Sergei Eisenstein in the Proletkult

The years during which Eisenstein worked under the aegis of the Proletkult were years during which he developed his “theory of attractions” and applied the theory in his earliest theatrical and first film productions.

On the evolution of Eisenstein’s theories, see Clark 1995: 179–181; Bulgakowa 2001c: 38–51; 2014: 423–448 and 2022: Chapter 3. For accounts of Eisenstein’s work in the Proletkult, see Hielscher 1973 and Mally 1990: 240–241.

“… an aggressive moment in theatre, i.e., any element of it that subjects the audience to emotional or psychological influence, verified by experience and mathematically calculated to produce specific emotional shocks in the spectator in their proper order within the whole. These shocks provide the only opportunity of perceiving the ideological aspect of what is being shown, the final ideological conclusion …” (Taylor 2010: 34).

Yurenev, citing S. Yutkevich, notes that Eisenstein seized upon the term attraktion at a time when he had a special interest in pantomime. The term can also refer to a circus act or carnival amusement. In 1925 Eisenstein spoke of the “role of circus and sport in the renewal of acting skills”. See “The problem of the materialist approach to form” in Taylor 2010: 60; and on the affinities between circus and theatre in the early 1920s, Yurenev 1985: 51, 58–59.

In “Montage of Film Attractions” (1924), Eisenstein argued that this theory was also applicable to film, which, he claimed, shared with the theatre the purpose of “influencing the audience in a desired direction through a series of calculated pressures on its psyché” (Taylor 2010: 39).

Emphasis in original.

The sources that Eisenstein drew upon for his understanding of reflexology were Vladimir Bekhterev (1857–1927)

For Eisenstein’s reference to Bekhterev, see “Montage of Film Attractions”, in Taylor 2010: 49 and, for his use of the term ‘reflexology’, “The method of making a workers’ film” (August 1925), in Taylor 2010: 68. On Bekhterev’s influence on Eisenstein’s thinking see Olenina 2020, 195–235.

During the years 1921–1922, when he was working within the Proletkult, Eisenstein was also attending the “theatrical technical school” of Vsevolod Meyerhold where lectures on biomechanics were delivered by Nikolay Bernstein, and it is clear that his interest in the physiology and psychology of human movement originated or further developed at this time (Hoover 1974: Bulgakowa 2001a: 26; Bulgakowa 2014: 427; Braun 1995: 172–177). In “Montage of film attractions” (1924) he claimed to be making his own contribution in this field: “The norms of organicism … for motor processes have been established partly by French and German theoreticians of movements (investigating kinetics in order to establish motor primitives) and partly by me (kinetics in its application to complex expressive movements and the dynamics of both) … in my laboratory work in the Proletkult Theatre” (Taylor 2010: 51).

On the theoretical and practical work of the First Workers’ Theatre see Leach 1994: 151–161.

Eisenstein’s applications in the First Workers’ Theatre of the Proletkult (where he worked in collaboration with Sergei Tretyakov) of the methods and techniques he had learned in the school of Meyerhold have been well described in Hielscher 1973, Hoover 1974, Gordon 1978 and Leach 1994. Here we shall focus upon what Eisenstein described as being his main purpose in applying scientific and aesthetic techniques on the stage and in film, namely to achieve the desired propaganda effect, or, as one scholar has put it, to “organize the cognition of the spectators” (Tikka 2009: 229). Indeed, we learn from an interview of 1928 that one of the modules of his Teaching and Research Workshop was devoted to “Ideological Expressiveness” – “the problem of the transition of film language from cinema figurativeness to the cinematic materialization of ideas, i.e., with the problems of the direct translation of an ideological thesis into a chain of visual stimulants” (Taylor 2010: 127–129).

The other two modules were devoted to “Human Expressiveness” and “Montage Expressiveness”. For the range of connotations acquired by ‘attraction’ and ‘montage’ in the later theoretical writings of Eisenstein, see Bulgakowa 2001c: 41 and passim.

There is no ‘programmatic’ Marxism in Strike. The film had originally been conceived as the fifth of a series that would outline the history of the Russian workers’ movement from the first underground printing press to the October Revolution, but the Communist Party had not yet come round to formulating an official version of the history of the revolution. Besides, as Mark D. Steinberg has pointed out, very few writers and artists working within proletarian cultural institutions during the 1920s considered themselves to be Marxists, and not only Marxist instructors taught within the Proletkult (Steinberg 2002: 52, 61). This doctrinal pluralism made possible a cross-fertilization of Marxist and non-Marxist ideas in the arts and this eclecticism is evident in Strike.

The relatively open membership policy of the Proletkult and the eclecticism of its activity in the arts are well described in Fitzpatrick 1970 and Mally 1990.

A key message of Strike is that workers can prevail against adversity if they accept the need for ‘organization’ (the film opens with a lengthy quotation on this subject from Lenin, dated 1907). Surprisingly, however, in the end, such ‘organization’ as is achieved is not effective, and the strike ends in defeat. The concluding message is not the standard rallying call of Social Democratic and, later, Communist Parties: – “Workers of the world unite!”, but a more sombre exhortation to “remember these things”; not the inevitable triumph of proletarian revolution, but a kind of radical ouvriérisme.

In Strike, rank and file Bolshevik leaders are shown mobilizing worker activists in ‘circles’, but there is no didactic emphasis upon the leading role of the Party. Throughout the film the workers, whether in the factory, in a family setting, or as a crowd or ‘collective’ are represented as a force capable of moving of its own volition.

Eisenstein described the ideas expressed by him in Strike as “themes of the social mass”. See “Beseda s rezh. S. M. Eyzenshteynom”. Kino-nedalya 1925 (4): 17.

The completion of Strike marked the point where Eisenstein’s conception of revolutionary art could no longer co-exist with the traditionalist approach to theatre and film and the schematic Marxism of the Chairman of the Proletkult, Valeriyan Pletnëv. Differences in their social backgrounds may also have been a source of friction. Whereas Eisenstein was the son of a court councilor and engineer, Pletnëv (born in 1886, he was 12 years older than Eisenstein) had been born into a working class family and had earned his living for 19 years as a carpenter. A member of the Russian Social Democratic Party since 1904, Pletnëv had endured two periods of exile: in the Vologda Governorship, and in the Lena region of Siberia. He had begun writing in 1918 and by the early 1920s was considered to be a ‘proletarian writer’.

His works included Na tikhom plëse (1919), a short story on the life of political exiles; his play Lena (1921); Andreykino Gore (1921) on the everyday life of the proletariat and the life of children before the revolution. In Bolotnye ogni (1921) he provides one of first post-revolutionary portraits of the kulak. See Literaturnaya Entsiklopediya 1934 and Kratkaya Literaturnaya Entsiklopediya 1968: 5.

In December 1920, Pletnëv had succeeded Pavel Lebedev-Polyanskiy as Chairman of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the Proletkult,

Lebedev-Polyanskiy had helped found the Proletarian University and had been Secretary of the International Bureau of the Proletkult. He claimed to have been a “dedicated defender of the idea of proletarian culture, proletarian science, proletarian art, proletarian literature.” See his autobiography in Deyateli … 1989: 489–491.

In March 1921, in the Second Central Studio of the Proletkult,

On the network of Proletkult theatre studios, 1920–1923, see Leach 1994: 71.

By this time, Eisenstein and the neo-Futurist playwright and critic, Sergey Tretyakov, saw themselves as the principal source of theatrical innovation in the Proletkult. After The Wise Man, Eisenstein in November 1923 directed Tret’yakov’s Are You Listening Moscow? (Slyshish’, Moskva?) and then, in February 1924, Tret’yakov’s Gas Masks (Protovogazy). But “the group came under unrelenting attack from Bolshevik critics and less adventurous artists alike” (Leach 1994: 151). In “Montage of attractions” (1923), Eisenstein attributed this hostile response to differing understandings of what constituted revolutionary theatre: there had been a reactionary tendency within the Proletkult – “The figurative-narrative theatre (static, domestic – the right wing: The Dawns of Proletkult,

The Dawns of the Proletkult, an anthology by Vasiliy Ignatov of the verse of several proletarian poets and adapted for the stage by Smyshlyaev, was performed in the Central Arena of the Proletkult in 1920. One of Eisenstein’s first tasks in the Proletkult was to assist Leonid Nikitin with the visual effects. See Yurenev 1985: 42, 44; and Leach 1994: 76–77.

Not only artistic, but also party-political factors were involved in Eisenstein’s departure from the Proletkult. By 1924, both Pletnëv and the Proletkult were coming under increasing pressure from the Agitprop Department of the Central Committee of the RK (b) and this may help to explain why Pletnëv felt he could no longer take the risk of harbouring within the Proletkult such a maverick as Eisenstein.

In September 1922, Pletnëv had felt able, in an article in Pravda entitled “On the ideological front”, publicly to defend the mission of the Proletkult to develop proletarian culture.

See Pletnëv, “Na ideologicheskom fronte”, Pravda, 27 September 1922.

Yakovlev’s denounced not only the Proletkult’s conception of theatre but also its assumption that its methods were specific to a proletarian phase of cultural development: the Proletkult, in its theses “On the tasks of the proletariat in physical culture”, had proclaimed that “the new physical culture of the proletariat consists of the psycho-physiological education of the qualified individual.” This ignored the fact that it the bourgeoisie was also organizing sport for the masses, and organizations like Sokol were inculcating nationalist ideas into the younger generation, using the very same methods that the Proletkult considered to be essentially “proletarian”.

Yakovlev, “O ‘proletarskoi kul’ture’ i Proletkul’te”, Pravda, 24 & 25 October 1922, in Voprosy kul’tury pri diktature proletariata 1925, 42–43. Yakovlev quotes Meyerhold from the journal Ermitazh (6): 41.

Yakovlev’s diatribe was not aimed solely at Pletnëv; indirectly he sought to disparage Aleksandr Bogdanov and Nikolay Bukharin, one of the Communist Party’s leading Marxists, who had in some respects been influenced by Bogdanov.

Bukharin, whose ideas on culture owed something to Bogdanov, asserted at a conference convened by the Central Committee in February 1925, that Lenin, through the article of Yakovlev, had been criticizing not only the Proletkult but also himself. See Bukharin 1925 (4): 265; and Biggart 1992: 131–158.

Given that the public campaign against Bogdanov coincided with Eisenstein’s period of activity within the Proletkult, and given the closeness of Eisenstein’s working relationship with Pletnëv, Eisenstein could hardly have been ignorant of the fact that Bogdanov was now an outcast.

Not all leading party officials ostracized Bogdanov. He continued to be highly regarded by Bukharin, Krasin and others. In December 1925, the Commissar for Health, Nikolay Semashko, supported the founding of Bogdanov’s Institute for Blood Transfusion. Stalin was well disposed towards Bogdanov during his lifetime.

Relations between Eisenstein and Pletnëv approached their nadir when, in mid-November 1924, Eisenstein refused to participate in a component of the planned programme of the Workers’ Theatre that included two plays by Pletnëv. His departure from the Proletkult soon followed. In January 1925 he gave his reasons in separate interviews published in Novyy zritel’ and Kino-nedelya, shortly after Strike had been completed and while the film was awaiting approval by the censor. He had turned his back on Pletnëv’s plays “because of their formal and theatrical qualities” (Eisenstein 1925b: 22).

In Eisenstein’s vocabulary “theatrical” was, of course, a term of contempt, but his criticism of the Proletkult ranged more widely: in Novyy zritel’ in 1925 he deplored the absence of any orientation (formal or in terms of content) in the repertoire of the Proletkult theatre. The repertoire had been constructed in haphazard fashion and since The Wise Man, only the two plays of Tret’yakov had followed a consistent political line. In the forthcoming repertoire there was not a single play that had articulated a clear message. Priority was being given to performances for the urban districts, for which the Proletkult theatre was not suited: during his four years with the Workers’ Theatre its policy had been to concentrate on practical exercises for the actors, putting on shows (spektakli) and on working out formats for agit-bouffe and agit-guignol, so that this experience could in due course be passed on to the districts and the provinces. He complained of “harassment” (gonenie) that had begun as early as his staging of The Wise Man, which had been removed from the repertoire after the general rehearsal in 1922 and then re-instated. In the current season, interference had assumed unacceptable forms: the Artistic Council of the Theatre, without informing him, had removed a number of “tricks” from The Wise Man and introduced verbal components of their own. A number of elements had been removed from the last “fight” scene in Are you listening Moscow? Grigoriy Roshal, whose approach to theatre was diametrically opposed to his own, had been brought in. Arbitrary appointments of this nature made it impossible to create a theatre with its own identity. In general, the Proletkult had adopted the role of a ‘censor’: ninety percent of its concerns were with ideological conformity and the fidelity of a production to the details of everyday life. Its approach to both theatre and film was one of “petty-bourgeois realism” (Eisenstein 1925c: 13–14).

In Kino-nedelya in 1925 Eisenstein described the circumstances of his departure from the Proletkult during the first week of December 1924. The occasion had been the “failure of the Proletkult Executive Bureau to recognize my rights as co-author of the script of Strike”. But this had arisen out of a more deep-seated struggle between his own, revolutionary, conception of the theatre and that of the Proletkult leadership: “over the past year my work could not conform with the manifestly reactionary direction (theatrically, formally) taken by the ruling circles of the Proletkult, commencing with the acquisition of influence by people who had always opposed my approach and who stubbornly defended the ‘rightist’ point of view in the theatre … The subsequent direction of work in the Proletkult marked a complete break with the ‘left front’ and, therefore, a strengthening of the position of our enemies in the theatre” (Eisenstein 1925a: 17). Two issues later, in the same journal, Pletnëv dismissed Eisenstein’s claim to represent the cultural avant-garde: Eisenstein possessed only a “formally revolutionary orientation” – one that amounted to mere “leftism”. This tendency “manifested itself in a striving for superfluous, self-directed formalism and gimmickry in working out the director’s plan for the film; and in the introduction into the plan of a number of incidents of dubious Freudian purport” (Pletnëv 1925: 9).

In an interview of 1926, Eisenstein denied that there had been any conflict in his relations with his working class associates in the Proletkult: “At that time, these workers were in complete agreement with my artistic views and requirements, although I really belonged to another class and had come to the same point of view only through purely theoretical analysis.” His exasperation had been with the artistic conservatism of the Proletkult leadership (Taylor 2010: 74). In a diary entry for 24 February 1927 Eisenstein made it clear that by November 1924 he had had enough of what he disparagingly refers to as “theatre”: ‘I did not want to do theatre in the Proletkult; I wanted to design new templates to solve experimental problems – Agit-revues (The Wise Man) or political agit-plays (Are you listening, Moscow?) to be staged throughout the entire network of provincial Proletkults. The Proletkult wanted to use our laboratory retorts to cook jam – to make theatre (out of the plays of Pletnëv!) and professional theatre at that! This was one of the biggest differences between us” (Yurenev 1985: 99).

Eisenstein’s career was not damaged by his departure from the Proletkult; if anything, the contrary. In January 1925 he declared that he was not willing to collaborate with the Proletkult in the next seven parts of a film series on the ‘Dictatorship’, for which the Proletkult had the contract (Eisenstein 1925c). But that same month the Commissar for Education (and cultural ‘conservative’), Anatoliy Lunacharskiy, invited him to make a film celebrating the twentieth anniversary of the revolution of 1905 under the direct auspices of Goskino, an invitation which he accepted (Yurenev 1985: 106–109; Bulgakowa 2001a: 56). Although both Eisenstein and Pletnëv were appointed to the committee that was to oversee the project, it is evident that they could not have worked together in the making of the film.

Other members of the committee were Malevich, Meyerhold, Pletnëv, Shutko, Krasin and the First Secretary of the Moscow City Committee of the RKP (b), Vasiliy Mikhaylov. See Yurenev 1985: 106–109.

That the relationship between Sergei Eisenstein and the Proletkult, under Pletnëv’s leadership, would become confrontational was, in retrospect, entirely predictable. As Biggart and Bulgakowa make clear, in providing more background on Pletnëv’s emergence as a dramatist than is customary, his life experience and his thematic preoccupation with strikes and worker self-organisation were entirely consonant with the ideals of Proletkult – more so, indeed, than the experience of its founder, the physician and polymath Aleksandr Bogdanov. Just as predictable, with historical hindsight, was Lenin’s move in 1920 to stem the influence of Proletkult, leading to a period when it was tolerated as a purely cultural organisation, subsumed within Narkompros.

Biggert and Bulgakowa provide an admirably detailed account of the doctrinal and political issues at stake during this transitional period, which can be characterized as allowing ‘doctrinal pluralism’ and eclecticism. But beneath such analysis, we can see a number of other factors at work, which might be termed social and personal elements. They point to the clear class hostility between Pletnëv and Eisenstein, a worker who had become a cultural-political leader, and a precocious young intellectual, making his way in theatre. Despite the fact that both had been influenced by Bogdanov’s ideas, it had become politic not to allude to these openly, even if we can see clear traces of such ideas in the ‘workerism’ of both Strike and Potemkin. And although we can only assess the impact of Eisenstein’s theatre productions under the Proletkult banner from his designs and the film fragment Glumov’s Diary, it is valuable to have Yakov Yakovlev’s highly critical denunciation of such avant-garde provocation.

Eisenstein’s solution to the complex and treacherous political situation of the mid-1920s following Lenin’s death was to stress the ‘scientific’ direction of his work – hence, the revealing diary entry quoted from 1927: ‘I did not want to do theatre in the Proletkult; I wanted to design new templates to solve experimental problems’. Drawing on an eclectic combination of behavioural and biological sciences to justify his ‘experiments’ would become a theoretical justification for what were, in truth, distinctly avant-garde impulses. From our expanding knowledge of Eisenstein’s interests and infatuations, we must surely recognize that he was much more intuitive, and indeed eclectic, than he was willing to admit. It shouldn’t be disloyal to admit that he was extremely adept at rationalising his impulses, and indeed covering his tracks within the dangerous world of Soviet cultural politics. What I draw from Biggert and Bulgakowa’s surefooted analysis of the ‘Proletkult period’ is a better understanding of how Eisenstein used the ‘pluralism’ of the early 1920s to gain experience, to push against boundaries, and indeed to advance his reputation. Despite the very real tensions, both sides benefited from the work of this period and its lasting impact.