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Socialist Realism: Twenty-Five Years Later

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2017

Maurice Friedberg
Maurice Friedberg*
Affiliation:
Hunter College
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Extract

In 1959 the Soviet doctrine of Socialist Realism in literature became a quarter of a century old. And yet, despite this rather venerable age for a literary “school,” its aims and methods are almost as vague as they were at its birth, at the First Soviet Writers’ Congress in 1934. This in spite of the fact that the official artistic credo of Soviet belles lettres exhibits the same passion for quasi-scientific definitions and statistical devices as do the periodically forthcoming definitions of the current implications of Party policy, united as they are by the insistence that the “science” of Marxism is not a dogma but a guide to action.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Slavic and East European Review , Volume 19 , Issue 2 , April 1960 , pp. 276 - 287
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies 1960

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References

1 Mikhail, Stel'makh in Literaturnaja gazeta, May 21, 1959, p. 1 Google Scholar.

2 Ibid.,May 22, 1959, p. 1.

3 Ibid.,May 24, 1959, p. 5.

4 Ibid.,May 22, 1959, p. 3

5 Ibid,, May 20, 1959, p. 6

6 Ibid.,p. 2.

7 Ibid.,May 26, 1959, p. 2.

8 Ibid.,May 21, 1959, p. 2.

9 Ibid.,May 20, 1959, p. 6.

10 Ibid.,May 21, 1959, p. 4.

11 Ibid.,May 22, 1959, p. 1.

12 Ibid.,May 26, 1959, p. 2.

13 Ibid.,January 8, 1959, p. 3.

14 frj'd., February 3, 1959, p. 3. The article also reported the sentiment that while Georgian intellectuals should speak Russian, every person living in Georgia—i.e., including every Russian—should speak Georgian.

15 Ibid., March 31, 1959, pp. 3–4.

16 Thus, one Lithuanian writer brought out a book about a Nazi collaborator written in the guise of the protagonist's confession, thus avoiding the necessity of portraying the Communist underground. Ibid., March 5, 1959, p. 4.

17 Ibid., January 3, 1959, pp. 1, 3. Similar charges were levied at the Congress against Azerbaidzhani writers who were said to claim that national traits can be best presented only in descriptions of the past (Pravda, May 20, 1959). Unlike Soviet Russian literature, attraction to historical themes on the part of non-Russian writers frequently gives rise to charges of “bourgeois nationalism.“

18 Lit. gazeta, May 21, 1959, p. 1 Google Scholar. Some tacit admission that literatures of the national minorities are entitled to a certain degree of independence at least in matters of style was to be found in an article by Novichenko, L. (“O mnogoobrazii khudozhestvennykh form i stilei v literature socialisticheskogo realizma,” Voprosy literatury, No. 5, May, 1959, pp. 43–76 Google Scholar). Novichenko argued that different national heritages impart specific national characteristics to different national literature. Thus he advanced the claim ihat Ukrainian literature is characterized by a romantic tendency, that Estonian literature is noted for its restrained quality, that the Central Asian literatures make generous use of the hyperbole, etc.

19 ieIzvestia, August 27, 1958, pp. 4, 6.

20 Percov, v. “Da, my optimisty,” Oktjabr', No. 3 (March, 1959), pp. 202–225 Google Scholar.

21 Lit. gazeta, April 25, 1959, p. 1.

22 Ibid., January 31, 1959, p. 2 Google Scholar. See also the article by the veteran “conservative” critic Ja. El'sberg, ibid., February 26, 1959, p. 3 Google ScholarPubMed; also the speech of the novelist and dramatist Valentin Kataev at the Congress (“Entire Creativity Must be Permeated With Party Spirit,” Pravda, May 21, 1959).

23 Lit. gazeta, March 12, 1959, pp. 1, 3Google Scholar.

24 Pravda, May 17, 1959, p. 5. A similar position was taken earlier by a critic writing in Lit. gazeta, February 19, 1959, p. 3.

25 Ibid., May 23, 1959, p. 2.

26 Izvestia, December 14, 1958, p. 2.

27 Lit gazeta, March 19, 1959, pp. 1, 3.

28 Pravda, May 23, 1959.

29 Ibid., April 1, 1959, p. 1. See also Frolov, V., “Dal'nimi dorogami,” Oktjabr', No. 2 (February, 1959), p. 133 Google Scholar.

30 Lit. gateta, May 22, 1959, p. 1.

31 Gus, M., “K voprosu o ‘pafose distancii',” Oktjabr', No. 3 (March, 1959), pp. 238–39 Google Scholar.

32 Izvestia, May 19, 1959.

33 Lit. gazeta, May 28, 1959, p. 3.

34 Ibid., February 27, 1959, p. 3.

35 Ibid.. May 22, 1959, p. 3.

36 Ibid., May 20, 1959, p. 4.

37 On another occasion Sel'vinskij had called the three “approved” poets “a trio of accordeon players“—in other words, primitive and artificial “folk” singers (ibid., May 21, 1959, p. 1).

38 Ibid., January 8, 1959, pp. 2–3.

39 Ibid., May 22, 1959, p. 2.

40 Vas., Inanov, “Ob iskhodnykh pozicijakh socialisticheskogo reaHzma,” Znamja, No. 5 (May, 1959), p. 173 Google Scholar.

41 Neizvestnyj sovetskij pisatel', “Socrealizm i ‘eel”,” Mosty, No. 2 (1959), pp. 293–94 Google ScholarPubMed.

42 Lit. gazeta, May 22, 1959, p. 2.

43 Ibid., May 30, 1959, p. 2. It is interesting that Novichenko uses the ironic-sounding adjective “ideal” rather than the traditional “positive.“

44 Ibid., May 26, 1959, p. 2.

45 Baruzdin, Sergei, “O nashem pervom s'ezde,“ Moskva, No. 1 (1959), p. 187 Google Scholar.

46 Chicherov, I ., “Nuzhen razgovor o forme,” Oktjabr', No. 1 (January, 1959), pp. 153–54 Google Scholar.

47 Izestia, March 29, 1959, p. 4.

48 Rodnjanskaja, I., “Poezija N. Zabolockogo,” Voprosy literatury, No. 1 (1959), p. 136 Google Scholar.

49 Fomenko, L., “V stroju sovremennikov,” Oktjabr', No. 3 (March, 1959), p. 234 Google Scholar.

50 Pravda, May 23, 1959.

51 Babel, Isaac, The Collected Stories, Edited and translated by Walter Morison, with an introduction by Lionel Trilling (New York, Criterion Books, 1955), pp. 12–13 Google Scholar.