Cultural revolution in the Soviet Union

The goal was to form a new type of culture as part of the building of a socialist society,[1][2] including an increase in the proportion of people from proletarian classes in the social composition of the intelligentsia.

[1] To implement the program in the first months of Soviet power, a network of organs of the party-state administration of the cultural life of society was created: Agitprop (department of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)), Glavpolitprosvet, Narcompros, Glavlit and others.

The 1918 RSFSR Constitution, for its part, proclaimed that the workers and peasants should have the means to print and publish: In order to secure for the workers actual freedom of expression of opinion, the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic abolishes the dependence of the press upon capital, and puts into the hands of the working class and the poor peasantry all the technical and material means for the publication of newspapers, pamphlets, books, and all other products of the printing press, and provides for their free distribution throughout the country.

[14]In the field of ideology, atheistic propaganda was widely developed, religion began to be persecuted, clubs, warehouses, production facilities were organized in churches, and strict censorship was introduced.

[1] At the same time, repressive measures were taken to eliminate intellectual political opponents: for example, more than 200 prominent representatives of Russian science and culture were expelled from the country on the Philosophical Steamship.

[2] The successes of the cultural revolution include raising the literacy rate to 87.4% of the population (according to the census of 1939), creating an extensive system of secondary schools, and significant development of science and the arts.

[3] On the other hand, a number of authors have challenged this position and come to the conclusion that the traditional values and worldviews of the Russian intelligentsia, petty bourgeoisie and the peasantry were only slightly transformed during the cultural revolution, and the Bolshevik project of creating a new type of person, that is, the "new man", should be considered largely failed.