1. The term bourgeois was as pejorative in intelligentsia usage (where it connoted philistinism, vulgarity, and materialism) as it was in Bolshevik. Moreover, the intelligentsia had radical traditions, as witness theprominence of its members in the Bolshevik leadership, regarded itself as “above class,” and defined itselfnot as a group linked by professionalism (as suggested by the word “specialist “) but in terms of moral commitmentand critical thinking.

2. Gimpel'son, E. G., Sovetskii rabochii Mass 1918–20 (Moscow, 1974), p. 80 Google Scholar.

3. Selunskaia, V. M., “Rukovodiashchaia rol’ rabochego klassa v sotsialisticheskoi revoliutsii v derevne 1918 g.,” Voprosy istorii, no. 3 (1958), p. 10.Google Scholar

4. Rashin, A. G., “Dinamika promyshlennykh kadrov SSSR v 1917–1958 gg.” in Izmeneniia v chislennostii sostave sovetskogo rabochego klassa (Moscow, 1961), p. 9 Google Scholar.

5. Gimpel'son, Rabochii Mass, p. 37.

6. The issue was the Capri school, organized for Russian revolutionary worker students in 1909 by Bogdanov and Lunacharskii and opposed by Lenin (then in Paris) because of his philosophical differences with Bogdanov. Thirteen workers, at least one a police spy, were smuggled with great difficulty and expenseout of Russia to attend the school; five were ultimately won over to Lenin's side. For an entertaining accountof this storm in a teacup, see Livshits, S., “Kapriiskaia partiinaia shkola (1909 g.),” Proletarskaia revoliutsiia, no. 6 (29) (1924)Google Scholar.

7. The Proletkul'tist V. Kunavin wrote that Proletkul't, like the Bolshevik party in its different sphere, based itself on the proletarian vanguard, “the more cultured and more advanced stratum” of the working class. Unfortunately, “as is well known, our proletariat stands on a rather low level of development in acultural sense” (Proletarskaia kul'tura, no. 17–19 [1920], p. 74).

8. Protocol of meeting of State Commission on Education, 13 April 1918, in Voprosy literatury, no. 1 (1968) p. 120.

9. Bogdanov, A. A., “Puti proletarskogo tvorchestva (Tezisy),” Proletarskaia kul'tura, no. 15–16 (1920), p. 50.Google Scholar

10. Proletarskaia kul'tura, no. 17–19 (1920), p. 76. This view, reported as an unattributed dissent atthe Proletkul't Congress, foreshadows the emphasis on class struggle and hostility to bourgeois cultural specialists later characteristic of RAPP, the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers.

11. Kunavin, , Proletarskaia kul'tura, no. 17–19 (1920), p. 74.Google Scholar

12. See Fitzpatrick, Sheila, The Commissariat of Enlightenment (London, 1970)Google Scholar, chap. 5; Gorbunov, “Bor'ba V. I. Lenina s separatistskimi ustremleniiami Proletkul'ta,” pp. 29–39.

13. Soviet historians suggest such a connection existed but cite only the manifesto “My—kollektivisty, “composed by “an underground intelligentsia group of Bogdanov's adherents” in the spirit of thebanned Workers’ Opposition, and circulated at the Second Congress of Proletkul't in November 1921. Primerov, E. V., Bor'ba partii za leninskoe edinstvo svoikh riadov (1921–1924). (Na materialakh partorganizatsii krupneishikh promyshlennykh tsentrov strany) (Lvov, 1979), pp. 134–135 Google Scholar.

14. Cited in Gorbunov, V. V., “Bor'ba V. I. Lenina s separatistskimi ustremleniiami Proletkul'ta, “Voprosy istorii KPSS, no. 1 (1958), p. 30.Google Scholar

15. Lenin, V. I., Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 5th ed., 55 vols. (Moscow, 1958–1965) 38: 368–369 Google Scholar.

16. This official Soviet figure (see Rigby, T. H., Communist Party Membership in the U.S.S.R., 1917–1967 [Princeton, 1968], p. 85 Google Scholar) appears to be confirmed by more reliable data from the 1922 party census, which show that, of those who were party members in 1922 and entered the party before 1917, 63 percentwere workers and 31 percent intelligentsia and white-collar people: Vserossiiskaia perepis’ chlenov R.K.P.1922 goda, vol. 4 (Moscow, 1923), p. 27.

17. The white-collar recruitment category includes intellectuals (professionals), but by all accounts most of the new white-collar recruits were office workers. Vserossiiskaia perepis', p.27, has the 1919–1920 figures.

18. Rigby, Party Membership, pp. 52 and 84.

19. Organizational Report, VIII s “ezd RKP (b). Mart 1919 goda. Protokoly (Moscow, 1959), p. 281.

20. Central Committee elected at the Sixth Congress is listed in Daniels, Robert V., The Conscience ofthe Revolution (New York, 1969)Google Scholar, Appendix 2; biographical data are from Entskilopedicheskii slovar’ Russkogo Bibliograficheskogo Instituta Granat, 7th ed. (Moscow, 1927–1929), v. 41 (“Deiateli SSSR i Oktiabr'skoiRevoliutsii “), Who Was Who in the USSR, compiled by the Institute for the Study of the USSR, Munich (Metuchen, N.J., 1972), and other sources. In addition to the two workers (Nogin and Muranov), one Central Committee member (the Latvian Smilga) had been a peasant when he joined the revolutionary movement. Of the intellectuals, fifteen out of eighteen had entered, though not always graduated from, universitiesor higher technical schools. The remaining three (Berzin, Sverdlov, Stalin), who were of lowersocial origin, had been to seminaries or middle schools. Of fifty-one intelligentsia delegates to the SixthCongress, twenty (including Lenin) gave their profession as literatory, twelve as teachers, seven as medical professionals, six as lawyers, four as statisticians, and two as technicians (tekhniki). In addition, not classifiedas intelligentsia were three who listed their profession as “officer, Junker” (Shestoi s “ezd, p. 274).

21. In the Central Committee elected in August 1917, ten out of twenty-one members were Russian, six Jewish, two Latvian, and one each Polish, Georgian, and Armenian; and in the Central Committee elected in March 1921, out of twenty-four full members, fourteen were Russian, five Jewish, two Latvian, two Georgian and one Polish. The working-class members of the Central Committee were more likely than the intellectuals to be Russian and less likely to be Jewish. Of the Central Committee workers in 1921, 80 percent were Russian and none Jewish; of its intellectuals, 43 percent were Russian and 36 percent Jewish (calculated from sources cited in note 20, above). Of all party members in 1922 79 percent were Russian (including 7 percent Ukrainian and Belorussian) and 5 percent were Jewish, (Sotsial'nyi i natsional'nyi sostav VKP (b)[Moscow, 1927], p. 114)Google Scholar. In January 1922 full members of the Central Committee were 58 percent Russianand 21 percent Jewish (calculated from sources cited in note 20).

22. Out of twenty-four full members of the Central Committee elected at the Tenth Congress in thespring of 1921, ten (42 percent) were workers and fourteen were intellectuals (calculated from sources citedin note 20). All delegates to the Ninth Party Congress (March-April 1920), including the worker group, were on full-time party (35 percent) or soviet (65 percent) work (Deviatyi s “ezdRKP (b), pp. 484–486).

23. “Bureaux members” are members and candidate members of the Politburo, Orgburo, and Secretariat (fifteen people in all) (Calculated from sources cited in note 20).

24. The practice of filling responsible party positions by appointment (strictly speaking, nominationby the Central Committee Secretariat in Moscow) rather than by local election.

25. See, for example, Daniels, Robert V., The Conscience of the Revolution: Communist Opposition inSoviet Russia (Cambridge, Mass., 1960)Google Scholar, and Schapiro, Leonard, The Origin of the Communist Autocracy: Political Opposition in the Soviet State, First Phase, 1917–1922 (Cambridge, Mass., 1955)Google Scholar.

26. IX konferentsiia RKP (b). Sentiabr’ 1920 goda. Protokoly (Moscow, 1972), p. 143.

27. Ibid., p. 187.

28. XI s “ezdRKP (b). Mart—apreV 1922 g. Stenograficheskii otchet (Moscow, 1961), p. 279.

29. IX konferentsiia RKP (b). Sentiabr’ 1920 goda. Protokoly, p. 193.

30. Rafail, R., Desiatyi s “ezdRKP (b). Mart 1921 g. Stenograficheskii otchet (Moscow, 1963), p. 274 Google Scholar. Rafail used the term intelligentoedstvo, an impromptu variant of the more familiar spetseedstvo, which referred only to harassment of “bourgeois” intelligentsia members.

31. According to the guidelines published in Pravda, 30 June 1921, the purge commissions should look particularly carefully at party members who had formerly belonged to other political parties or held official positions under the old regime or the Provisional Government and at those who were white-collaremployees of Soviet institutions (a group suspected of “careerist” reasons for party membership) or held Soviet offices “linked with some sort of privileges.” In implementation, the purge hit hardest on peasants (45 percent of those expelled) and then white-collar employees (35 percent). Only 20 percent of those expelled were classified as workers (Molotov, Organizational Report, XI s “ezd RKP (b). Mart-apreV 1922 g.Stenograficheskii otchet (Moscow, 1961), p. 47.

32. Ibid., p. 105. The Workers’ Oppositionist Perepechko similarly reported that workers at the Moscow power station had demanded that the party be purged of members of the intelligentsia (ibid., p. 90).

33. Iaroslavskii in ibid., p. 105.

34. Rafail, Desiatyi s “ezd RKP (b), p. 274. Iaroslavskii, ibid., p. 263. Both Iaroslavskii and Rafailseem to be using Aesopian language, and there are also signs that the text has been edited at points where theissue of anti-Semitism is raised.

35. Desiatyi s “ezdRKP (b). Mart 1921 g. Stenograficheskii otchet (Moscow, 1963), pp. 45–46.

36. Primerov, Bor'ba partii za leninskoe edinstvo svoikh riadov, pp. 99–101. In Tula, the conflictarose out of the opposition of local working-class Bolsheviks to the appointment of Zh. Meerzon, an outsider who was Jewish (a former Bundist) and probably an intellectual, as secretary of the gubkom in 1922. Conflictarose in the Nizhnyi party organization when Molotov was head of the gubernia soviet in 1920. Mikoian, his successor as senior Moscow-appointed Bolshevik in this important industrial city attributes it to the fact that Molotov, an intellectual, “was weakly linked to [the Bolsheviks in] the working-class districts (his main support came from [the Bolshevik organization in] Gorodskoi raion)” ( Mikoian, A. I., V nachaledvadtsatykh … (Moscow, 1975), p. 25 Google Scholar). Later Mikoian, a lower-class semi-intellectual who, like Stalin, was a member of Lenin's faction in the party struggles, had a long struggle with the Workers’ Opposition in Nizhnyi Novgorod.

37. Primerov, Bor'ba partii za leninskoe edinstvo svoikh riadov, pp. 77–78. In 1922 the Mariupol party organization in the Donbass, was split between “the city (gorodskaia) part, where petit bourgeois elements predominated, and the factory part, where workers predominated” (ibid., p. 108).

38. Sapronov in IX konferentsiia, pp. 159–160.

39. Ibid., p. 274.

40. Primerov, Bor'ba partii za leninskoe edinstvo svoikh riadov, p. 76. Mikoian was referring here tothe Platform of the 22, an offshoot of the defeated and banned Workers’ Opposition.

41. Ibid.

42. See Fitzpatrick, Commissariat of Enlightenment, pp. 238–241 and 269–270.

43. The Bolshevik press asserted that the revolt was instigated by “Whiteguards” and that in any casethe Kronstadt sailors, many of whom were conscripted peasants, were not truly proletarian. The latter point was strictly correct, but it was a logic that the Bolsheviks had not previously followed with regard to the class definition of soldiers and sailors.

44. Milonov, working in Samara, had been actively campaigning there against appointmentism and the increasing separation of the party's elite from its rank and file. In August 1920, he had argued publicly in Samara that the Bolsheviks were degenerating “from a party of the ruling proletariat into a party of its administrativestratum, the labour bureaucracy.” Service, Robert, The Bolshevik Party in Revolution: A Study inOrganisational Change 1917–1923 (London, 1979), pp. 141 and 146–147CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45. Desiatyi s “ezd, p. 85.

46. Ibid., p. 74.

47. The first statement is from Milonov, ibid., p. 74, describing the opinion of “some people in theprovinces,” and the second is from Riazanov, XI s “ezdRKP (b), pp. 37–38, implicitly attributing this opinionto the party leadership.

48. Primerov, Bor'ba partii za leninskoe edinstvo svoikh riadov, pp. 100–101.

49. XI s “ezd RKP (b). pp. 37–38.

50. XI s “ezdRKP (b). Mart-aprel’ 1922 g. Stenograficheskii otchet (Moscow, 1961), p. 80.

51. Ibid., pp. 103–104.

52. Avrich, Paul, Kronstadt 1921 (Princeton, N.J., 1970), p. 183 Google Scholar.

53. Kamenev referred to the “accusation,” in discussions preceeding the congress, that “comrade Lenin underestimates the forces of the proletariat” and exaggerates its lack of culture. He did not repeat orattempt to defend Lenin's argument (XI s “ezd RKP (b). 17–25 aprelia 1923 g. Stenograficheskii otchet[Moscow, 1968], p. 161)Google Scholar. The text on “exaggeration of lack of culture” appears to be garbled in the transcription.

54. Ibid., p. 37.

55. On this process, and the appeals to workers who had taken refuge in the village to come “home” to the factory, see Vdovin, A. I. and Drobizhev, V. Z., Rost rabochego klassa SSSR, 1917–1940 gg. (Moscow, 1976), p. 88 Google Scholar.

56. Primerov, Bor'ba partii za leninskoe edinstvo svoikh riadov, pp. 186–187, discusses the local drives immediately after the Twelfth Congress. The Central Committee announcement, “O prieme rabochikhot stanka v partiiu,” 31 January 1924, is published in Pravda, 1 February 1924. The campaign was named inhonor of Lenin because of his death in the month of its initiation. Given Lenin's desire in 1922 to restrict newparty enrollment, including enrollment of workers, (see Rigby, Party Membership, pp. 102–103), it is quite possible that he would have opposed it. Of all the party leaders, he was by far the most cautious on questions of proletarianization.

57. “Ob ocherednykh zadachakh partiinogo stroitel'stva,” May 1924, in Kommunisticheskaia Partita Sovetskogo Soiuza v rezoliutsiiakh i resheniiakh s “ezdo\, konferentsii i plenumov TsK (Moscow, 1970) 3: 46–47.

58. Ibid., p. 47. See above, pp. 14–16.

59. The great majority of Russian workers, both before the war and after, had been born in villages to families that were either peasant or peasant-worker (where the father spent all or part of the year in industrial employment outside the village).

60. When Zinoviev spoke in 1919 about using “proletarian executants” to run the country, he noted in passing the problem that after six months away from the factory the worker may lose contact with the proletariat. This concern was commonly voiced at the beginning of the 1920s, but dropped out of Bolshevik discussions after about 1922.

61. The most prominent such group was RAPP, the Association of Proletarian Writers. On the phenomenonas a whole, see Fitzpatrick, Sheila, ed., Cultural Revolution in Russia, 1928–1931 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978 Google Scholar.