Arskii, Pavel.

[PROLETKULT POETRY] Krov’ rabochego. Rasskazy [The blood of the worker. Short stories].

Petrograd: biblioteka proletkul’ta, 1919. Octavo (21 × 14.5 cm). Original printed wrappers; 56 pp. Unopened and uncut. Light moisture stain to lower right corner of front wrapper, else very good. Item #P5764

First edition. A debut collection of short stories by one of the early members of Petrograd (St. Petersburg) Proletkult, the journalist, poet and playwright Pavel Arskii (1886–1967). The Proletkult movement aimed to create a uniquely proletarian culture by encouraging and supporting artistic work by the members of the working class. Arskii’s rise through the Proletkult movement was indicative of the movement’s early success. Born in a peasant family, like many young men of his generation Arskii came to the city (Pskov) to work in a factory, where he was eventually arrested for “revolutionary activity”. Mobilized during WWI, he took part in the storming of the Winter Palace. In 1918 Arskii joined the Bolshevik party. The first collection of Arskii’s poetry was published by Proletkult in 1919, with this item being his first prose collection. Arskii also wrote plays for Proletkult theater and was eventually elected to the national board of the organization along with other leaders from the “lower classes” such as Valerian Pletnev. Founded in 1917 at a congress of worker creative workshops Proletkult “began as a loose coalition of clubs, factory committees, worker’s theaters, and educational societies devoted to the cultural needs of the working class.” With support from the minister of education Anatoly Lunacharsky and theoretical guidance by Aleksandr Bogdanov, who believed that only art made by the proletariat can reflect most accurately the reality of the proletariat, “by 1918 it had expanded into a national movement with a much more ambitious purpose: to define a unique proletarian culture that would inform and inspire the new society” (Lynn Mally. Culture of the Future: The Proletkult Movement in Revolutionary Russia, 1990; pp. xviii). A catalog of St. Petersburg Proletkult appears on the rear wrapper of this publication.

As of February 2024, KVK and OCLC show only one print copy at Stockholm.

Price: €300.00

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