ARTIFICIAL HELLS

notes to pages 49– 53
Benjamin, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, in
Illuminations, New York: Schocken, 1969, p. 235.)
27 Leon Trotsky, Literature and Revolution, London: RedWords, 1991, p. 160.
28 Ibid., p. 163.
29 Theatre’s accessibility also meant that it flourished in rural communities:
‘The lack of means, the almost complete lack of ideologically acceptable
films, the high cost of borrowing, and a number of other things have
made films available only in the cities . . .’ (V. Stanev, ‘Cinema in the
Countryside’, in William Rosenberg [ed.], Bolshevik Visions: First Phase
of the Cultural Revolution in Soviet Russia, Part 2, Ann Arbor: University
of Michigan Press, 1990, p. 113.)
30 Zenovia A. Sochor, Revolution and Culture: The Bogdanov–Lenin Controversy,
Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988, p. 134.
31 Aleksandr Bogdanov, ‘The Proletarian and Art’ (1918), in John Bowlt
(ed.), Russian Art of the Avant- garde: Theory and Criticism 1902– 34, New
York: Viking Press, 1976, p. 177.
32 Lenin, cited in Max Eastman, Artists in Uniform: A Study of Literature and
Bureaucratism, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1934, p. 244. Sochor characterises
the main difference between Bogdanov and Lenin as concerning
their position on utopia: for Bogdanov it was to be kept alive and realised,
while for Lenin it was to be pigeonholed and deferred. See Sochor, Revolution
and Culture, p. 233.
33 Lenin, ‘On Proletarian Culture’ (1920), in V. I. Lenin, On Literature and
Art, Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1967, p. 155.
34 Bogdanov, ‘The Paths of Proletarian Creation’ (1920), in Bowlt (ed.),
Russian Art of the Avant- garde, pp. 181– 2.
35 Ibid., p. 181.
36 Ibid., pp. 178– 82.
37 Alexei Gan, ‘Constructivism’, in Camilla Gray, The Great Experiment:
Russian Art 1863–1922, London: Thames and Hudson, 1962, p. 286.
38 Bogdanov, ‘The Paths of Proletarian Creation’, p. 180.
39 Bogdanov, cited in Sochor, Revolution and Culture, p. 148.
40 Trotsky, Literature and Revolution, p. 168.
41 Ibid., p. 432. Citing the Marxist adage that art is a hammer with which to
shape society, rather than a mirror that passively holds up a reflection to
it, Trotsky argued that society needs both the hammer and the mirror –
since what is the use of a hammer unless you can accurately see what you
are shaping?
42 Comrade N. I. Goncharko (Proletkult delegate for the city of Saratov),
cited in Kerzhentsev, ‘The Proletarian Theatre’, report and discussion at
the First All- Russian Conference of the Proletkult, 17 September 1918, in
Rosenberg (ed.), Bolshevik Visions, p. 131.
43 See Huntly Carter, The New Theatre and Cinema of Soviet Russia, London:
Chapman and Dodd, 1924, Chapter 6. Approximately 120,000 people saw
298