Socialist realism in literature. Socialist realism (prof.
UDC 82.091
SOCIALIST REALISM: METHOD OR STYLE
© Nadezhda Viktorovna DUBROVINA
Engels branch of Saratov State Technical University, Engels. Saratov region, Russian Federation, senior lecturer at the Department of Foreign Languages, e-mail: [email protected]
The article examines socialist realism as a complex cultural and ideological complex that cannot be studied based on traditional aesthetic standards. The implementation of the tradition in socialist realist literature is analyzed popular culture and literature.
Key words: socialist realism; totalitarian ideology; Mass culture.
Socialist realism- this is a page in the history of not only Soviet art, but also ideological propaganda. Research interest in this phenomenon has not disappeared not only in our country, but also abroad. “Right now, when socialist realism has ceased to be an oppressive reality and has gone into the realm of historical memories, it is necessary to subject the phenomenon of socialist realism to careful study in order to identify its origins and analyze its structure,” wrote the famous Italian Slavist V. Strada.
The principles of socialist realism received their final formulation at the first All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers in 1934. The focus on the works of A.V. was of great importance. Lunacharsky. M. Gorky, A.K. Voronsky, G. Plekhanov. M. Gorky defined the basic principles of socialist realism as follows: “Socialist realism affirms being as an act, as creativity, the goal of which is the continuous development of the most valuable individual abilities of man for the sake of his victory over the forces of nature, for the sake of his health and longevity, for the sake of the great happiness of living on earth.” . Socialist realism was understood as the heir and successor of realism with a special type of worldview that allows us to approach the depiction of reality historically. This ideological doctrine was imposed as the only correct one. Art took on political, spiritual, missionary, and religious functions. The general theme was set of a working person changing the world.
1930-1950s - the heyday of the method of socialist realism, the period of crisis
Stallization of its norms. At the same time, this is the period of the apogee of the regime of personal power of I.V. Stalin. The leadership of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in literature is becoming more and more comprehensive. A series of resolutions of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in the field of literature had an impact significant influence on the creative ideas of writers and artists, publishing plans, theater repertoires, and the contents of magazines. These decisions were not based on artistic practice and did not give rise to new artistic trends, but they had value as historical projects. Moreover, these were projects of global scope - recoding culture, changing aesthetic priorities, creating a new language of art, followed by programs for remaking the world, “shaping a new person,” and restructuring the system of fundamental values. The beginning of industrialization, the goal of which was to transform a huge peasant country into a military-industrial superpower, drew literature into its orbit. “Art and criticism acquire new functions - without generating anything, they only convey: bringing to consciousness what was brought to consciousness in the language of regulations.”
The establishment of one aesthetic system (socialist realism) as the only possible one and its canonization leads to the displacement of the alternative from official literature. All this was stated in 1934, when the strictly hierarchical structure of the command-bureaucratic management of literature, implemented by the Union of Soviet Writers, was approved. Thus, the literature of socialist realism is created according to state and political criteria. This
allows us to perceive the history of socialist realism literature as “... the history of the interaction of two trends: aesthetic, artistic, creative processes of the literary movement, and political pressure directly projected onto the literary process.” First of all, the functions of literature are affirmed: not the study of real conflicts and contradictions, but the formation of the concept of an ideal future. Thus, the function of propaganda comes to the fore, the purpose of which is to help educate a new person. Propaganda of official ideological concepts requires the declaration of elements of the normativity of art. Normativity literally fetters poetics works of art: normative characters are predetermined (enemy, communist, layman, kulak, etc.), conflicts and their outcome are determined (certainly in favor of virtue, victory of industrialization, etc.). It is important that normativity is no longer interpreted as an aesthetic, but a political requirement. Thus, created new method at the same time it forms the stylistic features of the works; style is equated to method, despite the declaration of the exact opposite: “The forms, styles, and means in the works of socialist realism are different and diverse. And every form, every style, every means becomes necessary if it successfully serves as a deep and impressive depiction of the truth of life."
The driving forces of socialist realism are class antagonism and ideological divisions, a demonstration of the inevitability of a “bright future.” The fact that the ideological function predominated in the literature of socialist realism is beyond doubt. Therefore, the literature of socialist realism is considered, first of all, as a propaganda rather than an aesthetic phenomenon.
The literature of socialist realism was presented with a system of requirements, the observance of which was vigilantly monitored by the censorship authorities. Moreover, not only directives came from the party-ideological authorities - the very verification of the ideological goodness of the text was not entrusted to the bodies of Glavlit and took place in the Directorate of Propaganda and Agitation. Censorship in Soviet literature due to its
propaganda and educational nature was very significant. Moreover, at the initial stage, literature was much more influenced by the author’s desire to guess the ideological, political and aesthetic claims that his manuscript might encounter during its passage through the officially controlling authorities. Since the 1930s. self-censorship is gradually becoming part of the flesh and blood of the vast majority of authors. According to A.V. Blume, this is what leads to the fact that the writer “writes himself out”, loses originality, trying not to stand out, to be “like everyone else”; he becomes cynical, striving to get published at all costs. . Writers who had no other merits other than proletarian origin and “class intuition” strived for power in art.
The form of the work and the structure of artistic language were given political significance. The term “formalism,” which in those years was associated with bourgeois, harmful, and alien to Soviet art, denoted those works that did not suit the party for stylistic reasons. One of the requirements for literature was the requirement of party membership, which implied the development of party provisions in artistic creativity. K. Simonov writes about the guidelines that Stalin personally gave. Thus, for his play “Alien Shadow” not only a theme was given, but also, after it was ready, when discussing it, “an almost textual program for reworking its ending ...” was given.
Party directives often did not directly indicate what a good work of art should be. More often they pointed out what it should not be. The criticism itself literary works did not so much interpret them as determine its propaganda value. Thus, criticism “became a kind of instructive initiative document that determined the future fate of the text.” . Analysis and assessment of the thematic part of the work, its relevance, and ideological content played a great role in the criticism of socialist realism. The artist, therefore, had a number of guidelines for what to write and how to write, i.e., the style of the work was already set from the very beginning. And due to these attitudes, he was responsible for what was depicted. By-
Therefore, not only the works of socialist realism were subjected to careful sorting, but the authors themselves were either encouraged (orders and medals, fees) or punished (ban on publication, repression). A major role in stimulating creative workers was played by the Stalin Prize Committee (1940), which annually named (except during the war) laureates in the field of literature and art.
In literature, a new image of the Soviet country is created with its wise leaders and happy people. The leader becomes the focus of both the human and the mythological. The ideological stamp is read in an optimistic mood, and uniformity of language arises. The defining themes are: revolutionary, collective farm, production, military.
Turning to the question of the role and place of style in the doctrine of socialist realism, as well as requirements for language, it should be noted that there were no clear requirements. The main requirement for style is unambiguity, which is necessary for an unambiguous interpretation of the work. The subtext of the work was suspicious. The language of the work was subject to a requirement of simplicity. This was due to the requirement of accessibility and intelligibility to the broad masses of the population, who were mainly represented by workers and peasants. By the end of the 1930s. The visual language of Soviet art becomes so uniform that stylistic differences are lost. This stylistic attitude, on the one hand, led to a decrease in aesthetic criteria and the flourishing of mass culture, but on the other hand, it opened up access to art to the broadest masses of society.
It should be noted that the absence of strict requirements for the language and style of works has led to the fact that according to this criterion, the literature of socialist realism cannot be assessed as homogeneous. In it one can distinguish a layer of works that are linguistically closer to the intellectual tradition (V. Kaverin), and works whose language and style are closer to folk culture (M. Bubennov).
Speaking about the language of works of socialist realism, it should be noted that this is the language of mass culture. However, not all research
Do you agree with this statement: “The 30s - 40s in the Soviet Union were anything but a time of free and unhindered manifestation of the real tastes of the masses, who, undoubtedly, at that time were inclined towards Hollywood comedies, jazz, novels "their beautiful life", etc., but not in the direction of socialist realism, which was called upon to educate the masses and therefore, first of all, scared them away with its mentoring tone, lack of entertainment and complete separation from reality." We cannot agree with this statement. Of course, there were people in the Soviet Union who were not committed to ideological dogma. But the broad masses were active consumers of socialist realist works. It's about about those who wanted to fit the image positive hero presented in the novel. After all, mass art is a powerful tool capable of manipulating the mood of the masses. And the phenomenon of socialist realism arose as a phenomenon of mass culture. The art of entertainment was given paramount propaganda importance. The theory contrasting mass art and socialist realism is currently not recognized by most scientists. The emergence and formation of mass culture are associated with the language of the media, which in the first half of the 20th century. achieved the greatest development and distribution. A change in the cultural situation leads to the fact that mass culture ceases to occupy an “intermediate” position and displaces elite and folk cultures. One can even talk about a kind of expansion of mass culture represented in the 20th century. in two versions: commodity-money (Western version) and ideological (Soviet version). Mass culture began to determine the political and business spheres of communications, and it extended to art.
Main feature mass art is secondary. It manifests itself in content, language, and style. Mass culture borrows features of elitist and folk cultures. Its originality lies in the rhetorical linking of all its elements. Thus, the basic principle of mass
art is the poetics of the stamp, i.e. it uses all the techniques for creating a work of art developed by elite art and adapts them to the needs of the average mass audience. Through the development of a network of libraries with a strictly selected set of “authorized” books and a program reading plan, mass tastes were formed. But the literature of socialist realism, like all mass culture, reflected both the author’s intentions and the expectations of readers, i.e. it was derivative of both the writer and the reader, but according to the specifics of the “totalitarian” type, it was oriented towards political-ideological manipulation of people’s consciousness, social demagoguery in the form direct agitation and propaganda artistic means. And here it is important to note that this process was carried out under the pressure of another important component of this system - power.
In the literary process, the response to the expectations of the masses was reflected as a very significant factor. Therefore, one cannot speak of the literature of socialist realism as literature implanted by the authorities through pressure on the author and the masses. After all, the personal tastes of party leaders for the most part coincided with the tastes of the worker-peasant masses. “If Lenin’s tastes coincided with the tastes of the old democrats of the 19th century, then the tastes of Stalin, Zhdanov, Voroshilov differed little from the tastes of the “working people” of the Stalin era. Or rather, one fairly common social type: an uncultured worker or “social worker” “from the proletarians,” a party member who despises the intelligentsia, accepts only “ours” and hates “abroad”; limited and self-confident, capable of accepting either political demagoguery or the most accessible “masculus”.
Thus, the literature of socialist realism is a complex system of interconnected elements. The fact that socialist realism established itself and for almost thirty years (from the 1930s to the 1950s) was the dominant trend in Soviet art today no longer requires proof. Of course, ideological dictatorship and political terror against those who did not follow the socialist realist dogma played a big role. According to its structure
re socialist realism was convenient for the authorities and understandable for the masses, explaining the world and inspiring mythology. Therefore, the ideological guidelines emanating from the authorities, which are the canon for a work of art, met the expectations of the masses. Therefore, this literature was interesting to the masses. This is convincingly shown in the works of N.N. Kozlova.
The experience of official Soviet literature of the 1930-1950s, when “industrial novels” were widely published, when entire newspaper pages were filled with collective poems about the “great leader”, “the light of humanity” Comrade Stalin, indicates that normativism, the predetermination of the artistic paradigm This method leads to uniformity. It is known that in literary circles there were no misconceptions about where the dictates of socialist realist dogmas were leading Russian literature. This is evidenced by the statements of a number of prominent Soviet writers, cited in denunciations that were sent by the security authorities to the Party Central Committee and personally to Stalin: “In Russia, all writers and poets are assigned to public service, they write what is ordered. And that’s why our literature is official literature” (N. Aseev); “I believe that Soviet literature is now a pitiful spectacle. The template dominates in literature” (M. Zoshchenko); “All talk about realism is ridiculous and nakedly false. Can there be a conversation about realism when the writer is forced to depict what is desired and not what exists?” (K. Fedin).
Totalitarian ideology was implemented in mass culture and played a decisive role in the formation of verbal culture. Main newspaper Soviet era there was the newspaper “Pravda”, which was a symbol of the era, a mediator between the state and the people, “had the status of not a simple, but a party document.” Therefore, the provisions and slogans of the articles were immediately implemented; one of the manifestations of such implementation was fiction. Socialist realist novels promoted Soviet achievements and decrees of the Soviet leadership. But, despite ideological attitudes, one cannot consider all writers of the socialist
realism in one plane. It is important to distinguish between “official” socialist realism and truly engaged works, embraced by the utopian but sincere pathos of revolutionary transformations.
Soviet culture is mass culture, which began to dominate the entire cultural system, pushing its folk and elite types to the periphery.
Socialist realist literature creates a new spirituality through the collision of “new” and “old” (the implantation of atheism, the destruction of original village foundations, the emergence of “newspeak”, the theme of creation through destruction) or replaces one tradition with another (the creation of a new community “Soviet people”, the replacement of family kin social connections: “native country, native plant, native leader”).
Thus, socialist realism is not just an aesthetic doctrine, but a complex cultural-ideological complex that cannot be studied based on traditional aesthetic standards. The socialist realist style should be understood not only as a method of expression, but also as a special mentality. New opportunities identified in modern science, allow a more objective approach to the study of socialist realism.
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Received by the editor on April 1, 2011.
SOCIALIST REALISM: METHOD OR STYLE
Nadezhda Viktorovna DUBROVINA, Engels Branch of Saratov State Technical University, Engels, Saratov region, Russian Federation, Senior Lecturer of Foreign Languages Department, e-mail: [email protected]
The article deals with the socialist realism as a difficult cultural-ideological complex which can't be studied by traditional esthetic measures. Realization of mass culture and literature tradition in socialist realism literature is analyzed.
Key words: socialist realism; totalitarian ideology mass culture.
Material from Wikipedia - the free encyclopedia
Socialist realism- an artistic method of literature and art, built on the socialist concept of the world and man. According to this concept, the artist was supposed to serve with his works the construction of a socialist society. Consequently, socialist realism was supposed to reflect life in the light of the ideals of socialism. The concept of “realism” is literary, and the concept of “socialist” is ideological. In themselves they contradict each other, but in this theory of art they merge. As a result, norms and criteria were formed, dictated by the Communist Party, and the artist, be he a writer, sculptor or painter, was obliged to create in accordance with them.
The literature of socialist realism was an instrument of party ideology. The writer was interpreted as an “engineer” human souls" With his talent he was supposed to influence the reader as a propagandist. He educated the reader in the spirit of the Party and at the same time supported it in the struggle for the victory of communism. The subjective actions and aspirations of the personalities of the heroes of works of socialist realism had to be brought into line with the objective course of history.
There had to be a positive character at the center of the work:
- He is an ideal communist and an example for a socialist society.
- He is a progressive person, to whom the doubts of the soul are alien.
Lenin expressed the idea that art should stand on the side of the proletariat in the following way: “Art belongs to the people. The deepest springs of art can be found among the broad class of working people... Art must be based on their feelings, thoughts and demands and must grow with them.” In addition, he clarified: “Literature must become party literature... Down with non-party writers. Down with the superhuman writers! Literary work must become part of the general proletarian cause, the cogs and wheels of one single great social-democratic mechanism, set in motion by the entire conscious vanguard of the entire working class.”
The founder of socialist realism in literature, Maxim Gorky (1868-1936), wrote the following about socialist realism: “It is vitally and creatively necessary for our writers to take a point of view from the height of which - and only from its height - all the dirty crimes of capitalism, all the meanness of his bloody intentions and all the greatness of the heroic work of the proletariat-dictator is visible.” He argued: “... a writer must have a good knowledge of the history of the past and knowledge of the social phenomena of our time, in which he is called upon to simultaneously play two roles: the role of a midwife and a gravedigger.”
A.M. Gorky believed that the main task of socialist realism is to cultivate a socialist, revolutionary view of the world, a corresponding sense of the world.
To follow the method of socialist realism, writing poetry and novels, creating paintings etc. it is necessary to subordinate the goals of exposing the crimes of capitalism and praising socialism in order to inspire readers and viewers to revolution, inflaming their minds with righteous anger. The method of socialist realism was formulated by Soviet cultural figures under the leadership of Stalin in 1932. It covered all areas of artistic activity (literature, drama, cinema, painting, sculpture, music and architecture). The method of socialist realism affirmed the following principles:
1) describe reality accurately, in accordance with specific historical revolutionary developments; 2) coordinate their artistic expression with the themes of ideological reforms and the education of workers in the socialist spirit.
Principles of socialist realism
- Nationality. The heroes of the works must come from the people, and the people are, first of all, workers and peasants.
- Party affiliation. Show heroic deeds, building a new life, revolutionary struggle for a bright future.
- Specificity. In depicting reality, show the process of historical development, which in turn must correspond to the doctrine of historical materialism (matter is primary, consciousness is secondary).
The Soviet era is usually called the period of Russian history of the 20th century, covering 1917-1991. At this time, Soviet artistic culture took shape and experienced the peak of its development. An important milestone on the path to becoming a major artistic direction art of the Soviet era, which later began to be called “socialist realism”, were works that affirmed the understanding of history as a tireless class struggle in the name of the ultimate goal - the elimination of private property and the establishment of people’s power (M. Gorky’s story “Mother”, his play “Enemies” ). In the development of art in the 1920s, two trends clearly emerged, which can be traced through the example of literature. On the one hand, a number of major writers did not accept the proletarian revolution and emigrated from Russia. On the other hand, some creators poeticized reality and believed in the height of the goals that the communists set for Russia. Hero of literature of the 20s. - a Bolshevik with a superhuman iron will. The works of V.V. Mayakovsky (“Left March”) and A.A. Blok (“The Twelve”) were created in this vein. A rather motley picture was presented by art 20s. Several groups emerged within it. The most significant group was the Association of Artists of the Revolution. They depicted today: the life of the Red Army, the life of workers, peasants, revolutionaries and labor.” They considered themselves the heirs of the Wanderers. They went to factories, factories, and Red Army barracks to directly observe the lives of their characters, to “sketch” it. Another creative community - OST (Society of Easel Painters) united young people who graduated from the first Soviet art university. OST's motto is the development of themes in easel painting that reflect the signs of the 20th century: industrial city, industrial production, sports, etc. Unlike the masters of the Academy of Arts, the “Ostovites” saw their aesthetic ideal not in the work of their predecessors - the “Itinerant” artists, but in the latest European movements.
Some works of socialist realism
- Maxim Gorky, novel "Mother"
- group of authors, painting “Speech by V.I. Lenin at the Third Komsomol Congress”
- Arkady Plastov, painting “The Fascist Flew Over” (Tretyakov Gallery)
- A. Gladkov, novel “Cement”
- film "The Pig Farmer and the Shepherd"
- film "Tractor Drivers"
- Boris Ioganson, painting “Interrogation of Communists” (Tretyakov Gallery)
- Sergei Gerasimov, painting “Partisan” (Tretyakov Gallery)
- Fyodor Reshetnikov, painting “Deuce Again” (Tretyakov Gallery)
- Yuri Neprintsev, painting “After the Battle” (Vasily Terkin)
- Vera Mukhina, sculpture “Worker and Collective Farm Woman” (at VDNKh)
- Mikhail Sholokhov, novel " Quiet Don»
- Alexander Laktionov, painting “Letter from the Front” (Tretyakov Gallery)
What is socialist realism
This was the name of the movement in literature and art that developed at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. and established in the era of socialism. In fact, it was an official direction that was fully encouraged and supported by the party bodies of the USSR not only within the country, but also abroad.
Socialist realism - emergence
Officially, this term was announced in the press by the Literaturnaya Gazeta on May 23, 1932.
(Neyasov V.A. "The guy from the Urals")
In literary works, a description of the life of the people was combined with the depiction of bright individuals and life events. In the 20s of the twentieth century, under the influence of the developing Soviet fiction and art, the movements of socialist realism began to emerge and take shape in foreign countries: Germany, Bulgaria, Poland, Czechoslovakia, France and other countries. Socialist realism in the USSR finally established itself in the 30s. 20th century, as the main method of multinational Soviet literature. After its official proclamation, socialist realism began to be opposed to the realism of the 19th century, called “critical” by Gorky.
(K. Yuon "New Planet")
From the official platforms it was proclaimed that, based on the fact that in the new socialist society there are no grounds for criticizing the system, the works of socialist realism should glorify the heroism of the working days of the multinational Soviet people, building their bright future.
(Tihiy I.D. "Admission to the Pioneers")
In fact, it turned out that the introduction of the ideas of socialist realism through an organization specially created for this in 1932, the Union of Artists of the USSR and the Ministry of Culture, led to the complete subordination of art and literature to the dominant ideology and politics. Any artistic and creative associations other than the Union of Artists of the USSR were prohibited. From this moment on, the main customer is government agencies, the main genre is thematic works. Those writers who defended freedom of creativity and did not fit into the “official line” became outcasts.
(Zvyagin M. L. "To work")
The brightest representative of socialist realism was Maxim Gorky, the founder of socialist realism in literature. Standing in the same row with him are: Alexander Fadeev, Alexander Serafimovich, Nikolai Ostrovsky, Konstantin Fedin, Dmitry Furmanov and many other Soviet writers.
The decline of socialist realism
(F. Shapaev "Rural Postman")
The collapse of the Union led to the destruction of the theme itself in all areas of art and literature. In the 10 years that followed, works of socialist realism were thrown out and destroyed in large quantities not only in the former USSR, but also in post-Soviet countries. However, the advent of the 21st century has once again awakened interest in the remaining “works of the era of totalitarianism.”
(A. Gulyaev "New Year")
After the Union faded into oblivion, socialist realism in art and literature was replaced by a mass of movements and trends, most of which were outright banned. Of course, a certain halo of “forbiddenness” played a certain role in their popularization after the collapse of the socialist regime. But, in this moment, despite their presence in literature and art, they cannot be called widely popular and popular. However, the final verdict always remains with the reader.
Socialist realism: the individual is socially active and included in the creation of history through violent means.
The philosophical foundation of socialist realism was Marxism, which asserts: 1) the proletariat is a messiah class, historically called upon to make a revolution and by force, through the dictatorship of the proletariat, transform society from an unjust to a just one; 2) at the head of the proletariat is a party of a new type, consisting of professionals called upon after the revolution to lead the construction of a new classless society in which people are deprived of private property (as it turned out, thereby people become absolutely dependent on the state, and the state itself becomes de facto property of the party bureaucracy that heads it).
These socio-utopian (and, as historically revealed, inevitably leading to totalitarianism), philosophical and political postulates found their continuation in Marxist aesthetics, which directly underlies socialist realism. The main ideas of Marxism in aesthetics are as follows.
- 1. Art, having some relative independence from the economy, is determined by the economy and artistic and mental traditions.
- 2. Art has the power to influence and mobilize the masses.
- 3. Party leadership of art directs it in the right direction.
- 4. Art must be imbued with historical optimism and serve the cause of society's movement towards communism. It must affirm the system established by the revolution. However, at the level of the house manager and even the chairman of the collective farm, criticism is acceptable; in exceptional circumstances 1941-1942 with Stalin’s personal permission, criticism of even the front commander was allowed in A. Korneychuk’s play “Front”. 5. Marxist epistemology, which places practice at the forefront, has become the basis for the interpretation of the figurative nature of art. 6. Lenin’s principle of party membership continued the ideas of Marx and Engels about classism and tendentiousness of art and introduced the idea of serving the party into the artist’s very creative consciousness.
On this philosophical and aesthetic basis, socialist realism arose - an art biased by the party bureaucracy that served the needs of a totalitarian society in the formation of a “new man.” According to official aesthetics, this art reflected the interests of the proletariat, and later of the entire socialist society. Socialist realism is an artistic movement that affirms the artistic concept: the individual is socially active and included in the creation of history through violent means.
Western theorists and critics give their definitions of socialist realism. According to the English critic J. A. Gooddon, “Socialist realism is an artistic credo developed in Russia to introduce Marxist doctrine and spread to other communist countries. This art affirms the goals of a socialist society and views the artist as a servant of the state or, in accordance with Stalin's definition, as an "engineer of human souls." Gooddon noted that socialist realism encroached on the freedom of creativity, which Pasternak and Solzhenitsyn rebelled against, and “they were shamelessly used for propaganda purposes by the Western press.”
Critics Karl Benson and Arthur Gatz write: “Socialist realism is traditional for the 19th century. a method of prose storytelling and dramaturgy associated with themes that favorably interpret the socialist idea. In the Soviet Union, especially during the Stalin era, as well as in other communist countries, it was artificially imposed on artists by the literary establishment."
Within the biased, official art, semi-official, politically neutral, but deeply humanistic (B. Okudzhava, V. Vysotsky, A. Galich) and frontier (A. Voznesensky) art, tolerated by the authorities, developed as a heresy. The latter is mentioned in the epigram:
The poet with his poetry
Creates worldwide intrigue.
It is with the permission of the authorities
Shows nothing to the authorities.
socialist realism totalitarian proletariat marxist
During periods of softening of the totalitarian regime (for example, during the “thaw”), works that were uncompromisingly truthful (“One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” by Solzhenitsyn) also appeared on the pages of the press. However, even in tougher times, there was a “back door” next to ceremonial art: poets used Aesopian language, went into children’s literature, into literary translation. Rejected artists (underground) formed groups, associations (for example, “SMOG”, Lianozovsky school of painting and poetry), unofficial exhibitions were created (for example, “bulldozer” in Izmailovo) - all this made it easier to endure the social boycott of publishing houses, exhibition committees, bureaucratic authorities and “cultural police stations.”
The theory of socialist realism was filled with dogmas and vulgar sociological propositions and, in this form, was used as a means of bureaucratic pressure on art. This manifested itself in the authoritarianism and subjectivity of judgments and assessments, in interference in creative activity, violation of creative freedom, rigid command methods of art management. Such leadership cost the multinational Soviet culture dearly, affecting the spiritual and moral state of society, and the human and creative fate of many artists.
Many artists, including the greatest, became victims of tyranny during the years of Stalinism: E. Charents, T. Tabidze, B. Pilnyak, I. Babel, M. Koltsov, O. Mandelstam, P. Markish, V. Meyerhold, S. Mikhoels . Y. Olesha, M. Bulgakov, A. Platonov, V. Grossman, B. Pasternak were pushed aside from the artistic process and remained silent for years or worked at a quarter of their strength, unable to show the results of their creativity. R. Falk, A. Tairov, A. Koonen.
The incompetence of art management was also reflected in the awarding of high prizes for opportunistic and weak works, which, despite the propaganda hype around them, not only did not enter the golden fund of artistic culture, but were generally quickly forgotten (S. Babaevsky, M. Bubennov, A. Surov, A. Sofronov).
Incompetence and authoritarianism, rudeness were not only personal characteristics of the party leaders, but (absolute power corrupts leaders absolutely!) became the style of the party leadership of artistic culture. The very principle of party leadership of art is a false and countercultural idea.
Post-perestroika criticism saw a number of important features of socialist realism. "Socialist realism. He is not at all so odious, he has quite enough analogues. If you look at him without social pain and through the prism of cinema, it turns out that the famous american film thirties" gone With the Wind“in its artistic merits it is equivalent to the Soviet film of the same years “Circus”. And if we return to literature, then Feuchtwanger’s novels in their aesthetics are not at all polar with A. Tolstoy’s epic “Peter the Great”. It is not for nothing that Feuchtwanger loved Stalin so much. Socialist realism is everything the same “grand style,” but only in the Soviet way.” (Yarkevich. 1999) Socialist realism is not only an artistic movement (a stable concept of the world and personality) and a type of “grand style,” but also a method.
The method of socialist realism as a way of imaginative thinking, a way of creating a politically tendentious work that fulfills a certain social order, was used far beyond the sphere of dominance of communist ideology, and was used for purposes alien to the conceptual orientation of socialist realism as an artistic movement. Thus, in 1972, at the Metropolitan Opera, I saw a musical performance that struck me with its tendentiousness. A young student came on vacation to Puerto Rico, where he met beautiful girl. They dance and sing merrily at the carnival. Then they decide to get married and fulfill their desire, due to which the dancing becomes especially temperamental. The only thing that upsets the young people is that he is just a student, and she is a poor peasant girl. However, this does not stop them from singing and dancing. In the midst of the wedding revelry, a blessing and a check for a million dollars arrives from New York from the parents of a student for the newlyweds. Here the fun becomes uncontrollable, all the dancers are arranged in a pyramid - below are the Puerto Rican people, above are the distant relatives of the bride, even above are her parents, and at the very top are the rich American student groom and the poor Puerto Rican bride-girl. Above them is a striped US flag with many stars burning on it. Everyone sings, and the bride and groom kiss and the moment their lips join, the American flag lights up new star, which means the emergence of a new American state - Pueru Rico is part of the United States. Among the most vulgar plays of Soviet drama, it is difficult to find a work that, in its vulgarity and straightforward political bias, reaches the level of this American performance. Why not the method of socialist realism?
According to the proclaimed theoretical postulates, socialist realism involves the inclusion of romance in imaginative thinking - a figurative form of historical anticipation, a dream based on real trends in the development of reality and overtaking the natural course of events.
Socialist realism affirms the need for historicism in art: historically specific artistic reality must acquire “three-dimensionality” in it (the writer strives to capture, in Gorky’s words, “three realities” - past, present and future). Here socialist realism is invaded by
stools of the utopian ideology of communism, which firmly knows the path to the “bright future of humanity.” However, for poetry, this aspiration to the future (even if it is utopian) had a lot of attractiveness, and the poet Leonid Martynov wrote:
Don't honor
Yourself worthwhile
Only here, in reality,
Present,
And imagine yourself walking,
Along the border between the past and the future
Mayakovsky also introduces the future into the reality of the 20s he depicts in the plays “The Bedbug” and “Bathhouse”. This image of the future appears in Mayakovsky’s dramaturgy both in the form of the Phosphoric Woman and in the form of a time machine, carrying people worthy of communism into a distant and beautiful tomorrow, and spitting out bureaucrats and other “unworthy of communism.” I note that society will “spit out” many “unworthy” people into the Gulag throughout its history, and some twenty-five years will pass after Mayakovsky wrote these plays and the concept of “unworthy of communism” will be widespread (“by the philosopher” D. Chesnokov, with approval of Stalin) on entire peoples (already evicted from places of historical residence or subject to deportation). This is how the artistic ideas turn out even of the really “best and most talented poet of the Soviet era” (I. Stalin), who created works of art that were vividly embodied on stage by both V. Meyerhold and V. Pluchek. However, nothing surprising: reliance on utopian ideas, including the principle of historical improvement of the world through violence, could not help but result in some “liking” to the Gulag’s “urgent tasks.”
Domestic art in the twentieth century. went through a number of stages, some of which enriched world culture masterpieces, while others had a decisive (not always beneficial) impact on the artistic process in countries of Eastern Europe and in Asia (China, Vietnam, North Korea).
First stage (1900--1917) -- silver Age. Symbolism, Acmeism, and Futurism originated and developed. In the novel “Mother” by Gorky, the principles of socialist realism are formed. Socialist realism arose at the beginning of the twentieth century. in Russia. Its founder was Maxim Gorky, whose artistic endeavors were continued and developed by Soviet art.
The second stage (1917-1932) is characterized by aesthetic polyphony and pluralism of artistic movements.
The Soviet government introduces brutal censorship, Trotsky believes that it is directed against the “union of capital with prejudice.” Gorky is trying to resist this violence against culture, for which Trotsky disrespectfully calls him “the most amiable psalm-reader.” Trotsky laid the foundation for the Soviet tradition of evaluating artistic phenomena not from an aesthetic, but from a purely political point of view. He gives political rather than aesthetic characteristics of the phenomena of art: “cadetism”, “joined”, “fellow travelers”. In this regard, Stalin will become a true Trotskyist and social utilitarianism and political pragmatics will become the dominant principles for him in his approach to art.
During these years, the formation of socialist realism took place and its discovery of an active personality participating in the creation of history through violence, according to the utopian model of the classics of Marxism. In art, the problem of a new artistic concept of personality and the world arose.
There was intense controversy around this concept in the 1920s. As the highest human virtues, the art of socialist realism glorifies socially important and significant qualities - heroism, selflessness, self-sacrifice (“The Death of a Commissar” by Petrov-Vodkin), self-giving (“give your heart to the times to break” - Mayakovsky).
The inclusion of the individual in the life of society becomes an important task of art and this is a valuable feature of socialist realism. However, the individual's own interests are not taken into account. Art asserts that a person’s personal happiness lies in dedication and service to the “happy future of humanity,” and the source of historical optimism and the filling of an individual’s life with social meaning lies in his involvement in the creation of a new “fair society.” Serafimovich’s novels “Iron Stream” are imbued with this pathos , “Chapaev” by Furmanov, the poem “Good” by Mayakovsky. In Sergei Eisenstein’s films “Strike” and “Battleship Potemkin,” the fate of the individual is overshadowed by the fate of the masses. The subject becomes what in humanistic art, concerned with the fate of the individual, was only a secondary element, “social background”, “social landscape”, “mass scene”, “epic retreat”.
However, some artists moved away from the dogmas of socialist realism. Thus, S. Eisenstein still did not completely eliminate the individual hero, did not sacrifice him to history. The mother evokes the strongest compassion in the episode on the Odessa stairs (“Battleship Potemkin”). At the same time, the director remains in line with socialist realism and does not limit the viewer’s sympathy to the personal fate of the character, but focuses the audience on experiencing the drama of history itself and asserts the historical necessity and legitimacy of the revolutionary action of the Black Sea sailors.
An invariant of the artistic concept of socialist realism at the first stage of its development: man in the “iron stream” of history “flows like a drop with the masses.” In other words, the meaning of an individual’s life is seen in selflessness (a person’s heroic ability to be involved in the creation of a new reality is affirmed, even at the cost of his direct everyday interests, and sometimes at the cost of life itself), in involvement in the creation of history (“and there are no other worries!”). Pragmatic and political tasks are placed above moral postulates and humanistic orientations. So, E. Bagritsky calls:
And if the era orders: kill! - Kill.
And if the era orders: lie! - Lie.
At this stage, next to socialist realism, other artistic movements are developing, asserting their invariants of the artistic concept of the world and personality (constructivism - I. Selvinsky, K. Zelinsky, I. Ehrenburg; neo-romanticism - A. Green; acmeism - N. Gumilyov , A. Akhmatova, imagism - S. Yesenin, Mariengof, symbolism - A. Blok; literary schools and associations arise and develop - LEF, Napostovites, “Pereval”, RAPP).
The very concept of “socialist realism,” which expressed the artistic and conceptual qualities of the new art, arose in the course of heated discussions and theoretical searches. These searches were a collective endeavor, in which many cultural figures took part in the late 20s and early 30s, who defined the new method of literature in different ways: “proletarian realism” (F. Gladkov, Yu. Lebedinsky), “tendentious realism" (V. Mayakovsky), "monumental realism" (A. Tolstoy), "realism with socialist content" (V. Stavsky). In the 30s, cultural figures increasingly agreed on defining the creative method of Soviet art as the method of socialist realism. “Literary Gazette” on May 29, 1932 in the editorial “For work!” wrote: “The masses demand from artists sincerity, revolutionary socialist realism in depicting the proletarian revolution.” The head of the Ukrainian writers' organization I. Kulik (Kharkov, 1932) said: “...conditionally, the method that you and I could focus on should be called “revolutionary socialist realism.” At a meeting of writers at Gorky’s apartment on October 25, 1932, socialist realism was named as the artistic method of literature during the discussion. Later, the collective efforts to develop a concept of the artistic method of Soviet literature were “forgotten” and everything was attributed to Stalin.
The third stage (1932--1956). When the Writers' Union was formed in the first half of the 30s, socialist realism was defined as an artistic method that requires the writer to provide a truthful and historically specific depiction of reality in its revolutionary development; The task of educating workers in the spirit of communism was emphasized. There was nothing specifically aesthetic in this definition, nothing pertaining to art itself. The definition oriented art towards political engagement and was equally applicable to history as a science, to journalism, and to propaganda and agitation. At the same time, this definition of socialist realism was difficult to apply to such types of art as architecture, applied and decorative arts, music, to such genres as landscape, still life. Essentially, lyricism and satire turned out to be outside the specified understanding of the artistic method. It banished or questioned major artistic values from our culture.
In the first half of the 30s. aesthetic pluralism is administratively suppressed, the idea of an active personality is deepened, but this personality does not always have an orientation towards truly humanistic values. Highest life values become the leader, the party and its goals.
In 1941, war invades the life of the Soviet people. Literature and art are included in the spiritual support of the fight against the fascist occupiers and victory. During this period, the art of socialist realism, where it does not fall into the primitiveness of agitation, most fully corresponds to the vital interests of the people.
In 1946, when our country lived with the joy of victory and the pain of enormous losses, a resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks was adopted “On the magazines Zvezda and Leningrad.” A. Zhdanov spoke at a meeting of party activists and writers of Leningrad to explain the resolution.
The creativity and personality of M. Zoshchenko were characterized by Zhdanov in the following “literary-critical” expressions: “philistine and vulgar”, “non-Soviet writer”, “dirtyness and lewdness”, “turns his vulgar and low soul inside out”, “unprincipled and unscrupulous literary hooligan".
It was said about A. Akhmatova that the range of her poetry is “limited to the point of squalor”, her work “cannot be tolerated on the pages of our magazines”, that, “besides the harm”, the work of this is either a “nun” or a “harlot” can give nothing to our youth.
Zhdanov’s extreme literary-critical vocabulary is the only argument and tool of “analysis.” The rude tone of literary teachings, elaborations, persecution, prohibitions, and martinet interference in the work of artists were justified by the dictates of historical circumstances, the extremity of the situations being experienced, and the constant aggravation of the class struggle.
Socialist realism was bureaucratically used as a separator, separating “permissible” (“our”) art from “illegal” (“not ours”) art. Because of this, the diversity of Russian art was rejected, neo-romanticism was pushed to the periphery of artistic life or even beyond the boundaries of the artistic process (A. Green’s story “ Scarlet Sails", painting by A. Rylov "In the blue expanse"), new realist existential-event, humanistic art (M. Bulgakov " White Guard", B. Pasternak "Doctor Zhivago", A. Platonov "The Pit", sculpture by S. Konenkov, painting by P. Korin), realism of memory (painting by R. Falk and graphics by V. Favorsky), poetry of the state of the individual’s spirit (M. Tsvetaeva , O. Mandelstam, A. Akhmatova, later I. Brodsky). History has put everything in its place and today it is clear that it is these works, rejected by official culture, that constitute the essence of the artistic process of the era and are its main artistic achievements and aesthetic values.
The artistic method as a historically conditioned type of figurative thinking is determined by three factors: 1) reality, 2) the worldview of artists, 3) the artistic and mental material from which they proceed. The imaginative thinking of the artists of socialist realism was based on the vital basis of the reality of the twentieth century, which accelerated in its development, on the ideological basis of the principles of historicism and the dialectical understanding of existence, relying on the realistic traditions of Russian and world art. Therefore, with all its tendentiousness, socialist realism, in accordance with the realistic tradition, aimed the artist at creating a three-dimensional, aesthetically multi-colored character. Such, for example, is the character of Grigory Melekhov in the novel “Quiet Don” by M. Sholokhov.
The fourth stage (1956-1984) - the art of socialist realism, affirming a historically active personality, began to think about its intrinsic value. If the artists did not directly attack the power of the party or the principles of socialist realism, the bureaucracy tolerated them; if they served, they were rewarded. “And if not, then no”: the persecution of B. Pasternak, the “bulldozer” dispersal of the exhibition in Izmailovo, the study of artists “at the highest level” (by Khrushchev) in Manezh, the arrest of I. Brodsky, the expulsion of A. Solzhenitsyn... -- “stages of the long path” of the party leadership of art.
During this period, the statutory definition of socialist realism finally lost its authority. Pre-sunset phenomena began to increase. All this affected the artistic process: it lost its guidelines, a “vibration” arose in it, on the one hand, the proportion of artistic works and literary critical articles of an anti-humanistic and nationalist orientation increased, on the other hand, works of apocryphal-dissident and unofficial democratic content appeared .
In place of the lost definition, the following can be given, reflecting the features of the new stage literary development: socialist realism is a method (method, tool) for constructing artistic reality and the corresponding artistic direction, absorbing the socio-aesthetic experience of the twentieth century, carrying within itself the artistic concept: the world is not perfect, “the world must first be remade, having remade it you can sing”; the individual must be socially active in the cause of violent change in the world.
Self-awareness awakens in this person - a sense of self-worth and a protest against violence (P. Nilin “Cruelty”).
Despite the ongoing bureaucratic interference in the artistic process, despite the continued reliance on the idea of violent transformation of the world, the vital impulses of reality, the powerful artistic traditions of the past contributed to the emergence of a number of valuable works (Sholokhov’s story “The Fate of a Man”, M. Romm’s films “Ordinary Fascism” and “ Nine Days of One Year”, M. Kalatozov’s “The Cranes Are Flying”, G. Chukhrai’s “The Forty-First” and “The Ballad of a Soldier”, S. Smirnov’s “Belorussky Station”). I note that many of the most striking and historical works were dedicated to Patriotic War against the fascists, which is explained by the real heroism of the era, and the high civil-patriotic pathos that gripped the entire society during this period, and by the fact that the main conceptual orientation of socialist realism (creating history through violence) during the war years coincided with both the vector of historical development and popular consciousness, and in this case did not contradict the principles of humanism.
Since the 60s. the art of socialist realism affirms the connection of man with the broad tradition of the national existence of the people (works by V. Shukshin and Ch. Aitmatov). In the first decades of its development, Soviet art (Vs. Ivanov and A. Fadeev in the images of Far Eastern partisans, D. Furmanov in the image of Chapaev, M. Sholokhov in the image of Davydov) captured images of people breaking away from the traditions and way of life of the old world. It would seem that there was a decisive and irrevocable break in the invisible threads connecting the personality with the past. However, the art of 1964-1984 pays increasing attention to how and what features a person is connected with centuries-old psychological, cultural, ethnographic, everyday, ethical traditions, because it turned out that a person who, in a revolutionary impulse, breaks with national tradition, is deprived of the soil for a socially expedient, humane life (Ch Aitmatov "White Steamer"). Without connection with national culture, a person turns out to be empty and destructively cruel.
A. Platonov put forward an artistic formula that was “ahead of its time”: “Without me, the people are not complete.” This is a wonderful formula - one of the highest achievements of socialist realism at its new stage (despite the fact that this position was put forward and artistically proven by the outcast of socialist realism - Platonov, it could only grow on the sometimes fertile, sometimes dead, and generally contradictory soil this artistic movement). The same idea about the merging of human life with the life of the people is also heard in Mayakovsky’s artistic formula: man “flows like a drop with the masses.” However, the new historical period is felt in Platonov’s emphasis on the intrinsic value of the individual.
The history of socialist realism has instructively demonstrated that what is important in art is not opportunism, but artistic truth, no matter how bitter and “inconvenient” it may be. The party leadership, the criticism that served it, and some postulates of socialist realism demanded “artistic truth” from the works, which coincided with the momentary situation and corresponded to the tasks set by the party. Otherwise, the work could be banned and thrown out of the artistic process, and the author would be persecuted or even ostracized.
History shows that the “banners” remained outside it, and the prohibited work was returned to it (for example, the poems by A. Tvardovsky “By the Right of Memory”, “Terkin in the Next World”).
Pushkin said: “Heavy damask steel, crushing glass, forges damask steel.” In our country, a terrible totalitarian force “fragmented” the intelligentsia, turning some into informers, others into drunkards, and others into conformists. However, in some, a deep artistic consciousness was forged, combined with vast life experience. This part of the intelligentsia (F. Iskander, V. Grossman, Yu. Dombrovsky, A. Solzhenitsyn) created profound and uncompromising works in the most difficult circumstances.
By even more decisively affirming the historically active personality, the art of socialist realism for the first time begins to realize the reciprocity of the process: not only the individual for history, but also history for the individual. Through the crackling slogans of serving a “happy future,” the idea of human self-worth begins to break through.
The art of socialist realism in the spirit of belated classicism continues to assert the priority of the “general”, state over the “private”, personal. The inclusion of the individual in the historical creativity of the masses continues to be preached. At the same time, in the novels of V. Bykov, Ch. Aitmatov, in the films of T. Abuladze, E. Klimov, and in the plays of A. Vasiliev, O. Efremov, G. Tovstonogov, not only does the theme of the individual’s responsibility to society, familiar to socialist realism, sound, but also a theme arises that prepares the idea of “perestroika”, the theme of society’s responsibility for the fate and happiness of a person.
Thus, socialist realism comes to self-negation. Within it (and not just outside it, in disgraced and underground art) an idea begins to sound: man is not fuel for history, providing energy for abstract progress. The future is created by people for people. A person must give himself to people; selfish isolation deprives life of meaning, turns it into absurdity (the promotion and approval of this idea is a merit of the art of socialist realism). If the spiritual growth of a person outside of society is fraught with degradation of the individual, then the development of society outside and apart from a person, contrary to his interests, is detrimental to both the individual and society. These ideas after 1984 will become the spiritual foundation of perestroika and glasnost, and after 1991 - the democratization of society. However, hopes for perestroika and democratization were far from being fully realized. The relatively soft, stable and socially concerned regime of the Brezhnev type (totalitarianism with an almost human face) was replaced by a corrupt, unstable terry democracy (oligarchy with an almost criminal face), concerned with the division and redistribution of public property, and not with the fate of the people and the state.
Just as the slogan of freedom put forward by the Renaissance “do what you want!” led to the crisis of the Renaissance (for not everyone wanted to do good), and the artistic ideas that prepared perestroika (all for man) turned into a crisis of both perestroika and the whole society, because bureaucrats and democrats considered only themselves and some of their own kind to be people; According to party, national and other group characteristics, people were divided into “ours” and “not ours”.
The fifth period (mid-80s - 90s) - the end of socialist realism (it did not survive socialism and Soviet power) and the beginning of the pluralistic development of domestic art: new trends in realism developed (V. Makanin), social art appeared (Melamid, Komar), conceptualism (D. Prigov) and other postmodern movements in literature and painting.
Nowadays, democratically and humanistically oriented art has two opponents, undermining and destroying the highest humanistic values of humanity. The first enemy of new art and new forms of life is social indifference, the egocentrism of the individual who celebrates the historical liberation from state control and has abdicated all responsibilities to society; selfishness of neophytes of the “market economy”. The other enemy is the leftist-lumpen extremism of those dispossessed by a self-interested, corrupt and stupid democracy, forcing people to look back at the communist values of the past with their herd collectivism that destroys the individual.
The development of society, its improvement must go through a person, in the name of the individual, and a self-valued personality, having unlocked social and personal egoism, must join the life of society and develop in accordance with it. This is a reliable reference point for art. Without affirming the need for social progress, literature degenerates, but it is important that progress occurs not in spite of or at the expense of man, but in his name. A happy society is one in which history moves through the channel of the individual. Unfortunately, this truth turned out to be unknown or uninteresting neither to the communist builders of the distant “bright future”, nor to shock therapists and other builders of the market and democracy. This truth is not very close to the Western defenders of individual rights, who rained bombs on Yugoslavia. For them, these rights are a tool in the fight against opponents and rivals, and not a real program of action.
The democratization of our society and the disappearance of party tutelage contributed to the publication of works whose authors strive to artistically comprehend the history of our society in all its drama and tragedy (the work of Alexander Solzhenitsyn “The Gulag Archipelago” is especially significant in this regard).
The idea of the aesthetics of socialist realism about the active influence of literature on reality turned out to be correct, but greatly exaggerated; in any case, artistic ideas do not become “material force.” Igor Yarkevich, in an article published on the Internet “Literature, aesthetics, freedom and other interesting things” writes: “Long before 1985, in all liberal-oriented parties it sounded like a motto: “If you publish the Bible and Solzhenitsyn tomorrow, then the day after tomorrow we will wake up in another country.” . Dominion over the world through literature - this idea warmed the hearts of not only the secretaries of the joint venture.”
It was thanks to the new atmosphere after 1985 that “The Tale of the Unextinguished Moon” by Boris Pilnyak, “Doctor Zhivago” by Boris Pasternak, “The Pit” by Andrei Platonov, “Life and Fate” by Vasily Grossman and other works that remained outside the reading circle for many years were published Soviet person. New films have appeared: “My Friend Ivan Lapshin”, “Plumbum, or a Dangerous Game”, “Is It Easy to Be Young”, “Taxi Blues”, “Should We Send a Messenger”. Films of the last one and a half decades of the twentieth century. they talk with pain about the tragedies of the past (“Repentance”), express concern for the fate of the younger generation (“Courier”, “Luna Park”), and talk about hopes for the future. Some of these works will remain in the history of artistic culture, and all of them pave the way to new art and a new understanding of the destinies of man and the world.
Perestroika created a special cultural situation in Russia.
Culture is dialogical. Changes in the reader and his life experience lead to changes in literature, not only in the emerging literature, but also in the existing one. Its content changes. “With fresh and present eyes” the reader reads literary texts and finds in them previously unknown meaning and value. This law of aesthetics is especially clearly manifested in critical epochs, when the life experience of people.
The turning point of perestroika affected not only social status and the rating of literary works, but also on the state of the literary process.
What is this condition like? All the main directions and trends of Russian literature have undergone a crisis, because the ideals, positive programs, options, and artistic concepts of the world they proposed turned out to be untenable. (The latter does not exclude the artistic significance of individual works, most often created at the cost of the writer’s departure from the concept of direction. An example of this is V. Astafiev’s relationship with village prose.)
The literature of the bright present and future (socialist realism in its “pure form”) has disappeared from culture in the last two decades. The crisis of the very idea of building communism deprived this direction of its ideological foundation and goals. The Gulag Archipelago alone is enough for all works that show life in a rosy light to reveal their falsity.
The newest modification of socialist realism, the product of its crisis, was the National Bolshevik movement of literature. In a state-patriotic form, this trend is represented by the work of Prokhanov, who glorified the export of violence in the form of the invasion of Soviet troops in Afghanistan. The nationalist form of this trend can be found in the works published by the magazines “Young Guard” and “Our Contemporary”. The collapse of this trend is clearly visible against the historical background of the flames that burned the Reichstag twice (in 1934 and 1945). And no matter how this direction develops, historically it has already been refuted and is alien to world culture.
I have already noted above that during the construction of the “new man”, connections with deep layers were weakened and sometimes lost national culture. This resulted in many disasters for the peoples on whom this experiment was carried out. And the worst of all troubles was the new man’s readiness for interethnic conflicts (Sumgait, Karabakh, Osh, Fergana, South Ossetia, Georgia, Abkhazia, Transnistria) and civil wars(Georgia, Tajikistan, Chechnya). Anti-Semitism was complemented by rejection of “persons of Caucasian nationality.” The Polish intellectual Michnik is right: the highest and final stage of socialism is nationalism. Another sad confirmation of this is the non-peaceful divorce in Yugoslav style and peaceful divorce in Czechoslovak or Belovezhsk style.
The crisis of socialist realism gave birth to the literary movement of socialist liberalism in the 70s. The idea of socialism with a human face became the pillar of this movement. The artist performed a hairdressing operation: the Stalinist mustache was shaved off the face of socialism and a Leninist beard was glued on. M. Shatrov’s plays were created according to this scheme. This movement was forced to solve political problems through artistic means when other means were closed. Writers put makeup on the face of barracks socialism. Shatrov gave a liberal interpretation of our history for those times, an interpretation capable of both satisfying and enlightening the higher authorities. Many spectators were delighted with the fact that Trotsky was given a hint, and this was already perceived as a discovery, or the hint said that Stalin was not entirely good. This was received with delight by our half-suppressed intelligentsia.
V. Rozov’s plays were also written in the vein of socialist liberalism and socialism with a human face. His young hero destroys furniture in the house of a former security officer with his father's Budennov saber taken from the wall, which was once used to cut down the White Guard counter. Today, such temporarily progressive works have gone from being half-true and moderately attractive to being false. The age of their triumph was short.
Another current of Russian literature is lumpen intellectual literature. A lumpen intellectual is an educated person who knows something about something, does not have a philosophical view of the world, does not feel personal responsibility for it, and is accustomed to thinking “freely” within the framework of cautious fronderism. The lumpen writer owns an art form borrowed from the masters of the past, which gives his work some appeal. However, he is not given the opportunity to apply this form to the real problems of existence: his consciousness is empty, he does not know what to say to people. Lumpen intellectuals use an exquisite form to convey highly artistic thoughts about nothing. This often happens with modern poets who master poetic technique, but lack the ability to comprehend modernity. A lumpen writer puts forward as literary hero his own alter ego, an empty, weak-willed, petty miscreant, capable of “grabbing what lies badly,” but incapable of love, unable to either give a woman happiness or become happy himself. This is, for example, the prose of M. Roshchin. A lumpen intellectual can be neither a hero nor a creator of high literature.
One of the products of the collapse of socialist realism was the neocritical naturalism of Kaledin and other exposers of the “lead abominations” of our army, cemetery and city life. This is everyday life writing like Pomyalovsky, only with less culture and less literary abilities.
Another manifestation of the crisis of socialist realism was the “camp” movement of literature. Unfortunately, many products
the writing of “camp” literature turned out to be at the level of the above-mentioned everyday life writing and lacked philosophical and artistic greatness. However, since these works dealt with everyday life that was unfamiliar to the general reader, its “exotic” details aroused great interest, and works that conveyed these details turned out to be socially significant and sometimes artistically valuable.
The literature of the Gulag brought into the people's consciousness the enormous tragic life experience of camp life. This literature will remain in the history of culture, especially in such its highest manifestations as the works of Solzhenitsyn and Shalamov.
Neo-emigrant literature (V. Voinovich, S. Dovlatov, V. Aksenov, Yu. Aleshkovsky, N. Korzhavin), living the life of Russia, has done a lot for the artistic understanding of our existence. “You can’t see faces face to face,” and even at an emigrant distance, writers really manage to see a lot of important things in a particularly bright light. In addition, neo-immigrant literature has its own powerful Russian emigrant tradition, which includes Bunin, Kuprin, Nabokov, Zaitsev, Gazdanov. Today, all emigrant literature has become part of our Russian literary process, part of our spiritual life.
At the same time, bad trends have emerged in the neo-emigrant wing of Russian literature: 1) division of Russian writers according to the following criteria: left (= decent and talented) - did not leave (= dishonest and mediocre); 2) a fashion has arisen: living in a cozy and well-fed distance, giving categorical advice and assessments of events on which the emigrant’s life almost does not depend, but which threaten the very lives of citizens in Russia. There is something immodest and even immoral in such “advice from an outsider” (especially when it is categorical and contains an undercurrent: you idiots in Russia don’t understand the simplest things).
Everything is good in Russian literature was born as something critical, opposing the existing order of things. This is fine. This is the only way in a totalitarian society that the birth of cultural values is possible. However, simple negation, simple criticism of what exists does not yet provide access to the highest literary achievements. Higher values appear along with a philosophical vision of the world and clear ideals. If Leo Tolstoy simply spoke about the abominations of life, he would be Gleb Uspensky. But this is not world level. Tolstoy developed the artistic concept of non-resistance to evil through violence, internal self-improvement of the individual; he argued that you can only destroy with violence, but you can build with love, and you should transform yourself first of all.
This concept of Tolstoy foresaw the twentieth century, and, if it had been heeded, it would have prevented the disasters of this century. Today she helps to understand and overcome them. We miss a concept of this magnitude, spanning our era and extending into the future. And when it appears, we will have great literature again. She is on her way, and the guarantee of this is the traditions of Russian literature and the tragic life experience of our intelligentsia, gained in the camps, in queues, at work and in the kitchen.
The pinnacles of Russian and world literature “War and Peace”, “Crime and Punishment”, “The Master and Margarita” are behind us and ahead. The fact that we had Ilf and Petrov, Platonov, Bulgakov, Tsvetaeva, Akhmatova gives confidence in the great future of our literature. The unique tragic life experience that our intelligentsia gained through suffering, and the great traditions of our artistic culture cannot but lead to the creative act of creating something new. art world to create true masterpieces. No matter how the historical process goes and no matter what setbacks occur, the country, which has enormous potential, will historically emerge from the crisis. Artistic and philosophical achievements await us in the near future. They will come before economic and political achievements.
- Drying organic liquids Wine spirit and its relatives
- Laboratory work: Production of methane and experiments with it Calcium carbide was used to dehydrate ethanol
- Model of error in the form of a random elementary function Mathematical model of measurement results of measurement error
- Questions for subject and object Basic geometric shapes