The Bemidji daily pioneer. [volume] (Bemidji, Minn.) 1904-1971, 1919-09-16
new CULTURE IS
J. Dream Of REDS
Huge Sums are Expended by
. BoIshevists to Promote
Their Propaganda.
SEE WEIRD Effects IN ART

Denoeratized Paintings are spIashes
Of Color That Guido the Work Of
OBSERVATION-DISCLOSURES and
Books are Scarce.
London-"Proletari Russian
culture" Is one of the tasks attended
10 by the bolshevik government Of Le-
nine and Trotzky. What this process
consists Of is told by the Copenhagen
correspondent of the London Morning
Post. He says:
If the bolshevik system, as seems
hkely, disappears altogether from Rus
sia during the present summer, curl
GUS experiment in culture thereby
win be brought to an end. Beyond
doubt nine-tenths Of bolshevism is
common murder and plunder-the boil
shevik dictator, Zinovilieff, in speech
Of May 16, admitted that 'three-quar-
tiers of the 100000 soviet officials care
only for their own pockets but the
ether tenth is honest fanaticism with
the customary foundation OF decisions.
zone delusion is that there can be q
specific 'proletarian culture Last
month the Moscow provincial soviet
Gin the intervals Of shooting old men
and boys whose kinsmen Of service age
refused to fght) set about organizing
biograph and graphophone entertain
anents in the villages, at which, says
the Krasnaya Gazetta, in addition to
showing pictorially and screaming
Stridently the infamies Of our former
foes, we are providing real proletarian
education, art, science, philosophy, his
tory 1t is culture stamped with the
irresistible 'proletkult' mark. This
'proletkult,' word concocted by
Lunatcharsky, is the official name of a
state department with headquarters in
Catherine street, Petrograd, and in the
Moscow Morosoff palace. The con-
aected word goes with Sovnarcom (for
Council of Peoples Commissaries),
&lavsakhar (for chief sugar mOnop-
oly), Sovdep, and other barbarous
neOlOgisms which. with bolshevism,
have enriched the language Of Tur-
genieff and TOlstOy.
Millions Expended on Cult.
"The commissariat Of education,
over which Lunatcharsky presides,
spent in 1918 2,9OO,OOO,OOO roubles
tnominally 81, $50, OOO, OOO), and the es-
Inmates of it's expenditure for the first
half of 1919 alone amount to 4,667 ,0OO,-
600 roubles, nominally about so per
cent more than the whole annual bud
net before the war. OF the first men-
toned sum over 25OOOO,OOO roubles,
the Kraynaya Gazetta says, was
ON the encouragement of literature and
the arts, that is, Of the specific artis-
tic and literary forms which are glor-
ieusly known as 'proletkult.' Thus art
and literature are violently democra-
tized.
During the whole of last winter, In
the Morosoff palace were held weekly
arsky and even our mighty Hitch
Il. e. Lenine) did not shrink from at
lending, though the ordeal for Lenine,
who is cultivated man, must have
been hard. Bolshevik poets read aloud
their verses, and bolshevik painters
showed how - hopelessly they had left
post-mpreSsonists. cubiStS and ex'
pressionists behind. Two Of their
paintings shown to me at Stockholm
were mere sp1ashes of color, framed in
x1gzags Of common tar.
The report Of the commissariat Of
hot IN,
enteen provinces swayed by the soviets
ut the end of last year there were 81
per cent more elementary schools than
ander the autocracy. This largely &C.
counts for the swollen expenditure.
Higher education has been proletar-
ianized-on paper-by admitting stu.
dents according to their merits.
Many Papers Suspended.
"9fe plight Of proletarian culture
has grown markedly worse during the
last few months, mainly owing to lack
of paper. In Petrograd, instead Of
nine newspapers, there have appeared
since April 1 only five. The bolshevik
propaganda is still turning out many
Thin political pamphlets, some Of which
] have seen; but book publishing has
almost entirely ceased; and the. best
Known Russian novelists, Andreyef,
Kurpin and Merezhkovsky, are begin
aing the publication Of their writings
With BONNER of Stockholm. The in
ability to produce books at home will
certainly continue for years."
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