The declaration of the proletarian writers «Kusnitsa»

I. The dialectic

Any phenomenon in the process of development carries in itself the germ of its own denial. This law of the contradictions is  permeating like a red thread both the all nature in its endless variety of the movement, and the all life of the humanity with its all superstructures.

II. The leap forward in reign of freedom

The working klass in the capitalist society is the self-contradiction of this society. The fact of its existence denies this society, the development of it undermines it from within and, matured in its bowels, breaks off the iron ring of old regime. The miserable multitudes, united in the process of work and struggle for the reorganization of the basics of life, by his pressuring recreates his mentality.

III. The dynamics of the forms

The proletarian revolution, conditioned by the economic and politic factors, ruins the old forms of the social life. The revolutionary destruction buries the systems of the became obsolete ideologies, feelings, conceptions.

New mentality materializes in the new forms of social activity, social activity materializes in own literary artist, who creates the new forms of art.
So change forms of the society determines forms of art.

IV. Art as a particular weapon

Proletariat is in need of art like an army is in need of transport, factories and plants.

Distant horizonts of new epoch, infinite perspectives of activity, an unexampled panorama of revolutionary being are standing in front of the new art. This one, liberated from necessary to serve for amusements and exploitation of bourgeoisie, becomes the special  instrument to organize the future communist society.

V. Style is a class

The artists, have crystallized in pre-revolutionary times, are impotent to form a creative material which appeared as a result of revolutionary earthquake. This artists have not personal worldview for describing the stages of the grandiose events, created love and enthusiasm by mass. And have not proper instrument to describe them, have not the literary technic,  the style. Style in general is an external mask of the work of art,  and the spirit of the content  lies behind this; not only the shell in which life and existence are hiding like a  snail, not only handwriting of the class, where everything is open and is impossible to hide anything, but the live strong-willed image of the accreted, organically finished multitudes of the class. The bourgeois and petty bourgeois writers have not a connection with proletariat in the past, are alien to the proletarian practise,  aspirations, ideology. But the style is the class.

VI. The denounced by history

Symbolism, futurism and imagism taken together as the literatural styles were been suckled the capitalistic regime.

Symbolism was born by fear the decadent bourgeois society in front of a tomorrow's revolution. This always is signifying the defence, advocacy and attack never. It, like an coenobite in the cell, simultaneously hates and worships.

Futurism grown up out of the extreme hypertrophic and, in the end , intelligence intellectualist  individualism. Futurism signified the fatal illness, the death to be. To go ahead for it – is to go towards its own death; to stand on spot – is to entrench itself and to stay in the bastion of a technicism and of its very wise theory. It had nowhere to recede. Imagism is a last death convulsions of the old petty bourgeois society (1918), which has a time only for analogy, for an rambling images of the present. Yesterday's art of word degenerated to an universal ugliness and touched powerlessly with working class, like a hand of corpse shakes hands with live man.

VII. The art of mortuary

Technique of art, means of fine arts are long ago the end in itself for the artists of  the last agony of capitalism. The enormous poems are writing only  for the purpose of  discovering the «rhythm»; the verses are making only for the purpose of creating an «unprecedented form»; the stream of the strophes are erupting only for the purpose of sounding of «alliteration», an «image» of sound; the plays are building only for the purpose to amaze with the trepak (russian folk danse ) of image-bearing tongue. The meters (iambic, trochee etc.) are smashing to pieces, the 1 verse is dividing into 1/2 of verse; 1/2 verse is dividing into 1/4 etc. The words are dividing into syllables, and the syllables are dividing into the separate letters. The world from which the literary material is extracted, – is a unheard-of cult of individualism, similar to insanity, the pornography, physiological function(s), barkovshina (verses of the russian  pornographic poet Barkov) of the serapions, the meaningless yelling ofthe «words with the alien paunch», badly hiding with revolutionary phrases. The art of the old regime enters a final disintegration phase. And we rise the working hammer to wall up a door of this terrible «temple», we hammer the last nail in the lid of this colored tomb of art.

VIII. The red flag in the wilderness

NEP like a phase of revolution is ringed  by art similar to «art» of gorillas. The artist-monkey  as if mimics  its predecessor, who creates inspiredly and  makes the directly necessary, in accordance with its time. In the present days the unnecessary, empty imitation, cold juggling with empty forms set as a the main task of the day — to revive by the decadent technicism, to breathe new life into the mummy of art. And There are means for the all it. The propaganda is carrying on. The working youth, which cut it's way to the knowledge and to the artistic creative work, is at a loss. There is not  Belinskij. Over the wilderness of art is twilight.

And we raise your's voice and raise a red flag of the platform – the declarations of the proletarian art.

IX. The growth of the October

The art of the ascending to the power proletariat is a denial of the decadent bourgeois art. Proletariat had not the own artist in the past, but it stood in front of the eyes of the sympathizer artist. And for a long time from the interior of the capitalism the scarlet growth grew.

This growth springs up in all countries: England – Elliot, Maurice, Thomas Hood; France – Dupont, Pottier, Jules Romain, Verhaeren; Belgium – Meunier, Ekout; Germany – Freiligrath, Stern, Demmel, partly Hauptmann; Italy – Ada Negri; America – partly Whitman, partly London and Sinclair; Ukraine – Franko, partly Shevchenko; Hungary – Petofi, Stefanik, Bezruch; Latvia – Janis Rainis; Russia – Nekrasov. The proletarian poets and writers coupled with its class, which went through the revolution of 1905, came somehow suddenly. Theirs art is an art of young materialistic class, – the art, which is to take the place of mystical cults which becomes a thing of the irreversibility.

X. We

We proclaim the art as a healthy organism, adjusted with itself and with an environment, which forms the crystals of the artistic needs. As we see it, the artistic creative is a function of the social ideology, emociology, psyche on the whole. Its base: the condition of the productive strengths of the country and the economic relations, determined by these productive strengths; then – the social-political system, which grew out of  this economical base; then – mentality of the working class, which partly determined directly by economy and partly by social-politic system; and at last ideology, reflecting in itself  the characteristics of the given mentality. Labor and struggle for the organisation of the communist society are the primordial fundamentals of the working class and the primordial fundamentals of  our creative activity. Masses are the air for its breathing. The connection with them is opened windows to the psychical laboratory of artist.

XI. Poetry is the practice of proletariat

Class of October reared up the social practice of working mankind to the terrific hight, from where we can see what we should do tomorrow, and what we did today and yesterday, having converted this practice into poetry. We have the construction material as huge as mountain; the thrown up  storey by storey, scaffolded unprecedented basis of the new life; black holes of ruined superstitions and all sorts of wildness; the ring of fire which made the sky horizont red-hot, and the cannonade of comradely defence of our workers' state. This everyday creative activity,  hour by hour adaptation of the peaceful conditions to ourselves and adaptation of ourselves as a builder to them, this marvellous, masterly technique to organise, to destroy, this practice to create is the poetry of proletariat. Its poetry is its practice.

XII. Artist is the medium of his class

Both the feelings about world of working class and the attitude to world of the artist are identical. Both the adopting  world in his heart by a proletariat and the adopting world in his heart by his, are the function of the artist. What the proletariat will can inhale in his breast for the building of life, what he will can contain to form of what he perceived, – he breathes out and formes by way of his artist. The proletarian art is a prism, where the face of proletariat is concentrated, is a mirror at  which the working masses see themselves, see their traversed path, see what they create and what they will be create. Our aim and our task are to comprehend and elicit an image of the builder of the communist society. It is to forge the revolutionary type of the new human. Using the labouring  word to turn up a virgin lands, where he cultivates the new conditions of the new existence – the red actuality. Our aim is to show this new way of life no cinematic, no  by gestures like the Great Dumb, like the Serapion`s, heartlessly, but our aim is to take by storm feelings and thoughts, to install the battery for collecting the will and consciousness, which are not combined yet but already included in the revolutionary constructing of life. Our aim is to give the images of the scientic revolutionary-marxist conception of the world, is to ruin the bourgeois ideology of the hereditary experiences of the pristine owner by the means of the art. Our aim is to sum up of the revolution and to plan the ways to future. Our aim is to look back and to advance. The artist of the proletariat is a creative medium of his class.

XIII. Content and form

Being suggests and determines form and itself is determined form. The content reveals the artistic means accidentally  and itself is being revealed in these artistic means and portrayed by these means. The element of the creative material and the elements of: 1) the rhythm, 2) the composition and 3) the element of content have to be a single organic whole. Then: 1) the picture of the work of art, 2) its pathos, the tension of the creative process, 3) its music, the resonant phonation of its words have to compose a single organic image and its atmosphere, be it an epic poem, drama, novel or little poem. Our creative work have to capture not the spots of the life which are similar to point, but all space of the life. The decadent bourgeoisie have no suitable means and inventive technic in its decadent art, and we have to seek them in the world literature, which are ascending to the life and power of the historical class. And in our era of October.

We are against the artistic works empty in contents and plots.

We are against mere empty words, verses and rhymes.

We are against the literary tricks without the soul.

We are against the individualistic twinklings and moods.

The proletariat has a very healthy organism and strong nerves to react  to these twinklings while we see in front of ourselves the centuries, to go into details of the moods while we are in the process of historical aspirations.

«Kuznitsa» will look for artistic forms corresponding to the scale of our epoch, work with them, but not imitate and copy the decadent artists.

XIV. Proletarian art

Proletarian art is an art, which embraces a three-dimensional area of the creative material and presents it in the clear, accurate, synthetic form corresponding to the class, – it paves through this material the way leading to realize the final aims of the proletariat. Art by its nature is the art of a great canvas, great style, – this is a monumental art.

The class of a collective unanimity, global comradeship, community  of workers in the labour, struggle and hitting, the class of the united interests, feelings, experiences – from the practical trifles to the  ascent to a peaks of the ideals, – the class-monolith from which a history chiseled the monument of Memnon, heralding the daybreak of the new life; this class creates the art in the image and likeness of itself only. Its peculiar, polyphonic, multiform  language with its simplicity, clearness, correctness assists to create the might of the great style, discovering by means of the riches of its lexicon the being and separating it from the dark bio-zoological existence to direct it at the plast of  the complicated conceptions and grand ideas.

XV. A destruction of a weed

The proletarian art, liberating itself from an influence of the contemporary decadent art , becomes stronger and more firmly connects itself  with labourers by means of the red threads and also draws into the sphere of its influence not only proletarian groups of the society, but petty bourgeoisie which takes part in revolutionary processes. The forms of  many literary trends already are feeling the influence of the proletarian art. They try to treat our material by our methods. Not seldom these experiments produce positive results. But some our publicists, who is accustomed to conduct with a shaft instead of a baton, like a ungifted band-master, by an oversight often disturb the former, who destructs a weed by means of the shoots of the new art.

XVI. The union

We open free access for all poets, writers, artists, musicians, who gravitates towards the proletariat, his aspirations and ideology. We do not afraid their joining our midst for further adaptation. First of all these are the writers from the peasantry. The kernel of «Kuznitsa» is strong. «Kuznitsa» becomes more profound and wide,  will be enough for all large hammers the dictatorship of the proletariat.

XVII. A shock work

The union of the writers of the working class «Kuznitsa» is a unique union which rests upon the program of the revolutionary vanguard of the working class and R.C.P. In the matter of strengthening of the dictatorship and realization of the democracy of  Workers and Peasants during the advancing to the communist society the union realizes itself as shock troops are positioned on front line of the ideological struggle.

XVIII. About international «Kuznitsa»

«Kuznitsa» unites writers of the working class of USSR and moulds the basic kernel of the common proletarian art with a view to create the union of the farriers of the working art of all countries.

XIX. Conclusion

The bourgeois art had degenerated in a universal deformity and it can not touch with working class like a corpse can not shake hands with living creature. We lift up a heavy working hammer to hammer the last nail in the coffin lid of this art. The replacement  social order changes the forms of art. We proclaim the art as a healthy, adjusted with itself and with social environment organism. As we see it the artistic creation is a function of a social ideology, emotiology, class-consciousness at all. The proletarian art  which embraces a three-dimensional area of the creative material and presents it in the clear, accurate, synthetic form corresponding to the class, – it paves through this material the way leading to realize the final aims of the proletariat. The labour and the struggle to create communist society are the main basis of the working class and the main basis of our creative work.

Being suggests and determines form and itself is determined form. The content reveals the artistic means accidentally and itself is being revealed in these artistic means and portrayed by these means. The element of: 1) the rhythm, 2) the composition and 3) the element of content have to be a single organic whole. 1) The picture of the work of art, 2) its pathos, 3) its music, the resonant phonation of its words have to compose a single organic image.

The style is the class. The artist is a function of this class and its creative medium, and creation of art is a practice of proletariat.

The union of working writers «Kuznitsa» rests upon the ideology of R.C.P. It realizes itself as shock troops are positioned on front line of the ideological and artistic struggle. «Kuznitsa» unites writers of the working class of USSR and moulds the basic kernel of the common proletarian art with a view to create the union of the farriers of the working art of all countries.

President of «Kuznitsa» – Iv. Philippchenko.
Vice-president – N. Lyashko.
Secretary – G. Sannikov.
Directors – G. Ajkunin, V. Kirillov.
Newspaper «Pravda», 1923, №186.