1928-1932 - Cultural Revolution

• Komsomol enthusiasts were encouraged to root out and attack "bourgeois" elements.
• Theatre productions of bourgeois plays were disrupted by booing and whistling.
• In literature, the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers (RAPP) made increasingly bitter attacks on non-communist writers and condemned the decadent individualism of writers who adopted new experimental techniques.
• RAPP preferred works which stressed the achievements of the workers in what became termed the cult of the "little man" such as Kataev's novel Time Forward (1932).
• The Cultural Revolution not only aimed to destroy elements of "bourgeois" culture but also encouraged visions of what the new socialist culture should be like.

  • This led to a brief flowering of visionary utopianism.
• Visionary utopianism was too radical for many party members and by the end of the First Five Year Plan, the government was ready to restore control over cultural organisations.
• The Cultural Revolution had removed most of the old intelligentsia and replaced it with Soviet intellectuals.