Forge (literary association)

Initially, the Forge association consisted of proletarian writers who left Proletcult in January 1920. Among them were S. Obradovich , M. Gerasimov , V. Alexandrovsky , G. Sannikov . Later, S. Rodov , V. Kirillov , N. Poletaev , V. Kazin , I. Filipchenko , G. Nikiforov , F. Vasyunin (Kamanin) joined them. In May 1920, they founded the Forge magazine (published until 1922) and in December 1920 chose this name for their group.

From the very beginning, the group opposed itself to pre-revolutionary literary schools and schools - symbolism , futurism , and imagism . The participants in the Forge in their Manifestos declared the primacy of class, proletarian literature, a departure from poetry from the "bourgeois" content, condensed by the formal framework of the verse, to the exact expression of the proletarian spirit. The proletarian artist was declared the medium of his class. The rhetoric of the “Forge” performances was very ideological. However, they did not recognize the leadership of the development of culture by the party. The writers of the Forge rejected the NEP , declaring this policy a betrayal of the principles of the World Revolution.

The group claimed a leading role in the development of a new proletarian culture; on its initiative, the First All-Russian Congress of Proletarian Writers was convened (October 18-21, 1920). The congress established WAPP and elected its board, which is more than half composed of members of the Forge.

However, since 1923, the period of splits and decline begins for the group. In December 1922 Rodov, Dorogoychenko and Malashkin left the Forge to organize a new association of proletarian writers, October , which soon replaced the Forge from the leading positions. In November 1923, the group left Gerasimov and Kirillov (they also left the party). By this time, G. Yakubovsky becomes the chairman of the board of the Forge, the prose writers F. V. Gladkov , V. Bakhmetyev , N. Lyashko , P. Nizova , and A. S. Novikov-Priboy are in the leadership.

In 1924, the “Forge” created a kind of block with the “ Pass ” of A. K. Voronsky , having held a joint conference against MAPP . However, already at the beginning of 1925, she sharply changed her position, speaking on the side of MAPP in the All-Union Conference of Proletarian Writers. In 1928, an attempt was made to create a mass organization capable of competing with the RAAP, all regional groups were reorganized into the All-Union Society of Proletarian Writers “Kuznitsa”. In 1929 there was an irreconcilable war with the RAAP, from which the latter emerged victorious. In December 1929, the Central Council of the Forge declared its readiness to capitulate on certain conditions. When discussing these conditions at the end of 1930, the Kuznitsa split into two parts: the Moscow central group Kuznitsa headed by Bakhmetyev and the New Kuznitsa led by I. Zhiga . Both parts joined RAPP (after cleaning) as creative groups.

The Forge meetings were held on Thursdays in Starokonyushenny Lane , building 33. Participants in other Moscow literary groups were invited to these meetings. In the 1920s, the association published the magazines Kuznitsa , Magazine for All , Workbook , and Proletarian Avant-Garde .

The main motive of the poetry of the Forges poets is the idealization of labor and the proletariat, metal and machinery. Prose is not so uniform; its significance, however, is also small. ^[one]

• Skvortsova L. A. The Forges Magazines // Essays on the History of Russian Soviet Journalism (1917-1932). - M .: Nauka, 1966 .-- S. 345-366 .
• The Forge / A. G. Gacheva // Big Russian Encyclopedia : [in 35 vol.] / Ch. ed. Yu.S. Osipov . - M .: Great Russian Encyclopedia, 2004—2017.

• An article about the Forge in the Literary Encyclopedia (1929-1939)
• The Forge Manifesto