Memorandum to the Politburo of the CC of the RCP(b), July 3, 1922

Source: Tom 17

To all members of the Politburo.

The question raised by Comrade Trotsky about winning over young poets who are close to us through material and moral support is, in my view, entirely timely. I think that the formation of Soviet culture (in the narrow sense of the word), about which certain "proletarian ideologists" (Bogdanov and others) wrote and spoke so much at one time, has only now begun. This culture must apparently develop in the course of the struggle of young poets and writers gravitating toward the Soviets against the various counter-revolutionary currents and groups on this new field. To rally the Soviet-minded poets into a single nucleus and to support them in every way in this struggle -- therein lies the task.

I think the most expedient form of this rallying of young writers would be the organization of an independent, let us say, "Society for the Development of Russian Culture" or something of the sort. To attempt to attach young writers to the censorship committee or to some "official" institution would mean repelling young poets from us and ruining the cause. It would be good to place at the head of such a society a non-party person, but one with Soviet sympathies -- someone like, say, Vsevolod Ivanov. Material support, up to and including subsidies clothed in some acceptable form, is absolutely necessary.

For orientation, I enclose the reply of the deputy head of the Agitation and Propaganda Department, Comrade Yakovlev, to my corresponding inquiry.

I. Stalin.

Source: Istochnik. 1995. No. 6, pp. 133-134.

AP RF. F. 3. Op. 34. D. 185. L. 5.

NOTE

Stalin's memorandum was a reaction to Trotsky's appeal to the Politburo of June 30, 1922: "...We are undoubtedly in danger of losing young poets, artists, and so forth who gravitate toward us. There is no or almost no attention paid to them; more precisely, attention to individual persons is shown accidentally by individual Soviet functionaries or in a purely artisanal manner... It is necessary to set ourselves the task of an attentive, fully individualized attitude toward the representatives of young Soviet art..."