The Myth of the 'Writers’ Family”: Split in the Petrograd House of Arts at the Dawn of the NEP

• In Event: Soviet Culture in the Making: Literature, Film, and Institutions in the 1920s

Abstract

The Petrograd House of Arts (1919–1923), founded under the patronage of Maxim Gorky, was created to unite and support writers, artists, and musicians during the challenging years of War Communism. Its members often idealized their communal life within the organization, emphasizing friendship, love, and mutual understanding. Accordingly, they attributed the closure of the House of Arts to the pressure from officials. However, internal conflicts within the community significantly undermined the organization’s cohesion and contributed to its decline. The paper examines one of the most notorious public conflicts within the House of Arts: the arbitration trial of one of its founders, Kornei Chukovsky. Analysis of archival materials and biographical accounts reveals that the root of this conflict lay in a struggle for power between two prominent House of Arts’ leaders, Kornei Chukovsky and Akim Volynsky, each envisioning a different path for the organization’s future. Ultimately, this conflict led to the resignation of one of them, severely destabilizing the House of Arts. The paper shows the selectivity of the collective memory of the first post-revolutionary years in the writing community.

Author

• Maria Likhinina, UC Berkeley