Criticism That's all I could find. Literary critics wrote little and colorless about Marantseva. Maxim Artemiev (“Ex-libris”, 06/24/2004), “Twenty-year-olds are neither smart nor fresh”: “In Anna Marantseva’s story“ The Beggar ”, written in the first person, the heroine, talking about

4. Psychoanalytic Criticism Our last option is psychoanalytic. This direction directly insisted on its special proximity to the "inner world" of man. It was, however, a bodily-tangible world. For many fascinated admirers and detractors of psychoanalysis, he was

3. Liberal Criticism Critics with a liberal orientation differed from their fellow patriots not only conceptually, but also stylistically. If nationalist criticism was mainly characterized by a combination of grandiloquent prophetism and ideological (Soviet

5. "Patriotic" Criticism Despite the apparent drop out of the cultural mainstream after 1991, criticism of the nationalist trend continued to develop quite actively throughout the entire post-Soviet period. And when in the early 2000s, in a situation

The phenomenality and uniqueness of the proletarian movement cannot be understood without studying its practical experience. Proletcults in a short time were able to develop diverse work in a variety of organizational forms using a wide range of methods and techniques of work. In addition to the comprehensive cultural enlightenment of the masses, Proletkult tried in every possible way to develop the creative, creative abilities of ordinary residents of the country. “In all areas of work, Proletkult will lay the foundation for the creative principle of amateur performance. He will have to create for the proletariat ... a complete opportunity to freely create and work ”Kerzhentsev V. "Proletkult" - an organization of proletarian amateur performance // Proletarian culture. 1918.No.1.S.8..

The literary studios of the proletarian cults united professional and beginning poets and writers of the proletarian trend around themselves. Proletkult was the first organization that sought to bring order and organization into the spontaneous stream of creations of proletarian literary "masters".

The studio received persons delegated by local proletarian cults, provincial and city trade unions, and workers' literary circles. The students of the metropolitan proletcults were provided with housing, meals and stipends.

The studios had a two-stage structure. The first stage is general education, which set itself the task of acquainting future masters with the culture of the past. The second is a special one, which pursued the goal of teaching the students the methods of literary creativity. A good practice for beginner writers was to analyze their own works at seminars.

The program of literary studios of Proletkult included three obligatory elements of education: 1) correspondence in newspapers and magazines; 2) the creation and publication by the students of their own newspapers and magazines, starting with the simplest forms (oral and wall), then professional mastery of the editorial and publishing business; 3) the joint work of young writers with the theater and music studios of Proletkult, writing plays, dramatizations, scripts, fables, materials for live newspapers, etc. for them.

The works of proletarian authors are characterized by the "devaluation" of the individual as such: the mass, the collective, began to play the primary role. The idea of ​​"conscious collectivism" by A. Bogdanov provided for the identification of "not a person in itself, but a creative team." This idea rejected lyrical and individual beginnings in poetry. Instead of "I" in proletarian poetry, the word "we" reigned. V. Mayakovsky was ironic about this:

"Proletcultists do not speak

not about "I"

not about personality.

"I" for the proletarian -

it’s all the same as indecency” Quoted from: Pinegina L.A. Soviet working class and artistic culture (1917-1932). P.100..

The most massive were the theater studios of Proletkult, which were located in 260 of the 300 proletkults that existed in 1920. Already at the First Petrograd Conference of Proletarian Cultural and Educational Organizations in 1917, the question of building a proletarian theater was comprehensively discussed.

The proletarians saw their main duty as follows: “To unite the activities of the proletarian drama circles, to help playwrights from the working class to look for new forms for the coming socialist theater ..., to create for the proletariat that environment in which anyone who wants to show his creative instinct in the theater, will be able to find a full opportunity to freely create and work in a friendly, comradely environment, ”proletkult was stated in the Proletkult magazine in 1918. 1918. No. 1. S.8.. That is, proletarian cults encouraged the writing of proletarian plays, which were staged in studios.

Access to the theater studios was open to everyone. Let us turn to the words of one of the main theater theorists of Proletkult, P. Kerzhentsev: “It goes without saying that not only members of the circles, but also everyone who wants to, are accepted into the studio.” Thus, the elitism of theaters, characteristic of the tsarist regime, was receding: representatives of the widest sections of the population received a real opportunity to play on stage. All theatrical creative searches, and just playing on the stage, found the widest response among the masses.

The system of teaching theater in Proletkult was multi-stage. The studios were preceded by the workers' theater circles, which were numerous at the workers' clubs. Kruzhkovites received basic knowledge in the field of theatrical business. The most talented of them were selected and sent to the district theater studios of Proletkult, where training was carried out according to a more extensive program. A special examination committee, having familiarized itself with the possibilities of applicants, formed junior and senior groups from them. The students of the younger group studied according to the program, in which general educational and social disciplines prevailed. Along with this, they mastered the art of expressive reading, diction, plasticity, rhythm and a number of other special disciplines. Senior groups were engaged in special subjects according to a more in-depth program. They listened to courses in the history of the theater, art history, comprehended acting technique, the art of makeup, and so on. The most gifted students, after graduating from district studios, could continue their studies at the central Proletkult studios. Here the work was carried out at the level of vocational schools. Much attention was paid to directing, design and musical accompaniment of the performance, costume history, pantomime, props art.

The leaders of Proletkult considered amateur theaters of amateur workers, as well as mass performances and festivals, to be the main forms of the new theater.

In the country at that time, under the influence of Proletkult, many theater troupes worked. The Proletkult Arena in Petrograd and the Central Theater Studio in Moscow (since 1920 - the 1st Workers' Theater of Proletkult) that arose in 1918 gained particular popularity. They staged many interesting plays and had a noticeable influence on the formation of Soviet theatrical culture. These were mass theatres. For example, the First Workers' Theater of the Proletcult included 256 workers from Moscow factories and plants and the most talented worker actors sent by local proletcults.

The question of the repertoire of the nascent proletarian theater was rather complicated. A special list of plays that were allowed to be staged in proletarian theaters was drawn up. It included plays and dramatizations of proletarian authors (V. Pletnev "Lena", "Flengo", "Avenger", V. Ignatov "Red Corner", "Draft Work", P. Bessalko "Commune", A. Arsky "Slave" ), the classical one was extensive (N. Gogol "Marriage", A. Ostrovsky "Poverty - not at times", A. Chekhov "Jubilee") and the repertoire of foreign authors (D. London "Iron Heel", "Mexican", R. Rolland “The Taking of the Bastille”, P. Verhaarn “October”), the main themes of which were the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat (less often other oppressed classes) against capital and philistinism. The plays were made accessible in terms of content and for visiting: “We must ensure that our best theaters put on simple plays that are understandable to the workers, travel with productions to factories, adapt their theaters to the working masses, equal them in terms of location, start time of performances, the language and content of the plays, the simplicity of the productions. working viewer. Theatrical and art weekly MGSPS. 1924. No. 19. C.5. The staging of their own works, created as a result of collective creativity, had a predominantly propaganda value.

Important for revealing the problem of proletarian culture is the analysis of theatrical productions of proletarian directors. For example, S. Eisenstein staged A. Ostrovsky's play "Enough Stupidity for Every Wise Man". "The fast pace of the performance, the abundance of acrobaticism ... made the performance more alive and the very idea of ​​the play more understandable and significant for the general public ... Suddenly, but in full connection with the text, the ramp darkened, and a cinema flashed on the screen above the stage." Thus, in order to enhance the effect and clarity, according to the author's idea, acrobatic, cinematic and other techniques were used in the production. However, such a free treatment of the texts of the classics caused an ambiguous assessment by theater critics. Some pointed out: "The 'Sage', well worked out by the proletcult team ... aroused great interest in Moscow and was imprinted in the memory" Ogonyok. Weekly illustrated magazine. 1923. No. 14. P.13.. There were also other assessments: “I consider myself theatrically literate; but, nevertheless, when I watched "The Sage" I could not navigate. I didn’t understand what was happening there, what was the point.”

The play by Lope de Vega "The Gardener's Dog" was recommended for staging in the theater studios of the club, because: "In it, the workers will especially clearly see the falseness that the former world was saturated with fetters that bind people and interfere with the manifestation of the fullness of life" Hoots. Weekly of the Moscow Proletcult. 1919. No. 3. P. 22. Thus, classical plays were allowed to be staged if they contained a revolutionary and instructive meaning: it was necessary not only to glorify the socialist system, but also to debunk the previous ones, especially the capitalist one.

As a rule, costumes and decorations for theatrical productions were made by the studio members themselves, or they were expropriated from the royal theaters. Often they did without scenery and costumes: “Here, in this First Workers' Theatre, everything is really modest and frankly working. No stage, no curtain, no backstage. The action is played out on the floor” - a review is given of one of the proletarian productions of Krasnaya Niva. Literary and art magazine. 1923. No. 48. P.25..

At this time, there was a search for new forms, the most striking means of expression. “In the initial period of work here, from morning to night, enthusiastically practiced the art of expressive speech, polyphonic recitation, rhythm, plastique, Swedish gymnastics, acrobatics, circus training. On the working theater I went through even more experiments than exercises. The favorite method of working theaters was improvisation. It happened that the authors of the play turned out to be all the participants in the performance.

The principle of collective creativity in the workers' theater was actively supported by the ideologists of Proletkult. Its main provisions were formulated in the work of P. Kerzhentsev "Creative Theater", which went through five reprints. The theater was democratic, in the process of writing the script of the play and staging, everyone could become a co-author, expressing their opinion and comments. Individualistic art faded into the background, the first was the collective.

An interesting idea is the mass involvement of workers in active creative activity, when the audience, being involved in the action, became actors in mass scenes. Mass actions have gained immense popularity. The first mass action took place on May 1, 1919 in Petrograd. The theatrical action was full of poems, choral recitation, revolutionary songs and so on. Soon they began to be staged with the involvement of all amateur circles of the city, military units, consolidated orchestras using artillery, pyrotechnics, and the fleet. Vast territories, as a rule, city blocks and districts, became theatrical venues.

The most impressive performance was The Storming of the Winter Palace, staged in 1920 on the third anniversary of the October revolutionary events. “Hundreds and thousands of people moved, sang, went on the attack, rode horses, jumped on cars, rushed, stopped and swayed, illuminated by military searchlights to the incessant sound of several brass bands, the roar of sirens and the hoot of guns,” the newspaper wrote in those days. News".

For some time, the ideas of "machinism" and "biomechanics" were popular among the proletarian cult. Supporters of these trends unceremoniously distorted the works of classical literature, passing them off as proletarian creativity. Allegorical costumes and masks were widely used here. Another direction of the Proletkult theater was the traveling troupe "Peretru", organized by the leftist experimenters of the Moscow Proletkult. She contrasted the "theater of experience" with the theater of "organized movement, organized muscular tension": theatrical performance, in their opinion, became akin to a circus performance.

In addition to the diverse work of the theater troupes of the proletarian clubs, cinema workshops were opened in some central studios. The films of the first Soviet years were distinguished by the great drama of mass scenes, the brightness and accuracy of details, the strict composition of shots, the impersonality of the main characters, and the absence of a clearly defined script.

Moreover, the cinema was initially included in the ideological apparatus (hence such close attention of V. Lenin to the film industry). The Proletkino magazine states: “Film in the Soviet state has lost its significance as a source of entertainment after a hearty dinner and before “spicy pleasures”, the film is being ennobled, fulfilling a service cultural role” Proletkino. M., 1924. No. 4-5. C.2.. Movies, as a rule, are shot on revolutionary themes in order to increase the pathos of the struggle of the proletariat for a just cause. Indicative in this regard are the films of the famous proletarian director S. Eisenstein "Battleship Potemkin", "Strike", V. Pudovkin "Mother". For example, the film "Strike" by S. Eisenstein was conceived as the first in a series of paintings under the general title "Toward Dictatorship", in which it was supposed to show various methods of revolutionary struggle: demonstrations, strikes, the work of underground printing houses, and the like.

Through the Proletcult studios, such well-known cinema figures as G. Alexandrov, I. Pyryev, E. Garin, Yu. Glizer, M. Strauch, A. Khamov came to the Soviet theater and cinema; in the theater worked - V. Smyshlyaev, M. Tereshkovich, I. Loyter, A. Afinogenov and a number of others. Thus, Proletkult was able not only to win its audience, but also allowed a number of outstanding figures of national culture to show their talent.

In general, the activities of the proletarian theater and cinematographic studios played a huge role in the first post-revolutionary years in the matter of cultural construction: new forms of work were found, and the widest sections of the population were attracted to creativity.

Collection output:

PROLETCULT: THEATER ART IN THE MIRROR OF THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION

Karpov Alexander Vladimirovich

Associate Professor, Cand. cultural studies, St. Petersburg Humanitarian University of Trade Unions, Associate Professor of the Department of Art History, Russian Federation, St.- Petersburg

PROLETKULT:THEATERIN THE MIRROR OF THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION

Karpov Alexander

Ph. D. in Culture Studies, associate professor, Saint-Petersburg University of Humanities and Social Sciences, Department of Theory and History of Art, Professor, Russia, Saint-Petersburg

ANNOTATION

The article deals with the theoretical and practical aspects of the activities of the Proletkult theater in the context of the revolutionary culture of Russia in the 1917-1920s. The aesthetic principles of the theatrical practice of Proletkult are revealed, the specifics of the activity of theater studios are shown, the opinions of the ideologists of Proletkult on the significance of theater in artistic culture are presented. Particular attention is paid to the role of the Russian intelligentsia in the practical activities of Proletkult.

ABSTRACT

The article considers the theoretical and practical aspects of the activity of the Proletkult’s theater in the context of revolutionary culture of Russia in 1917-1920s. The aesthetic principles of Proletkul "t theatrical practice are revealed; the specific character of the activities of theatrical studios is analyzed; and the opinions of the leaders are represented. The focus is set on the role of Russian intelligentsia in Proletkul" t practice.

Keywords: Proletcult; theatrical art; theater studios; cultural revolution; Russian intelligentsia; Russian revolution.

keywords: Proletkul "t; theater; studio theater; the Cultural Revolution; the Russian intelligentsia; the Russian revolution.

Prince Sergei Mikhailovich Volkonsky, who was in 1899-1901. director of the imperial theaters, describing the theatrical situation in post-revolutionary Russia, ironically noted in his memoirs that in Russia "there was no village where there would not be a shed turned into a theater" . Sergei Mikhailovich did not exaggerate at all. Here is the text of the "theatrical poster" distributed in 1921 in the villages located along the Ilyinskoye - Arkhangelsk highway: “On June 1, a list will be given in the village of Glukhovoy, a piece at dawn and Shelmenko, at four o’clock in the evening, in Simonov’s barn, the entrance is one million”(original spelling).

The post-revolutionary time is the era of radical cultural and artistic projects, one of which was the program of "proletarian culture", put forward by the ideologists of the mass socio-cultural movement Proletkult. The social basis of the proletarian program was a unique phenomenon in the history of Russian culture - the "working intelligentsia" - a community of workers whose cultural and leisure activities were aimed at mastering the cultural heritage through education and self-education; self-realization in creative activity; self-determination on the basis of critical thinking (opposing oneself, on the one hand, to the authorities, and, on the other hand, to “low-conscious” workers, anti-intellectual moods, a special style of behavior). The revolution released the creative energy of this layer, which aspired to become dominant from the subcultural.

Considering art entirely as a social phenomenon, the ideologists of Proletcult (A.A. Bogdanov, P.M. Kerzhentsev, P.I. Lebedev-Polyansky, F.I. Kalinin and others) believed that the essence of works of art is due to the class nature of the creators of artistic values , and the social purpose of art is to strengthen the dominance of the ruling class or social group. According to the ideologists of the Proletcult, “proletarian” art should supplant “bourgeois” art, taking “the best examples” from “old” art, based on which one should look for new forms. According to A.A. Bogdanov, art is "one of the ideologies of the class, an element of its class consciousness"; The “class nature” of art lies in the fact that “behind the author-personality lies the author-class”. Creativity, from the point of view of A.A. Bogdanov, is “the most complex and highest type of labor; his methods proceed from the methods of labor. In the field of artistic creativity, the old culture was characterized by the uncertainty and unconsciousness of methods (“inspiration”), their isolation from the methods of labor practice, from the methods of creativity in other areas. The way out was seen in "merging art with life, making art an instrument of its active aesthetic transformation" . The basis, for example, of literary creativity should be "simplicity, clarity, purity of form", hence the working poets should "learn broadly and deeply, and not get their hands on cunning rhymes and alliterations." New writer, according to A.A. Bogdanov, may not belong to the working class by origin and status, but is able to express the basic principles of the new art - camaraderie and collectivism. Other proletarians believed that the creator of the new literature should have been a writer from the working environment - "an artist with a pure class worldview." The new art was associated by its theorists with a "stunning revolution of artistic techniques", with the emergence of a world that knows nothing "intimate and lyrical", where there are no individual personalities, but there is only "objective psychology of the masses".

The theatrical researches of Proletcult theoreticians were the most numerous, and theatrical activity received its greatest development in the practice of Proletcult. The program essence of the proletarian theater was formulated by V.F. Pletnev: "Revolutionary content and collective creativity, these are the foundations of the proletarian theater". The main theater theorist of Proletcult was Platon Kerzhentsev (1881-1940), the author of the book "Creative Theater", which survived from 1918 to 1923. five editions.

The proletarian theater, according to Kerzhentsev, must enable the proletariat to "show its own theatrical instinct." A necessary prerequisite for the creation of a new theater is a "uniform class environment in spirit", overcoming the problem of "discord between the actor and the spectator".

The new actor must be an amateur. "Only those artist-workers will be the true creators of the new proletarian theater who will be at the bench." A professional actor, on the other hand, will not be able to "be imbued with the mood of the proletariat, or open up new paths and opportunities for the proletarian theater." “The basis of proletarian artistic culture,” wrote Pletnev, “for us is a proletarian artist with pure class outlook» . Otherwise, he will fall into the ranks of "bourgeois professionals, deeply alien and even hostile to the ideas of proletarian culture." This "professional environment" can "only poison the professional worker and destroy him."

The path to the new theater lies through the drama studios of Proletkult. "The whole country should be covered with such cells, in which the inconspicuous, but extremely important work of developing a new actor will take place." The significance of “technical training”, that is, professional stagecraft, “should not be exaggerated,” since it is not with its help that “a revolution is being made in theatrical business. Much more important is the correct theatrical line, correct slogans, ardent enthusiasm.

Since the "proletarian repertoire" has not yet been formed, it is necessary to use the classical repertoire, which will be useful both for "educating taste" and as a "weapon in the fight against theatrical vulgarity". As a possible way to form a new repertoire, Kerzhentsev suggested reworking classical plays: "Let the plays be for the director only a canvas for independent work."

As an independent and most important direction in the development of the new theater, Kerzhentsev considered mass festivities and mass spectacles, calling for the use of the rich experience of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Kerzhentsev campaigned for a mass theater in the open air and "threw" the slogan: "Art on the street!" The assessment of these pages of Kerzhentsev's book by the American researcher Katerina Clark, who draws a parallel between the research of P.M. Kerzhentsev and M.M. Bakhtin about the medieval carnival. An analogy of this kind is appropriate, according to Clarke, if "we abstract from the class orientation of Kerzhentsev's theory."

The ideologists of the new theater - not only the proletarians - brought to their logical conclusion the various provisions of Kerzhentsev's theory. For example, the quintessence of ideas on the "construction" of the proletarian theater is the collection "On the Theater". These ideas were very common in post-revolutionary Russia, including in proletarian organizations. Any art is a class art, therefore "we can and must talk about the proletarian theater" - an implacable opponent of the bourgeois theater. As the main features of the emerging culture, including theatrical, one can single out collectivism, which serves as the opposite of bourgeois individualism; social optimism, opposed to intellectual "Hamletism"; as well as the almost complete overcoming of the line between art and science, the definition of art as a "scientific discipline of productive labor" . The new theater will be "an example of collective forms of social production"; mass action for the coming theater is “a completely natural material production process, inevitably reflecting in the forms and methods of theatrical skill the psyche of proletarian collectivism as a social system” . Developing the thesis about the theater as a form of production art, B.I. Arvatov writes: “We need to turn the director into a master of ceremonies of work and life,” and an actor who specializes in “aesthetic action” into “a qualified person, i.e. socially effective personality of a harmonic type". The coming proletarian theater, according to Arvatov, will become “a tribune of creative forms of reality, it will build patterns of life and models of people; it will turn into a continuous laboratory of the new public<…>» .

The problem of "director-actor-spectator" received its own solution from proletarian theoreticians: "In the proletarian theater, the role of the director should be strictly limited and the creative role of the artist and the closer and more direct connection of the latter with the audience should be in the foreground." The Tambov proletarians saw the way to the revival of the theater "in the release of the actor from the grip of the playwright, in the collective work of dramatic works." The fantasy of such authors knew no limits of development: “To burst into the theater in a friendly crowd after a fiery rally, surround the actors and stand shoulder to shoulder,<...>momentarily seeking to intervene in the course of action. Down with the scenery - no one believes them - they have outlived themselves. In some proletarian concepts, the problem of "actor-spectator" was brought to the point of absurdity: "In the socialist theater<...>these elements will not only be reunited, but also harmoniously merged into the unity of production relations.

Theater studios were the most massive in the system of proletarian organizations. By 1920, theater studios had been set up with 260 out of 300 proletcults in the country. The system of teaching theater in Proletkult was multi-stage. The studios were preceded by working theatrical circles, which were numerous at workers' clubs. Kruzhkovites received basic knowledge in the field of theatrical business. The most talented of them were selected and sent to the regional theater studios of Proletkult. A special examination committee, having familiarized itself with the possibilities of applicants, formed junior and senior groups from them. The students of the younger group studied according to a program in which general education disciplines prevailed, as well as the art of expressive reading, diction, plasticity, rhythm, etc. The older groups studied special subjects according to a more in-depth program: the history of the theater, art history, acting technique, the art of make-up. The most gifted students, after graduating from regional studios, could continue their studies at the theater studios of Proletkult. The work here was at the level of vocational schools. Much attention was paid to directing, design and musical accompaniment of the performance, the history of costume, pantomime, the art of props, etc. . The main one was the problem of specialists capable of leading the studios, which led to cooperation with professional theatrical figures: actors, directors - in short, with "old bourgeois specialists".

The attraction of the artistic intelligentsia to study in theater studios could not but have a beneficial effect on the students, on their intellectual and artistic development. On the other hand, in the atmosphere of anti-intellectual sentiments in post-revolutionary Russia, the participation of specialists could not help but be accompanied by conflicts and suspicions against them. In relation to the proletarians towards the intelligentsia, both sharp anti-intellectual sentiments and an arrogant and dismissive attitude towards it, as well as the realization that cultural development is impossible without the help of the intelligentsia, were fancifully intertwined.

Prince S.M. Volkonsky, who taught stage speech at the theater studio of the Moscow Proletkult, later recalled: “Out of the mass of people that passed in front of my eyes in various “studios” in three years, I found a manifestation of real freshness in only one environment. It's in a working environment. Here I saw bright eyes burning with inquisitiveness; every word was received by them with confidence and thirst. I read a lot in the so-called proletcult. There were only workers, there was a percentage of non-workers. I will always remember with gratitude these young people and their attitude to work and personally to me. The students treated Volkonsky with confidence, once protesting against the establishment of guardianship over him by the leadership of Proletkult. CM. Volkonsky could not accept the new social order, he did not understand "the theories of these people regarding art", he could not work in the atmosphere of "enmity and hatred" that reigned in society. Twice he left Proletkult and twice returned at the request of the students. The cup of patience was overflowing with Pletnev's play "Unbelievable, but Possible", described by Volkonsky as "the most terrible vulgarity". He wrote in his resignation letter that " for this" his " classes Not needed" .

The theater studio of the Moscow Proletkult also taught: N.V. Demidov, V.R. Olkhovsky, V.S. Smyshlyaev (who was also the director of many proletarian productions), M.A. Chekhov. The Proletcult magazine Gorn published two articles by Chekhov “On the Stanislavsky System” (1919. - Book 2/3) and “On the Actor’s Work on Himself (according to the Stanislavsky System)” (1919. - Book 4). This was the first documentary presentation of Stanislavsky's system, which until then had existed only in oral form. Stanislavsky was offended because of this by Chekhov, who as a result was forced to apologize to the master.

In 1920-1925. S.M. worked in Proletkult. Eisenstein. He directed director's workshops, headed the first working theater of Proletkult. In the Proletkult Theater, Eisenstein staged the performances “The Mexican” (based on the story of Jack London), “The Wise Man” (political buffoonery based on the play by N.A. Ostrovsky “Enough Stupidity for Every Wise Man”), “Gas Masks” (instead of the theater stage - a gas plant, turned into a stage platform), as well as the film "Strike" was shot together with Proletkult. Eisenstein left Proletkult because of a conflict with V.F. Pletnev about the film "Strike".

In the theater studio of the Petrograd Proletkult, the actors of the Alexandrinsky Theater worked - G.G. Ge, E.P. Karpov, directors were N.N. Urvantsov (director of The Crooked Mirror), A.L. Gripich, a student of Meyerhold, A.A. Mgebrov, who carried out most of the productions of the Petrograd Proletkult. The course "The Art of Living Speech" in the Petrograd Proletkult was taught by the famous lawyer A.F. Horses.

What prompted the intelligentsia to take part in the work of Proletkult? M.V. Voloshina writes in her memoirs: “Was it not the fulfillment of my deepest desire to open the way to art for our people. I was so happy that neither hunger, nor cold, nor the fact that I had a roof over my head, and every night I spent where I had to, did not play any role for me. Replying to the reproaches of acquaintances why she did not sabotage the Bolsheviks, Voloshina said: “What we want to give the workers has nothing to do with the parties. Then I was convinced that Bolshevism, so alien to the Russian people, would last only a short period of time, as a transitional situation. But, what the workers will get by joining the culture of the common humanity, this will remain even when Bolshevism disappears. Not only Voloshin lived by such faith. The journalist A. Levinson recalled: “Those who have experienced cultural work in the Soviet of Deputies know the bitterness of futile efforts, all the doom of the fight against the bestial enmity of the masters of life, but nevertheless we lived with a generous illusion in these years, hoping that Byron and Flaubert, penetrating the masses, even for the glory of the Bolshevik bluff, they will fruitfully shake more than one soul” [Cit. by: 14, p. 55]. Margarita Voloshina, mentioned by us, worked as the secretary of the Moscow Proletcult, organized fine art studios, and also lectured on the history of art. She later recalled: “The Proletkult building was located near a military school, where people were shot every night. In the apartment where I most often spent the night, these shots were heard behind the wall all night. But in the daytime I saw students of Proletcult, people eager to find the true meaning of life and posing deep, even the deepest questions of being. With what confidence, with what gratitude they accepted what was given to them! In this dual world I lived then.

If we consider the question of the participation of the Russian intelligentsia in the cultural, creative and educational activities of Proletkult as a whole, then it can be argued that the cooperation of a significant part of the intelligentsia with Proletkult was by no means due to their support for the ideology and practice of Bolshevism. She was driven by the indestructible spiritual need in a true intellectual to preserve and develop the world of culture; "magnanimous illusions" about Pushkin, Shakespeare, Byron, Flaubert, which "shock more than one soul", even when "Bolshevism has disappeared." Other representatives of the creative intelligentsia voluntarily and with sincere enthusiasm succumbed to the romance of the revolution, but very soon became convinced of what bloody chimeras they were dealing with. The "working intelligentsia", created largely thanks to the "old" intelligentsia, repaid its teachers in a peculiar way.

The romance of the revolution led to the active participation of the "proletarians" in the activities of the studios. Such activity was to a certain extent predetermined by the development of workers' theaters and drama clubs, which began to appear at the beginning of the 20th century. They consisted of those people whom contemporaries called "working intelligentsia." Workers' theaters and drama circles formed a special subculture that developed as an alternative to existing forms of cultural and leisure activities; first of all, commercial mass culture: amusement parks, cinema, theaters, even records. Workers' theaters were also an alternative to those cultural and entertainment events that were "sponsored" by entrepreneurs. “Undoubtedly, many performances were hopelessly amateur.<…>However, these performances existed to demonstrate not the skill of the actors, but the fact that they were created by the workers and for the workers, which seemed more important, ”says the British historian E. Swift.

On the basis of the largest theatrical studios, proletarian theaters were formed. The theatrical activity of Proletkult was varied. The studios did not repeat themselves in their work, did not agree with each other regarding the principles of the new theater. “There was no such aesthetic thesis,” notes D.I. Zolotnitsky, - on which everyone would agree amicably. Despite the existence of Kerzhentsev's treatise, none of the theatrical groups, and not only in the Proletkult system, completely and completely did not correspond to the principles set forth in it. The analysis of proletarian theatrical productions is an independent subject for art history and cultural understanding.

In the analysis of the practice of proletarian theater studios, in fact, some commonality, oddly enough, of the principles of proletarian art and postmodern philosophy is visible: the search for new relationships between the actor and the audience, not just the creative use of the classical repertoire, but the possibility of its radical transformation, attracting the entire volume historical experience. The program of "proletarian culture", corresponding to the spirit of the time of post-revolutionary Russia and expressing the desire of yesterday's "oppressed" for cultural development and the creation of a just society, contained deep contradictions, features of primitivism, utilitarianism, classism and utopian elements.

Proletkult was the first to undertake to direct the "living creativity of the masses" into an organized channel. As a result of the revolutionary upheaval, the aesthetic ideas of the “working intelligentsia” and their ideologists were given the opportunity to be institutionalized, and communities that aspired to cultural individualization, being only to a small extent socialized, were involved in the artistic process. However, the revolutionary enthusiasm among the broad masses regarding the possibilities of their own cultural creation very soon faded away, which, along with political and organizational-ideological factors, became the cause of the crisis and decline of the proletarian movement. The very idea of ​​a “new culture” (literature, art, theater) is by no means dead. It was picked up by numerous literary, artistic and creative groups and associations, each of which sought to lead the cultural process; the authorities, for their part, skillfully manipulated the struggle of creative associations on the "cultural front".

Bibliography:

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4. Voloshina M.V. Green snake: Memoirs of an artist. St. Petersburg: Andreev and sons, 1993. - 339 p.
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Literature of the 1920s is "polar", is a struggle of poles, and these poles are indicated brighter and brighter in the controversy RAPP With "Pass" . On the one hand - extreme rationalism, ultra-classism, the consideration of art as an instrument of political struggle; on the other hand, the upholding of universal human values ​​as opposed to class values. In the battle between RAPP and Pereval, not only different views on art were manifested, but also different categories in which the opponents thought. The Rappovtsy sought to transfer the socio-political slogans of the class struggle into literary criticism, while the Perevaltsy turned to extremely broad image-symbols that had a deep artistic content and philosophical meaning. Among them are the images of Mozart and Salieri, the "hidden goddess Galatea" (this was the name of one of the books of the critic D. Gorbov, which became the banner of the "Pass"), the Master and the Artist.

So, RAPP and "Pass". These two groupings reflected, figuratively speaking, the two poles of the literature of the second half of the 1920s. On one, a dogmatically understood class approach, elevated to the hysteria of class hatred, violence against literature and personality - the personality of an artist, writer, hero. On the other - art as the goal and life of the artist, justifying his social existence. How did such polar ideas about art, and therefore about life in general, find their organizational expression? Turning to the history of the emergence of these groups, we can understand the most important aspects of the literary process of that era.

RAPP

As an organization with its own strict hierarchical structure RAPP (Russian Association of Proletarian Writers) took shape in January 1925, at the I All-Union Conference of Proletarian Writers, but the history of this organization begins 5 years earlier: in 1920, the VAPP (All-Russian Association of Proletarian Writers) was created, headed by a group of proletarian poets "Forge". In 1922, a split occurred in the "Forge" and the leadership passed to another organization, "October". In 1923, MAPP (Moscow APP) was formed, and so on ad infinitum. The entire Rappov history is constant transformations and reorganizations caused by a significant numerical growth of its members (more than three thousand people by the mid-20s), the creation of regional branches, for example, in Moscow, Leningrad, Transcaucasia. As a result, by 1928 VAPP turns into VOAPP (All-Union Union of Associations of Proletarian Writers). Since the change in the names of numerous Rappov divisions did not affect the position of the organization, one name has been adopted in the history of literature - RAPP. December 1922 can be considered the moment of clear formulation of the principles of its activity, when a meeting was held in the editorial office of the Young Guard, in which the writers who left the Forge took part: Semyon Rodov, Artem Vesely, Alexander Bezymensky, Yuri Libedinsky, G. Lelevich, Leopold Averbakh. At this meeting, it was decided to create the October group, with which, in fact, the Rapp story begins.

Rappov's magazine comes out next summer "At the post" , in which the direction declared itself at the top of its voice. There was a special literary-critical trend - "napostovstvo", which was distinguished by a different and condescending criticism of all literary phenomena that were opposite or at least neutral to it. It was at this time that such a concept as “Rapp's baton” appeared on the literary sidelines, always standing ready in the reception room. “We did not at all put our Napost baton, so popular with our opponents, in the far corner. She is, to our great delight, always with us.” , an editorial in 1929 claimed. A distinctive feature of Rappov's critics, who joined the editorial board of the journal "On the Post", and then "On the Literary Post" (S. Rodov, G. Lelevich, B. Volin, L. Averbakh, V. Ermilov), was youth and extreme lack of education. It was precisely this that often became the subject of malicious ridicule by their opponents from Pereval, who were much more educated, who explained, for example, to Vladimir Yermilov, that Kipling had never been an American colonist (on which the RAPP critic based his sociological analysis of his work, calling him “the poet of the American bourgeoisie » ) that the word "feuilleton" is not at all translated from French as "stirring trifles", etc. The Rappovites shook themselves off after a tub of cold water, corrected their previous mistakes and immediately made new ones.

The very first issue of On Post, published in 1923, showed that the controversy would be conducted in all directions, but, first of all, with LEF and Pereval. Here are just the titles of the articles published in this journal: “Slanderers” by B. Volin (about the story of O. Brik), “How the LEF got ready for a campaign” and “And the king is naked” by S. Rodov (about the poetry collection of N. Aseev ), “Vladimir Mayakovsky” by G. Lelevich, in which he recommended the poet as a typical declassed element who approached the revolution individually, not seeing its true face. Here is also published an article about Gorky by L. Sosnovsky “Former Glav-Sokol, now Centro-Uzh”. “Yes, the former Glav-Sokol did not sit well,” its author ironically over the views of the writer of the early 20s. “It would be better if we didn’t see him trudging into a damp and warm crevice after a snake.” .

However, pretty soon, in November 1923, the Rappovites identified their main opponent - "Pass" and A.K. Voronsky, who was then at the head of the Krasnaya Nov magazine. With the LEF, in the best traditions of military strategy and tactics, an alliance was concluded, sealed by an agreement signed by both parties. To this agreement was added a special secret agreement directed personally against Voronsky. It was signed on behalf of the LEF by V. Mayakovsky and O. Brik, on behalf of the RAPP - L. Averbakh, S. Rodov, Yu. Libedinsky. Indeed, all this did not resemble literary activity, but an undercover political struggle for power in literature, an unprincipled and cruel fight, in which purely artistic questions lose their relevance.

But the fact of the matter is that the Rappovites understood their work in this way! They believed that they were participating in the activities of a political organization, and not a creative one, and often declared this. “The RAPP is a political (and not just literary) historically established militant organization of the working class, and neither I nor you can leave it,” A. Fadeev addressed in a letter to A. Serafimovich, “this will please only class enemies” . This is what determined the tone of the controversy, and the endless restructuring and reorganization, and the slogans and orders with which the Rappers tried to implement their creative program, and, most importantly, the fact that RAPP critics often confused the genres of a literary-critical article and political denunciation.

The Rappovites represented that pole of social consciousness that defended the class as opposed to the universal, and therefore they thought exclusively about proletarian literature. This was recorded in the very first document of the RAPP - "The ideological and artistic platform of the group of proletarian writers "October"", adopted according to the report of S. Rodov "Modern moment and tasks of fiction". It was from that meeting, when Rodov read out his theses in the editorial office of the Young Guard in December 1922, that the so-called RAPP orthodoxy, one of the many variants of the vulgar sociological approach to modern literature, traces its history. “Proletarian,” the speaker said, “is such literature that organizes the psyche and consciousness of the working class and the broad working masses towards the ultimate tasks of the proletariat as a rebuilder of the world and the creator of communist society” . Wandering like a spell from document to document, this phrase solidified the idea of ​​dividing both literature and all art along rigid class boundaries. Thus, obvious rudiments of Proletkult and Bogdanov's concepts were found in the RAPP ideology. Proletarian literature, created by the proletarian and intended for the proletarians and unsuitable, doomed to incomprehension for any other class, assumed insurmountable class boundaries erected within art, depriving literature of its very essence: the universal human content. This idea, then very widespread, was substantiated in the school of professors V.F. Pereverzev (Moscow State University, Komakademiya) and V.M.

Feeling themselves to be the most true and uncompromising defenders of the class approach in modern literature, the Rappians were very hostile towards other writers, qualifying them either as class enemies or as fellow travelers: her only as the most blind anarchic peasant rebellion ("Serapion's brothers", etc.), reflect the revolution in a crooked mirror and are not able to organize the psyche and consciousness of the reader in the direction of the ultimate tasks of the proletariat, "G. Lelevich stated in his theses" On the attitude to bourgeois literature and intermediate groupings”, adopted at the first Moscow conference of proletarian writers (1923). Even cooperation is possible with them: let them be "an auxiliary detachment that disorganizes the enemy," i.e. a camp of "emigrant pogrom writers like the Gippius and Bunins" and "internal Russian mystics of individualists like the Akhmatovs and Khodasevichs". It was this role that G. Lelevich assigned to the members of the brotherhood of the hermit Serapion. At the same time, the mentors from the RAPP undertook to "constantly reveal their confused petty-bourgeois features" . This attitude towards "fellow travelers" will go through the entire history of the organization.

The term "fellow traveler" arose among the German social democracy in the 1890s, in the early 20s for the first time in relation to literature was used by Trotsky, who did not put a negative meaning into it. Rappovtsy was used as a pejorative: all Soviet writers who were not members of the RAPP (Gorky, Mayakovsky, Prishvin, Fedin, Leonov and others) fell into fellow travelers, therefore, they did not understand the prospects of the proletarian revolution and literature. N. Ognev, whom the Rappovites recommended as a writer with a reactionary gut, who fell into fellow travelers, wrote in 1929: “For the current moment, one can establish approximately the following meaning of the word“ fellow traveler ”:“ Today you are not yet an enemy, but tomorrow you can be an enemy; you're suspicious." Many people felt the insult of such a division of artists into truly proletarian and fellow travelers dramatically.

"At the Post" (1923-1925) vividly revealed the nature of the RAPP: each of its numbers is a fight with other groups, personal insults and political denunciations of other participants in the literary process. For all two years, the RAPP has not made any progress in solving truly creative, and not opportunistic, issues, not a single step. The reason for this is sectarianism, the interpretation of classism as casteism, when the word "proletarian" is pronounced as swaggeringly as "nobleman" was previously pronounced. This phenomenon began to be called in political everyday life swagger. But the main thing was the claim to the monopoly leadership of all literature, the attitude towards their own organization as a political party with unconditional hegemony in the field of art. These circumstances became the reason for the appearance of the resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks “On the policy of the party in the field of fiction” of June 18, 1925.

The nature of the relationship between power and RAPP is not entirely clear. Probably, until some time, the RAPP was quite satisfied with the party leadership, making it possible to distance themselves from the most defiant actions and political defeats in the field of literature, as was the case, for example, in 1929, when the persecution of B. Pilnyak, E. Zamyatin, A. Platonova M. Bulgakov organized and headed the RAPP (of course, with full party-state direction), and at the same time demonstrate his non-participation in them, if necessary. On the other hand, the party leadership could not help but be irritated by the rabid and even semi-literacy of Rappov's leaders, their position in literature, their claim to take the place of a kind of leading literary party. This function could belong only to the CPSU (b) and no one else. The resolution of 1925, which denied direct party support to the Rappists (“There is no hegemony of proletarian writers yet,” the document said, “and the party must help these writers earn their historical right to this hegemony”) was an attempt to show the RAPP its place, to straighten up, and in the same time to distance themselves from him in the eyes of the literary community.

The whole pathos of the resolution denied what the RAPP leaders were trying to claim: to become a literary party, to monopolize the leadership of literature, to smash fellow travelers and everyone who happens to be nearby. However, already in 1929, during the drafting campaigns, the coherence of the actions of the RAPP and the party leadership was not in doubt: the RAPP was perceived as the vanguard, which was entrusted with the most dirty tasks related to the implementation of official literary policy.

After the 1925 resolution, some transformations took place within the organization. D. Furmanov, an active member of the RAPP, is fighting against "rodovshchina as a whole system of methods, forms and techniques of politicking and tricks on the front of proletarian literature." It is with Semyon Rodov, Furmanov's main opponent in this struggle, that in the minds of his contemporaries all the negative aspects of the posting are associated. “Amazing schematism of thinking, incomparable doctrinairism, colossal stubbornness, an extraordinary ability to reduce everything big to small and deep to shallow, intolerable jingoistic classism and jingoistic orthodoxy - all these qualities, grown in the nutrient broth of the most primitive knowledge, constitute Rodov as literary phenomenon" , - one of his contemporaries characterized him. In a difficult political intra-party struggle, Furmanov seeks the removal of Rodov, G. Lelevich and Vardin from the leadership of the organization and the condemnation of the "harmful line of left phrasemongers." As a result of the victory won by Furmanov, who secured the support of the resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, the magazine "On Post" is closed.

However, a year later he was revived under a new cover - "At a literary post." L. Averbakh became the head of the magazine. A young man (then he was only twenty-three years old), distinguished by indomitable energy, the ability to maneuver and mimicry, ascended to Rappov's Olympus, defeating his former comrades-in-arms, he furiously treated the "fellow travelers", himself being the most distant companion of Russian literature. Voronsky gave an excellent characterization to Averbakh in the pamphlet "Mr. Britling drinks the cup to the bottom", his only work where he allowed himself such sharp attacks against his literary opponent. “You, Averbakh, are the first who confuse overexposure with excerpt, a literary dispute with a literary denunciation, and criticism with libel” - wrote Voronsky. Reflecting on his literary opponent, he created a vivid collective portrait of Rapp's leadership: “The Averbakhs are not an accident. He is from the young, but early. We have already become accustomed to these figures of sharp, successful, restless youths, self-confident and arrogant to the point of self-forgetfulness, who do not doubt anything, never make mistakes ... The lightness and simplicity of their luggage compete with their readiness to distort, distort, compose, invent ... They learned one thing firmly: slander there will always be something left from slander" .

The style of the journal, which was now headed by Averbakh, did not change much. Attempts to move from organizational fuss to a creative program did not bring too much success: it turned into an endless string of slogans replacing each other almost every month, or even weeks. Literary officials sent out all sorts of circulars on how to and not to write, but this did not add any real literature within the RAPP.

There were many slogans. Slogan realism because "realism is such a literary school that is most suitable for the materialistic creative method", because the proletariat, like no other class, needs a realistic view of reality. Rapp's concept of realism was most vividly embodied in A. Fadeeva's article with the characteristic title "Down with Schiller." Already from the title it is clear that Fadeev's concept of realism is based on the denial of romanticism.

Romanticism and realism are comprehended by Fadeev, who follows the Plekhanov tradition, not so much in aesthetic terms, but in philosophical terms. "We distinguish between the methods of realism and romanticism as methods of more or less consistent materialism and idealism in artistic creation." Romanticism is rejected by Fadeev as “poeticizing and mystifying the false, banal and most superficial appearance of things”, which is why he is opposed by realism with its sober view of reality: “An artist who has mastered this method will be able to present the phenomena of life and man in their complexity, change, development, "self-movement", in the light of a large and genuine historical perspective" .

The following point of the creative program followed from the slogan of realism: " studying with the classics ". After all, it was in classical literature that realism reached its culmination, and the modern writer needs to take this skill from the classic. Most often, L.N. Tolstoy was called the object of study by the Rappovites. whose Tolstoy traditions both in the construction of images and in the appeal to the methods of psychological analysis are obvious.

However, realism (“the dialectical-materialistic method”) was interpreted by the Rappovites in a very peculiar way, not so much as the art of knowing life, but as the art of exposing. Related to this is the slogan " tearing off all and sundry masks ", borrowed from Lenin's characterization of Tolstoy, his "screaming contradictions." The importance of this slogan for the creative program of the RAPP was due to the fact that no class, as the Rappians believed, needs such a sober and realistic view of reality as the proletariat. "We work over the creation of a school that sets itself the task of developing a consistent dialectical-materialistic artistic method. We act under the banner of realistic art, tearing off everything and every kind of mask from reality (Lenino Tolstoy), realistic art, exposing where the romantic puts on veils, varnishing reality " .

But most of all, the slogan " for a living person in literature ", which became the center of the discussion about the "living person" that unfolded in the second half of the 20s. It was with the need to show the versatile human character of the modern era that the slogan in-depth psychologism , however, understood very primitively: he demanded an image of the struggle of consciousness with the subconscious. The subconscious was interpreted very narrowly, in a Freudian way, as sexual complexes driven into the subconscious. (It was with this interpretation of the subconscious that Voronsky argued, saying: “The Freudians reduce the unconscious exclusively to sexual motives, leaving no room for other, no less powerful impulses.”) Psychologism among Rappovites was associated with realism, with the achievement of the fullness of showing the inner life of a person.

The whole set of provisions of the creative program of the RAPP (realism corresponding to the dialectical-materialistic method, tearing off all and sundry masks, in-depth psychologism, studying with the classics, a living person) led to the question of the very specifics of art. An attempt to answer this question was theory of immediate impressions ", the author of which in Rappov's circles was Yu. Libedinsky. He borrowed the very concept from Belinsky. "Immediate impressions", from the point of view of the writer, are the most clear, bright, cleared of social and class layers, the impressions of a person's life, stored in the depths of his subconscious under the layers of later experience. The artist's task is to bring them to the surface, to discover the knowledge stored in the depths of memory, which a person is not aware of. "A person knows much more about the world than he thinks he knows," he tried to formulate the provisions of his theory Y. Libedinsky – Art takes precisely this knowledge as its building material… Voronsky calls this “knowledge” sometimes subconscious, sometimes intuitive…” .

It must be said that the Rappians were not at all original in their appeal to the subconscious. Freud, the theory of psychoanalysis, the Viennese school were then at the center of literary-critical consciousness, suffice it to point to L. Vygotsky's book "Psychology of Art", written in the 20s, but published only in the early 1960s. It was also no coincidence that Libedinsky made a reference to Voronsky: it was Voronsky who developed the problem of the subconscious in the creative process during this period, but did not reduce the subconscious only to Freudian complexes, expanding it, including in its sphere the brightest phenomena of the human spirit. In the article “The Art of Seeing the World”, Voronsky expresses similar ideas much more clearly than Yu. Libedinsky, a writer from the RAPP, expressed similar ideas. The task of art, according to Voronsky, is “to see the world, beautiful in itself ... in all its freshness and immediacy ... We are closest to this in childhood, in youth, in extraordinary, rare moments of our lives. Then, as it were, the crust that hides the world from us is torn apart by us, a person unexpectedly for himself in a new light, sees objects, things, phenomena, events, people from a new side; in the most ordinary, familiar, he suddenly finds properties and qualities that he never found, the environment begins to live its own special life, he rediscovers the world, is surprised and rejoices at these discoveries. But such discoveries, however, are not often granted to a person. Imprintedness, freshness of perceptions depends on their strength, on their purity, on their immediacy. The fact is, as Voronsky believed, that those very virgin images of the world are hidden from man: “Habits, prejudices, petty worries, sorrows, insignificant joys, overwork, conventions, illnesses, heredity, social oppression, deaths of people close to us, vulgar the environment, current opinions and judgments, twisted dreams, fantasies, fanaticism from an early age blind our eyes, dull the sharpness and freshness of perception, attention - they push into the depths of consciousness, beyond its threshold, the most powerful and joyful impressions, make inconspicuous the most precious and beautiful in life, in space. For such a person, the beauty of the world is not visible, the disinterested enjoyment of it is impossible. A distorted social person must also have distorted perceptions of the world, images and ideas. In us, as in a mirror with an uneven surface, reality is reflected in distorted forms. We are more like ballrooms than normal people. The past, the dominant capitalist environment, the survivals of millions of people make them so sick and abnormal. In modern society, the balance, even if very conditional, between a person and the environment is a rare and happy exception. The task of art is to reveal to the reader or viewer the true images of the world: “Genuine, genuine art, sometimes consciously, and even more often unconsciously, has always strived to restore, find, discover these true images of the world. This is the main meaning of art and its purpose. .

In his articles, and first of all “The Art of Seeing the World ( About new realism)" and "Art as knowledge of life and modernity ( On the Question of Our Literary Differences)”, Voronsky much more professionally formulated the set of ideas that Libedinsky tried to talk about when building his “theory of direct impressions”. It would be logical to expect the positions of the two critics to converge, however, for the RAPP, it was not the creative program that was more important, but the group struggle: the theorists of the RAPP attacked Voronsky for these ideas, seeing in them idealistic views, primarily the philosophy of Bergson. Rapprochement did not happen, on the contrary, the enmity flared up.

According to S.I. Sheshukov, the author of the first monograph on the history of the RAPP, “the system of views, pursued and defended for a number of years, was nothing more than an artistic platform of the RAPP, which had its positive results ... The theoretical problems put forward by the Rappers became the subject of judgment and disputes of the entire creative and scientific community of the country, which in itself contributed to the development of theoretical thought. However, the researcher further admitted that “precisely fruitful results have been achieved by the Rappovites. How much noise there was, how many books, brochures were published, how many conferences, plenums, meetings devoted to creative issues, and in the end the results turned out to be modest. . Indeed, the creative program cannot be the subject of political discussions and be implemented by orders, namely, political discussion and frenzied struggle were the elements of the RAPP.

RAPP fought a lot and almost always won, and not only in discussions about a living person - and this is another paradox of the era. One of the documents lists the enemies they defeated: the association fought “against Trotskyism (Averbakh, a former favorite and ward of Trotsky, was a member of the Trotskyist opposition, after its defeat, catching the political situation, violently crushes Trotsky), Voronshchina, Pereverzevism, Menshevik idealism ... Lefovism, Litfront (Lithfront - an organization within the RAPP), against the right danger, as the main one, and left vulgarism, against great-power chauvinism and local nationalism, against all kinds of rotten liberalism and conciliation to bourgeois anti-Marxist theories " . By the end of their activities, they managed to quarrel with Komsomolskaya Pravda and the Komsomol Central Committee. The critical mass of the humiliated and offended RAPP was growing rapidly.

In addition, the endless bickering with literally all the participants in the literary process led to a deep crisis in the organization. There was no longer any talk of creativity - endless slogans were thrown out, with the help of which they sought to improve the state of affairs. But things went from bad to worse: real literature was created outside the RAPP, in spite of it, despite the blows of Rapp's club, Gorky, Leonov, Sholokhov, Kaverin, Pilnyak, Kataev, Prishvin worked ...

One of the latest actions of the RAPP is the call for drummers to literature. One of the most characteristic features of this organization's activities came into play here: the copying of political slogans and directive introduction of them into creative work. The beginning of the thirties is the time when socialist competition unfolds, in public life such a figure as the shock worker of socialist labor appears. From the point of view of the RAPP, it is precisely such workers, conscious and active, who should join the ranks of writers. And the Rappovites launched the recruitment of workers into literature! Rappov's primary organizations tore many people out of plants and factories, inspired them with the naive idea that a shock worker could very easily and naturally become a shock writer, they put them at the table, saying just like Griboedov's Repetilov: "Write, write, write." What did people deceived by flattery write? Here is one example: "Worker Pyzhova//Working experience//In our department//She has twenty years.//She is in our department//Always on the job//Unauthorized absenteeism//She has no trace."

The absurdity of Rapp's latest slogans showed that the organization was in agony. In 1932, the Decree of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks "On the restructuring of literary and artistic organizations" was adopted, which liquidated the RAPP, and along with it, all literary groups, as if the creative and ideological dead end of one organization would testify to the creative and ideological failure others.

"PASS"

The opposition to the Rappovites was managed by the perevaltsy. Organizational All-Union Association of Workers' and Peasants' Writers "Pass" formed in 1924. However, its existence would have been impossible if, at the very beginning of the 1920s, on the initiative of A.K. Voronsky, the first Soviet "thick" magazine, Krasnaya Nov, had been created. In February 1921, the head of the Glavpolitprosveta N.K. Krupskaya and critic, journalist, writer A.K. Voronsky applied to the Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) with a proposal to publish a literary and artistic and public-journalistic magazine. At the same time, a meeting was held with V.I. Lenin, which was attended by N.K. Krupskaya, M. Gorky and A.K. Voronsky. There it was decided to publish a magazine, while Gorky was to be in charge of the literary department, and Voronsky was appointed editor-in-chief. Gorky, in connection with his soon-to-be-departure abroad, was unable to manage the journal's literary department from afar, so all editorial and organizational work fell on the shoulders of Voronsky. Already in the summer of 1921, the first issue of the magazine was published, around which in the near future "Pass" was destined to form, the group that most consistently defended the humanistic pathos of art.

Voronsky managed to create a very interesting magazine in a short time. “Krasnaya Nov” turned out to be the center around which the first cadres of Soviet literature gathered, - wrote, reviewing the literature of the first Soviet decade in the late 1920s, V. Polonsky, critic and journalist, editor-in-chief of the journals Print and Revolution and Novy Mir ". - Almost all the big names went through the magazine into Soviet literature. To look at the books of Krasnaya Nov from the first to the last means to trace the first stages of Soviet literature. In fact, on the pages of his journal, Voronsky provided a place for new writers (Vs. Ivanov, K. Fedin, L. Seifullina, I. Babel, B. Pilnyak, A. Malyshkin, L. Leonov, M. Zoshchenko, N. Tikhonov) , and those whose names were known even before the revolution (M. Gorky, A. Tolstoy, S. Yesenin, I. Erenburg, V. Veresaev, V. Lidin, M. Prishvin, A. Bely). He himself, acting as a critic, created literary portraits of A. Bely, V. Veresaev, M. Gorky, V. Mayakovsky, S. Yesenin, Vs. Ivanov, A. Tolstoy, B. Pilnyak, portraits of literary groups: “Forges”, "October", "Pass". Krasnaya Nov, according to V. Polonsky, has become a new growing home of modern literature, and Voronsky himself was seen as Ivan Kalita of Russian literature, collecting it bit by bit at the moment when she really needed it. The position of the collector, Polonsky stated, was, of course, not easy: “Krasnaya Nov” “became an organ predominantly of companion literature, in the absence of another. The task of gathering dispelled writers' forces, preserving the old masters who will be able to switch to the Soviet platform, attracting new ones from the ranks of the literary youth - such was the task facing the editors of the magazine " . In fact, the editors' focus not so much on political slogans as on artistic qualifications led to the creation of an environment around the magazine from which Pereval arose.

Of course, Voronsky was a communist critic, and it is very difficult to imagine the appearance in his journal of the works of V. Nabokov, V. Khodasevich, D. Merezhkovsky or I. Bunin. He also did not accept representatives of the so-called "internal emigration", and in this sense, his literary relations with E. Zamyatin are indicative. Voronsky published an article about him, impartial and unfair, where he allowed himself to sharply criticize his unpublished, i.e. reader unknown novel "We" (which will be published in the USSR after more than sixty years, in 1987). In other words, he smashed an opponent who did not have the opportunity to object. Zamyatin reciprocated, calling Krasnaya Nov an "official journal" and Voronsky a "communist critic" , the same, in essence, as Averbakh. From his point of view, when he peered into the literary situation of the metropolis from emigration, from Paris, there was no fundamental difference between them.

And yet, I think, it is not entirely fair to take the Parisian point of view. An inside look at the literary situation revealed that the distance between Krasnaya Novyu and On Post was huge; these two publications marked the poles of the artistic and political spectrum of the 1920s. And Voronsky, a brilliant critic, subtle editor and talented publisher, was able, like no one else, to identify the central points of literary disagreement between these poles.

They were determined, first of all, by the traditional for Russian culture question about the relationship of art to reality, which was raised by N.G. Chernyshevsky in his famous dissertation. What are the tasks of art in the new society? What is the role of the artist? Who is he - a prophet in his own country or an apprentice, a lone handicraftsman, artistically processing ideological constructions not created by him, as the Lefites insisted on? Is art the most important sphere of social consciousness on a par with philosophy, or is its function reduced to elementary didactics, the transfer of best practices, design, decorating everyday life, in other words, to use the metaphor of A. Blok again, should he really just sweep rubbish off the streets? ? Why pick up a book - for entertainment or in order to better understand being and one's place in it?

For Voronsky, the answer was unequivocal - he formulated it so precisely that his words became the slogan of one of the poles of public consciousness in the 1920s: "Art as knowledge of life and modernity" - he titled one of his articles. "The Art of Seeing the World" - emphasized another in the title. At the heart of his concept lay the cognitive function of art.

“What is art? - Voronsky asked and immediately answered: - First of all, art is the knowledge of life ... Art, like science, knows life. Art, like science, has one and the same subject: life, reality. But science analyzes, art synthesizes; science is abstract, art is concrete; science is turned to the mind of man, art - to his sensual nature. Science cognizes life with the help of concepts, art - with the help of images, in the form of living sensual contemplation" .

Voronsky contrasts the theory of the cognitive function of art with concepts that have very authoritative defenders. Proletcultists Arvatov Gastev, LEF critics Chuzhaki Brik, constructivist K. Zelinsky, defending various versions of the theory of "art - life construction" or "production art", with all the nuances of their concept, saw him as a servant of production and life. She was hired by the owners, in this case - the leaders of a large industrial production, which was worshiped as a deity by the Lefites, constructivists, Proletcultists, and her task was to ensure maximum comfort for the producer of material values ​​- for a separate human unit standing at the machine, because on such an aesthetic scale, which is proposed by the left front, the individuality, the personality of this person with his requests and contradictions, joys and sorrows is simply indistinguishable. Lefovtsy come to the unification of the individual, to the "apology of a disciplined machine", as the Perevaltsy interpreted their concept of personality, seeing in it a "distinctly functioning person", a producer of material values ​​- and the task of art is to carry out this unification as quickly and better as possible.

“For us, socialism,” Lezhnev objected to them, “is not a huge workhouse, as it seems to maniacs of production and proponents of factography, not a dull barracks from Klop, where equally dressed people die of boredom and monotony. For us, this is a great era of the liberation of a person from all the fetters that bind him, when all the abilities inherent in him will be revealed to the end. .

Voronsky's Krasnaya Nov' became a citadel in which many writers (now recognized as classics) found protection from fire and the sword of the "frantic zealots" of proletarian purity. “During a literary fire, Voronsky carried people like me out of the fire on his shoulders,” M. Prishvin, “a writer with a reactionary gut,” would later say, as the Rappovites recommended him. The words of M. Prishvinane will be an exaggeration: until a certain moment, the walls of this citadel were inaccessible to the enemy.

This was one of the circumstances that led in 1924 to the formation of the Pereval group around Krasnaya Novi. This group became the school of A.K. Voronsky - his name was read on the banners of the "Pass" even after 1927, when Voronsky was removed from the "literary battlefield" (Gorky). He proposed ideas picked up and developed by his associates, critics of "Pass": Dmitry Aleksandrovich Gorbov, Abram Zakharovich Lezhnev; he provided the pages of the magazine to writers - perevaltsy. Ideologically and organizationally, "Pass" would not have taken place without Voronsky, although organizationally he himself was not a member of this group.

The aesthetic views of the critics of The Pass took shape in the second half of the 1920s, when their main books came out. These are “Art and Life” (1924), “Literary Recordings” (1926), “Mr. Britling Drinks the Cup to the Bottom” (1927), “The Art of Seeing the World” (1928), “Literary Portraits” (1928-29) by A. K. Voronsky; “At home and abroad”, “The Way of M. Gorky” (both - 1928), “The Search for Galatea” (1929) by D. A. Gorbov; "Contemporaries" (1927), "Literary everyday life" (1929), "Conversation in the hearts" (1930) by A.Z. Lezhnev.

The ideological and aesthetic concept of the Pass was associated with an interest in the future. Hence such a peculiar name of the group: behind the pass of time they sought to distinguish "elements of tomorrow's morality", "new humanism", "new, genuine communism", "morality of tomorrow". The Perevaltsy tried to look into the future, to cast a glance at "that new genuine humanism that is put forward by our era of the restructuring of society, going towards the destruction of classes, and without which the poetry of our days is unthinkable" . This reliance on the future objectively led to the establishment of a universal human principle in art, which was opposed to the momentary. "The artist must be able to combine the temporal with the eternal," Voronsky emphasized. "Only then will his things become the property of the future."

Orientation to the future, from the point of view of which the present is considered, determined almost all the slogans of the perevaltsy, proposed by them to the art of the 20s. Their creed was expressed by three most important theses: sincerity, aesthetic culture, humanism .

Sincerity- this slogan is directed against the theory of social order, justified by the theorists of the LEF. An artist is not a lone handicraftsman, he cannot take a social order the way a tailor takes an order for a coat. He is responsible for the ideological constructions contained in his works, and has no right to fulfill a social order alien to him, to step on the throat of his own song: insincerity will cost dearly not only to him, but also to society.

aesthetic culture. “Art,” wrote Voronsky, “always strived and strives to return, restore, discover the beautiful world in itself, to give it in the most purified and direct sensations. The artist feels this need, perhaps more sharply than other people, because, unlike them he gets used to seeing nature, people, as if they were painted in a picture; he deals mainly not with the world as such, but with images, with representations of the world: his main work takes place mainly on this material " . "Images", "representations of the world", "the world, beautiful in itself" - in this "frantic zealots" of the proletarian class system saw idealism. Let's say, Averbakhk addressed Gorbov with the same reproaches when he heard from him about the "secret world of the goddess Galatea", that "the task of the artist is not to show reality, but to build on the material of reality, proceeding from from it, the world of aesthetic, ideal reality.

But more important than the panicky fear of idealism was the fear of the concept of personality that the participants in the "Pass" claimed - in this case, the personality of the artist. The need to see the world, beautiful in itself, the artist perceives more acutely than other people, argued, in particular, Voronsky, and frantic zealots could not come to terms with this. The very idea of ​​the artist's exclusivity, his ability to see further and more than others, his prophetic mission, affirmed by Russian literature since Pushkin's time, horrified them. It was about them, as it were, with a bitter smile that Voronsky said: “The most rational people in art are often the most stupid and unreceptive” .

What is given to the artist? Aesthetic perception of the world, we will say now, summing up the complex of Voronsky's ideas. The artist is endowed with "the ability to find beauty in itself where it is hidden", he has access to "disinterested enjoyment of the world", he feels "unspoiled, virginally bright images". And a true artist cannot have any other goal than to teach other people "the art of seeing the world." Here the knot of conflict between Voronsky and many of his contemporaries was tied.

Critics of RAPP and LEF were quite satisfied with the person about whom Voronsky wrote bitterly: “In us, as in a mirror with an uneven surface, reality is reflected in distorted forms. We are more like sick people than normal people. The past, the dominant capitalist environment, the survivals of millions of people make so sick and abnormal. . Moreover, consciously or unconsciously, Lef's creators of the "distinctly functioning person" or "living person" RAPP objectively sought to conserve such a "distorted" person: it is easier for him to inspire ultra-class ideas.

Where did Voronsky see the way out? How did he propose to get away from the "distorted forms" of reality, from the "distorted perception of the world"? This, according to his deep conviction, is the greatest mission of art. “But, surrounded by this world distorted in his ideas, a person still keeps in his memory, perhaps, sometimes only as a distant, vague dream, uncorrupted, genuine images of the world. They break through in a person in spite of all obstacles... Genuine, genuine art, sometimes consciously, and more often unconsciously, has always striven to restore, find, and open these images of the world. This is the main meaning of art and its purpose. .

Until 1927, the Krasnaya Nov' citadel was impregnable. In 1927 it fell: Voronsky was removed from the literary battlefield, as Gorky said. His forced resignation from the post of editor-in-chief of Krasnaya Nov and exclusion from the party were due to political events: in 1927, the Trotskyist opposition, of which Voronsky was a member, was crushed. His departure was felt by contemporaries as a great loss. At the same time, between M. Gorky, who lives in exile in the Italian Mediterranean, and the writer F. Gladkov, an eyewitness and a direct participant in the literary process, the following epistolary dialogue took place.

Bitter. I'm sorry that Voronsky is leaving Krasnaya Nov, very sorry. And strangely, why and who did not like it?

Gladkov. Who didn't like Voronsky? VAPP, of course, in the first place. These intriguers and officials of the new formation are striving for the complete destruction of Voronsky as a stronghold of "petty-bourgeois" literature, they are fighting for the supreme leadership of all Soviet literature in order to become its sole hegemon.

Bitter(Voronsky). If this is true, it is very sad and more than sad. This testifies that we still have not learned to value workers according to their merits and work according to its merit. You have created the best magazine that could have been created under difficult conditions, well known to me.

Voronsky(to Gorky). Lately my situation has become aggravated because I resolutely opposed a number of stupid things that could have been committed, but have not been committed, or rather, have been committed in a small dose so far. .

Three years later, Gorky sadly stated: “Disputes and strife of circles reign in literature, and Voronsky, Polonsky, Pereverzev, Bespalov, and the Perevals have been eliminated from the battlefield. The most talented Voronsky deserved this least of all, if he deserved ostracism at all.

However, the dismissal of Voronsky in 1927 did not lead to the collapse of the group, which had a serious and deep aesthetic program. For another three years they played perhaps the most prominent role in literature and criticism.

Approving their ideas, the participants of the "Pass" operated with broad images-symbols that have a deep philosophical meaning, relating to the very nature of art. Among them is the image of the hidden goddess Galatea. That was also the name of the book by D. Gorbov, which became the aesthetic declaration of the "Pass": "Search for Galatea" (Moscow, "Federation", 1929). The release of this book was preceded by quite dramatic events.

The report "The Search for Galatea" was read in October 1928 at a joint meeting of the assets of "Pass" and RAPP. The meeting took place at the suggestion of L. Averbakh, who guaranteed D. Gorbov a “comradely form of polemic”, as the Rappovites understood it. However, the Perevaltsy themselves were not ready for a comradely form of polemic: a thirst for dispute, repulsion from other people's opinions was characteristic of them, perhaps even to a greater extent than for representatives of other directions. So, D.A. Gorbov, in a very peaceful mood, begins his report, addressing the Rappovites, who offered a meeting and seem to be looking for understanding and dialogue: “I do not want to suspect the current leaders of the UAPP of hypocrisy. Despite the inadmissibility of the polemical attacks they directed at us, the Perevaltsy, I am ready to see in this group comrades who are mistaken, but animated by a sincere desire to promote the successful development of proletarian literature. Without accusing them of hypocrisy, however, with all my desire, I cannot but see them as empty saints. . Having thus determined the nature of his relationship with the audience, Gorbov moved on to what was most relevant for himself and for Pereval: a reflection on the essence of art.

“What is the true nature of art,” Gorbova asks her listeners from the RAPP, “without understanding which one cannot work in art?” - and further cites an extensive quotation from Baratynsky's poem "The Sculptor":

Deep gaze on the stone

The artist saw the nymph in him,

And fire ran through my veins,

And his heart flew to her ...

In the work of sweet-foggy

Not an hour, not a day, not a year will pass,

And with the predicted, desired

The cover of the last will not fall.

As long as, understanding the passion,

Under the caress of an insinuating cutter,

Galatea's return gaze

It will not captivate, with a desire for desire,

To the victory of the bliss of the sage.

“I make a courageous decision,” continues Gorbov. “Neglecting the capricious pen of Averbakhai and the frivolous pencil of the Kukryniksy, I publicly declare the cited poem by Baratynsky to be a universally binding formula for creativity for any true artist.” .

The world of Galatea is the world of art, the world that exists on a par with the real, material, tangible world. Objects and facts of reality, drawn by the artist into the world of Galatea, Gorbov said, acquire a different, unrealistic meaning: they appear there as a sign of some ideal, aesthetic system created by the artist's intention. A breakthrough into the world of the hidden goddess Galatea, the world of the ideal and beautiful, is the social task of art. “It is precisely the ideal, aesthetic reality created by the artist, precisely this world of the “secret goddess” Galatea, that is that special form of social existence, the disclosure of which the artist is completely and without a trace absorbed. Objects and facts of reality, “depicted” or “shown” on the pages of art, have no independent meaning. After all, they cannot be taken literally. Drawn by the artist into the world of Galatea, they acquire a different, unrealistic meaning: they appear there as signs of some ideal, aesthetic system created by the artist's intention. .

Wanting to find at least some points of contact with his opponents, Gorbov cited one of the episodes of the novel "The Rout" by A. Fadeev, a prominent figure in the leadership of the RAPP, where Levinson goes to check the night patrols and sees in the glow of the fire a smile on the face of one of the partisans. “I love this passage,” Gorbov told the audience, not for what it shows, but for what it does not show. I love him because, next to Levinson, whom we see, the “hidden goddess” Galatea walked invisibly through this picture with a light tread. From his point of view, “The Defeat” is the only novel so far where “the exit of an artist belonging to the VAPP from the world of stamp and bare display of reality into the world of its aesthetic implementation, into the ideal world of Galatea” is accomplished. .

It is hard to say what Gorbov was counting on when he appealed to his listeners from the RAPP. They spoke different languages, used fundamentally different categorical devices: political slogans borrowed from the party lexicon and applied to literature - from the RAPP; wide images-symbols, having an inexhaustible semantic volume, having deep mythological and cultural-historical origins - at the "Pass". "Dialectical-materialistic method", "ally or enemy", "calling shock workers to literature", "tearing off all and sundry masks" - on the one hand; "hidden goddess Galatea", "sincerity", "aesthetic culture", "mastery", Mozartianism and Salierism - on the other. Dialogue was also impossible due to the fundamentally different level of education of the opponents, and, perhaps, the parties did not strive for it, using it to achieve their own goals for each side: political defamation and the removal of the enemy from the “literary battlefield”, as Gorky said, - at RAPP; the statement and even more precise formulation of their ideas in repulsion from the opposite opinion - among the perevaltsy. And it must be said that both sides achieved their goals in this strange dialogue in different languages.

“I take a piece of rough and poor life and create a sweet legend out of it, for I am a poet,” Gorbov quoted Fyodor Sologub, whose very name was anathematized in Rappov’s circles as a decadent, and then asked a question that pissed off his opponents: “The question is , is it possible to take this formula of Sologubai and put it as the basis for the artistic education of our proletarian literature? This question was of a fundamental nature, because it made it possible to expand Rapp's slogan "learning from the classics" and introduce into the literary and cultural circulation of modernity the experience of symbolism and, more broadly, a huge layer of literature of the Silver Age in order to "learn" not only from L. Tolstoy, but also from Bely, Solovyov, Sologub. “Yes,” Gorbov continued, “this Sologubov formula must be assimilated by every young writer, including proletarian ones. Tov. Libedinsky! - Gorbovk addressed one of the recognized Rappov writers. “Teach proletarian writers to transform the simple and crude material of life into a sweet legend!” There is more life in legends than meets the eye! There is more of the bitter truth of life in some sweet legend than in the bare display of life's facts. .

Such an appeal addressed to Libedinsky, the author of the famous in the 1920s story "Week", the author of "Commissars", depicting the harsh everyday life of the civil war and the exploits of the communists - by no means a sweet legend, could not be liked. RAPP asserted other principles of approach to art. The ideas of the "passers" were perceived as "a break from reality", "idealism" and "smuggling of idealistic reaction". Their opponents did not hear the main thing: the desire to expand the literary horizons of modernity, narrowed by vulgar sociological dogma, and to introduce harmony into real life, disharmonious and broken.

Establishing their ideas about the social function of art as the construction of an ideal aesthetic reality, as the world of Galatea, as a special form of social life, the “passengers” inevitably came to the slogan of sincerity, directed against the theory of social order, introduced by O. Brikomi and later picked up by the RAPP. A direct denial of the social order in the context of the time was simply impossible, therefore Gorbov puts forward his own interpretation of the social order, which, in fact, is a rejection of it: as a living fact of the artist's own inner world. From this genuine social order, the artist should not break away even for a minute. .

One can imagine what the Rappovites did with Gorbov after listening to his judgments about the hidden goddess Galatea, Sologub and Fadeev's novel "The Rout"! He himself talks about this in the next article of his book, "Galatea or the merchant's wife." As one might guess, the promise of a "comradely form of polemic" was not fulfilled by Averbakh. He "irritated" the report not only at the meeting, but also in print - in the next issue of "Evening Moscow", which has an audience of many thousands. Gorbov's response article was published only in a book published in three thousand copies a year after the events described. “Based on the analysis of my unpublished, i.e. for the reader of a non-existent work, - Gorbov complained, - Averbakh very “comradely” spoke on the pages of Vechernyaya Moskva about the need to remove from me the “Marxist uniform”, which is supposedly for me either a “protective color” or a “passing hobby”. The readership, served by Vechernyaya Moskva, obviously seems to Averbakhun to be the most appropriate authority for resolving such issues. .

The drama of The Pass consisted in the fact that the vast majority of the participants in the literary process spoke a different language and could not understand those broad symbolic images that Gorbovili Lezhnev operated on. Among such emotionally and meaningfully saturated images, images of Mozart and Salieri appeared at the end of the 1920s. They found themselves at the center of literary-critical controversy in connection with the publication of the story "Mastery", written by a bright writer, now unfairly forgotten, a participant in the "Pass" Pyotr Sletov. Its main characters, Martino and Luigi, embody different principles of attitude to art, to the artist, to creativity: on the one hand, rational, connected with the desire to believe harmony with algebra. Inspirational, emotional, irrational, associated with selfless enjoyment of the beauty of things and the harmony of the world - on the other hand. Obviously, it was precisely this problem that objectively turned out to be the center around which the struggle between the RAPP and Pereval was going on. One way or another, all the problems of the disputes of the 20s (about the method of literature, about the class nature of art, about the concept of personality), all the discussions of that time (about a living person, about psychologism, about Freudianism, the correlation of the rational and irrational components in character) were reduced to a dispute , which was conducted between Pushkin's Mozart and Salieri, as if they became full participants in the ideological disputes of the first Soviet decade. In 1929, the heroes of P. Sletov's story "Mastery" also joined this tense dialogue.

The creative history of this work is very revealing. It dates back to 1926, when the State Institute of Musical Science hosted an exhibition of bow instruments, where rare and valuable specimens were presented, among which were Stradivari and Amati violins. The exhibition became a notable event in the cultural life of Moscow and reminded that the history of violin music is closely connected with the history of the revolutionary movement in Europe. The bottom line is that the French Revolution opened the doors of palaces to the violin that used to sound in the street, in the marketplace, at the city gates, in the neighborhoods of the poor. And the violin under the palace vaults sounded in a completely new way: there was an unprecedented combination of acoustic conditions and a democratic audience that entered under the palace vaults. It turned out that where harpsichords or organs, a violin, a folk instrument, were heard before, it sounds no worse. The violin thus became the musical instrument of revolutionary Europe, associated with the music of a democratic audience, with the romantic ideals of the French Revolution. The master's art of violin making attracts everyone's attention; in the minds of the crowd, he turns from an artisan into a master.

Sletov chose the violin maker Luigi Ruggeri as his hero. This is a fictional character, although some features of Stradivari are guessed in his image. The story accurately reproduces not only the urban life of the 18th century, but also the topography of Cremona, the city where Stradivarius lived (his image is characterized by several leitmotifs), the appearance of the city gates of Ogni Santi, the small house of the master at Porto Po. The conflict of the story is due to the confrontation between two heroes: the violin maker Luigi Ruggieri and his student, Martino Foresti. Getting to learn from Luigi, an inspired creator, Martino wants to understand and master the secrets of his skill. This is where two different understandings of what art and the creator, the master are.

Martino embodies a rational, head approach to art, while Luigi tries to instill in his student the ability to disinterestedly enjoy the beauty of the world, as Voronsky would say: he advises him to admire church frescoes, cathedral stained-glass windows, Italian wood carvings, look at the harmony of everyday life, even if this is the everyday life of the market, the urban life of Cremona. This skill, the master believes, will give intuition, creative flight, which even ten teachers will not teach, because it is irrational in nature. Not to become a master, Luigi instructs his apprentice, but to remain forever an artisan, if you do not learn to see the harmony of everyday life, then embodying it in natural material. Martino does not understand the teacher, believing that he simply does not want to pass on his skill. “It would be better if he told me exactly the thickness of the decks and the height of the vaults, I would try to cut as carefully as possible” .

Luigi sees the secret of craftsmanship in a completely different way: the thickness of the decks in each case will be different, as well as the height of the vault: they will be prompted by the material, living wood. “A tree, even a dead one,” the master reflects, “has a life of its own. Be able not to cripple it, but free it and at the same time give new life to the instrument by breathing your soul into it” (59). The task of the creator is to see life, the harmony of the material, to expose it and give it the opportunity to manifest itself: “If you took a spruce with a wavy thread, look at what a wonderful drawing you get ... You will remove only one hair with a planer, and everything will intertwine and play in a new way. They cut the butt - the interrupted threads will splatter like rays from the tail of a comet, and unite into a restless fiery pattern. Put your ear on, try to bend it, weigh it on your hand - this is the joy of knowledge ”(58).

For about three years, Martino spends in Luigi's small house, not advancing in the vision that the teacher is trying to reveal to him. In a mad desire to ferret out the secrets of mastery, Martino blinds his teacher. And here the mystical plot of the story begins: the life hidden in a dead tree, about which the teacher repeated to his stupid student, falls upon the executioner, avenges the victim. Martino hears the groans of a dead tree, as it seems to him, a tree that, because of his crime, was not embodied in a violin.

“We sat in complete silence, the noise of the silent Cremona did not reach us. And then I heard really light sounds, like a light sound of a sounding board being tapped. The hair on my head stirred, and I shrank and petrified with horror. Luigi occasionally whispered:

Do you hear? This is an alto bottom, I almost made it, it is closest to life and sounds louder. But there are others, listen ... those are barely conceived ...

And I heard others: they were quieter than sighs, but they made me shrink all the more. Covered with perspiration, I listened to the chorus of these quiet groans ”(112).

Obviously, Sletov, creating the image of Luigi, at the end of the 20s, artistically embodies the concept of a creative personality, which A. Blokv wrote about at the beginning of the decade in his famous Pushkin speech: “The poet is the son of harmony; and he is given some role in world culture. Three things are entrusted to him: firstly, to release the sounds from the native beginningless element in which they reside; secondly, to bring these sounds into harmony, to give them a form; thirdly, to bring this harmony into the outside world” . It is in the search for harmony, in the release of sound from the original element, in bringing it into life that Sletov sees the meaning of art. His RAPP opponents are closer to Martineau's view.

Shocked by what he discovered, Martino sees in the night voices not the life bestowed by the creator who turns the tree into a violin, but a devilish obsession, and kills the teacher, leaves Cremona and after long wanderings becomes a Jesuit, a murderer and an executioner, uniting his life with "brothers in the holy cause protection of the motherland and the mother church from rapists and blasphemers ... With my own hands I hanged traitors to the church, in the name of God, smashing freethinkers, and not once did their groans touch, and pleas for mercy did not pity me ”(123). Believing that Luigi, his first victim, was an apostate who put on the guise of a master, Martino is perplexed: “But why is my thought always confused when I remember Luigi?” (123). “In misty dreams, round dances of silent violins dance in front of me a vile sabbat, their efs wink at me fiercely, the vultures bend like snakes, and reach out to me with long, like stings, tongues of torn strings. In mortal anguish, I brandish a sledgehammer, and the ephs bleed like Luigi's eye sockets...

My God, can it be that, having chosen me as your instrument, you will not protect from the forces of hell! ”(124).

The resolution of the conflict in Sletov's story foresaw the denouement of the dramatic clash between RAPP and "Pass". The Rappovites, who approached art and literature from a rational-pragmatic point of view, proved to be stronger. The final victory was won by them in April 1930, when the Pereval group was subjected to devastating criticism at a discussion in the Komakademiya, held under the characteristic slogan: "Against bourgeois liberalism in fiction." The aforementioned trend was embodied, of course, by the participants in the Pass. During the discussion, all the slogans of the "passers" were rejected.

Slogan humanism , which was interpreted by its defenders as the idea of ​​the inherent value of the human personality, was interpreted by M. Gelfand, an employee of the Komakademiya, who spoke at the discussion with the main report, as follows: this is one of the slogans of self-defense and resistance of the “oppressed”, “offended”, knocked out by the revolution from the saddle of classes and groups” .

Another example. It's about the formula mozartianism ", act