Socialist realism is a style of idealized
realistic art that was developed in the Soviet Union and was the official style
in that country between 1932 and 1988, as well as in other socialist countries
after World War II. Socialist realism is characterized by the glorified
depiction of communist values, such as the emancipation of the proletariat.
Despite its name, the figures in the style are very often highly idealized,
especially in sculpture, where it often leans heavily on the conventions of
classical sculpture. Although related, it should not be confused with social
realism, a type of art that realistically depicts subjects of social concern,
or other forms of "realism" in the visual arts.
Term used to describe the idealization of
the dictatorship of the proletariat in the arts, apparently first used in the
Soviet journal Literaturnaya Gazeta on 25 May 1932 After the cultural pluralism
of the 1920s in the Soviet Union, and in line with the objectives of the
Five-year plans, art was subordinated to the needs and dictates of the
Communist Party In 1932, following four years of ideological struggle and
polemic among different artistic groups, the Central Committee of the party
disbanded all existing artistic organizations and set up in their place
party-led unions for individual art forms In the summer of 1934, at the First
All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers, Socialist Realism was proclaimed the
approved method for Soviet artists in all media Andrey Zhdanov, who gave the
keynote address at the Congress, was Stalin’s mouthpiece on cultural policy
until his death in 1948 In
the words of his leader, the artist was to be ‘an engineer of the human soul’
The aim of the new creative method was ‘to depict reality in its revolutionary
development’; no further guidelines concerning style or subject-matter were
laid down.
Socialist realism was the predominant form
of approved art in the Soviet Union from its development in the early 1920s to
its eventual fall from official status beginning in the late 1960s until the
breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. While
other countries have employed a prescribed canon of art, socialist realism in
the Soviet Union persisted longer and was more restrictive than elsewhere in Europe .
Feature
The definition from the point of view of
the official ideology
For the first time, the official definition
of socialist realism is given in the Charter of the Union of Writers of the USSR
Socialist realism, being the main method of
Soviet fiction and literary criticism, demands from the artist a truthful,
historically concrete image of reality in its revolutionary development.
Moreover, the truthfulness and historical concreteness of the artistic
depiction of reality should be combined with the task of ideological reworking
and education in the spirit of socialism.
This definition became the starting point
for all further interpretations up to the 1980s.
“ Socialist
realism is a profoundly vital, scientific, and most advanced artistic method,
developed as a result of the successes of socialist construction and the
education of Soviet people in the spirit of communism. The principles of
socialist realism... were a further development of Lenin's theory of the
partisanship of literature. ”(The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 1947)
Lenin expressed the following idea that art
should stand on the side of the proletariat:
“Art belongs
to the people. It must have its deepest roots in the thick of the broad masses.
It should be clear to these masses and loved by them. It should unite the
feeling, thought and will of these masses, raise them ” .
Principles of social realism
Nationality. This meant both the clarity of
literature for the common people, and the use of folk speech and proverbs.
Ideology. Show the peaceful life of the
people, the search for ways to a new, better life, heroic deeds in order to
achieve a happy life for all people.
Concreteness. In the image of reality show
the process of historical development, which in turn must correspond to the
materialistic understanding of history (in the process of changing the
conditions of their existence, people change their consciousness and attitude
to the surrounding reality).
According to the definition from the Soviet
textbook, the method implied the use of the heritage of world realistic art,
but not as a simple imitation of great models, but with a creative approach.
“The method of socialist realism predetermines the deep connection of works of
art with contemporary reality, the active participation of art in socialist
construction. Socialist realism tasks require each artist a true understanding
of the meaning of the events occurring in the country, the ability to assess
social phenomena in their development, in a complex dialectical interaction
".
The method included the unity of realism
and Soviet romance, combining the heroic and romantic with the "realistic
statement of the true truth of the surrounding reality." It was argued
that in this way the humanism of "critical realism" was complemented
by "socialist humanism."
The state gave orders, sent it on creative
business trips, organized exhibitions — thus stimulating the development of the
level of art it needed. The idea of "social order" is part of social
realism.
Development
Socialist realism was developed by many
thousands of artists, across a diverse society, over several decades. Early
examples of realism in Russian art include the work of the Peredvizhnikis and
Ilya Yefimovich Repin. While these works do not have the same political
connotation, they exhibit the techniques exercised by their successors. After
the Bolsheviks took control of Russia
Shortly after the Bolsheviks took control,
Anatoly Lunacharsky was appointed as head of Narkompros, the People's
Commissariat for Enlightenment. This put Lunacharsky in the position of deciding
the direction of art in the newly created Soviet state. Although Lunacharsky
did not dictate a single aesthetic model for Soviet artists to follow, he
developed a system of aesthetics based on the human body that would later help
to influence socialist realism. He believed that "the sight of a healthy
body, intelligent face or friendly smile was essentially life-enhancing."
He concluded that art had a direct effect on the human organism and under the
right circumstances that effect could be positive. By depicting "the
perfect person" (New Soviet man), Lunacharsky believed art could educate
citizens on how to be the perfect Soviets.
Debate within Soviet art
There were two main groups debating the
fate of Soviet art: futurists and traditionalists. Russian Futurists, many of
whom had been creating abstract or leftist art before the Bolsheviks, believed
communism required a complete rupture from the past and, therefore, so did
Soviet art. Traditionalists believed in the importance of realistic representations
of everyday life. Under Lenin's rule and the New Economic Policy, there was a
certain amount of private commercial enterprise, allowing both the futurists
and the traditionalists to produce their art for individuals with capital. By
1928, the Soviet government had enough strength and authority to end private
enterprises, thus ending support for fringe groups such as the futurists. At
this point, although the term "socialist realism" was not being used,
its defining characteristics became the norm.
The first time the term "socialist
realism" was officially used was in 1932. The term was settled upon in
meetings that included politicians of the highest level, including Stalin
himself. Maxim Gorky, a proponent of literary socialist realism, published a
famous article titled "Socialist Realism" in 1933 and by 1934 the
term's etymology was traced back to Stalin. During the Congress of 1934, four
guidelines were laid out for socialist realism. The work must be:
Proletarian: art relevant to the workers
and understandable to them.
Typical: scenes of everyday life of the
people.
Realistic: in the representational sense.
Partisan: supportive of the aims of the
State and the Party.
Characteristics
The purpose of socialist realism was to
limit popular culture to a specific, highly regulated faction of emotional
expression that promoted Soviet ideals. The party was of the utmost importance
and was always to be favorably featured. The key concepts that developed
assured loyalty to the party, "partiinost'" (party-mindedness),
"ideinost" (idea- or ideological-content), "klassovost"
(class content), "pravdivost" (truthfulness).
There was a prevailing sense of optimism,
socialist realism's function was to show the ideal Soviet society. Not only was
the present gloried, but the future was also supposed to be depicted in an
agreeable fashion. Because the present and the future were constantly
idealized, socialist realism had a sense of forced optimism. Tragedy and
negativity were not permitted, unless they were shown in a different time or
place. This sentiment created what would later be dubbed "revolutionary
romanticism."
Revolutionary romanticism elevated the
common worker, whether factory or agricultural, by presenting his life, work,
and recreation as admirable. Its purpose was to show how much the standard of
living had improved thanks to the revolution. Art was used as educational
information. By illustrating the party's success, artists were showing their
viewers that sovietism was the best political system. Art was also used to show
how Soviet citizens should be acting. The ultimate aim was to create what Lenin
called "an entirely new type of human being": The New Soviet Man. Art
(especially posters and murals) was a way to instill party values on a massive
scale. Stalin described the socialist realist artists as "engineers of
souls."
Common images used in socialist realism
were flowers, sunlight, the body, youth, flight, industry, and new technology.
These poetic images were used to show the utopianism of communism and the
Soviet state. Art became more than an aesthetic pleasure; instead it served a
very specific function. Soviet ideals placed functionality and work above all
else; therefore, for art to be admired, it must serve a purpose. Georgi
Plekhanov, a Marxist theoretician, states that art is useful if it serves
society: "There can be no doubt that art acquired a social significance
only in so far as it depicts, evokes, or conveys actions, emotions and events
that are of significance to society."
The artist could not, however, portray life
just as they saw it because anything that reflected poorly on Communism had to
be omitted. People who could not be shown as either wholly good or wholly evil
could not be used as characters. This was reflective of the Soviet idea that
morality is simple: things are either right or wrong. This view on morality
called for idealism over realism. Art was filled with health and happiness:
paintings showed busy industrial and agricultural scenes; sculptures depicted
workers, sentries, and schoolchildren.
Creativity was not an important part of
socialist realism. The styles used in creating art during this period were
those that would produce the most realistic results. Painters would depict
happy, muscular peasants and workers in factories and collective farms. During
the Stalin period, they produced numerous heroic portraits of Stalin to serve
his cult of personality—all in the most realistic fashion possible. The most
important thing for a socialist realist artist was not artistic integrity but
adherence to party doctrine.
Applications
Socialist Realism in Literature
Background
The 1920s, ie the period after the October
Revolution, were marked by a diversity and avant-garde in the art and
literature of the Soviet Union . Free from
tsarist censorship, enthusiastically welcoming the new zeitgeist, countless
groups ("групповщина", pronounced "gruppovshchina") and
associations such as LEF, LCK, Proletkult, which promoted workers' literature
and partly aggressively advanced.
However, avant-garde trends in culture as a
whole had survived at the beginning of the 1930s and were also superseded
internationally by tendencies towards classicism and ruralism (such as "
blood and soil literature " in fascist countries).
Shortly after the revolution of 1917,
Kazimir Malevich, founder of Constructivism and Suprematism, was a formative
force of a culture of rebuilding that was to keep up with social changes. He
formed the art school
of Vitebsk
The "State Institute of Artistic
Culture" (GINChUk), whose director was Malevich, was closed in 1926.
An Association for the Writers
In its decree of April 23, 1932 on the
transformation of literary-artistic organizations, the Central Committee of the
CPSU decided the dissolution of all groups and organizations and the founding
of a (provisional) All Union Writers Association (WSP). In particular, the
groups of the radical proletarian worker poetry ("proletcult") RAPP,
which had formed since 1918 and in turn contributed to the dissolution of other
groups, were affected.
Two years later, the first All-Union
Congress of Soviet writers was prepared in August 1934, at which the new
doctrine was openly discussed and the Soviet Writers' Union
was founded. In its statutes, socialist realism was codified as a "binding
artistic method". Literally it was said there:
"Socialist realism as the main method
of Soviet artistic literature and literary criticism, demands of the artist
truthful, historically concrete representation of reality in its revolutionary
development. Truth-loyal and historical concreteness of the artistic
representation must be coordinated with the tasks of the ideological
transformation and education of the working people in the spirit of socialism.
"
A total of 591 writers participated
representing 52 nations. The central figure of the congress was Maxim Gorky,
the first chairman of the Soviet Writers' Association. Some of them hoped in
the discussion of the new methods even greater freedom and diversity in topics
and forms; However, the inaugural speech by Andrei Zhdanov as representative of
the Central Committee of the CPSU clearly pointed to the upcoming ideological
codification of the artistic method. Campaigns that in the following years
propagated terms such as partisanship, popular affiliation, mass custom and
intelligibility, gradually narrowed the literary forms. Humor, irony andSatire,
grotesquely absurd forms and experimental literature were - at least officially
- impossible.
Shapes
Socialist realism was a formal attempt to
unite romanticism and realism, which from a Russian perspective represented the
two major literary epochs of the 19th century. Here the kind of representation
as method should be taken from the realism, the positive spirit and the
emotions against the romanticism, and so a new, revolutionary romance arise. It
was also pointed out that the roots of socialist realism are found less in
Romanticism than in Classicism.
In both cases, old forms were reused to
convey new, socially acceptable content, often in a trivial way. Poets of the
avant-garde, who had developed new linguistic forms and expressive
possibilities of poetry, or naturalistic currents no longer fit into this
concept. Only Mayakovsky, who had been attacked by the proletarian workers'
poets in the 1920s, was honored by Bukharin and Stalin himself in 1935 as a
"Soviet classic."
Genera and Motives
Typical motifs of the literature of this
epoch are the heroes of the construction of the Soviet society. There is a
"worker and work cult". The exemplary achievement that had to be made
by the industrialization of a hitherto predominantly agricultural country by
the people needed heroes of a new, Soviet type. Pilots, aviation pioneers and
ship's crews were acting persons. Later, in order to strengthen the defense
preparedness against the fascist foreign countries, a close connection of
writers with the Red Army was built. As early as 1930, the literature
organization of the Red Army (LOKAF) was founded, which also Maxim
Gorkibelonged. In other areas too, literary creators have been assigned very
specific social tasks.
A fusion of classical epics (such as Eugene
Onegin) and civil novel (such as war and peace) led to the typical socialist
realism genre of the novel - epic (Роман-Эпопея, also: Roman-Epopö). Here,
important historical epochs were linked to the individual fates of their heroes
and displayed in epic breadth. Alexei Tolstoy with its Epic The ordeal
(Хождение по мукам) or Sholokhov The silent Don (Тихий Дон) contributed to this
genus.
Another important genre of socialist
realism, the novel, was divided into three sub-branches:
Until the late 1930s, the production novel
was the most important subgenus. Topics were agricultural kolkhoz,
collectivization and " dekulakization ", industrial construction,
extraction of natural resources, sabotage and class struggle, etc. Known
authors of this genre were Mikhail Sholokhov, Fyodor Panfjorow and Leonid
Leonov; later also Vsevolod Kochetov.
The Stalinist maxim that writers had to
contribute to the education of the people, as well as the fundamental change of
values of the entire educational system under Stalin sprang from the genre of
the educational novel. Thematically, the development of man to "socialist
personality", patriotism and loyalty to the party was treated. Successful
educational novels were about Nikolai Ostrowski's How the steel was hardened
and Anton Makarenko's Educational Poem.
Without abandoning the perspective of
historical materialism (Marx), the historical novel in the thirties represented
a new perspective on history. Instead of focusing on the historical class
struggle as in the twenties, important events from the "national
past" have now been worked out, although always referring to the Soviet
present, either as warning negative examples or indirectly parallels to the
current system of rule were constructed. Notable examples of this idiom are the
works of Alexei Tolstoy, Alexey Novikov-Priboj and Sergei Sergey-Tschenski.
Promotion and purges
The cultural upheaval was accompanied by
rigorous censorship, as well as the persecution and " cleansing " of
non-conformist literati ("pests" - "вредители", "
people's enemies " - "враги народа"), with the scale of the
persecution unparalleled. Based on archive finds of the Lubyanka it is
estimated that a total of about 2,000 writers were arrested, of whom 1,500
either died in the camp or were executed. Typical of a dictatorial rule was
that Stalin arbitrarily spared individual persons in all repressions and seemed
to almost take them under his protection. The focus of the persecutions on
cultural workers (see also Formalismusstreitin the GDR) demonstrates the
immense importance attached to this group of people. On the other hand, there
was a comprehensive system of economic promotion of the system-compliant
literary creators: housing and dachshunds, sanatorium stays and a pension and
health insurance were among them. The Hungarian composer György Ligeti
described the situation as follows:
"Thus a culture of the 'closed room'
was created in Budapest Budapest Art Museum
-
György Ligeti: Accompanying
text to György Ligeti Works, Sony Classical 2010
Alternative Literatures
In the climate of repression, censorship
and narrow artistic dogmata deviant works could only emerge and exist in secret
from the official line. In spite of the "purges" of the thirties,
poets such as Anna Akhmatova, Ossip Mandelstam, Andrei Platonov, Mikhail
Bulgakov and other lasting works created, in their entirety, a widespread
countercurrent to the literary products of socialist realism.
GDR
In the Soviet-controlled eastern Germany
The Soviet military administration SMAD had
its own cultural department, whose leader, the Russian literary scholar
Alexander Lwowitsch Dymschitz, had the guidelines for the new art in the SBZ.
Individualism, subjectivism, emotions and fantasies are an expression of
bourgeois decadence and thus to be rejected. Being on November 19, 1948 in the newspaper Daily
RundschauPublished article is regarded as the trigger for a turnaround in the
art of East Germany
Socialist Realism in Music
Development from 1932 until the death of
Stalin
Before socialist realism was adopted as the
guideline of all the arts in 1932 (see above), two different currents prevailed
in the musical life of the Soviet Union , in
sharp contrast to each other. The Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians
(RAPM) propagated the Proletkurs in music. Its members were predominantly
dilettantes, as well as the ideology of the association rejected the music as
art as bourgeois and accepted only works that had explicit propagandistic
content. Contemporary currents were rejected as western and decadent. The
ideological position of the association was that only simple songs should be
composed to praise the revolution and the proletariat, but not works in
conventional forms.
The counterpart to the RAPM was formed by
the Association for Contemporary Music (ASM), founded in 1924, which was
fiercely opposed by the latter. Members of this organization were as good as
all well-known composers of the Soviet Union - especially those who served as
suppliers of the entertainment music cultivated in the Soviet
Union , the Estrada. Therefore, the musical positions of their
members were extremely heterogeneous - Maximilian Steinberg, for example, was
still deeply rooted in the music of Romanticism, Nikolai Mjaskowski, however,
modernized his musical language in these years, while Alexander
Mossolowrepresented the total avant-garde. As a guideline, however, was
unambiguously oriented to the modern Western tendencies (such as the twelve-tone
technique). Part of this association was also a kind of proletcult. Some
members (like Mossolov) wanted to "industrialize" art, d. H. in
musical works, for example, represent the rhythm of machines. Also,
compositions were written in praise of the new state. Overall, the association
pursued a sharp demarcation from tradition. But when in 1931 the rather
conservative Mjaskowski left the ASM, many composers followed him, and the ASM
gradually dissolved. Nevertheless, many composers continued to pursue the goal
of modernizing music.
The proclamation of socialist realism in
principle contradicted both currents, as on the one hand a clear rejection of
avant-garde tendencies, which gradually developed into a kind of taboo, on the
other hand, a rejection of amateurism as a postulate for all composers. In
fact, the new aesthetics strengthened the composers, whose musical ideas were
largely rooted in the nineteenth century, and which previously seemed to have
faded completely into the background, since a return to old traditions was
openly demanded (see below). On the other hand, the ideological orientation of
the music of the "new era" has been adapted. Therefore, the new
directive was also adopted by more conservative composers (Reinhold Glière,
Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov,Sergei Vasilenko) euphorically welcomed. Other
composers, such as Mjaskowski or Anatoly Alexandrov, changed their style
significantly to accommodate the new directive.
Around 1932 the genre of the Liedsinfonie
came to its heyday. The Liedsinfonie is a symphony with vocals (often solos and
chorus) whose themes are deliberately song-like and catchy. Nevertheless, the
formal criteria of the symphony are retained to some extent. The best-known and
often regarded as the best representative of this genus is the Symphony No. 4
op. 41 entitled Poem on a Komsomolzen fighter by Lew Knipper. The theme of the
finale of this symphony became a popular mass song in the Soviet
Union (see below).
At first, however, the new aesthetics was
far from being generally accepted; For example, Dmitri Shostakovich continued
to write very daring and modern works such as his Fourth Symphony and his opera
Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. In 1936, however, there was a decisive event: after
Stalin received Shostakovich's o. G. Opera had appeared on January 28 in Pravdaan article called "Chaos
instead of music," in which the opera was sharply attacked. Both the
subject and the music were presented as out of the question, and even a kind of
threat was contained ("This game can end badly"). In the times of the
great "purges" this article did not miss its effect; In addition, in
the following years more modern composers such as Mossolow were temporarily
arrested. The result was that all composers from the mid-1930s, without
exception, oriented to socialist realism.
When the Second World War began, it was a
matter of course for many composers to write works dedicated to the theme
"Fight for Freedom". In addition to various marches and battle songs
for the Soviet Army, not a few large-format works were created - Mjaskowski's
Symphony No. 22 followed, followed by the famous Symphony No. 7 of Shostakovich
(the Leningrad Symphony), the 2nd Symphony of Khachaturian and other works.
Also Sergei Prokofievtook up this theme, for example in some piano sonatas, but
also in the 6th Symphony, which was composed only in 1947. The theme of the war
and the accompanying portrayal of the "evil" allowed the composer to
use more brutal (and at the same time more progressive) stylistic devices than
was "allowed" before the war. In addition, at the time public
attention was not so much a part of music, even though cultural life in the Soviet Union remained surprisingly vital during the war.
Thus it came to a (admittedly limited) modernization of Soviet music.
This tendency, however, should not be
granted a long life: in 1948 there was the well-known resolution. Direct
trigger was the visit of Stalin and some high-ranking politicians of the opera
The Great Friendship of the Georgian composer Wano Muradeli, Although this
opera was actually propagandist-oriented, some details of the plot were met
with fierce opposition from the political figures. The music was also sharply
criticized for supposed modernisms; However, to what extent this judgment is
correct is unclear, since at present (2004) neither a photograph nor a neutral
opinion seem to be available. In any case, this opera visit led to a meeting of
the Moscow Composers' Union being convened in
January 1948, in which especially Party official Andrei Zhdanov sharply
attacked the developments in Soviet music. As a result of this three-day
session, on February 10, the party resolution On the Opera "The Great
Friendship" was published.
In this resolution, the slogan of formalism
was put into the world, which is equivalent in meaning with "modern".
It was officially stated that formalism is characterized by the fact that the
musical form, the construction of a piece of music, is placed above parameters
such as the melody and leads to "decadent" phenomena such as
atonality. Directly criticized in this resolution were Shostakovich, Prokofiev,
Khachaturian, Vissarion Shebalin, Gavriil Popovas well as Myaskovsky. These
composers were urged on public "concessions", which they did with the
exception of Mjaskowskis. In April, a new session of the Composers Union was
held, repeatedly condemning "formalism" and electing Tichon
Chrennikow as the new Secretary-General (which he remained until 1992). The
consequence of the resolution was a total turn of the composers towards
socialist realism; a multitude of propagandistic mass songs, cantatas,
oratorios and symphonies were written. Officially, the critically acclaimed
composers were not rehabilitated until 1958, but de facto Myskovsky's works
were an essential part of musical life from 1949 onwards. This sole rule of
socialist realism lasted until Stalin's Death on.
After the Second World War, the directives
of socialist realism were gradually introduced into the new socialist states of
the Eastern bloc in musical life. This proved to be problematic in that most of
the composers in those countries had previously taken different paths; After
all, the musical development in 1932, when this aesthetic was introduced in the
Soviet Union, was still far from being as advanced as it was around 1950 in countries outside the Soviet Union . Thus, the composers, who had remained in
their home countries, were under massive pressure to implement the new
guidelines, because "formalistic" composers were exposed and had to
reckon with many disadvantages. In the GDR in 1951, for example, Paul Dessau
operaThe condemnation of Lucullus publicly sharply criticized. To Stalin's
death, socialist realism was widely enforced in all socialist countries.
Flag
Musical works that are committed to
socialist realism generally have the following characteristics: The musical
language is remarkably conservative and, in fact, rather close to the music of
Romanticism. It remains within the limits of a modally colored tonality, is
based on catchy melodies and is also committed to shaping the tradition.
Tendencies of 20th century music such as twelve-tone technique, serialism,
atonality or the like rejects the ideology of Socialist Realism as
"formalistic aberrations" strictly.
A special feature of socialist realism is
the strong involvement of national folklore in music. If original folk-song
themes are not used, then melody and harmony are strongly national. Composers
who rejected this were vilified as "bourgeois internationalists". In
the popular view, the national component, on the other hand, proves popular
affiliation and ensures that the music is "democratic", ie. H. is
generally understandable. In general, every musical work should appeal to all
people; the motto L'art pour l'art has been redrafted in L'art pour l'homme.
These demands for general understanding,
conservative musical language and the inclusion of national folklore are
reflected, for example, in the following article from a music lexicon for
children from the GDR:
"One of the main tasks of realistic
music is to reach as many people as possible. To make himself understood the
composer starts from tradition. He studies the art of the great masters before
him and builds on his work. This attachment may consist of taking up and
developing the form of the symphony or using national intonations. "
-
Keyword music - music lexicon
for the youth, VEB German publishing house for music, Leipzig 1977, P. 157 and
158
Despite the above-mentioned similarities
with the music of the Romantic period, there is a grave difference to this
epoch: While the romantics developed a preference for the dark, the uncertain
and often reveal a certain world pain, the music of socialist realism is
optimistic in its basic mood. Negative moods are used only to be overcome; The
basis of many works is the concept of an "optimistic tragedy", d. H.
the struggle for the overcoming of negative phenomena (often shown in the
development from minor to major). For this reason, many compositions have a
heroic, active fighting spirit and often have a penchant for great pathos.
Particularly noteworthy is the fact that
this basic mood is a much more reliable indicator of socialist realism in music
than music itself. Thus, the " Mansfeld oratorio " by Ernst Hermann
Meyer, a prime example of socialist realism, full of the principle of "Per
aspera ad astra"; it is the history of a mining work from the Middle Ages
to the establishment of socialism on German soil. Musically, however, the
aesthetics of socialist realism can not be established at any point in the
work. In fact, it is a music-aesthetic smorgasbord in which echoes of different
forms and styles of different epochs can be found; Meyer himself speaks in this
context of "style parodies". Whether socialist realism in the field
of music has existed only as a doctrine or indeed as an independent aesthetic
is therefore questionable.
Of particular importance was (of course)
the mediation of socialist content. Thus, operas, cantatas and songs were
created on propagandistic texts, but also instrumental works were often backed
by an ideological program. The music criticism interpreted new compositions
(even those without an explicit program) basically as social expressions. Older
compositions were postponed political-social messages. This is how Antonyn
Sychra explains in his book "Partial Music Criticism as Co-Creator of a
New Music", Schubert's song cycle " Winterreise"Only
superficially relates to the personal pain of an unfortunate man in love;
Rather, Schubert was anxious to express the general social misery in the years
following the Congress of Vienna.
An almost exclusively occurred phenomenon
in socialist countries is the so-called " mass song ". This is a
melodic and harmonically stressed simple song on a revolutionary, clearly for
socialism party grabbing text that could be sung easily by a large number of
people. An example of the mass song was, for example, The International. The
official view was that the mass song was an entirely new genre typical of
musical culture in socialism.
Composers and their works
From about 1936 to the early 1960s,
virtually every composer in the Soviet Union
was committed to the aesthetics of socialist realism. Exceptions like Nikolai
Roslavets or Galina Ustvolskaya were very rare; In addition, works by these
composers were de facto banned from performing. Even the most famous composers
based on this doctrine. Although Dmitri Shostakovich was rather skeptical about
her, but nevertheless was forced by the harsh criticism of 1936 and 1948 to
enter into works such as the 5th Symphony and even more to his oratorio The
Song of the Woods op. 81 on the official demands and to defuse his tone
language.
Although Sergei Prokofiev also came under
fire in 1948, he nevertheless found it much easier to adapt to aesthetics,
since he considered it his own concern to offer "understandable"
music to the listener. Of course, his music was considered too modern, so that
Prokofiev had to make concessions. His efforts for intelligibility in works
such as the 5th and 7th symphonies or his oratorio Auf Friedenswacht op. 124
are especially clear.
The situation was different with Aram
Khachaturian, whose own aesthetic position was largely in line with the demands
of socialist realism (especially in relation to the national character of
music). Ballets such as Gayaneh or Spartacus, his concertos, symphonies and
vocal works such as the Ode on Stalin combine Armenian color with propaganda
orientation. Nevertheless, Chatschaturian 1948 was criticized. This also
happened to his teacher Nikolai Mjaskowski, who immediately after the
proclamation of the principles in 1932 composed a symphony on the
collectivization of agriculture (No. 12 in G minor op. 35)). In the following years
Mjaskowski strove to simplify and elucidate his very complex, melancholic style
and found music based largely on the 19th century. Nevertheless, he preserved
some of the hallmarks of his previous work. Of all the composers criticized in
1948, he is the one who seems most incomprehensible. He was also quickly
rehabilitated, without composing larger works that are expressly on Party line.
In addition to these four great composers,
there are a number of other composers who composed music in the style of
socialist realism. Dmitri Kabalewski, who also wrote music for younger people,
Tichon Chrennikow, who played a key role as Secretary General of the Composers'
Union , and Georgi Sviridov, who mainly
composed vocal music, deserve special mention. In addition, a number of ancient
composers adopted the principles of socialist realism, such as Mikhail
Ippolitov-Ivanov, Reinhold Glière and Sergei Vasilenko, In addition, socialist
realism played a major role in a number of national schools. Examples are
Fikret Amirow from Azerbaijan ,
Otar Taktakischwili from Georgia
and Mykola Kolessa from the Ukraine
In the GDR, Ottmar Gerster and Leo Spies
were probably the most important representatives of socialist realism. Already
at the time of the Weimar
Republic
In most of the Eastern Bloc countries,
hardly any composer deals with socialist realism in the longer term. In Czechoslovakia Bulgaria Romania Poland
Socialist Realism in Architecture
In the architecture of the Soviet Union , socialist realism, which in architecture is
termed Stalinist architecture, socialist classicism, or Stalinist confectionery
style, replaced constructivism. The turn of architecture to classicism in the
1930s was not exclusively Soviet, but quite an international phenomenon.
However, the totalitarian system of Stalinism - and the same is true of
National Socialism - ensured that classicism prevailed throughout Soviet
architecture and found its expression in monumental building projects. Examples
are the so-called "Seven sisters "in Moscow St
Petersburg Moscow Square
After the end of the Second World War, the
Soviet style of construction also spread to the other countries of the
socialist camp. Examples include the East Berlin Stalin Allee or the Palace of Culture
in Warsaw
Developments after Stalin's death
Unlike the other art genres, the period of
socialist realism in architecture ended with the death of Stalin (officially
since 1955). This was followed by a return to the simplicity of modern
architecture. One exception is the so-called House of the People (now the Parliament Palace ),
which was built in Bucharest
Collections
The Szoborpark (also Memento
Park ) in the southwest of the
Hungarian capital Budapest
Important groups
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines
Socialist Realism as: a Marxist aesthetic theory calling for the didactic use
of literature, art, and music to develop social consciousness in an evolving
socialist state. Socialist Realism compelled, often by force or coercion, artists
of all forms to create positive or uplifting reflections of socialist utopian
life by utilizing any visual media such as: posters, movies, newspapers,
theater and radio beginning during the Communist Revolution of 1917, escalating
during the reign of Josef Stalin (1924-1953) until the early 1980's.
Vladimir Lenin, head of the Russian
government 1917-1924, laid the foundation for this new wave of art, suggesting
that art is for the people and the people should love and understand it, while
uniting the masses. Artists Naum Gabo and Antoine Pevsner attempted to define
the lines of art under Lenin by writing "The Realist Manifesto" in
1920 suggesting that artists should be given free rein to create as their muse
desired. Lenin, however, had a different purpose for art; wanting it
functional, and Stalin built on that belief that art should be propaganda.
Maxim Gorky, founder of the Socialist
Realist movement, proclaimed in 1934 at the Soviet Writer's congress that any
works of art that portrayed a negative or anti-governmental view of Russia
After the death of Stalin in 1953, his was
succeed by Nikita Khrushchev who harbored less draconian state controls and
openly condemned Stalin's artistic demands in 1957 with his "Secret
Speech", and thus began a reversal in policy known as "Khrushchev's
Thaw." He believed that artists should not be constrained and should be
allowed to live by their creative talents. In 1964, Khrushchev was removed and
replaced by Leonid Brezhnev who reintroduced Stalin's ideas and reversed the
artistic decisions made by Khrushchev.
However, by the early 1980's, the Socialist
Realist movement had begun to fade. Artist to date remark that the Russian
Social Realist movement as the most oppressive and shunned period of Soviet
Art.
Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia
The Association of Artists of Revolutionary
Russia (AKhRR) was established in 1922 and was one of the most influential
artist groups in the USSR Russia
In 1928, the AKhRR was renamed to
Association of Artists of the Revolution (AKhR) in order to include the rest of
the Soviet states. At this point the group had begun participating in state
promoted mass forms of art like murals, jointly made paintings, advertisement production
and textile design. The group was disbanded April 23, 1932 by the decree
"On the Reorganization of Literary and Artistic Organizations"
serving as the nucleus for the stalinist USSR Union of Artists.
Society of Easel Painters (OSt)
While the Society of Easel Painters (OSt)
was also focused on the glorification of the revolution they, as per their
name, worked individually as easel painters. The most common subjects of the
OSt's works fit with the developing socialist realism trope. Their paintings
consisted of sport and battle, industry and modern technology.
The OSt broke up in 1931 due to some
members' demand to transition to collective print and poster work. Some
prominent members include Aleksandr Deyneka (till 1928), Yuri Pimanov,
Aleksandr Labas, Pyotr Vilyams, all of whom were students or ex-students of Moscow
The Union
of Soviet Writers (USW)
The Union of Soviet Writers was created to
mandate the single soviet method of socialist realism for all writers, poets
and journalist. Its duties comprising from awards to punishment was the
ultimate silencing of the most gifted writers. In August 1934, the union held
its first congress where the revolutionary writer Maxim Gorky said, “The Writers’
Union is not being created merely for the purpose of bodily uniting all artists
of the pen, but so that professional unification may enable them to comprehend
their corporate strength, to define with all possible clarity their varied
tendencies, creative activity, guiding principles, and harmoniously to merge
all aims in that unity which is guiding all the creative working energies of
the country.”
One of the most famous authors during this
time was Alexander Fadeyev(24, December 1901- 13, May 1956). Fadeyev was a
close personal friend of Stalin and called Stalin "one of the greatest
humanists the world has ever seen."His most famous works include "The
Rout" and "The Young Guard"."The Young Guard" is a book
written by Fadeyev, it was written about an anti-German group called the Young
Guards, a group of young men that opposed the Germans. The book details the
story of a few different members of the group. It was praised by the Soviet Union and the patriotism show by the group of men.
Impact
The impact of socialist realism art can
still be seen and felt decades after it was no longer the only state supported
style. Even before the end of the USSR
In the 1990s, many Russian artists used
socialist realism characteristics in an ironic fashion. This was a complete
rupture from what existed only a couple of decades before. Once artists broke
from the socialist realism mold there was a significant power shift. Artists
began including subjects that could not exist according to Soviet ideals. Now
that the power over appearances was taken away from the government, artists
achieved a level of authority that had not existed since the early 20th
century. In the decade immediately after the fall of the USSR
Western cultures often do not look at
socialist realism positively. Democratic countries view the art produced during
this period of repression as a lie. Non-Marxist art historians tend to view
communism as a form of totalitarianism that smothers artistic expression and
therefore retards the progress of culture.
Notable works and artists
Maxim Gorky's novel Mother is usually
considered to have been the first socialist-realist novel. Gorky was also a
major factor in the school's rapid rise, and his pamphlet, On Socialist
Realism, essentially lays out the needs of Soviet art. Other important works of
literature include Fyodor Gladkov's Cement (1925), Nikolai Ostrovsky's How the
Steel Was Tempered and Mikhail Sholokhov's two volume epic, Quiet Flows the Don
(1934) and The Don Flows Home to the Sea (1940). Yury Krymov's novel Tanker
"Derbent" (1938) portrays Soviet merchant seafarers being transformed
by the Stakhanovite movement.
Martin Andersen Nexø developed socialist
realism in his own way. His creative method featured a combination of
publicistic passion, a critical view of capitalist society, and a steadfast
striving to bring reality into accord with socialist ideals. The novel Pelle,
the Conqueror is considered to be a classic of socialist realism. The novel
Ditte, Daughter of Man had a working-class woman as its heroine. He battled
against the enemies of socialism in the books Two Worlds, and Hands Off!.
The novels of Louis Aragon, such as The
Real World, depict the working class as a rising force of the nation. He
published two books of documentary prose, The Communist Man. In the collection
of poems A Knife in the Heart Again, Aragon
criticizes the penetration of American imperialism into Europe .
The novel The Holy Week depicts the artist's path toward the people against a
broad social and historical background.
Hanns Eisler composed many workers' songs,
marches, and ballads on current political topics such as Song of Solidarity,
Song of the United Front, and Song of the Comintern. He was a founder of a new
style of revolutionary song for the masses. He also composed works in larger
forms such as Requiem for Lenin. Eisler's most important works include the
cantatas German Symphony, Serenade of the Age and Song of Peace. Eisler
combines features of revolutionary songs with varied expression. His symphonic
music is known for its complex and subtle orchestration.
Closely associated with the rise of the
labor movement was the development of the revolutionary song, which was
performed at demonstrations and meetings. Among the most famous of the
revolutionary songs are The Internationale and Whirlwinds of Danger. Notable
songs from Russia
In the early 1930s, Soviet filmmakers
applied socialist realism in their work. Notable films include Chapaev, which
shows the role of the people in the history-making process. The theme of
revolutionary history was developed in films such as The Youth of Maxim, by
Grigori Kozintsev and Leonid Trauberg, Shchors by Dovzhenko, and We are from
Kronstadt by E. Dzigan. The shaping of the new man under socialism was a theme
of films such as A Start Life by N. Ekk, Ivan by Dovzhenko, Valerii Chkalov by
M. Kalatozov and the film version of Tanker "Derbent" (1941). Some
films depicted the part of peoples of the Soviet Union
against foreign invaders: Alexander Nevsky by Eisenstein, Minin and Pozharsky
by Pudvokin, and Bogdan Khmelnitsky by Savchenko. Soviet politicians were the
subjects in films such as Yutkevich's trilogy of movies about Lenin.
Socialist realism was also applied to Hindi
films of the 1940s and 1950s. These include Chetan Anand's Neecha Nagar (1946),
which won the Grand Prize at the 1st Cannes Film Festival, and Bimal Roy's Two
Acres of Land (1953), which won the International Prize at the 7th Cannes Film
Festival.
The painter Aleksandr Deineka provides a
notable example for his expressionist and patriotic scenes of the Second World
War, collective farms, and sports. Yuriy Pimenov, Boris Ioganson and Geli
Korzev have also been described as "unappreciated masters of
twentieth-century realism". Another well-known practitioner was Fyodor
Pavlovich Reshetnikov.
Socialist realism art found acceptance in
the Baltic nations, inspiring many artists. One such artist was Czeslaw
Znamierowski (23 May 1890 – 9 August 1977), a Soviet Lithuanian painter, known
for his large panoramic landscapes and love of nature. Znamierowski combined
these two passions to create very notable paintings in the Soviet
Union , earning the prestigious title of Honorable Artist of LSSR
in 1965. Born in Latvia, which formed part of the Russian Empire at the time,
Znamierowski was of Polish nationality and Lithuanian citizenship, a country
where he lived for most of his life and died. He excelled in landscapes and
social realism, and held many exhibitions. Znamierowski was also widely published
in national newspapers, magazines and books. His more notable paintings include
Before Rain (1930), Panorama of Vilnius City (1950), The Green Lake (1955), and
In Klaipeda Fishing Port (1959).A large collection of his art is located in the
Lithuanian Art Museum
Thol, a novel by D. Selvaraj in Tamil is a
standing example of Marxist Realism in India
In conjunction with the Socialist Classical
style of architecture, socialist realism was the officially approved type of
art in the Soviet Union for more than fifty
years. All material goods and means of production belonged to the community as
a whole; this included means of producing art, which were also seen as powerful
propaganda tools.
In the early years of the Soviet
Union , Russian and Soviet artists embraced a wide variety of art
forms under the auspices of Proletkult. Revolutionary politics and radical
non-traditional art forms were seen as complementary. In art, Constructivism
flourished. In poetry, the non-traditional and the avant-garde were often
praised.
These styles of art were later rejected by
members of the Communist Party who did not appreciate modern styles such as
Impressionism and Cubism. Socialist realism was, to some extent, a reaction
against the adoption of these "decadent" styles. It was thought by
Lenin that the non-representative forms of art were not understood by the
proletariat and could therefore not be used by the state for propaganda.
Alexander Bogdanov argued that the radical
reformation of society to communist principles meant little if any bourgeois
art would prove useful; some of his more radical followers advocated the
destruction of libraries and museums. Lenin rejected this philosophy, deplored
the rejection of the beautiful because it was old, and explicitly described art
as needing to call on its heritage: "Proletarian culture must be the
logical development of the store of knowledge mankind has accumulated under the
yoke of capitalist, landowner, and bureaucratic society."
Modern art styles appeared to refuse to
draw upon this heritage, thus clashing with the long realist tradition in Russia
Socialist realism became state policy in
1934 when the First Congress of Soviet Writers met and Stalin's representative
Andrei Zhdanov gave a speech strongly endorsing it as "the official style
of Soviet culture". It was enforced ruthlessly in all spheres of artistic
endeavour. Form and content were often limited, with erotic, religious,
abstract, surrealist, and expressionist art being forbidden. Formal
experiments, including internal dialogue, stream of consciousness, nonsense,
free-form association, and cut-up were also disallowed. This was either because
they were "decadent", unintelligible to the proletariat, or
counter-revolutionary.
In response to the 1934 Congress in Russia , the most important American writers of
the left gathered in the First American Writers Congress of 26–27 April 1935 in Chicago Soviet Union by German
forces.
The first exhibition organized by the
Leningrad Union of Artists took place in 1935. Its participants – Mikhail
Avilov, Isaak Brodsky, Piotr Buchkin, Nikolai Dormidontov, Rudolf Frentz,
Kazimir Malevich, Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, and Alexander Samokhvalov among them –
became the founding fathers of the Leningrad
In 1932, the Leningrad Institute of
Proletarian Visual Arts was transformed into the Institute of Painting Leningrad
school – namely, a higher art education establishment of a new type and a
unified professional union of Leningrad
In 1934 Isaak Brodsky, a disciple of Ilya
Repin, was appointed director of the National Academy of Arts and the Leningrad
Institute of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture. Brodsky invited
distinguished painters and pedagogues to teach at the Academy, namely Semion
Abugov, Mikhail Bernshtein, Ivan Bilibin, Piotr Buchkin, Efim Cheptsov, Rudolf
Frentz, Boris Ioganson, Dmitry Kardovsky, Alexander Karev, Dmitry Kiplik,
Yevgeny Lansere, Alexander Lubimov, Matvey Manizer, Vasily Meshkov, Pavel
Naumov, Alexander Osmerkin, Anna Ostroumova-Lebedeva, Leonid Ovsyannikov,
Nikolai Petrov, Sergei Priselkov, Nikolay Punin, Nikolai Radlov, Konstantin
Rudakov, Pavel Shillingovsky, Vasily Shukhaev, Victor Sinaisky, Ivan Stepashkin,
Konstantin Yuon, and others.
Art exhibitions of 1935–1940 serve as
counterpoint to claims that the artistic life of the period was suppressed by
the ideology and artists submitted entirely to what was then called
"social order". A great number of landscapes, portraits, and genre
paintings exhibited at the time pursued purely technical purposes and were thus
ostensibly free from any ideology. Genre painting was also approached in a
similar way.
In the post-war period between the mid-fifties
and sixties, the Leningrad
Their time and contemporaries, with all its
images, ideas, and dispositions found it full expression in portraits by
Vladimir Gorb, Boris Korneev, Engels Kozlov, Felix Lembersky, Oleg Lomakin,
Samuil Nevelshtein, Victor Oreshnikov, Semion Rotnitsky, Lev Russov, and Leonid
Steele; in landscapes by Nikolai Galakhov, Vasily Golubev, Dmitry Maevsky,
Sergei Osipov, Vladimir Ovchinnikov, Alexander Semionov, Arseny Semionov, and
Nikolai Timkov; and in genre paintings by Andrey Milnikov, Yevsey Moiseenko,
Mikhail Natarevich, Yuri Neprintsev, Nikolai Pozdneev, Mikhail Trufanov, Yuri
Tulin, Nina Veselova, and others.
In 1957, the first all-Russian Congress of
Soviet artists took place in Moscow Union of Artists was
organized. Accordingly, these events influenced the art life in Moscow , Leningrad Volga region, and great achievements of Soviet science
and technology became the chief topics of the new painting. Heroes of the time
– young scientists, workers, civil engineers, physicians, etc. – were made the
most popular heroes of paintings.
In this period, life provided artists with
plenty of thrilling topics, positive figures, and images. Legacy of many great
artists and art movements became available for study and public discussion
again. This greatly broadened artists' understanding of the realist method and
widened its possibilities. It was the repeated renewal of the very conception
of realism that made this style dominate Russian art throughout its history.
Realist tradition gave rise to many trends of contemporary painting, including
painting from nature, "severe style" painting, and decorative art.
However, during this period impressionism, postimpressionism, cubism, and
expressionism also had their fervent adherents and interpreters.
The restrictions were relaxed somewhat
after Stalin's death in 1953, but the state still kept a tight rein on personal
artistic expression. This caused many artists to choose to go into exile, for
example the Odessa Group from the city of that name. Independent-minded artists
that remained continued to feel the hostility of the state.
In 1974, for instance, a show of unofficial
art in a field near Moscow Soviet Union that artists were finally freed from state
censorship.
Other socialist states
After the Russian Revolution, socialist
realism became an international literary movement. Socialist trends in
literature were established in the 1920s in Germany ,
France , Czechoslovakia , and Poland
The doctrine of socialist realism in other
People's Republics, was legally enforced from 1949 to 1956. It involved all
domains of visual and literary arts, though its most spectacular achievements
were made in the field of architecture, considered a key weapon in the creation
of a new social order, intended to help spread the communist doctrine by
influencing citizens' consciousness as well as their outlook on life. During
this massive undertaking, a crucial role fell to architects perceived not as
merely engineers creating streets and edifices, but rather as "engineers
of the human soul" who, in addition to extending simple aesthetics into
urban design, were to express grandiose ideas and arouse feelings of stability,
persistence and political power.
In art, from the mid-1960s more relaxed and
decorative styles became acceptable even in large public works in the Warsaw
Pact bloc, the style mostly deriving from popular posters, illustrations and
other works on paper, with discreet influence from their Western equivalents.
Today, arguably the only countries still
focused on these aesthetic principles are North
Korea , Laos ,
and to some extent Vietnam China
The former Socialist Federal Republic of
Yugoslavia was an important exception among the communist countries, because
after the Tito-Stalin split in 1948, it abandoned socialist realism along with
other elements previously imported from the Soviet system and allowed greater
artistic freedom. Miroslav Krleža, one of the leading Yugoslav intellectuals,
gave a speech at the Third Congress of the Writers Alliance of Yugoslavia held
in Ljubljana in 1952, which is considered a turning point in the Yugoslav
denouncement of dogmatic socialist realism.
Reception
Marxist Critique
Leon Trotsky subjected Soviet cultural
production to a fundamental critique (Art and Revolution, 1939). While the
October Revolution has provided a boost to cultural production, the bureaucracy
is suppressing art with a totalitarian hand. Their only purpose would be to
worship the leaders and produce myths.
"The style of today's official Soviet
painting is called 'socialist realism'. This name has apparently been given to
her by some leader of some art section. This realism consists in aping the
provincial daguerreotypes of the third quarter of the last century; The
'socialist' character is evidently to represent events by means of a distorting
photograph that never took place. It is not possible, without a feeling of
physical disgust and horror, to read Soviet verses and novels, or to look at
reproductions of Soviet sculptures: in these works, functionaries armed with
feathers, brushes or chisels under the supervision of functionaries armed with
mousepouchers perpetuate, great and ingenious leaders, who in reality do not
possess a spark of greatness and ingenuity. The art of the Stalin epoch will go
down in history as the most blatant expression of the deepest decline of the
proletarian revolution. "
Trotsky emphasizes the freedom of art, so a
truly revolutionary party would neither be able nor willing to control art.
"Art and science not only seek no guidance, but can by their very nature
tolerate nothing." Art could only serve the revolution if it remained true
to itself.
Contemporary reception
Often received as unpretentious and with
kitsch elements tainted art, experienced the socialist realism in the wake of
the aestheticization of the trash a renaissance in popular culture (see also: Ostalgie).
Today, it becomes clear that the literature
of socialist realism was also a legal possibility of examining ideological
taboo subjects and political-societal constraints. This position sometimes
required serious sacrifices from literature, forcing it to assume a social
responsibility that Western European literature no longer had, as such
responsibility fell within the remit of other institutions. Compared to Western
Europe, the larger social area of literature in Central and Eastern
Europe was lost after 1990.
Criticism of socialist realism
For its critics, compared to the variety
and eclecticism of twentieth-century Western art, socialist realism appears as
a narrow, coarse, and predictable range of intellectual production. He was
often criticized for representing an obstacle to true art, or for the political
pressures to which artists were subjected. Czeslaw Milosz in the introduction
on social realism, of Andrei Sinyavsky (1959) describes the production of
social realism as lower, what he considers the inevitable result of a,
according to him, limited vision of the reality allowed to artists by this
current. In the same vein, critics speak of several cases of cultural exiles
even after the end of the Stalinist period, such as the Odesa Group, a group of
artists who left the country on political grounds.
The precepts of socialist realism and its
rigid application for more than twenty years caused a great damage to the
freedom of expression of the Soviet artists. Many artists and authors saw their
works censored, ignored or rejected. Mikhail Bulgakov, for example, had to
write his masterpiece The Master and Margarita in secret, despite previous
successes as White Guard. Dmitri Shostakovich suffered the prohibition of
several of his works, such as the Fourth Symphony and the opera Lady Macbeth of
Mtsensk and had to resort to all kinds of maneuvers to get around censorship -
official controls - and obtain his rehabilitation. In 1937he composed his Fifth
Symphony in D minor opus 47, which subtitled a Soviet composer's response to a
fair critique.
The political doctrine underlying socialist
realism led to the prohibition of works such as those of George Orwell,
considered by the Soviet government as little more than anti-communist pamphlets,
and made access to foreign art and literature in some cases difficult. Much of
the so-called bourgeois art and all the experimental or formalist works were
denounced as decadent, degenerate and pessimistic, and therefore essentially
anti-communist. The work of James Joyce was condemned in a particularly drastic
way.
The concrete result was that until the
1980s much of the Soviet public had difficult access to many works of Western
art and literature, a fact highlighted by critics of the Soviet system. For its
defenders, the constant agitation of the idea of censorship clashes with the
tangible efforts made by the State to meet the cultural needs of the
population, including the encouragement of reading and plays, customs
considered today reminiscent of the Soviet period.
In any case, not all communists accepted
the need for socialist realism. Its establishment as a State policy in the
1930s had more to do with the internal policies of the Communist Party than
with the imperatives of classical Marxism.
The Hungarian Marxist essayist Georg Lukács
criticized the rigidity of socialist realism and postulated his own critical
realism as an alternative. Also, in 1938, a famous manifesto was published:
"Manifesto for an independent revolutionary art", signed by André
Bretón and the old Bolshevik revolutionary Leon Trotsky, in which a radical
critique of "Soviet" art is made. The Che Guevara also criticized in
his day the rigidity of socialist realism.
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