with, here, of course, the bourgeois scientific army is all working to ensure that, using what is not there, it is still clear to prove that there are mysterious forces here, forces that testify to the presence of providence in nature, and all vitalism boils down to recognizing next to matter an inscrutable spirit that cannot be scientifically studied. What is it for? All this is done in order to make the world outlook beneficial to oneself at the very root.

The proletarian says: “You are right, bourgeoisie, in saying that the world is one, in this world labor can reign, make the foundation of our happiness, and happiness is the only one that can be used from the cradle to the grave, there are no other worlds, we must hope for myself, to unfold our scientific work systematically in order to achieve maximum results, and therefore, bourgeoisie, I come to the question: is our society scientifically built, is it not chaotic, is it not unprofitable?

The bourgeoisie does not like this. She wants to say, together with the priests: “Yes, what is a human life: 70-80 years”, and if you hint that there is an immortal soul, it will turn out completely different. It is necessary not to arrange happiness in this world, but to think about the soul, what will be the life of the soul after death. Priests and philosophers will tell you about this, all sorts of turuses on wheels will tell you. And the proletarian who allows himself to carry water all his life, he will be the smartest and will receive a salary several times higher in the next world.

Thus the bourgeoisie falsified science. She correctly unfolded it at first, and we must take this science out of her hands until the moment when the bourgeoisie falsified it.

I do not dispute that among scientists, where the bourgeoisie does not press them very hard, there are honest scientists, i.e. in the field of chemistry, mathematics, physics, and where they give products that are very useful to them. In the field of biology and social science, one must have great civic courage to speak the truth. After the war, the bourgeoisie began to put such pressure on science that only heroes can remain true to themselves. Therefore, we are here, in most cases, dealing with a fake, and we must consider it carefully.

What do we see in Europe when we go to explore the phenomena there. The bourgeoisie has become indifferent to science in general. This shows that it comes into a state of stupefaction, a certain frenzy, it is so afraid that the proletariat might rise up against it, it has become afraid of science, it sees in it Marxist principles that awaken critical thought, illuminate dark heads, it slips to to the proletariat - a "suspicious gossip". But since she works in factories and factories, we need to support her, but carefully. The bourgeoisie has become cold in relation to science. She says: “Pop has become nice to me. When I was young, I didn't need it, I got old, I needed it. It is necessary that he calm me down, so that he arranges my frantic life in the next world, and most importantly, for someone else's consumption: to inspire the proletariat and peasantry with the ideas of Christian patience. "Christ endured - and we must." And a learned person argues with a priest, proves the stupidity that is written in the Bible and the gospel in ancient times. He is uncomfortable to deal with. Besides, the bourgeoisie is preparing for a worldwide slaughter by spending gigantic sums of money, when Europe is all wounded and impoverished, it spends gigantic sums on armaments and has little left for science. Therefore, in almost all European countries, the financial situation of scientists and scientific work is falling. In Germany, in a period of great need, when the country was suffering from the consequences of the war, the Notgemeinschaft was organized, i.e. a society of need, which included all the scientists of Germany in order to give the opportunity to work scientifically by arranging lectures and all kinds of mutual assistance, because the government could not help. It must be said that in Germany this society still exists today.

“They robbed us, humiliated us, our future will be covered with heavy clouds, and the only way out for us is work and science.”

That is why Germany is recovering so quickly now. You will not find anywhere such hard work, effort and such a growing appreciation of science as in Germany. She has just caught her breath from such a deadly fight, from such a dead loop into which she has been driven and she is still threatened with enormous disasters. It is not known whether Germany can save itself with the Dawes commitments. But she develops her scientifically organized work with all her might, and in this respect inspires a certain respect.

Of course, we would be glad if she, together with all this, understood that on the capitalist path, even the most diligent, scientifically organized work does not promise recovery and will not enable the German people, in their entire mass, to achieve prosperity. If communism were to join this scientifically organized labor and industriousness, then it would be an invincibly strong country.

When some progressive people in Germany said what would it be like if the Union of Sov. Social The Republic, on the one hand, has come to the Rhine, and on the other, to the Pacific Ocean - that would be a good thing. I answered that it would really not be bad, really, it would be a good thing: with the Germans as the vanguard, with the Chinese and Indians as the rear, we would represent a world in front of which all of old Europe and America should have saved.

In Germany, besides our brothers the Communists, there are significant forces in the most diverse strata who, although they are afraid of communism, nevertheless stand for such a Euro-Asian alliance—an alliance of the German Slavs and the Asian peoples to resist the imperialists of the West.

True, this party, this trend, has begun to weaken lately. Germany is pulled to a large extent to the west, but because she is afraid that by playing west and entering the combination of the League of Nations, she will be swallowed by sharks, she casts and anchors her anchors with us, plays a two-faced game in order to be able to impress the Eastern Union as well. As a result, a very complex, interesting, not only political, but also cultural game is being played with us in Germany. Therefore, we meet in Germany a rather favorable ground for our ideas ... When we come to Germany, we feel surrounded, if not by friends, then, in any case, by people who are benevolent towards us.

In France, the situation is much worse: firstly, victorious France, having swallowed up new lands, having robbed Germany to the bone, is nevertheless colossally poorer.

When, for example, such a person as the historian Olar, a world historian, told me: “My savings turned into shards, and on my salary I can only have breakfast, but I can’t have lunch,” then you will appreciate what this scientist is . Or, as Rakovsky told me: a great scientist gives a franc for his coat and asks for 50 centimes in change. This is the routine of half-heartedness into which the capitalists have immersed their scientists.

At the same time, these same capitalists allotted, at one stroke, several tens of millions of francs additionally for submarine military construction and refused to save the scientific institutions from freezing, i.e., to the Minister of Public Education. refused to give funds for fuel, something we fought against in 18-19. When the minister said that they would not be able to heat themselves with the allocated amount for education, he was still refused. Here is a picture of the purely material impoverishment of French scientific life. They cut off funds for public education so much that there are even more difficult pictures.

Gosplan called me a pessimist when I said that we would finish general education at the age of seven, he said “much earlier”, but he was mistaken, he does not take school construction into account, he thinks that in our climate we can educate children in the open heaven, but I think that in seven years we will be able to complete this task, because this business is growing from year to year.

And France, which before the war did not have a single illiterate recruit, this year has 14% of absolutely illiterate recruits. It crawls towards illiteracy. But this is still not enough, this is a purely technical manifestation, but let's see how things stand with respect to the very "spirit" with which France is now so overwhelmed. The number of Catholic newspapers is growing from year to year. The newspaper, the so-called "Crucifixion", acquired a million subscribers. Fascist and monarchist circles carry on tireless propaganda, chiefly among the intelligentsia, and propagate the worst superstitions. And you can see a lot of the most serious people thinking about the devil, how to fight him, etc.

In England, too, there is a general decline in the cultural level and the impoverishment of means.

Here, t.t., not to mention Italy, Mussolini, who introduced the law of God in all schools, put scientists under police supervision so that they would not lie about such things that could prevent an alliance with the pope, and one Italian the scientist declared definitely that it was no longer possible for a scientist to live in Italy.

Here is the general formulation of the question of science there, in Europe. There are a lot of honest scientists out there. In the same France, I found a number of scientists, for example, Mazon, who is now visiting us in Moscow, these are honest leading scientists, but they are discouraged by everything that is happening. And when this Mazon came to us to conclude an alliance between French and Russian science, he said that this is not necessary for us because science has given us a lot of interesting things, but we need to somehow unite in order to organize a worldwide resistance to reaction.

It happened to me at large meetings where there were not communists at all, but good progressive people, writers with famous names, I talked with them, I asked: why don’t you all rally together, why don’t you create a union, a publishing house, a magazine, a newspaper in which you are honest progressive people, not necessarily sinning with communism, I know that you are not communists, but in the name of human progress, in the name of genuine science, you would rebuff this reaction. Yes, they say, - that would be very good - maybe you will undertake to organize this? And not joking, but really! Discouraged, they give up, do not know how to help themselves, bewildered by this onset of gloom and darkness. This is how it is in the realm of science.

Touch the realm of art. In Europe there are a certain number of artists of the old art, but they do not play a big role in public life. You understand that the traditions of repeating at least the good, but the old, do not play a serious role in culture. Those artists who respond to modernity play a role. These new schools of art in all the countries of Europe can be generally divided into three streams, into three great currents. In one country one prevails, in another the other prevails. The first, the most dangerous, the most terrible, which seeks to penetrate partly to us, which can be called the most expressive name, is the French school of Dadaism. The school is something formidable and very powerful. Not only artists are fond of Dadaism, but also extremely wide circles. The Dadaists say this: art must be nonsense at all costs, art that is connected with the intellect, with thought, with logic, art that is connected with a social question or a philosophical question is the most boring nonsense.

We do not want this kind of art. Art should only entertain, so you need to take care in every possible way that there is no logic, there is no sense, that it reflects completely hopeless, meaningless nonsense, but so beautifully depicted, with such pepper that you, at the sight of it, involuntarily burst out laughing, lifting your legs . Now, if an artist can act in such a way that it would be funny to you, and you yourself don’t know why, (simply because it’s stupid), then you are a great artist. To create a work of art that would deprive a person of brains for a while - this is the true task of the artist.

This I convey, approximately, in the same terms as they say. Art must be abstruse, non-intelligent, non-intellectual, it must combine images, colors, sounds and lines in such a way that a stunning noise comes out, a person would be left with one unconscious, idiotic fun coming from nowhere. Therefore, both the exploiter and the victim of exploitation can take a break from imperialist blood transfusions and all exploitation. What, as a result, can they squeeze out of life, except for a sentence for themselves, except for their danger, except for the consciousness that they are not morally justified, that they have no life ideals.

And the petty bourgeoisie, given its weakness and confusion, the fact that it is cracking under the yoke of the big bourgeoisie, and the fact that it is afraid of communism, because it is scattered and turned into sand, is generally afraid of any organization, it is also looking for entertainment. Thought works only when a person in the office, in the service, calculates, as long as it is necessary in order to earn a franc or a dollar, but you need to rest, and art gives rest, hence the colossal spill of this meaningless art. Whether you go to any exhibition, you see an endless amount of colorful connections, all kinds of sticking out of the tongue, teasing tricks and all kinds of impudence towards the public. Even the Futurists and Cubists, who did have some kind of idea, whether it was based on the religion of movement or form, have long been declared academics who are spat on, like old. There is no theory, only a trick. Their usual entertainment - the theaters are completely forgotten, driven away, the cinema has taken on senseless, depraved forms, entertainment is mainly found in chantans, in music halls and revues. I remember earlier, when I was in Paris, they played a major role even then. Even then they were with coarse salt, there was little decent in them, but nevertheless they were witty, but now there is no head or tail. A complete mess. A huge number of flashy colors, gilding, tinsel, naked women, one in front of the other trumps by the fact that one released 200 naked women, the other 400, and the third at once a thousand. The public breaks into these music halls, laughs at senseless witticisms, but at the same time it is so savagely low that it is worth going to such a revue once in Berlin and Paris (and Berlin imitates Paris), to see to what level the public has fallen. And that's what the big public eats. In hotels where there is only a large hall, the ill-fated foxtrot dominates. Two huge orchestras sit and start playing one or the other. The audience dances from old to young, from a schoolboy to an old bald banker. All sorts of strokes that should not show themselves, so as not to frighten people, they are here, here cocottes and young people, and all this, at the signal of the conductor, presses against each other and the indecent stamping of the foxtrot begins.

No one even has a smile on their lips, no one is having fun. Everyone seems to be kneading dough or trampling grapes; some caricature work; then the concert stops, again the orchestra, and again they converge with dead faces, as if the devil is pulling them. The new dances and the new music corresponding to them, with its dead machine rhythm, with its lack of humanity, are taken from the savage peoples, the Negroes. With the Negroes themselves, this is still full of life and temperament, but here it is emasculated into a foxtrot that crawled into Germany, creeps towards us, and Komsomol members ask at my reports: “Can I dance?”. I say it is possible. "And a foxtrot, maybe?" I say - you shouldn’t, why would you take a monkey dance.

And we create our dances in Moscow - cheerful, grandiose, full of dance beginnings. And just as they now come to Moscow to study theater, so let them come and learn to dance. It is not for us to learn from them, but for them to learn from us.

Comrades, this is the first line of art. The second is expressionism, which operates in Germany. This is also extremely interesting. The German intelligentsia has been bruised to such an extent by the war, it already guessed before the war that capitalism was suffocating humanity. But when Wilhelm failed, then she was imbued with hatred and contempt for her bourgeoisie. It turned into some kind of bleeding wound. These artists are all sick people, offended in their patriotism and in their human dignity, and all their art is a cry and protest against the bourgeoisie.

Maybe it's our friends? We are against the bourgeoisie and they are against the bourgeoisie. Who is the enemy of our enemy, that is our friend? Unfortunately no. In all cases they are afraid of communists like fire. They have each prophet, each carries his own truth, his own god. They are afraid of organization, they see communists as barracks. "Discipline" - the very word makes their hamstrings tremble. Therefore, they have no choice. They scold the bourgeoisie, but what is the way out, they do not know. And so they created a whole school of art and also consider it unnecessary that there be meaning in a picture, in a dramatic work, in a dance - it is necessary that there should be longing, a complaint. We, they say, do not know how and do not want to sing, we cry out. But just like an inarticulate cry, so is a picture: it is some kind of nonsense, it is some kind of incessant complaint, it is some kind of continuous moaning in colors, in lines, in music, and there is a lot of melancholy in them, they have a very strong effect, but nothing can be taught.

They say: we have lost faith in reality, we have repulsed ourselves from our corrupted republic and Wilhelm, which replaced the soldier's regime. We, they say, do not want to use nature and its images, we must create everything from ourselves. Therefore, everything is ugly with them and, as a result, ugly, they despaired, went into mysticism, into themselves and became crazed eccentrics. They don't want to fight reality, they are scared, they hide from it, they don't know what to do with it. They hide, releasing whole clouds of all sorts of unconvincing fantasies. This is the second line of Western European art.

Finally, there is communist art. It has nominated several major artists. They also hate the German bourgeoisie, but they are communists and black melancholy prevails in their works, for they are not victors, but defeated, they write from below, from the underground. Evaluate a society full of malice and indignation. They interpret malice so broadly that in their pictures the world is some sort of a collection of idiots, criminals. This is a heavy nightmarish caricature of the world. I almost never saw anything bright in any of the works. The best they can find is pity for some crippled invalid, a mother-girl who goes to drown herself with her child, but I have not seen bright victorious labor moments of the struggle. This shows that these communist intellectuals, who create a certain amount of European art, are so overwhelmed by what is happening around them that they feel they are not firmly on their feet.

These are the pictures that we have in Western Europe. But we don't say for a single minute that we don't want to study, because we know that excellent work is going on there in the field of science, good work, without which we cannot go forward. We will not say: “I don’t want to ride a locomobile, let’s get something proletarian, but until then I will sit still.” We take bourgeois culture, but without ugliness and falsification.

What can be said briefly about our culture, about its meaning.

For quite a long time, Russia had a so-called culture of its own. Before Peter the Great, culture was a mixture of Byzantine and East Asian influences, and some of it came from local sources. Peter the Great, as a representative of an autocratic country, who understood that without Europeanizing the army, and therefore also industry and communications, it is impossible to resist European enemies. He began to Europeanize our country. After that, in our intelligentsia, i.e. in that part of the intelligentsia, which was then great-thinking, there was a dispute about whether Peter the Great borrowed culture from the West or whether it unfolded on our own principles.

One of the highlights at that time was the great speech that Dostoevsky delivered at the opening of the monument to Pushkin. The meaning of the speech, approximately, was as follows: in Russia, our people are rather soft. We, starting with Peter the Great, Lomonosov and Pushkin, perceive with extreme ease everything that was beautiful and kind in the West, we reflect it all, as in a mirror, we press it to our hearts and build, as it were, an electric culture assembled from different pieces. This softness, lack of national egoism, lack of desire to push our national personality forward determines our great future, for we collect everything beautiful, wherever it is found, and instead of building from these elements that inert prison that the European peoples built, we dream of connecting all this and are gradually approaching the fact that to unite in a real world good. “We,” says Dostoevsky, “are a people filled with love for the people.”

We are a people who take on a worldwide task, it is we who will one day call all nations to a fraternal feast. Here is the approximate meaning that Dostoevsky put into his speech.

He did not guess in what way, how it would turn out and how it would turn out that it was we, the peoples of this very tsarist Russia, who would be the first on the road to socialism, that we would become the core of the Comintern, i.e., the international homeland of all people who are fighting for a bright future: Dostoevsky prophetically foresaw this. Why did he and many others, and Tolstoy, and Korolenko, whose anniversary we recently celebrated, why did they believe in some special sincerity of the Russian people, in some kind of his internationalism, in some kind of his love for truth, which was expressed in clumsy phrase "people-God-bearer", i.e. a people that has Christian truths in itself, meaning by this always love, brotherhood, a good attitude towards everyone. This is because the Russian intelligentsia was, throughout the entire period from Karamzin to the fall of the regime of Nicholas II, held in a political vice. She was never able to start social practice, she was politically weak, her paths to social creativity were cut off, and therefore she dreamed, she completely went into a dream, she was even prevented from speaking scientifically, she could only publicly express her opinion, her thoughts. Our great thinkers acted only as writers, as critics, because the only permitted channel was only criticism and journalism. It was in these artistic dreams that all the energy of all that part of the population poured out - first the nobility, then the raznochinsk populist, which, under the name of the intelligentsia, created the history of our culture until recently.

There is a huge capital of humanity, true human relations, methods of how realistically and truthfully to reveal the untruth of life, how to call forward, how to find those sparks of fire of genuine truth, lost in darkness, which illuminated a person’s path.

This is all laid down in the vast culture that the Russian intelligentsia created during this period from Tsar Alexander I to the overthrow of Nicholas II.

Vladimir Ilyich liked to say this: our worst enemy is Oblomovism, and he once explained to me and other comrades, - Oblomov is not only a gentleman who lies on the sofa and dreams, this has deeply penetrated into us, and intellectuals are very often Oblomovs. They have no arms and legs, everything is atrophied because the autocracy did not allow them to work.

And this is considered, as Lenin said: "our Slavic sign." We will show, said Tyurin, what kind of Slavs we are, whether we are Tyurins or not.

During the revolution, this same people put forward those steel phalanxes of the Bolsheviks who shook the world in ten days. This nation has brought forward us, people filled with the highest energy the world has ever seen. We are really practitioners, we are genuine people of reality, we are truly everything that prevented us from putting our hands to life - sent to hell and smashed to smithereens. We have exercised our right to create life in the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat, in the form of the unlimited power of labor.

We are practitioners. We have learned from Marx the scientific analysis of society, and we shine a searchlight of gigantic power in front of us in order to see the real truth; we will not allow ourselves or anyone else to distort this truth, perhaps even for noble purposes. And, having learned the truth, we intervene in life with a sharp weapon, not stopping when necessary, neither before cruelty, nor before any difficulty. We are really people of this type that when we are told: “This is not Russia, but America”, we say: “Well, we found something to compare with: the pursuit of the dollar by some uncle Sam and our task when we want to win the world and not only to win, but to reforge into a rationally built society.

Who set such goals, and who, with such colossal labor, not sparing his blood and strength, moved forward along this line with such speed? Nobody ever. Therefore, it is now difficult to talk about Slavism, laziness, Oblomovism, etc.

Does this mean that we, having embarked on the path of such an iron practice, that we, who are creating a practical culture in contrast to the culture of dreams of our populists and utopians, have broken with the culture of high ideals? Is it so? No, we did not take power in order to be tyrannical. We do not run our economy in order to make money; all our work is aimed at establishing the kingdom of socialism not only in our country, but throughout the world. We also ache for the Javanese slave, who breaks his chains imposed by Holland, we hasten with help to the English miners and the Chinese revolutionaries. We are “people of the world,” as Dostoevsky said, although in a slightly different sense than he understood it, because our ideal is so lofty compared to the Christian one—no matter what the priests say about it—it’s an active, it’s a real life ideal. , is the ideal of universal beauty.

Therefore, we do not pass by the old culture, we say fraternally to the Western peoples: “Come here with your achievements in the field of theater, music, painting,” because we rely on the West. The West is selfish, it has a purely bourgeois culture, practical. And we? We are not only business people, we are real businessmen, we are people of action, but at the same time we are the greatest idealists, the greatest admirers of the vast truths shining over all of humanity, the builders of the future. Therefore, all this, perhaps, will be useful to us, and the problem of our cultural forms lies in the fact that, along with our serious business-like economic work, we include all the great achievements of our cultural intellectuals in our property and on it we will unfold the sprouts of our scientific and artistic the culture that the proletariat itself manifests. We will unite, we will graft the proletarian culture onto our old culture, and to this end we will abundantly use all the blessings that we find in the West.

We starved for a long time, got cold, lice ate us, we died from epidemics and saw ruins around us. With incredible amazing elasticity and speed in 3-4 years that were left behind, we restored our economy to the pre-war level. And we can now say with full confidence that the time has come to begin to develop even more subtle forms of culture. In the field of public education, we have, firstly, incredible, like a flood of spring, requests from the lower classes, thirsting for knowledge, and workers and peasants. We have before us the prospects of our rapid general public education. We are the first country in the world to have more than 70% of students in higher educational institutions - there are representatives of genuine workers and peasants.

And this wave of juices, running deep from 140 mil. population guarantees us great achievements. No matter how badly equipped our educational institutions, no matter how difficult the situation of students, we will overcome all this because we have great strength, our health reserve is huge, the scope caused by the revolution is invincible, and where we have we do not have enough technology, our freshness, our effectiveness is on the way. If Vladimir Ilyich, who did not believe in miracles, said the word "miracle" when we took Perekop, then we will still take these Perekops on the cultural front. We are currently seeing a number of achievements. Of course, the bourgeois scientists took a step away from us, they were connected with the bourgeoisie, who paid them well, and we not only destroyed the laboratories, but also the apartments of these scientists, put them in a semi-beggarly position. They naturally hated us for it.

But already during the celebration of the 200th anniversary of the Academy, we were able to demonstrate to scientists from all over the world how much we managed to hook our scientists. It was a huge demonstration of the beginning, of course, of an agreement on a peace treaty between that part of science that remained faithful to our country and its Soviet forms, and between the Soviet organized proletariat.

European scientists state that during the years of hunger and deprivation, our science has achieved such great achievements in almost all areas, made so many scientific discoveries, conclusions, so many guiding ideas that they directly say that without Russian science we cannot move forward. Now they are constantly turning to us for the organization of various scientific forms of our assistance.

Why were our scientists able to develop such a pace, why can we say that only the lack of our publishing funds does not allow us to publish everything that lies in the desks of scientists, some of them have wonderful things of world significance. Where? Of course, scientists themselves did not understand why they had so many creative ideas, why they wanted to work so much. This was because our whole atmosphere was trembling with an electric charge of revolutionary enthusiasm. Because all minds were built differently, because everyone understood that everything old was dissipating like a mirage, that new brave minds were preparing, they would shake off the old, look at things in a new way, and make great progress.

And it inspired our science. And when we begin to care more and more about it, we are convinced that Russian science will take first place in the world, and by this we will prove that the revolution brings with it a new culture.

In the field of art, one can say briefly: it has now become indisputable in Europe that we have the first theater in the world.

This is recognized by the Europeans. This is confirmed by all the exhibitions in which we performed - in Vienna, in Paris. They were amazed that we had broken all the world records in the field of decorative art, that we had won all the first prizes. In all areas, except for costume and furniture, we took first place. They were amazed: what is being done? Why is this hungry country so developed? And if they knew how our fine artists live, they would be even more amazed. There is nowhere to sell paintings. Exhibitions are filled with works. They write and write brightly and get better and better in terms of technique, more and more meaningful in terms of mood. AHR for the first time in the world has touched people's attention with a huge wheel. Indeed, in Moscow and Leningrad, hundreds of thousands passed through the exhibition of Red Army soldiers, workers, young students, those elements who previously did not know about the existence of art exhibitions.

I repeat that I did not blush when European artists told me: "From the East we are waiting for light from you." I answered: “We are too naked and poor, while we can show a little” (I felt very well that even now we have something to show), but after a while we will be able to show a lot, we will be able to show the ways that would appear for saving you."

And our literature. No wonder Gorky writes one letter after another: "What a great thing Russian literature is." He speaks not of the literature of Pushkin, not of the literature of Dostoevsky's time, but of our present-day literature. Our literature is overflowing with both proletarian and fellow-traveling writers who have experienced a fate such as no other writer has experienced before. Read at least one biography of one of our writers, you will see that he fought and was a commissar, he either disappeared from hunger or died from scurvy, he traveled all over vast Russia far and wide, was engaged in all sorts of crafts, rubbed and crushed him life, he endured so much, came into contact with so many, that he endured an incredible amount of experience. Previously, each person sat in his place and knew what was due by rank. Revolution took and shook the jar so that the cream and water mixed together. All the old well-worn ruts have turned over, and everyone has gone through a huge zigzag path. And now these writers, whether they are communists, whether they are fellow travelers, whether ideologically alien to us, but everyone is trying to harmonize this whole world of new images, new colors, in the throes of creativity, overcoming this material in order to write collectively our agitated country, which is all in the making, which has not yet acquired new stable forms, is all growing, changing. That is why our literature is so rich.

Europeans write deftly, Europeans know how to interest, and we read them willingly when we want to be headless for a while, but when you follow a European writer, for example, Leonov, Vsevolod Ivanov, or Lyashko, or Lebedinsky, you understand that he a man is engaged in trifles, but this one is engaged in deep and serious artistic work, he wants to understand this country with his heart in order to facilitate and show her the right paths.

In the field of cinema, we recently had a complete collapse. The theaters closed one after another. What do the statistics say now? First, the attendance of our films is much higher than the attendance of European ones. Moreover, we now have our own production occupied the screen by 56%. We have already ousted world production by more than half, that our paintings, like "Battleship Potemkin", like "Mother", "Wind", "Servant's Wings", that these are wonderful things, we know this. But this is not enough, they beat foreign competition in foreign markets. When I was on my way to you, I received a telegram from Germany: they bought 14 negatives of “Klya Khlopa” and they say that there is not enough, send as many more as you can.

I read a critical article in the Berliner Tageblatt which writes: "The Russians displayed their usual high skill here."

Where do we get it from? German cinematography offers us an alliance and stipulates it like this: “The Americans have been bugging us and they are bugging you with their senseless feuilletons, but we have no choice, there is no sharp variety of plots, we cannot give a new director every week.” And we have? After all, no one knew Pudovkin recently. And now Pudovkin, a very young man, will have world success. Because our land is fresh, because it is rushing from everywhere, not only bourgeois sons, but are rising from all sides, the most talented people are being selected.

Everyone remembers what Vladimir Ilyich said: "Cinema is the most useful of the arts." Of course, we are still very weak, in this respect we have barely stirred up the countryside, there is still a lot of senseless foreignness, our comrades in the field of cinema very often do stupid things, and we still do not have enough money, although we already have millions of dollars. We are growing into one of the world's producers of cinematography. It's only the beginning!

We have already grown, yes, we are growing right like a 3-week-old hero, we are growing by leaps and bounds.

And why should we not respect European culture. It must be understood that it is in the process of degeneration. We want to liberate genuine culture, honest scientists and honest artists, and above all, we want to liberate the proletariat of Europe from under the decrepit bourgeoisie, which creates falsification in the field of science and art, lies, swindles human life. Maybe they are even stronger than us? They say that a decrepit old man is stronger than a growing boy. But this is not for long: they approach the grave, and we grow. They are the past that goes away, we are the future that arises.

And so I repeat: when famous people in Western Europe sometimes told me that we have to rely mainly on you, we are declining, we still have a lot of wealth, but we do not know where to go, and we are still we can’t believe your word, we still need to make sure that some business is being done with you - I didn’t feel embarrassed at all and didn’t consider it necessary to say “how many dishes were stuffed, but how little new they did.”

I knew perfectly well that indeed we are growing on the right principles. I said that maybe today we cannot prove it, but tomorrow we will prove it for sure.

When I was invited by a society of scientists in Germany to a banquet, where different publics made diplomatic speeches, I told them this: “As long as you have nothing to fear from us, we do not want to repeat the experience of probing our neighbors with a bayonet, how much they are inclined to revolution, we will do no invasion we will not. And you, for your part, also refrain from any intervention, give us the opportunity to carry out our experiment, our experience, let us calmly build a socialist system at our low technical cultural level. Very soon you will see that this is possible, and then we hope that not only the proletariat, but all honest people will move away from your tyrants, from those who exploit culture, and will follow our path.”

I was very amazed when all these gray-haired scientists listened very carefully to my words and probably thought: “The devil knows, they beat us on the first paths, maybe this young country will really help us to remove our rapists.” Yes, we will show ourselves to them!

Let me end my speech like this. The plan of our socialist construction also includes the construction of our own culture based on the great traditions of healthy European culture and on the great traditions of the culture of our intelligentsia. And on these principles and depths, in connection with all construction, we will develop a high cultural level. Both work, continuously linked into one thing, which can be generally called socialist construction, is not only the construction of our own destinies, but also the most powerful propaganda on a world scale for the construction of socialism and, at a certain stage of its achievements, will not only force the workers and peasants of all world to turn towards us, to know the correctness of our path and follow us, but also honest scientists and artists, those who cherish the culture that was once created by the bourgeoisie, but then abandoned, spat on and falsified, they will also come to us for salvation. And when one gray-haired German scientist said: “light from the East,” I think he was telling the truth. It turned out that this time the sun also rises from the East, floods with its rays our red Moscow, the red heart of our Union and other cities, one of the first lines and yours, and then gradually, dispersing the darkness of bourgeois autumn, penetrates with its golden rays to the West bringing with it a new great, as yet unprecedented flourishing of human culture.