Chapter 11 - Revolution’s Demands

Summary

Revolution has long been regarded as generative for modernism, with several scholars noting the frequent, often troubled alignment of artistic and political vanguards. A key case in point from the new modernist studies is Martin Puchner’s Poetry of the Revolution (2006), which presents the Communist Manifesto as a model for world literature – in particular, for avant-garde manifestos throughout the twentieth century. This article expands Puchner’s framework by applying it to the 1934 Soviet Writers Congress and Mao Zedong’s 1942 Yan’an Forum on Literature and Art, events which marked the subordination of artists and writers to the political vanguard. However, reading the documents from these events as manifestos makes it possible to blur the boundary between modernism and (socialist) realism and, in the process, to expand the reach of global modernism to realms typically closed off from it – Stalin’s Soviet Union and Mao’s China.