The Bolsheviks' War on Language and Culture

While earlier episodes covered the political coups, famines, and secret police operations of the early Soviet Union, Episode 222 explores a different kind of conquest: the Bolsheviks’ aggressive campaign to reshape Russian culture and language. After seizing power in October 1917, Lenin and Trotsky did not just want new laws; they wanted a new human being. This episode examines the role of Anatoly Lunacharsky as the People’s Commissar for Education and his radical policies to dismantle the old aristocratic education system. We look at the rise of Proletkult, the movement that sought to create a purely working-class culture, and why Lenin ultimately feared its independence. You will hear about the suppression of the Symbolist poets, the destruction of imperial monuments, and the strange, chaotic experiment of creating a new Soviet alphabet that erased centuries of literary tradition. From the burning of libraries to the rewriting of school textbooks, this was a war against the past itself, waged by commissars who believed that culture was a weapon as vital as any rifle.

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