Kultintern was an international organization set up to enable the Russian Proletkult organization to work with an international network of contacts alongside the Comintern. Its goal was to spread "proletarian culture".[1]: 200 It was first proposed in an issue of Gorn, publication of Proletkult, during the First Congress of the Communist International, March 1919, but practical steps were only taken during the Second Congress of the Communist International.[2]
This was set up on 12 August 1920 following the Comintern Congress. The president was Anatoly Lunacharsky and the General Secretary Pavel Lebedev-Polianskii.[2] The Bureau included several international delegates:
Leo Pasvolsky was one of the first people to criticize the formation of Kultintern. First he portrayed the movement as generally exhibiting a heavy monotony with poetry which was both facile and pretentious. However he further claimed that the foundation of Kultintern would reduce the Proletkult movement "not primarily, but exclusively" to a weapon to promote the Bolshevik view of communism.[4]
