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1.8 - Socialist Realism

from History 1 - Movements

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 December 2024

By
Evgeny Dobrenko
Edited by
Simon Franklin ,
Rebecca Reich  and
Emma Widdis
Simon Franklin
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Rebecca Reich
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Emma Widdis
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
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Summary

Socialist Realism was the (only) art officially sponsored in the Soviet Union. This chapter traces how it emerged, developed and faded away along with the Soviet regime. Socialist Realism was specific and unique, as never before had an artistic movement became a focus of state and bureaucratic activity. The political servility, explicit propagandistic aims and aesthetic inferiority of this populist art gave Socialist Realism both originality and novelty. This chapter analyses the main functions of Socialist Realism, from the normalisation and de-realisation of Soviet reality and its transformation into socialism, to the legitimisation of the regime and the wider aims of historisation, mobilisation and interiorisation. It also explores the movement’s institutional dimensions and characteristic features, which included a propensity for superficial verisimilitude, a craving for melodrama, an evenness of style, and linguistic and structural conventionality.

Keywords

Socialist RealismStalinism in artpopulism in artpolitical instrumentalisation of artliterary institutions
Type
Chapter
Information
The New Cambridge History of Russian Literature , pp. 147 - 163
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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References

Further Reading

Any, Carol, The Soviet Writers’ Union and Its Leaders: Identity and Authority under Stalin (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2020).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, Katerina, The Soviet Novel: History as Ritual (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985).Google Scholar
Dobrenko, Evgeny, Political Economy of Socialist Realism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007).Google Scholar
Dunham, Vera, In Stalin’s Time: Middleclass Values in Soviet Fiction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976).Google Scholar
Golomstock, Igor, Totalitarian Art: In the Soviet Union, the Third Reich, Fascist Italy, and the People’s Republic of China, trans. Robert Chandler (London: Collins Harvill, 1990).Google Scholar
Groys, Boris, The Total Art of Stalinism: Avant-Garde, Aesthetic Dictatorship, and Beyond, trans. Charles Rougle (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992).Google Scholar
Gutkin, Irina, The Cultural Origins of the Socialist Realist Aesthetic, 1890–1934 (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1999).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paperny, Vladimir, Architecture in the Age of Stalin: Culture Two, trans. John Hill and Roann Barris (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002).Google Scholar
Robin, Régine, Socialist Realism: An Impossible Aesthetic, trans. Catherine Porter (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992).Google Scholar
Tertz, Abram, ‘The Trial Begins’ and ‘On Socialist Realism’, trans. Max Hayward and George Denis (New York: Vintage Books, 1960).Google Scholar

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