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Lunacharsky Articles and speeches on international politics

 Abstracts for the report at the plenum of the International Bureau of Proletarian Literature

Abstracts are published according to the typewritten text stored in the CPA IML, f. 142 (A. V. Lunacharsky), op. 1, unit ridge 318, l. 12-14.

Preface and publication L. K. Shvetsovoi

This report, the text of which has not been preserved, was made by Lunacharsky at the MBPL plenum, which opened on March 17, 1926, immediately after the completion of the VI extended plenum of the Comintern (February 17 - March 15, 1926). On March 7, Pravda (No. 55) published an information note, signed by Lunacharsky, outlining the tasks of the upcoming IBPL plenum and its program of work:

Literary Conference on Proletarian Literature
The International Bureau of Proletarian Literature communicated with the Presidium of the Extended Plenum of the ECCI regarding a conference on questions of proletarian literature. This meeting, authorized by the Presidium, will take place after the completion of the work of the Plenum and will presumably have the following content:

Fiction as a Weapon of the Class Struggle - report by Comrade Clara Zetkin.

The Tasks of the International Bureau and the Perspectives of Proletarian Literature in the West - report by Comrade A. V. Lunacharsky.

Proletarian Literature in the USSR - report by Comrade L. Averbakh.

The Western Workers' Press and Proletarian Literature - Report by Comrade Heinz Kagan.

Fiction of the East - report by Comrade Katayama.

The organizational question is the report of Comrade Sigismund Valaitis.

The International Bureau attaches great importance to this meeting. In almost all countries of Europe there are certain cells, tendencies, which, if properly organized, can turn into well-formed forces for the communist movement. To give some account of the totality of these phenomena and to try to introduce into them a certain unity of principles and organizational methods is already quite timely,* especially since it is planned to convene an international congress of proletarian and revolutionary writers this summer.

A. Lunacharsky

* There is an obvious typo in the newspaper text: modern

The "International Congress" mentioned at the end of the note took place a year and a half later - it opened on November 15, 1927, and was called the First International Conference of Proletarian and Revolutionary Writers. During this period of time, the work to rally the forces of the revolutionary literature of the world was determined by the decision of the March 1926 plenum. The most important of them was the recognition of the inconsistency of Littern's ideas and the need to move to more complex and more flexible forms of work. In accordance with this, the governing body of the movement was renamed the International Bureau of Revolutionary Literature (IBRL), which existed until November 1930.

In an article published at the beginning of 1928, B. Illes, characterizing the work of the International Bureau for a number of years, defined the essence of the new fundamental principles on which the work of the IBRL was based after the March 1926 plenum: “The target setting has become more reasonable and thus more realistic : instead of Littern, a Bureau that oversees literature, shares experience and results, organizes the translation of proletarian literature, delivers materials for the party and sympathetic press, criticizes literary works and literary trends in a Marxist way, and, finally, prepares a congress of revolutionary writers. The Bureau sought to rely on revolutionary writers' organizations in individual countries, realizing that "these organizations must cease to be sects, since the Bureau now organizes not only revolutionary writers,1

Art is a function of social life and in a class society bears a class character.

Bearing the stamp of class, art is not only a kind of reflection of the surrounding social reality, but also its vital factor and, in this sense, a weapon of the class struggle.

The class character of literature and art is not weakened at all by the fact that individual writers and artists may be the spokesmen for the tendency not of any one class, but of the intersection of the tendencies of several classes.

By and large, literature and art in general are subject to the influence of the ruling class. They either put its tendencies into practice in a more or less transparent form, or, by their very lack of ideas, turn out to be allies in the struggle against the enlightenment of the popular masses and the growth of the class consciousness of the oppressed.

As the oppressed class rises to power, it begins to develop martial literature, and sometimes art in general, aimed at strengthening its own self-consciousness and self-respect and at overthrowing the cultural foundations of the ruling class, hostile to the rising class. The bourgeoisie, in its advancing era, also strove in its art to express the interests of the masses, whom it wished to draw into its movement.

Bourgeois revolutionary art had the advantage that the bourgeois class, at the time when it was ripe for revolution, had a serious cultural preparation; on the other hand, the more or less broad character of bourgeois revolutionary art began to erode in proportion as the bourgeoisie ceased to play a revolutionary role; some of its responses can still be heard for quite a long time in progressive, petty-bourgeois literature.

The proletariat also needs literature as a powerful form of work to strengthen class self-consciousness and self-respect and fight enemies, but during its offensive struggle it is placed in a worse position than the bourgeoisie, since its cultural level is much lower due to its economic oppression. On the other hand, much more than bourgeois literature, proletarian literature can lay claim to universal humanity, because the proletariat in its revolution is truly a fighter for the freedom and happiness of all mankind.

The International Bureau has in mind proletarian literature in the strict sense of the word, i.e., class-conscious literature. As for the more vague revolutionary literature, it should be used in the interests of the proletariat, and individual writers of this type should be attracted as far as possible to our views and principles.

In countries where the proletariat has triumphed (in the countries of the Union 2 ), proletarian literature has taken a very prominent role in the whole of society. The Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in a special resolution recognized the need to fight for the hegemony of proletarian literature through artistic and ideological competition with other literary elements. 3

In countries where the proletariat is only going to fight and where the communist parties are the parties of the revolutionary opposition, the position of proletarian literature is much more precarious. Nevertheless, the usefulness of organizational assistance to all glimpses of proletarian literature is obvious.

The International Bureau of Proletarian Literature knows that in Germany, France, America, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Switzerland, Turkey, Persia and other countries of Europe and the East, there are either individual writers who are close to proletarian literature, or entire circles, or literary departments or literary supplements. to communist newspapers and magazines. The International Bureau also knows that from time to time there are signs of an independent literary movement among the proletarians who have begun artistic work (worker correspondents, etc.), as well as attempts to seek support from such units or circles (Michael's attempt in the editorial of Klarte). 4All this makes one think that the International Bureau can find strongholds for a network of proletarian literary cells, perhaps still rare, but nonetheless expedient. For this, of course, the help of the Comintern and individual communist parties is needed.

B. Illesh. Plenum of the International Bureau of Revolutionary Literature. — Bulletin of Foreign Literature, 1928, No. 1, p. 146. ↩
See note. 16 to Lunacharsky's 1925 report ( p. 45 of this volume ). ↩
We are talking about the resolution of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) "On the policy of the party in the field of fiction" of June 18, 1925. ↩
In 1925, Georges Mikael, one of the members of the editorial board of the Clarté magazine, made an attempt to attract wide circles of readers to cooperate in it, organized in the so-called "Clarté brigades". This attempt to revive the magazine's popularity, which had been undermined by the sectarian policy of its leadership, was unsuccessful (see F. Narquiriere, French Revolutionary Literature (1914-1924), p. 243). ↩