Abstract
While the ‘cultural revolution’ which accompanied Stalin’s revolution from above most directly involved intellectuals, workers figured prominently among its intended beneficiaries. Bringing culture ‘closer to the masses’ and ending the ‘isolation’ of artistic work from ‘real life’ would, it was believed, strengthen the political consciousness of the working-class, on whom the success of the industrialisation drive most directly depended. In the longer run, it would facilitate the emergence, primarily from the proletariat, of the ‘new Soviet man’ — educated, culturally developed, ideologically aware, able to participate fully in the life of Socialist society. Accordingly the Party campaigned energetically both to promote the ‘proletarian theme’ in culture and to raise the cultural level of the working-class.
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Notes
See A.I. Vdovin and V.Z Drobizhev, Rost rabochego klassa SSSR 1917–1940 gg. (Moscow, 1976)
and John Barber, The Composition of the Soviet Working Class (CREES Discussion Paper SIPS no. 16), Birmingham: University of Birmingham, 1978.
See Donald Filtzer, Soviet Workers and Stalinist Industrialization (London, 1986)
and John Barber, ‘The Standard of Living of Soviet Industrial Workers, 1928–40’, in C. Bettelheim, L’Industrialisation dans les années trente (Paris, 1981).
A.S. Moskovsky, Formirovanie i razvitie rabochego klassa Sibirii v period stroitel’stva sotsializma (Novosibirsk, 1968), p. 133.
Calculated from the findings of all-Union time budget studies of workers published in S.G. Strumilin, Izbrannye proizvedeniya vol. 3 (Moscow, 1964), pp. 202–32
L.A. Gordon, E.V. Klopov, L.A. Onikov, Cherty sotsialisticheskogo obraza zhizni: byt gorodskikh rabochikh vchera, segodnya, zavtra (Moscow, 1977) p.51. See also John Barber, ‘The Worker’s Day: Time Distribution in Soviet Working-Class Families, 1923–1936’. (Unpublished paper presented to the CREES Social and Economic History Seminar), Birmingham, 1979.
K. Strievsky, Material’noe i kul’turnoe polozhenie moskovskikh rabochikh (Moscow, 1929) pp. 33–4.
A.v. Bakunin, Bor’ba bol’shevikov za industrializatsiyu Urala vo vtoroi pyatiletke (Sverdlovsk, 1968) p. 218.
V.P. Butorin and P.F. Marchenko, ‘Biblioteki zapadnoi Sibirii v period stroitel’stva sotsializma i prosveshchenie rabochikh (1920–1937 gg.’, in Rabochii klass Sibirii v period stroitel’stva sotsializma (Materialy k ‘Istorii rabochego klassa Sibirii’) (Novosibirsk, 1975) p. 158.
A. Khain, V. Khandros, Kto oni — novye liudi na proizvodstve (Moscow, 1930) p. 7.
Estimated from T.H. Rigby, Communist Party Membership in the USSR, 1917–1967 (Princeton, 1968) pp. 52, 116, 167, 226; Profsoyuznaya perepis’ (Moscow, 1934) pp. 59–60; Bol’shaya sovetskaya entsiklopediya 3rd ed., vol. 21, p. 316.
Nadezhda Mandelshtam, Hope Against Hope (London. 1975) p. 403.
See Filtzer, op. cit., pp. 200–4; Solomon M. Schwarz, Labor in the Soviet Union (London, 1952) pp. 191–6.
Nadezhda Mandelshtam, Vospominaniya (New York, 1970) p. 365.
A. Inkeles and R.A. Bauer, The Soviet Citizen ((1959) pp. 234–6, 238.
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© 1990 School of Slavonic and East European Studies
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Barber, J. (1990). Working-Class Culture and Political Culture in the 1930s. In: Günther, H. (eds) The Culture of the Stalin Period. Studies in Russia and East Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20651-3_1
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