good deal of strenuous thinking, in which they were helped by others, came 
to the conclusion that the proletariat has not yet created its literature, its 
style, its expression in art ( i. e. has not created its multiplication table) 
and that “great carefulness and tact is required in dealing with those literary 
layers that might and will walk together with the proletariat.” The con- 
struction is not brilliant, “layers” can hardly be expected to “walk”; still, 
Bolshevics preaching tact and tolerancy — what a wonderful and touching 
vision! And as such writers that could not voice the interests of the pro- 
letariat simply do not exist (for proletarians are human beings like we, and 
books are writted not for a class of people but for all mankind) it results 
that the Bolshevics accept now, not just a particular brand of literature 
and culture, but all literature, all culture. The fraction yields to the whole. 
But certainly, boys will be boys and it could hardly be expected that our 
brainy Bolshevics would stop insisting, that in a “class society” art cannot 
and should not be free of “class conscience”. This they repeat in the 
resolution proclaiming their new attitude towards the old culture. If 
however, this little bow to Karl Marx be not taken seriously, we are left 
to assume that their resolution is a capitulation; and it is between capi- 
tulation and Marx's capital that Russian thought is at present precariously 
poised. 
Thus the Bolshevics after havings turned their backs on the old culture, 
promised at first with demiurgical boldness to built a new world and that, 
in revolutionary record time, i. e. in much less time than the Creator took 
when he tackled his little job. But the destruction of spiritial treasures 
made matters worse for the destructors themselves. There lingered a sense 
of emptiness and dullness, where devastating communism had passed sweeping 
away all that the spirit cherished. But the spirit cannot do without its needs 
and treasures; it puts materialism to shame and proves by its own radiant 
indestructible life that materialism cannot satisfy the human soul. One 
of those who did the most harm in Russia, Trotzky, proclaims conservative 
truths instead of former revolutionary ones. “Man lives not only on politics” 
says he and after having conceded this, goes on to explain his point. He 
does not hide the fact that he is “fed up with the solemn articles of 
communistic moralists, with there official platitudes, with such phrases 
as: “bourgeoisie is bourgeoisie and proletariat is proletariat” or references 
to the “bourgeois mind of the bourgeois”. Trotzky admits that culture is 
necessary and turns away with contempt from his “comrades who think 
they can create proletarian culture by laboratory methods”, thus divulging 
there “childish belief in black magic’. The former chief of the revo- 
lutionary Red Army is apparently convinced that culture is created by 
degrees, staidly and steadily; the fiery revolutionary speaks up for evolution, 
for a long and slow process. It is most instructive to hear from such a 
~ AN