"Socialist Realism": An Introduction

...The anonymous Russian is therefore not alone in his stylistic leanings...

...Each one of us should beat his breast and ask himself whether he does not tend to modify attacks on his own native institutions, if these attacks are likely to expose him to the charge of subversion and assisting enemies from without...

...This was not particularly novel...

...However, such an inferiority does not prevent, and indeed facilitates, the extension of the influence of this kind of mass culture...

...All the evidence goes to show, however, that he belongs to the younger generation of Russian writers, educated entirely under the post-revolutionary system...

...This transfer was characteristic of the Russian progressive intelligentsia, and was noticed by Dostoevsky, who wrote in his Diary of a Writer in 1873: "By making man dependent on every error in the social system, the science of environment reduces man to total loss of personality, to total release from all individual obligations and any kind of independence, it reduces him to the worst slavery imaginable...

...Nonetheless, it is likely that the Russians who want freedom and justice find themselves in conflict with most of their fellow countrymen, just as their predecessors did...

...That anyone who opposes this system of aesthetics is committing a political offense might appear fantastic...

...But as we now know, Chaadaev's severe judgments regarding his own country were little short of prophetic...

...Let us consider this step: here we have a man with ample talent for attaining popularity in his own country, but who secretly writes something intended at best for reading by a small group of intimates...

...These readers and audiences want the truth, at least as savage as that of Khrushchev's 1956 report...

...Hence the suspicion may arise that here we have a case of the "internal emigre," imitating forbidden but longed-for foreign models...

...Russia has given the world many evangelically pure men and women, fearless in condemning evil, and fully aware that that which is to be rendered unto God is not the same as that which is to be rendered unto Caesar...

...Only one kind of reality exists for him: it is that in which he has grown up and which forms his daily environment...

...The hymns of praise that were sung in the past to the Russian state, assurances of the high vocation of the Russians and their superiority to other nations, were justified ex post...

...LITERATURE IN WESTERN EUROPE and America has never had the social character it possesses in Eastern Europe, except perhaps during the Reformation, when the writer spoke on behalf of a specific religious community...

...And this aim is the victory of the revolution throughout the world...

...Socrealism has served for several decades as a drug exciting activity, and the effectiveness of hymns of praise has been proved...

...These were examples of a large body of totally unknown works by prisoners in concentration camps and by students...

...And this public, capable of thinking for itself, is going to increase...

...Some are remarkable for their high quality, and all are imbued with various shades of sarcasm and irony...

...Where this anonymous Russian differs from his fellow writers is in the boldness with which he goes to the heart of the matter...

...Although this reasoning is crude, it is not difficult to perceive its origins in the German philosophy of history of the first half of the nineteenth century, which introduced the concept of historical development taking place independent of our wishes and desires...

...Alexander Herzen, too, was to find that even the most progressive circles supported him only as long as he did not question the frontiers of the Tsarist Empire, and Russia's right to dominate the territories she had conquered...

...Were this so, the situation would be relatively simple (an internal enemy of the system would have found means to reveal himself...

...This philosophy fell on remarkably fertile soil in Tsarist Russia, because its solidified social structure faced the individual with obstacles whenever he tried to exert his own will...

...He then goes to a great deal of trouble to place his manuscript in reliable keeping, and in this way it is brought across the frontiers...

...When the Communist Party established its dictatorship, it retained the custom of allotting a high social rank to writers...

...Even during the worst periods, a second current has always existed alongside the official one: the unpublished Boris Pasternak, for instance, had a few thousand admirers who knew his verses by heart...

...Thus he said...

...It is thus an effective anaesthetic...

...This shows that the apparently naive formulas for novels and plays, laid down by the party for writers to follow, were preceded in Russia by many decades of argument as to the relations between the individual and society...

...There is a good deal of evidence to show that his views are shared by a large proportion of the intellectuals, particularly among the younger generation...

...So that all frontiers should fall, we surrounded ourselves with a Chinese Wall...

...The hero is allowed to have some doubts and make some mistakes, but good must finally triumph...

...And the theory of socrealism itself, which the party adopted, took shape long before the revolution, as this anonymous Russian shows...

...This saturation by the printed word constantly creates, as it were, a surplus of demand, which cannot be satisfied by the current monotonous production...

...Even before 1917, Russia was one of the biggest consumers of books, and although most of the enormous number of books published in Russia since the Revolution are official and mediocre, there also have been a good many Russian or foreign "classics"—the last in excellent translations...

...Historians of literature can refer only to the isolated example of Ireland in this respect...

...Should this tried and tested creed be jettisoned, and, instead of rejoicing at measurable results, should one turn to what is immeasurable—the happiness and unhappiness of man...

...it is very real, and has been acquired by ruthless indifference to human life...

...Collective glory is not something fictitious...

...The Russian press has published attempts to reach conclusions in a vein similar to this essay, though they are cautious and half-hearted...

...Some Americans may believe that Socialist Realism or "socrealism," as it is called, is nothing more than a style applied in the literature and art of the Soviet Union and in those areas to which its influence extends, a style which bears witness to the nineteenth century tastes of bureaucrats for wedding-cake architecture, for flat colors in painting, and for plush luxury...

...But the authorities of America have never regarded literature as dangerous to themselves or as an important instrument for maintaining power...

...From this time on, Russia has been the chosen nation, a Welthistorische Nation, since it has chosen to be the instrument of a providential historical process leading "out of iron necessity" to Communism throughout the world...

...THE COMMUNISTS of several countries west of the Soviet Union —first the Yugoslays, then the Hungarians and the Poles—adopted the phrase "the humanizing of Marxism," and many of them paid a high price to oppose what they regarded as a parody of Karl Marx's thought...

...This document presents a picture of the situation of Russian intellectuals under the Communist dictatorship, as well as a review of Russian literary history, which is of the greatest historical and intellectual interest...

...We do not know the writer's name, nor would there be any point in trying to discover it...

...This essay should be taken as a voice participating in an internal discussion among Soviet writers...

...He knows full well the risk he runs should the authorities identify him as the author, while at the same time the preservation of his anonymity means that he can acquire neither fame nor money, even if his work is translated into many languages...

...After the 1917 revolution in Russia, writers were given the honorary title of "Engineers of Souls...

...Admittedly, Russia is no exception in this respect, and there are other societies in which the cult of raison d'etat was and is highly developed...

...Thus the very fact that the Soviet Union is changing into a highly industrialized country supports the campaign carried on by those who share the views of our anonymous writer, even though they have to be more circumspect in the way they set about uttering them...

...Still, we must not forget that the writer is a Russian, and is guilty of lese-majeste in criticizing his own civilization...

...Technical progress requiring a whole army of highly educated specialists, and the development of education both in high schools and in universities, are bringing conditions into being in which social sciences, literature and art shackled by dogma clearly do not fit...

...We need have no doubt as to its authenticity...

...He lives with the problems of his own community, and it is significant that he uses the form "we"—"we did this and that," "we believed," "we ought to...

...Despite many attempts, the elements which constitute its theory have never been combined into a harmonious whole...

...THE PROBLEM OF SOCREALISM is much less simple than it might appear at first sight...

...To what extent does this anonymous Russian express the trends prevailing in the society he belongs to...

...If we are to understand him, we must abandon the division of people into Communists and anti-Communists...

...We can only cling to the hope that the day is nevertheless approaching when the Russians "will find themselves a part of humanity...

...Socrealism emerged from the fusion of two creeds: belief in the mission of the Russian nation and belief in the mission of the (Russian) proletariat...

...The world outside the Soviet Union might just as well not exist, as far as he is concerned...

...Yet a government has effective means at its disposal to prevent independence of mind...

...The fact that he has decided to have his work published abroad shows his belief in the importance of what he has to say...

...we are one of those nations which do not seem to be an integral part of the human race, but which exist only to give some great lesson to the world...

...The game is being played for much higher stakes...

...So that not one drop of blood be shed any more, we killed and killed and killed...

...Attempts at drawing analogies between the Russia of the past and present-day Russia may well lead to errors...

...he therefore learned to make the system itself responsible, even for his own incompetence...

...This man has chosen to do what is condemned by the existing institutions and by the community formed by these institutions for he sees no other way to voice his beliefs...

...At the same time he must also face the thorny problem of his loyalty as a citizen, for he lives in a state which forbids writers to publish without permission, and which regards violation of this rule as tantamount to violation of a citizen's duties, i.e., treason...

...EDITORS The essay which follows was written in the Soviet Union and sent by its author through friends to Paris, asking that it be published...

...Revolutionary movements in Russia were created by the intelligentsia, who let off steam by writing and used words as a substitute for, or introduction to, action...

...But to claim this would be to disregard the fact that Russian literature is vast enough to provide models to satisfy anyone...

...The origins of the Hungarian revolt in 1956 may well have been the Petofi Club, so named after the nineteenth century poet, and if so this has symbolic meaning and is simply the repetition of an older pattern...

...What the anonymous Russian writer does for us is to let us for a time enter the skin of a Russian, into a circle inaccessible to anyone without the same background of experiences and rooted in another tradition...

...But American readers would be mistaken if they attributed their own values and perspectives to this anonymous Russian writer, and regarded him as a supporter of the Western way of life, for instance...

...Socrealism is directly responsible for the deaths of millions of men and women, for it is based on the glorification of the state by the writer and artist, whose task it is to portray the power of the state as the greatest good, and to scorn the sufferings of the individual...

...the demands of these readers and audiences cannot be satisfied until the presentation of life in the Soviet Union is cleared of its numerous taboos...

...It came out first in 1959, in a French translation, in the Paris monthly Esprit...

...That is why the voice of this anonymous Russian is so important, and it is interesting to consider how far it bears witness to a ripening of new tendencies directed against the heritage of the Stalinist era, and also what prospects these new tendencies have of emerging triumphant...

...So the norms of individual behavior are to be found not within an individual, but are determined from without: the "subjective honesty" of a man who, motivated by moral impulses, might condemn the use of tanks in Budapest does not lessen his "objective guilt," for the independence of Hungary would be at variance with the interests of the Soviet Union and hence with the interests of the Revolution, i.e., of all mankind...

...The battle against socrealism is, therefore, a battle in defense of truth and consequently in defense of man himself...

...His fellow countrymen obtain plenty of nourishment every day for their national pride, and the government makes sure that this nourishment never runs short...

...in conditions of greater freedom, his voice would be regarded as a manifestation of the normal right to criticize...

...The writer of this essay is one of their number...

...When "coexistence" started, tourists who visited Moscow brought back poems circulating in manuscript mainly among young people...

...So that work should become a rest and a pleasure, we introduced forced labor...

...Though they cannot eat the moon, it bears the emblem of the hammer and sickle...

...Outside the Soviet Union proper, in the countries of Eastern Europe now ruled by the Communists, his ideas would cause no surprise...

...Nevertheless the "humanizing of Marxism" depends in the first instance on changes in the Soviet Union, for until they come about, attempts undertaken in other countries ruled by the Communists will continue to fail...

...This is what happens when criticism of things as they are seems to go against patriotism...

...If this anonymous Russian were asked whether he is a Communist or an anti-Communist, he would almost certainly shrug and answer: "What does that mean...

...On Socialist Realism" is to be published in the winter of 1961 as a separate book by Pantheon Books...

...It would never occur to the President of the United States to consider poems and plays, and to wonder whether their authors should be rewarded or exiled to Northern Alaska...

...Moderate optimism seems called for, since the number of factors working for or against are about equal...

...The most important point in his argument seems to me to be this: the Great Aim—the glory of Russia as sung in the eighteenth century by Derzhavin—was found again at the moment when Lenin seized power, when Russia was torn asunder by the revolutionary movement, after the doubts and searches of the nineteenth century...

...The light of the universal task (the salvation of man) has dawned upon Russia...

...The anonymous Russian writer has had the courage to reject both these creeds, for he believes that an aim attained by methods such as have been used changes into its very opposite: "So that prisons should vanish forever, we built new prisons...

...The inferiority of poetry, novels, plays and pictures produced in accordance with this formula cannot be avoided, since reality, which is quite disagreeable, has to be passed over in silence in the name of an ideal, in the name of what ought to be...

...Yet this good does not mean morality based on the Ten Commandments, but simply the individual's conformity with the communal aim...

...for no matter what may be the feelings of those it governs, they will be united whenever national pride is to be upheld...

...moral norms were transferred from the inner forum of the conscience to a providential historical process...

...But unfortunately, socrealism is not merely a question of taste...

...Faced with statements such as those made by the anonymous Russian writer, issuing from the mysterious East, many Western readers may well tend to be incredulous...

...When Chaadaev, in 1836, published one of these Letters, public opinion was so incensed that the Tsar did not even think it necessary to jail the unfortunate philosopher: obedient doctors diagnosed the originator of the uproar as a lunatic...

...The falsity of novels, poems and plays which sterilize reality is too self-evident...

...In this way powerful habits of mind were formed, encouraging dreams of revolution to solve all the personal problems of men and women faced with the world...

...But since victory can be obtained only through a state led by the Party, the aim is everything which assists the Party to increase the state's industrial, military, and other strength...

...Literature and art played a leading part in these attempts to do away with dogmas that were crushing man, and it is no exaggeration to say that the breakdown of socrealism has opened the prison gates...

...His wide knowledge of Russian literature both old and new shows we are dealing with a professional, whose answers to the fundamental questions are not merely academic, for his own progress and realization of himself as a writer depend on them...

...The main argument used by Soviet "liberals" is the fact that readers and audiences are more intelligent than the product served up to them by the highly paid practitioners of socialist realism...

...The history of Polish-Russian relations can largely be reduced to the collision of two different concepts of freedom, concepts maintained by writers and closely bound up with their pedagogic functions, different though these functions were in the two countries...

...For these reasons the present work is not merely the reflection of arguments about aesthetics, of no interest to the public at large...

...In some of these countries, where matters of the same kind are openly discussed, such arguments as we find in this essay are, at least unofficially, as plain as daylight to everyone...

...Yet, the case of Peter Chaadaev, author of The Philosophical Letters gives some indication of the strength of this cult inside Russia...

...The violence of national and social conflicts in the eastern territories of Europe has made specific demands on writers...

...Therefore, singing the praises of that future happiness which is to be the lot of all men, and this ceaseless ode in praise of themselves (which is what Soviet literature is) amounts at the same time to an ode in praise of tomorrow...

...Although the political part played by certain writers has sometimes been great (Rousseau and Voltaire are obvious instances), the collective imagination has never had its archetype of bard, leader, and teacher...

...In Russia, on the other hand, Tsar Nicholas I personally censured Pushkin's verses...

...The instruction which we are destined to give will certainly not be lost: but who knows the day when we will find ourselves a part of humanity, and how much misery we shall experience before the fulfillment of our destiny...

...In fiction, the division of characters into "good guys" and "bad guys" is required just as it is in any Western...

...A simplified picture of the world is not enough...

...It is a philosophy, too, and the cornerstone of official doctrine worked out in Stalin's days...

...We print below, with the kind permission of Pantheon Books, the introduction to that forthcoming volume, written by Czeslaw Milosz, the distinguished Polish novelist and poet, and author of The Captive Mind...

...This irony, this kind of lyrical rage, strikes them as the privilege of modern writing, which could not have developed in a country deprived for decades of any kind of contact with the outside...