Lunacharskii Versus the Proletcult

Abstract

After the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks, an intense interest in history manifested itself, not only in professional theatres, but also in the many amateur groups attached to workers’ clubs. The Russian past was looked on as a gradual preparation for the October Revolution, and world history as the road man trod toward freedom and justice. The hero of the plays was always the people or one of its representatives—a freedom fighter or a humanist—drawn from the four corners of the earth. But, in the first years after the Revolution, only the lowest layers of society were considered worthy of depiction. A number of writers even went so far as to make the masses the play’s protagonist.