Swedish Proletarians towards Freedom: Ideals of Participation as Propaganda in the Communist Children’s Press of the 1920s
Alfred Andersson witnessed as a young boy the social and economic downside of Swedish class society during the mid-1920s. He was one of capitalism’s victims, doomed to a life of hard labour under unequal conditions. But Alfred refused to remain a victim: he fought back by organizing himself. This is, of course, if you believe his testimony in a two-piece letter published in the Swedish communist children’s periodical The Young Comrade (Den unge kamraten) in the beginning of 1924. In the letter he describes why he became a communist and how he successfully organized a local revolutionary children’s club.1 His is a model letter in the radical paper that targeted children between the ages of nine and 14. Young Alfred’s story touches upon several themes promoted by the editors. For instance, he doesn’t stay silent or accept things as they are. Rather he depicts himself in the position of an opponent to the current societal regime. In that position he opposes, for example, the inherited poverty that is most likely to make his a hard life as it had done his father’s. Furthermore, he opposes bourgeois children’s organizations such as the Scout movement or the Christian Sunday school. He turns to communism, therefore, as a way of liberating himself from oppression. From the editors’ point of view, his letter served as an inspirational didactic example depicting the need for class struggle.
Culture of the Future: The Proletkult Movement in Revolutionary Russia
Just days before the October 1917 Revolution, the Proletkult was formed in Petrograd to serve as an umbrella organization for numerous burgeoning working-class cultural groups. Advocates of the Proletkult hoped to devise new forms of art, education, and social relations that would express the spirit of the class that had come to power in the world's first successful proletarian revolution. Lynn Mally offers a detailed analysis of the Proletkult's cultural and political agenda. Drawing extensively on archival sources, she argues that the creation of a new culture proved as difficult and controversial as the creation of new notions of politics. From the outset, the Proletkult was divided by severe political and social tensions as members struggled to define the role of the organization and the cultural desires of the proletariat. What fused this divided movement was the shared belief that without radical cultural change the revolution would not succeed. The Proletkult's eventual decline graphically shows how political consolidation, institutional rivalries, and the devastating social consequences of the revolution and Civil War all worked together to limit the utopian potential of the October Revolution.
Continents of Liberty: Emerson and Gerald Vizenor’s Chair of Tears
Ralph Waldo Emerson protested what came to be known as the Trail of Tears in a public letter to President Martin Van Buren in 1838. Th e Cherokee Nation, he argued, had been cheated by a “sham treaty” (Emerson, “Letter” 50), the will of the people ignored, and a false acquiescence to removal written into law. In making a passionate appeal to the highest “chair” of the land, Emerson underscored the great political and moral stakes involved: