Page:Knight (1975) Past, Future and the Problem of Communication in the Work of V V Khlebnikov.djvu/181

173 But he insisted that, despite the Russian revolution, it would be a long time before this came about. In the meantime—alongside more 'modern' forms of art—an art which “inirrored" life would continue to be required. Trotsky criticized the Futurists' attempt "to tear out of the future that which can only develop as an inseparable part of it", saying that the artists responsible reminded him of "anarchists who anticipate the absence of government in the future" but "have no bridge to the future, "

For Trotsky, then, the kind of world which the futurists required for their art was one which could only emerge after a long period of revolutionary work, Fevertheless, this future would emerge, the "future" of the Futurists, in this sense, was also the "future" fought for by the revolutionary movement as a whole, There was an intimate and necessary connection between the futurists! dreams and the aims of the Revolution, even if there were disagreements as to how the future could be reached.

It is not necessary to agree with these arguments to see that the view of Futurism's revolutionary commitments as a "mistake" is shallow in the extreme. One can agree or disagree with the aims and hopes of the revolutionary movement as a whole. But to describe the revolution's artistic expression as "mistakenly" associated with its other expressions is simply nonsensical.

The real "sin" of the Futurists—an extreme revolutionary optimism, impatience and millenniarism—had also been, to a large extent (as Trotsky concedes), the "sin" of the Revolution itself. In the earliest period of the Revolution, many even of the wildest dreams and expectations of the Futurists could be seen as having at least some foundation in the wider revolutionary optimism of the time. As Shklovsky writes: