Chairman of the S. P. C., V. Ulianoy (Lenin).
People's Commissaire of Education, Lunacharsky,
Chargé d'affaires of the Soviet of People's Commissaires, Viadimir Bonch-Bruevich.
Sec'y of the Soviet of People's Commissaires, N. Gorbunov.
Moscow, Kreml, July 12th, 1918.
We come now to one of the features of Soviet domination that distinguish it from any other government that has ever been established. For the first time in history a whole people is to have the opportunity, not only to see works of art, to appreciate them and study them, but creatively to produce art of a type consonant with their system of civilization. The efforts of the Soviet Government to stimulate the proletariat, now that it is dominant, to take advantage of its opportunities for culture, are nowhere more clearly stated than in Documents Nos. 19 and 20, which are concerned with the art education of the people.
DOCUMENT No. 19
The Main Problems of the Art Sections of the Soviets of
Workmen's Deputies
Each Soviet of workmen's deputies has a special section of people's education and to the latter is usually attached an art sub-section. What are, then, the fundamental problems of these art sections and sub-sections?
Four main problems can be distinguished upon examination.
J. Keats, the English poet, said that "A thing of beauty is a joy forever." It would have been better had it been possible for him to say, "a thing of beauty is a Joy to everybody." The immediate duty of the art sections attached to the Soviets of workmen's deputies it to turn beauty and art into a "universal joy"—a joy to the whole city's population. The first problem is the "socialization of art" and there are two ways by which this aim can be accomplished best and most easily. The first step required is external beautification of cities (chiefly large cities, of course): turn them not merely into city-village, city-park, city-garden but also into a city-museum, a museum of magnificient buildings, beautiful monuments, in fine, make them externally resemble that picturesque London of the future described by William Morris in his utopian "News from Nowhere." Some-42
