Special Thematic Section “Eisenstein, Bogdanov, and the Organization of Culture”: Guest Editorial Introduction

We do not know whether Bogdanov and Eisenstein ever met, but during the early years of the Soviet régime their ideas found expression in the Russian Proletarian Cultural-Educational Organization, the Proletkult. This was an extra-curricular institution that sought to create a new ‘proletarian culture’ by fostering the values of collectivism through tuition in philosophy, literature, theatre, the graphic arts and the sciences. After the October Revolution, institutions based on the Proletkult sprang up in a number of Western European countries.

An economist, culturologist, science fiction writer and experimental haematologist, Bogdanov was the principal theorist of the Proletkult (1917–32). In what he considered to be his key work, Tektology: Universal Organizational Science (1913–22), based on the natural sciences rather than Hegelian dialectics, he identified what he considered to be the common mechanisms that determined the evolution and inter-relationship of nature, society, and the mind. Central to Bogdanov’s conception of ‘cultural revolution’ was the hope that his universal organizational science would serve as an analytical and practical instrument for the working class in its struggle for socialism. One of Lenin’s closest collaborators between 1904 and 1909, Bogdanov thereafter became his most feared intellectual rival. Shortly after Bogdanov’s death in 1928, his works ceased to be published. However, although he had been denounced as a ‘heretic’ as early as 1920, his ideas were a latent influence in the development of Soviet economic and cultural thought. In the late 1960s and early 1970s he was rehabilitated and his ideas have attracted increasing interest.

The career of Sergei M. Eisenstein was very different. During his life, and to an even greater degree after his death, he had an enormous impact not only on Soviet film culture but on film culture throughout the world. The Proletkult, which sought to educate the proletarian masses in the values of collectivism, was an important post-revolutionary framework for the young film director and theoretician.

Guest Editorial Board: Pia Tikka (Editor-in-Chief ), John Biggart, Vesa Oittinen, Simona Poustilnik, Giulia Rispoli, Maja Soboleva