BALTIC special section23 WORLDS Theme: Perspectives and narratives of socialist realism Introduction. Ambiguities and dogmas of the real by Tora Lane he workshop “Ambiguities and to serve as a foundation for the specific literary review Das Wort. With Adorno, Dogmas of the Real” was aimed role that the socialist utopia played in the Wallenstein invites us to grasp realism in at discussing issues of social- engagement with reality in socialist real- its historical attempt to understand “what T ist realism with respect to the ism. The proposal was not to see socialist it once meant, and how it attempted to question of necessity for and function of realism as the necessary development of mediate between subjectivity and the realism in modern and contemporary realism, but to understand the power of world at a historical conjuncture that cultural spheres. For some reason, schol- the socialist realist myth by considering is no longer ours”. Fundamental to the arship on socialist realism has predomi- it in its quality of being a myth of reality, aesthetic ideology of modern realism as nantly focused on the totalizing myths of that is, as writing that was able to deliver it was formed in the early 19th century is the avant-garde or the socialist utopia as “revolutionary reality” to the reader in a the idea that literature can narrate real- the basis for the way in which this “real- narrative form. ity. Reality is understood in its quality as ism” became a tool for manipulation and social and historical reality, and literature political repression. A central concern THIS SPECIAL THEME focuses on the rela- is predominantly understood as narra- of this scholarship has been to analyze tion between realism and social or so- tive representation. Modern realism was the doctrine’s claim to the real—to real- cialist realism from different angles and driven by the aspiration to find a narrative ism and reality—and the question of its with examples from different countries. representation of social and historical distortion, or what Evgeny Dobrenko It consists of contributions from eight reality, and at the outset, at least, it nur- calls the “de-realization of the real.”1 As scholars who took part in the workshop: tured an ideal of objectivity in the writer’s Petre Petrov has shown, there is a line of Sven-Olov Wallenstein, Karin Grelz, Alek- representation of reality.3 In other words, reasoning in this scholarship, emanating sei Semenenko, Susanna Witt, Marcia Sá there is a question to what extent there is from Boris Groys, that continues to insist Cavalcante Schuback, Epp Lankots, and an idealism of the real in realism, as Char- that socialist realism can be defined as a Charlotte Bydler and Dan Karlholm. The lotte Bydler and Dan Karlholm ask with distortion of reality according to certain first article, by Sven-Olov Wallenstein, Walter Benjamin in their article on the ideological or mytho-poetic principles. analyzes “Adorno’s realism” against the functions of realism in Swedish art, which This argument, however, operates with a background of the quarrel over Expres- is placed last in this special topic section. pre-critical idea of reality.2 The question sionism in the 1930s, which engaged The flaws in the aesthetic ideology of that we wanted to ask instead was how several writers, most notably Ernst Bloch modern realism became the subject of a realism as an aesthetic doctrine came and George Lukács, in the Moscow exile debate among writers at an early stage in Baltic Worlds 2016, vol. IX:4 Special section: Perspectives and narratives of socialist realism. 24 introduction ILLUSTRATION: MOA THELANDER the development of modern realism,4 and ten by Karin Grelz. She presents us with such a high status, but it was also in real- I will bring up just one central problem of a reading of Nabokov’s understanding ism that this status was undercut by “the realism on which Barthes focuses in Writ- of the relation between cinema and the castrating objectivity of the realist novel.” ing Degree Zero,5 namely the inherent and doctrines of realism and socialist realism. In other words, the high esteem accorded often suppressed opposition between the As Grelz shows, Nabokov displaces the the writer in modern realism is related to literariness or formal features of litera- notion of realism in relation to the cinema his or her ability to describe the world ob- ture and how this literature is measured so that we come to understand not only jectively. The “castrating” objectivity or against its extra literary role in history.6 socialist realist works, but also the reality universalism of the great nineteenth-cen- The extra literary role is both the very of the exile community, as bad, insipid, tury realist is guaranteed by the writer’s aspiration to depict social and historical and sentimental movies. He opposes a very ability to write or narrate. Indeed, in reality and the education of the modern simple common-sense understanding to realism, writers’ artistic skills are closely reader. an experience of reality in all its unreality, related to their knowledge or aware- to be best captured by cinematic special ness of the world as social and historical IN HER COMMENTARY on the special theme, effects transferredinto literature. reality. It was in fact as representatives Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback asks how In asking what realism meant in the of knowledge and through engagement realism invites us to think about the prob- doctrine of socialist realism, we can see that Soviet writers were subordinated to lem of mimetic representation in relation that in an extreme and unprecedented the politics of repression and at the same to the socialist realist doctrine of “the manner, Soviet literature came to fuse time it was in that capacity that they were reality of the real”. She shows how the literature and reality on the model of real- authorized to be masters of the historical socialist realist text is already interpreted ist literature, measuring literature against narrative. and therefore a read and ready text, its extra literary role in history, that is, which also tells us about the way that real- against its role in the formation of Soviet THE REALIST NOVEL was supposed not only ism creates the reality of the real. The ques- “revolutionary” society and Soviet “revo- to reflect social and historical reality, but tion how literature can avoid falling into lutionary consciousness”. As Barthes7 as- also to enter it as a tool for aesthetic and the traps of realism by having recourse to serts, the writer first became important in democratic education. The formation of cinematic effects, and how real-life real- conjunction with modern realism’s claim the educated subject is one of the roles ity appears as bad cinema, is the theme to positivism and universalism. It was in that the realist novel plays in modern of the second article in the cluster, writ- realism that the author-person acquired democratic society, because if the writer 25 is the representative of knowledge, the reason for this is that the avant-garde held contents reader, by and large, is its recipient. This that it was bringing about the event of art Special Section: Perspectives and formative role of the novel was arguably as reality. However, there are good argu- narratives of socialist realism what made realism so attractive for offi- ments that what socialist realism undid Guest Editor: Tora Lane cial doctrine in the massive Soviet project in its forms of instruction was instead the 23 Introduction. Ambiguities and of modernization. At an early stage, Lenin reality of art, or, really, the reality of the dogmas of the real, Tora Lane made education the main task of the new aesthetic experience of writing as well as Peer-reviewed articles proletarian culture, which he initially of reading.10 We cannot go to the socialist 28 Adorno’s realism, Sven-Olov Wallenstein argued must learn from the literature of realist work of art and simply ask if it is a 35 Nabokov on socialist and cinematic nineteenth-century realism.8 Andrei Zh- form or expression of an aesthetic experi- realism, Karin Grelz danov9 insisted that the task of Soviet lit- ence of the world, because we will always 43 The mystery of The Blue Cup. Arkadii erature was the “edu- first meet it in its “lit- Gaidar and socialist realism, Aleksei cation of the working erary” or narrated “In realism, writers’ ar- Semenenko people in the spirit of ideological relation 52 Socialist realism in translation. The socialism.” However, tistic skills are closely to history, to society, theory of a practice, Susanna Witt it was not only the to the Revolution, as related to their knowl- 61 Architectural history and new reality. people, that is, the well as in its concrete edge or awareness of Leonhard Lapin’s textual practice, readers, who were to relationship to the Epp Lankots be educated, but also the world as social and entire apparatus of 70 Functions of realist art in Sweden, the writer himself. institutions, rep- historical reality.” circa 1970. Lena Svedberg & Olle Kåks, The Soviet writer resentations and Charlotte Bydler and Dan Karlholm was arguably not an erudite bourgeois by instructions.11 Realist literature is always birth, but a proletarian or a man of the dependent on its relation to historical and Commentary people who followed Gorky’s educative social reality.12 The quest for realist art is 59 The reality of the real. On questions “road to awareness” by appropriating the based on the fact that we read literature of socialist realism, Marcia Sá knowledge and status of the bourgeois.