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Soviet Socialist Realism: Origins and Theory Soviel Socialisl Realism Origins and Theory Soviet Socialist Realism: Origins and Theory Soviel Socialisl Realism Origins and Theory c. V AUGHAN JAMES Senior Fellow in Language SJudies in Jhe Universily 0/ Sussex Palgrave Macmillan © C. Vaughan James 1973 Softcover reprint ofthe hardcover 1st edition 1973 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without permission. First published /973 by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD London and Basingstoke Associated companies in New York Dublin Me/boume /ohannesburg and Madras ISBN 978-1-349-02078-2 ISBN 978-1-349-02076-8 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-02076-8 Contents List 0/ Plates vi I ntroduetion ix 1 ART AND THE PEOPLE 2 ART AND THE PARTY 15 3 A FEW DECREES ••• 38 4 SOCIALIST REALISM 84 Appendiees I V. L. Unin, Party Organisation and Party Literature (1905) 103 11 V. I. Lenin, In Memory of Herzen (1912) 107 III (I) V. I. Lenin, On Proletarian Culture (draft resolution); (2) On the Proletkults (letter from the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party, 1920) 112 IV On the Party's Poliey in the Field 01 Literature (resolution of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party (b), 18 June 1925) 116 V On the Reformation of Literary-Artistie Organisations (decision of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party (b), 23 April 1932) 120 Referenees and Notes 121 Seleeted Bibliography 138 Seleeted Index 143 List of Plates betw~~n pages 50 and 51 I OFFICIAL RECEPTION FOR MAKSIM G6RKY A friendly cartoon by the Kukryniksy on the occasion of G6rky's return from abroad in 1928. Krasnaya Niva, No. 13, 1928 11 REPIN (1844-1930): The Zaporozhian Cossacks Write a Letter to the Turkish Sultan (1891) III PIMENOV (1903-): For Industrialisation! (1927) IV DEINEKA (1899-1969): Defence of Petrograd (1928) V J0 HA NSO N (1893-): At an Old Urals Works (1937) VI YABLONSKAYA(I90o-): Grain (1949) VII PLAST6v (1893-1973): The Tractormen's Dinner (1951) VIII GERASIMOV (1881-1963): For the Power of the Soviets (1957) IX SAGONEK (1919-): Morning (1960) Agitation and propaganda acquire special edge and efficacy when decked in the attractive and powerful forms of art. Arts Seetion, Narkompros & Rabis, 1921 In conformity with the interests of the working people and in order to strengthen the socialist system, the citizens of the USSR are guaranteed by law: (a) freedom of speech; (h) freedom of the press; (e) freedom of assembly, including the holding of mass meetings; (d) freedom of street processions and demonstrations. These civil rights are ensured by placing at the disposal of the working people and their organisations printing presses, stocks of paper, public buildings, the streets, communications facilities and other material re­ quisites for the exercise of these rights. Constitution of the USSR 1936 (Article 125) Agitation and propaganda conducted for the purpose of overthrowing or weakening Soviet authority or for the commission of single especially dangerous state crimes; the distribution for these same purposes of slanderous inventions against the Soviet state and public structure, and also the distribution or preparation of or possession for these same pur­ poses of literature having such a content shall be punished by deprivation of freedom for a term of from 6 months to 7 years or exile for a term of from 2 to 5 years. lAw on Criminal Responsibility for State Crimes, 25 Deeember 1958 Introduction THE Western reader of Soviet literature is faced with a number of prob­ lems at severallevels. Quite apart from the linguistic barrier, the inacces­ sibility of sources, the lack of documentation and research, and the piecemeal nature of most treatments, with the political attitudes that often invest them, he encounters a whole philosophy that Unin, its prime architect, described as 'alien and strange to the bourgeoisie and bourgeois democracy'.l Brought up in a society that not only does not boast a widely­ accepted theory of the socio-political function of art but is, in the main, ho stile to the very idea of the elaborat ion of such a theory, he is thrown into dramatic confrontation with the 'artistic method' of Socialist Realism. This, he learns, 'demands from the artist a true and historically concrete depiction of reality in its revolutionary development. Moreover, this true and historically concrete depiction of reality must be combined with the task of educating the workers in the spirit of Communism.' 2 His bewil­ derment as to what this formula might mean will be rendered even greater by being informed (as the reader of almost any Western history of Soviet literature will be) that no less a personage than Mikhall Sh610khov, winner of the Nobel Prize for literature and author of the universally admired novels The Quiet Don (Tikhy Don) and Virgin Soil Upturned (P6dnyataya tselinaJ, himself once proclaimed himself unable to say what Socialist Realism was. 3 Yet without some unravelling of this mystery the student will at best not completely understand, and at worst positively misunderstand, a great deal of what he reads, hears or views. Of course, the Western reader may prefer to judge Soviet writing only by the 'universal' criteria by which he judges other literature; but an important critical dimension may well be thought lacking if such writing is not also regarded from the point of view of the explicit aesthetic criteria of the society in which the author lives and writes. Certainly, any under­ standing of the scandales concerning such authors as Pasternak, Sinyavsky, Daniel or Solzhenftsyn in anything but the crudest political terms is rendered doubly difficult in the absence of detailed points of reference in the sense of a grasp not only of the 'formula' of Socialist Realism but of the principles that underlie it and, at least to some extent, of the history of S.S.R.-I* x INTRODUCTION their evolution. The object of this present study is to contribute - however modesdy - to providing a basis for such understanding and hence for independent judgement. Such an aim has naturally dictated much of the content of this book, in which I have set out to present, in Chapters 1 (Art and the People) and 4 (Socialist Realism), abrief but fairly comprehensive survey of the Soviet point of view. For this purpose I have made extensive use of Soviet sources, in Russian, so that the arguments presented are those with which the Soviet student is hirnself confronted. In these chapters I have restricted my own comments to aminimum, and though my own convictions must inevitably have influenced both my selection of material and its presenta· tion, I am confident that the reader will have litde difficulty in applying any necessary corrective interpretation. Chapter 1 is a discussion of certain basic principles of Soviet aesthetics, and Chapter 4 is a description of Socialist Realism which relies for its clarity on a knowledge of those principles. Together they make up a coherent whole, representing a summary of official Soviet attitudes since the death of St:Hin in 1953. But whereas Chapters 1 and 4 are largely descriptive, Chapters 2 and 3 are analytical and historical. A quite vital element in the aesthetic system on which the method of Socialist Realism is based is the principle of the writer's allegiance to the Communist Party (partiinost'), which is extrapolated from Lenin's 1905 article, 'Party Organisation and Party Literature', and vigorous arguments rage as to whether or not such extrapolation is justified. In Chapter 2, therefore, I have tried to follow through the Soviet line of reasoning, though not here refraining from making my own comments or drawing my own conclu· sions, and the theme is taken up again in Chapter 3. Two quite distinct theories of the origin of Socialist Realism are wide­ spread. To its opponents, it is the extension into the cultural field of Stalinist policies as they may be observed in other branches of sociallife. This means that Socialist Realism was invented by Stalin, Zhdanov and G6rky and forced on the unwilling artists in the early thirties by the formation of the artistic unions, beginning with the Union of Soviet Writers in 1934. From such a point of view, Socialist Realism derives from the 1930S and is in origin Russian and Stalinist. To the proponents of Socialist Realism, however, it is a world-wide development, though with local peculiarities, associated with the rise of a politically conscious, i.e. Marxist, industrial proletariat. It is therefore the reflection in the arts of the batde for the creation of a socialist society. It obviously dates in each country from the emergence of a Marxist pro- INTRODUCTION xi letarian movement; in Russia the crucial date was 1895. The theory - as opposed to the tendency in art - was not elaborated or given a name until 1932-4, but it was then simply a summary and codification of what had already been evolving for several decades, strengthened by the Marxist­ Leninist understanding of social developments and consequent ability to shape and foretell the future. From such a viewpoint it is in origin Leninist, and what happened in the thirties in the USSR was not a logical stage but a temporary aberration. This is not a mere quibble, since its implications for the whole history of the arts in the USSR are clearly very grave; Socialist Realism is either a thing of the past or of the present and future. I have therefore examined some of the evidence for the period between the 1917 October Revolution and the announcement of the formation of the artists' unions in 1932 and have drawn what seems to me the inescapable conclusion.
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