On

the Restructuring of Artistic-Literary Organizations 23 April 1932 Politburo meeting no. 97, point 21 1. The Central Committee [of the Communist Party] finds that great quantitative and qualitative growth of literature and art has been achieved in recent years on the basis of the significant successes of socialist construction. Several years ago, when literature still experienced the significant influence of foreign elements, which became especially active in the first years of NEP, while the cadres of proletarian literature were still weak, the Party took all possible measures to help the creation and strengthening of special proletarian organizations in the area of literature and art with the goal of strengthening the positions of the proletarian writers and workers of the arts. At the present time, when the cadres of proletarian literature and art have had time to grow and new writers and artists have emerged from the industrial plants, factories, and collective farms, the framework of the corresponding proletarian artistic-literary organizations (VOAPP, RAPP, VAMP) is becoming narrow and is retarding the serious scope of artistic work. This circumstance is creating the danger of turning these organizations from a means of the maximal mobilization of Soviet writers and artists around the tasks of socialist construction into a means of cultivating cliquish insularism, isolation from the political tasks of the day and from significant groups of writers and artists who sympathize with socialist construction. Hence there is the need for a corresponding restructuring of artistic-literary organizations and a broadening of the bases of their work. Based on this the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) has resolved: 1) to liquidate the association of proletarian writers (VOAPP, RAPP); 2) to unite all writers who support the platform of Soviet power and who aspire to participate in socialist construction into a single Union of Soviet Writers that includes a communist fraction; 3) to conduct an analogous change with respect to the other kinds of art; 4) to task the Orgburo with developing practical measures to implement this decision. Translation by Robert Bird From: Mezhdu molotom i nakovalnei: Soiuz sovetskikh pisatelei SSSR. Dokumenty i kommentarii. Ed. T. M. Goriaeva et al. Vol. 1: 1925 iun 1941 g. Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2010.