Socialist literature. Socialist realism in literature

Socialist realism(socialist realism) is an artistic method of literature and art (leading in the art of the Soviet Union and other socialist countries), which is an aesthetic expression of a socialist-conscious concept of the world and man, determined by the era of struggle for the establishment and creation of a socialist society. The depiction of life ideals under socialism determines both the content and the basic artistic and structural principles of art. Its emergence and development are associated with the spread of socialist ideas in different countries, with the development of the revolutionary labor movement.

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✪ Lecture "Socialist realism"

✪ The offensive of ideology: the formation of socialist realism as a state artistic method

✪ Boris Gasparov. Socialist realism as a moral problem

✪ Lecture by B. M. Gasparov “Andrei Platonov and socialist realism”

✪ A. Bobrikov "Socialist realism and the studio of military artists named after M.B. Grekov"

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History of origin and development

Term "socialist realism" first proposed by the Chairman of the Organizing Committee of the USSR SP I. Gronsky in the Literary Newspaper on May 23, 1932. It arose in connection with the need to direct RAPP and the avant-garde to the artistic development of Soviet culture. Decisive in this regard was the recognition of the role of classical traditions and the understanding of the new qualities of realism. In 1932-1933 Gronsky and head. The fiction sector of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, V. Kirpotin, vigorously promoted this term [ ] .

At the 1st All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers in 1934, Maxim Gorky stated:

“Socialist realism affirms being as an act, as creativity, the goal of which is the continuous development of man’s most valuable individual abilities 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 the earth, which he, in accordance with the continuous growth of his needs, wants treat the whole as a beautiful home for humanity united in one family.”

The state needed to approve this method as the main one for better control over creative individuals and better propaganda of its policies. In the previous period, the twenties, there were Soviet writers who sometimes took aggressive positions towards many outstanding writers. For example, RAPP, an organization of proletarian writers, was actively engaged in criticism of non-proletarian writers. RAPP consisted mainly of aspiring writers. During the period of the creation of modern industry (the years of industrialization), Soviet power needed art that would raise the people to “deeds of labor.” The fine arts of the 1920s also presented a rather motley picture. 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 soldiers, workers, peasants, leaders of the revolution and labor. They considered themselves the heirs of the “Itinerants”. They went to factories, mills, and Red Army barracks to directly observe the lives of their characters, to “sketch” it. It was they who became the main backbone of the artists of “socialist realism”. It was much harder for less traditional masters, in particular, members of the OST (Society of Easel Painters), which united young people who graduated from the first Soviet art university [ ] .

Gorky returned from exile in a solemn ceremony and headed the specially created Union of Writers of the USSR, which included mainly writers and poets of Soviet orientation.

Characteristic

Definition from the point of view of official ideology

For the first time, the official definition of socialist realism was given in the Charter of the USSR SP, adopted at the First Congress of the SP:

Socialist realism, being the main method of Soviet fiction and literary criticism, requires the artist to provide a truthful, historically specific depiction of reality in its revolutionary development. Moreover, the truthfulness and historical specificity of the artistic depiction of reality must be combined with the task of ideological remodeling and education in the spirit of socialism.

This definition became the starting point for all further interpretations until the 80s.

« Socialist realism is a deeply vital, scientific and most advanced artistic method that developed as a result of the successes of socialist construction and the education of Soviet people in the spirit of communism. The principles of socialist realism ... were a further development of Lenin’s teaching on the partisanship of literature.” (Great Soviet Encyclopedia , )

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.”

Principles of socialist realism

Ideology. Show the peaceful life of the people, the search for ways to a new, better life, heroic deeds in order to achieve a happy life for all people.

Specificity. In depicting reality, show the process of historical development, which in turn must correspond to the materialistic understanding of history (in the process of changing the conditions of their existence, people change their consciousness and attitude towards the surrounding reality).

As the definition from the Soviet textbook stated, the method implied the use of the heritage of world realistic art, but not as a simple imitation of great examples, but with a creative approach. “The method of socialist realism predetermines the deep connection of works of art with modern reality, the active participation of art in socialist construction. The tasks of the method of socialist realism require from each artist a true understanding of the meaning of the events taking place in the country, the ability to evaluate the phenomena of social life in their development, in complex dialectical interaction.”

The method included the unity of realism and Soviet romance, combining the heroic and romantic with “a realistic statement of the true truth of the surrounding reality.” It was argued that in this way the humanism of “critical realism” was complemented by “socialist humanism.”

The state gave orders, sent people on creative trips, organized exhibitions - thus stimulating the development of the necessary layer of art. The idea of “social order” is part of socialist realism.

In literature

The writer, in the famous expression of Yu. K. Olesha, is “an engineer of human souls.” With his talent he must influence the reader as a propagandist. He educates the reader in the spirit of devotion to the party and supports it in the struggle for the victory of communism. Subjective actions and aspirations of the individual had to correspond to the objective course of history. Lenin wrote: “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.”

A literary work in the genre of socialist realism should be built “on the idea of the inhumanity of any form of exploitation of man by man, expose the crimes of capitalism, inflaming the minds of readers and viewers with just anger, and inspire them to the revolutionary struggle for socialism.” [ ]

Maxim Gorky 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 its bloody intentions are clearly visible, and all the greatness of the heroic work of the proletariat-dictator is visible.”

He also stated:

“...the 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 perform two roles: the role of a midwife and a gravedigger.”

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.

Belarusian Soviet writer Vasil Bykov called socialist realism the most advanced and proven method

So what can we, writers, masters of words, humanists, who have chosen the most advanced and proven method of socialist realism as the method of their creativity?

In the USSR, such foreign authors as Henri Barbusse, Louis Aragon, Martin Andersen-Nexe, Bertolt Brecht, Johannes Becher, Anna Seghers, Maria Puymanova, Pablo Neruda, Jorge Amado and others were also classified as socialist realists.

Criticism

Andrei Sinyavsky in his essay “What is socialist realism”, having analyzed the ideology and history of the development of socialist realism, as well as the features of its typical works in literature, concluded that this style is actually not related to “real” realism, but is Soviet a variant of classicism with admixtures of romanticism. Also in this work, he believed that due to the erroneous orientation of Soviet artists towards realistic works of the 19th century (especially critical realism), deeply alien to the classicistic nature of socialist realism - and, in his opinion, due to the unacceptable and curious synthesis of classicism and realism in one work - creating outstanding works of art in this style is unthinkable.

The film “Circus” directed by Grigory Alexandrov ends like this: a demonstration, people in white clothes with shining faces march to the song “Wide is my native country.” This frame a year after the film’s release, in 1937, will be literally repeated in Alexander Deyneka’s monumental panel “Stakhanovites” - except that instead of a black child sitting on the shoulder of one of the demonstrators, here a white child will be placed on the shoulder of a Stakhanovite. And then the same composition will be used in the giant canvas “Noble People of the Land of the Soviets,” written by a team of artists under the leadership of Vasily Efanov: this is a collective portrait, where heroes of labor, polar explorers, pilots, akyns and artists are presented together. This is the genre of apotheosis - and it most of all gives a visual idea of the style that almost exclusively dominated Soviet art for more than two decades. Socialist realism, or, as the critic Boris Groys called it, “Stalin style.”

Still from Grigory Alexandrov’s film “Circus”. 1936 Film studio "Mosfilm"

Socialist realism became an official term in 1934, after Gorky used this phrase at the First Congress of Soviet Writers (before that there were random uses). Then it was included in the statutes of the Writers' Union, but it was explained in a completely unclear and very garish way: about the ideological education of a person in the spirit of socialism, about the depiction of reality in its revolutionary development. This vector - focus on the future, revolutionary development - could somehow be applied to literature, because literature is a temporary art, it has a plot sequence and the evolution of heroes is possible. But how to apply this to fine art is unclear. Nevertheless, the term has spread to the entire spectrum of culture and has become mandatory for everything.

The main customer, addressee and consumer of socialist realism art was the state. It viewed culture as a means of agitation and propaganda. Accordingly, the canon of socialist realism required the Soviet artist and writer to depict exactly what the state wants to see. This concerned not only the subject matter, but also the form and method of depiction. Of course, there might not have been a direct order, the artists created as if at the call of their hearts, but there was a certain receiving authority above them, and it decided whether, for example, a painting should be at an exhibition and whether the author deserves encouragement or quite the opposite. Such a power vertical in the matter of purchases, orders and other ways to encourage creative activity. The role of this receiving authority was often played by critics. Despite the fact that there were no normative poetics or sets of rules in socialist realist art, criticism was good at catching and transmitting the supreme ideological fluids. The tone of this criticism could be mocking, destructive, repressive. She held court and confirmed the verdict.

The state order system took shape back in the twenties, and then the main hired artists were members of the AHRR - the Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia. The need to fulfill the social order was written down in their declaration, and the customers were government bodies: the Revolutionary Military Council, the Red Army, and so on. But then this commissioned art existed in a diverse field, among many completely different initiatives. There were communities of a completely different kind - avant-garde and not quite avant-garde: they all competed for the right to be the main art of our time. AHRR won this fight because its aesthetics met both the tastes of the authorities and the mass taste. Painting that simply illustrates and records the subjects of reality is understandable to everyone. And naturally, after the forced dissolution of all artistic groups in 1932, it was this aesthetics that became the basis of socialist realism - mandatory.

In socialist realism, a hierarchy of painting genres is strictly built. At its top is the so-called thematic picture. This is a graphic story with correctly placed accents. The plot has to do with modernity - and if not with modernity, then with those situations of the past that promise us this beautiful modernity. As was said in the definition of socialist realism: reality in its revolutionary development.

In such a picture there is often a conflict of forces - but which force is right is demonstrated unambiguously. For example, in Boris Ioganson’s painting “At the Old Ural Factory” the figure of the worker is in the light, and the figure of the exploiter-manufacturer is immersed in shadow; Moreover, the artist gave him a repulsive appearance. In his painting “Interrogation of Communists” we see only the back of the head of the white officer conducting the interrogation - the back of the head is fat and folded.

Boris Ioganson. At the old Ural plant. 1937

Boris Ioganson. Interrogation of communists. 1933Photo by RIA Novosti,

Thematic paintings with historical and revolutionary content were combined with battle paintings and historical ones. The historical ones came out mainly after the war, and their genre is close to the apotheosis paintings already described - such an operatic aesthetic. For example, in Alexander Bubnov’s film “Morning on the Kulikovo Field”, where the Russian army is waiting for the start of the battle with the Tatar-Mongols. Apotheoses were also created on conditionally modern material - such are the two “Collective Farm Holidays” of 1937, by Sergei Gerasimov and Arkady Plastov: triumphant abundance in the spirit of the later film “Kuban Cossacks”. In general, the art of socialist realism loves abundance - there should be a lot of everything, because abundance is joy, completeness and the fulfillment of aspirations.

Alexander Bubnov. Morning on the Kulikovo field. 1943–1947State Tretyakov Gallery

Sergey Gerasimov. Collective farm holiday. 1937Photo by E. Kogan / RIA Novosti; State Tretyakov Gallery

In socialist realist landscapes, scale is also important. Very often this is a panorama of the “Russian expanse” - like an image of the entire country in a specific landscape. Fyodor Shurpin’s painting “Morning of our Motherland” is a vivid example of such a landscape. True, here the landscape is only a background for the figure of Stalin, but in other similar panoramas Stalin seems to be invisibly present. And it is important that landscape compositions are horizontally oriented - not a directed vertical, not a dynamically active diagonal, but horizontal statics. This is an unchanging world, already accomplished.

Fedor Shurpin. Morning of our homeland. 1946-1948 State Tretyakov Gallery

On the other hand, hyperbolic industrial landscapes are very popular - giant construction sites, for example. Rodina is building Magnitka, Dneproges, plants, factories, power plants and so on. Gigantism and the pathos of quantity are also a very important feature of socialist realism. It is not formulated directly, but manifests itself not only at the level of theme, but also in the way everything is drawn: the pictorial fabric becomes noticeably heavier and denser.

By the way, former “jacks of diamonds”, for example Lentulov, are very successful in depicting industrial giants. The materiality characteristic of their painting turned out to be very useful in the new situation.

And in portraits this material pressure is very noticeable, especially in women’s portraits. Not only at the level of pictorial texture, but even in the surroundings. Such fabric heaviness - velvet, plush, fur, and everything feels slightly worn, with an antique touch. Such, for example, is Joganson’s portrait of the actress Zerkalova; Ilya Mashkov has such portraits - quite salon-like.

Boris Ioganson. Portrait of Honored Artist of the RSFSR Daria Zerkalova. 1947 Photo by Abram Shterenberg / RIA Novosti; State Tretyakov Gallery

But in general, portraits, almost in an educational spirit, are seen as a way to glorify outstanding people who, through their work, have earned the right to be portrayed. Sometimes these works are presented directly in the text of the portrait: here academician Pavlov is thinking intensely in his laboratory against the backdrop of biological stations, here is the surgeon Yudin performing an operation, here is the sculptor Vera Mukhina sculpting a figurine of Boreas. All these are portraits created by Mikhail Nesterov. In the 80-90s of the 19th century, he was the creator of his own genre of monastic idylls, then he fell silent for a long time, and in the 1930s he suddenly found himself the main Soviet portrait painter. And the teacher was Pavel Korin, whose portraits of Gorky, actor Leonidov or Marshal Zhukov already resemble monuments in their monumental structure.

Mikhail Nesterov. Portrait of sculptor Vera Mukhina. 1940Photo by Alexey Bushkin / RIA Novosti; State Tretyakov Gallery

Mikhail Nesterov. Portrait of surgeon Sergei Yudin. 1935Photo by Oleg Ignatovich / RIA Novosti; State Tretyakov Gallery

Monumentality extends even to still lifes. And they are called, for example by the same Mashkov, epically - “Moscow Snacks” or “Soviet Breads” . The former “Jacks of Diamonds” are generally the first in terms of subject wealth. For example, in 1941, Pyotr Konchalovsky painted the painting “Alexey Nikolaevich Tolstoy visiting the artist” - and in front of the writer is a ham, slices of red fish, baked poultry, cucumbers, tomatoes, lemon, glasses for various drinks... But the tendency towards monumentalization is general . Everything heavy and solid is welcome. Deineka’s athletic bodies of his characters become heavy and gain weight. By Alexander Samokhvalov in the “Metroconstruction” series and by other masters from the former association"Circle of Artists"the motif of a “large figure” appears - such female deities personifying earthly power and the power of creation. And the painting itself becomes heavy and dense. But thick - in moderation.

Pyotr Konchalovsky. Alexey Tolstoy visiting the artist. 1941 Photo by RIA Novosti, State Tretyakov Gallery

Because moderation is also an important sign of style. On the one hand, a brush stroke should be noticeable - a sign that the artist worked. If the texture is smoothed, then the author’s work is not visible - but it should be visible. And, say, the same Deineka, who previously operated with solid color planes, now makes the surface of the painting more prominent. On the other hand, excess maestry is also not encouraged - it is immodest, it is sticking oneself out. The word “protrusion” sounds very menacing in the 1930s, when a campaign was being waged against formalism - in painting, and in children's books, and in music, and generally everywhere. It’s like a fight against wrong influences, but in fact it’s a fight in general with any manner, with any techniques. After all, the technique calls into question the artist’s sincerity, and sincerity is an absolute fusion with the subject of the image. Sincerity does not imply any mediation, but reception, influence - this is mediation.

However, there are different methods for different tasks. For example, a kind of colorless, “rainy” impressionism is quite suitable for lyrical subjects. It appeared not only in the genres of Yuri Pimenov - in his film “New Moscow”, where a girl rides in an open car in the center of the capital, transformed by new construction sites, or in the later “New Quarters” - a series about the construction of outlying microdistricts. But also, say, in the huge canvas by Alexander Gerasimov “Joseph Stalin and Kliment Voroshilov in the Kremlin” (popular name - “Two Leaders after the Rain”). The atmosphere of rain signifies human warmth and openness to each other. Of course, such impressionistic language cannot be used in the depiction of parades and celebrations - everything there is still extremely strict and academic.

Yuri Pimenov. New Moscow. 1937Photo by A. Saikov / RIA Novosti; State Tretyakov Gallery

Alexander Gerasimov. Joseph Stalin and Kliment Voroshilov in the Kremlin. 1938Photo by Viktor Velikzhanin / TASS Photo Chronicle; State Tretyakov Gallery

It has already been said that socialist realism has a futuristic vector - a focus on the future, towards the outcome of revolutionary development. And since the victory of socialism is inevitable, signs of the accomplished future are present in the present. It turns out that in socialist realism time collapses. The present is already the future, and one beyond which there will be no next future. History reached its highest peak and stopped. Deinekov’s white-robed Stakhanovites are no longer people—they are celestial beings. And they don’t even look at us, but somewhere into eternity - which is already here, already with us.

Somewhere around 1936-1938 this gets its final form. Here is the highest point of socialist realism - and Stalin becomes the obligatory hero. His appearance in the paintings of Efanov, or Svarog, or anyone else looks like a miracle - and this is the biblical motif of a miraculous phenomenon, traditionally associated, naturally, with completely different heroes. But this is how genre memory works. At this moment, socialist realism really becomes a great style, the style of a totalitarian utopia - only this is a utopia that has come true. And once this utopia has come true, then the style becomes frozen—monumental academization.

And any other art, which was based on a different understanding of plastic values, turns out to be a forgotten, “closet”, invisible art. Of course, artists had some kind of space in which they could exist, where cultural skills were preserved and reproduced. For example, in 1935, at the Academy of Architecture, the Workshop of Monumental Painting was founded, led by artists of old training - Vladimir Favorsky, Lev Bruni, Konstantin Istomin, Sergei Romanovich, Nikolai Chernyshev. But all such oases do not exist for long.

There is a paradox here. Totalitarian art in its verbal declarations is addressed specifically to man - the words “man” and “humanity” are present in all manifestos of socialist realism of this time. But in fact, socialist realism partly continues this messianic pathos of the avant-garde with its myth-making pathos, with its apology for the result, with the desire to remake the whole world - and among such pathos there is no place for the individual. And “quiet” painters who do not write declarations, but in reality stand in defense of the individual, small, human, are doomed to an invisible existence. And it is in this “closet” art that humanity continues to live.

Late socialist realism of the 1950s will try to appropriate it. Stalin, the cementing figure of the style, is no longer alive; his former subordinates are at a loss - in a word, an era has ended. And in the 1950s and 60s, socialist realism wants to be socialist realism with a human face. There were some harbingers a little earlier - for example, Arkady Plastov’s paintings on rural themes, and especially his painting “The Fascist Flew Over” about a senselessly killed shepherd boy.

Arkady Plastov. The fascist flew by. 1942 Photo by RIA Novosti, State Tretyakov Gallery

But the most revealing are the paintings by Fyodor Reshetnikov “Arrived on Vacation,” where a young Suvorov student salutes his grandfather at the New Year’s tree, and “Deuce Again,” about a careless schoolboy (by the way, on the wall of the room in the painting “Deuce Again” hangs a reproduction of the painting “Arrived on vacation” is a very touching detail). This is still socialist realism, this is a clear and detailed story - but the thought of state, which was the basis of all the stories before, is reincarnated into a family thought, and the intonation changes. Socialist realism is becoming more intimate, now it is about the life of ordinary people. This also includes the later genres of Pimenov, and the work of Alexander Laktionov. His most famous painting, “Letter from the Front,” which was sold in many postcards, is one of the main Soviet paintings. Here there is edification, didacticism, and sentimentality - this is such a socialist-realist bourgeois style.

1. Prerequisites. If in the field of natural science the cultural revolution was reduced primarily to a “revision” of the scientific picture of the world “in the light of the ideas of dialectical materialism,” then in the field of humanities the program of the party leadership of artistic creativity and the creation of a new communist art came to the fore.

The aesthetic equivalent of this art was the theory of socialist realism.

Its premises were formulated by the classics of Marxism. For example, Engels, discussing the purpose of a “tendentious” or “socialist” novel, noted that a proletarian writer achieves his goal “when, truthfully depicting real relations, he breaks the prevailing conventional illusions about the nature of these relations, and undermines the optimism of the bourgeois world , raises doubts about the immutability of the foundations of the existing..." At the same time, it was not at all necessary to "present the reader in a ready-made form with the future historical resolution of the social conflicts he depicts." Such attempts seemed to Engels to be a deviation into utopia, which was resolutely rejected by the “scientific theory” of Marxism.

Lenin emphasized the organizational aspect more: “Literature must be party literature.” This meant that it “cannot be an individual matter at all, independent of the general proletarian cause.” “Down with non-party writers! - Lenin declared categorically. - Down with the superhuman writers! The literary cause must become part of the general proletarian cause, the “wheel and cog” of one single, great social-democratic mechanism, set in motion by the entire conscious vanguard of the entire working class. Literary work must become an integral part of organized, systematic, united Social Democratic party work.” Literature was assigned the role of “propagandist and agitator,” embodying in artistic images the tasks and ideals of the class struggle of the proletariat.

2. The theory of socialist realism. The aesthetic platform of socialist realism was developed by A. M. Gorky (1868-1936), the main “petrel” of the revolution.

According to this platform, the worldview of a proletarian writer should be permeated with the pathos of militant anti-philistinism. Philistinism has many faces, but its essence is the thirst for “satiety”, material well-being, on which the entire bourgeois culture is based. The petty-bourgeois passion for the “meaningless accumulation of things” and personal property is instilled in the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Hence the duality of his consciousness: emotionally the proletariat gravitates towards the past, intellectually towards the future.

And therefore, a proletarian writer needs, on the one hand, to persistently pursue “a line of critical attitude towards the past,” and on the other, “to develop the ability to look at it from the height of the achievements of the present, from the height of the great goals of the future.” According to Gorky, this will give socialist literature a new tone, will help it develop new forms, “a new direction - socialist realism, which - it goes without saying - can only be created on the facts of socialist experience.”

Thus, the method of socialist realism consisted in decomposing everyday reality into “old” and “new”, i.e., in fact, bourgeois and communist, and in showing the bearers of this new in real life. They should become the positive heroes of Soviet literature. At the same time, Gorky allowed the possibility of “speculation”, exaggeration of elements of the new in reality, considering this as a leading reflection of the communist ideal.

Accordingly, the writer categorically spoke out against criticism of the socialist system. Critics, in his opinion, only “clog a bright working day with the rubbish of critical words. They suppress the will and creative energy of the people.” After reading the manuscript of A.P. Platonov’s novel “Chevengur,” Gorky wrote to the author with barely concealed irritation: “With all the undeniable merits of your work, I don’t think it will be printed or published. Your anarchic mentality, apparently characteristic of the nature of your “spirit,” will prevent this.

Whether you wanted it or not, you gave the coverage of reality a lyrical-satirical character; this, of course, is unacceptable for our censorship. With all the tenderness of your attitude towards people, they are colored ironically, they appear to the reader not so much as revolutionaries, but as “eccentrics” and “crazy”... I will add: among modern editors I don’t see anyone who could evaluate your novel based on its merits... That’s all I can tell you, and I’m very sorry that I can’t say anything else.” And these are the words of a man whose influence was worth the influence of all Soviet editors combined!

For the sake of glorifying “socialist achievements,” Gorky allowed the creation of a legend about Lenin and exalted the personality of Stalin.

3. Novel "Mother". Articles and speeches of Gorky in the 20-30s. summed up his own artistic experience, the pinnacle of which was the novel “Mother” (1906). Lenin called it a “great work of art” that contributed to the strengthening of the labor movement in Russia. This assessment was the reason for the party canonization of Gorky’s novel.

The plot core of the novel is the awakening of revolutionary consciousness in a proletariat suppressed by need and lack of rights.

Here is a familiar and joyless picture of suburban life. Every morning, with a long factory whistle, “gloomy people who had not had time to refresh their muscles with sleep ran out of small gray houses into the street, like frightened cockroaches.” They were workers from a nearby factory. The non-stop “hard labor” varied in the evenings with drunken, bloody fights, often ending in serious injuries, even murders.

There was no kindness or responsiveness in people. The bourgeois world, drop by drop, squeezed out of them a sense of human dignity and self-respect. “In people’s relationships,” Gorky made the situation even more gloomy, “there was most of all a feeling of lurking anger, it was as old as incurable muscle fatigue. People were born with this disease of the soul, inheriting it from their fathers, and it accompanied them like a black shadow to the grave, prompting throughout life a series of actions disgusting in their aimless cruelty.”

And people were so accustomed to this constant pressure of life that they did not expect any changes for the better; moreover, they “considered all changes could only increase oppression.”

This is how Gorky imagined the “poisonous, convict abomination” of the capitalist world. He was not at all concerned with how the picture he depicted corresponded to real life. He drew his understanding of the latter from Marxist literature, from Lenin’s assessments of Russian reality. And this meant only one thing: the situation of the working masses under capitalism is hopeless, and it cannot be changed without a revolution. Gorky wanted to show one of the possible ways of awakening the social “bottom” and acquiring revolutionary consciousness.

The images he created of the young worker Pavel Vlasov and his mother Pelageya Nilovna served to solve this problem.

Pavel Vlasov could completely repeat the path of his father, in which the tragedy of the situation of the Russian proletariat seemed to be personified. But a meeting with “forbidden people” (Gorky remembered Lenin’s words that socialism is being introduced to the masses “from the outside”!) opened up his life perspective and led him onto the path of the “liberation” struggle. He creates an underground revolutionary circle in the settlement, rallies the most energetic workers around him, and they initiate political education.

Taking advantage of the story with the “swamp penny,” Pavel Vlasov openly made a pathetic speech, calling on the workers to unite, to feel like “comrades, a family of friends, tightly bound by one desire - the desire to fight for our rights.”

From this moment on, Pelageya Nilovna accepts her son’s work with all her heart. After the arrest of Pavel and his comrades at the May Day demonstration, she picks up a red flag dropped by someone and addresses the frightened crowd with fiery words: “Listen, for Christ’s sake! All of you are relatives... all of you are warm-hearted... look without fear, - what happened? Children, our blood, are walking in the world, following the truth... for all of you, for your babies, they have doomed themselves to the way of the cross... They want a different life in truth, in justice.. . want good for everyone! "

Nilovna's speech reflects her former way of life - a downtrodden, religious woman. She believes in Christ and the necessity of suffering for the sake of “Christ’s resurrection” - a bright future: “Our Lord Jesus Christ would not have existed if people had not died for his glory...” Nilovna is not yet a Bolshevik, but she is already a Christian socialist. At the time Gorky wrote his novel Mother, the Christian Socialist movement in Russia was in full force, and it was supported by the Bolsheviks.

But Pavel Vlasov is an undisputed Bolshevik. His consciousness from beginning to end is permeated with the slogans and calls of the Leninist party. This is fully revealed at the trial, where two irreconcilable camps come face to face. The depiction of the court is based on the principle of multifaceted contrast. Everything that relates to the old world is presented in depressingly gloomy tones. This is a sick world in every way.

“All the judges seemed to the mother to be unhealthy people. Painful fatigue was evident in their poses and voices, it lay on their faces - painful fatigue and boring, gray boredom.” In some ways they are similar to the workers of the settlement before their awakening to a new life, and it is not surprising, because both of them are the product of the same “dead” and “indifferent” bourgeois society.

The depiction of revolutionary workers has a completely different character. Their mere presence at the trial makes the hall more spacious and brighter; one can feel that they are not criminals here, but prisoners, and the truth is on their side. This is what Paul demonstrates when the judge gives him the floor. “A man of the party,” he declares, “I recognize only the court of my party and will not speak in my own defense, but - at the request of my comrades, who also refused to defend themselves - I will try to explain to you what you did not understand.”

But the judges did not understand that before them were not just “rebels against the Tsar,” but “enemies of private property,” enemies of a society that “considers a person only as a tool for its enrichment.” “We want,” Pavel declares in phrases from socialist leaflets, “now to have so much freedom that it will give us the opportunity to conquer all power over time. Our slogans are simple - down with private property, all means of production - to the people, all power - to the people, labor - obligatory for everyone. You see - we are not rebels! Paul’s words “in orderly rows” were engraved in the memories of those present, filling them with strength and faith in a bright future.

Gorky's novel is inherently hagiographic; For the writer, partisanship is the same category of holiness that constituted the affiliation of hagiographic literature. He assessed partisanship as a kind of participation in the highest ideological sacraments, ideological shrines: the image of a person without partisanship is the image of an enemy. We can say that for Gorky, partisanship is a kind of symbolic distinction between polar cultural categories: “us” and “alien.” It ensures the unity of ideology, endowing it with the features of a new religion, a new Bolshevik revelation.

Thus, a kind of hagiography of Soviet literature was accomplished, which Gorky himself imagined as a fusion of romanticism with realism. It is no coincidence that he called for learning the art of writing from his medieval fellow Nizhny Novgorod resident, Avvakum Petrov.

4. Literature of socialist realism. The novel “Mother” caused an endless stream of “party books” dedicated to the sacralization of “Soviet everyday life.” Particularly noteworthy are the works of D. A. Furmanov (“Chapaev”, 1923), A. S. Serafimovich (“Iron Stream”, 1924), M. A. Sholokhov (“Quiet Don”, 1928-1940; “Virgin Soil Upturned” , 1932-1960), N. A. Ostrovsky (“How the Steel Was Tempered”, 1932-1934), F. I. Panferov (“Whetstones”, 1928-1937), A. N. Tolstoy (“Walking in Torment”, 1922-1941), etc.

Perhaps the largest, perhaps even larger than Gorky himself, apologist of the Soviet era was V.V. Mayakovsky (1893-1930).

Glorifying Lenin and the party in every possible way, he himself openly admitted:

I wouldn’t be a poet if
that's not what he sang -
in the five-pointed stars the sky of the immeasurable vault of the Russian Communist Party.

The literature of socialist realism was tightly protected from reality by the wall of party myth-making. She could only exist under “high patronage”: she had little strength of her own. Like hagiography with the church, it merged with the party, sharing the ups and downs of communist ideology.

5. Cinema. Along with literature, the party considered cinema to be “the most important of the arts.” The importance of cinema especially increased after it became sound in 1931. One after another, film adaptations of Gorky’s works appeared: “Mother” (1934), “Gorky’s Childhood” (1938), “In People” (1939), “My Universities” (1940), created by director M. S. Donskoy. He also owned films dedicated to Lenin’s mother - “A Mother’s Heart” (1966) and “Loyalty to a Mother” (1967), which reflected the influence of Gorky’s stencil.

A wide stream of films are being released on historical and revolutionary themes: the trilogy about Maxim directed by G. M. Kozintsev and L. Z. Trauberg - “The Youth of Maxim” (1935), “The Return of Maxim” (1937), “The Vyborg Side” (1939); “We are from Kronstadt” (directed by E. L. Dzigan, 1936), “Baltic Deputy” (directed by A. G. Zarkhi and I. E. Kheifits, 1937), “Shchors” (directed by A. P. Dovzhenko, 1939) , “Yakov Sverdlov” (directed by S. I. Yutkevich, 1940), etc.

The exemplary film of this series was “Chapaev” (1934), filmed by directors G. N. and S. D. Vasilyev based on Furmanov’s novel.

Films in which the image of the “leader of the proletariat” was embodied did not leave the screens: “Lenin in October” (1937) and “Lenin in 1918” (1939) directed by M. I. Romm, “Man with a Gun” (1938) directed S. I. Yutkevich.

6. Secretary General and artist. Soviet cinema has always been a product of official commission. This was considered the norm and was supported in every possible way by both the “tops” and the “bottoms.”

Even such an outstanding master of cinema as S. M. Eisenstein (1898-1948) recognized the “most successful” films in his work that he made on “the instructions of the government,” namely “Battleship Potemkin” (1925), “October "(1927) and "Alexander Nevsky" (1938).

By government order, he also shot the film “Ivan the Terrible.” The first episode of the film was released in 1945 and was awarded the Stalin Prize. Soon the director completed the editing of the second episode, and it was immediately shown in the Kremlin. Stalin was disappointed by the film: he did not like that Ivan the Terrible was shown as some kind of “neurasthenic”, repentant and worried about his atrocities.

For Eisenstein, such a reaction from the Secretary General was quite expected: he knew that Stalin followed the example of Ivan the Terrible in everything. And Eisenstein himself filled his previous films with scenes of cruelty, conditioning them on the “selection of themes, methods and credo” of his directorial work. It seemed quite normal to him that in his films “crowds of people are shot, children are crushed on the Odessa stairs and thrown from the roof (Strike), they are allowed to be killed by their own parents (Bezhin Meadow), thrown into blazing fires (Alexander Nevsky ") etc.". When he began work on “Ivan the Terrible,” he first of all wanted to recreate the “cruel age” of the Moscow Tsar, who, according to the director, for a long time remained the “ruler” of his soul and “favorite hero.”

So the sympathies of the general secretary and the artist coincided completely, and Stalin had the right to count on the appropriate completion of the film. But it turned out differently, and this could only be perceived as an expression of doubt about the appropriateness of the “bloody” policy. Probably, something similar was really experienced by the ideologized director, tired of eternally pleasing the authorities. Stalin never forgave this: Eisenstein was saved only by his premature death.

The second series of “Ivan the Terrible” was banned and saw the light only after Stalin’s death, in 1958, when the political climate in the country leaned towards the “thaw” and the ferment of intellectual dissidence began.

7. "Red Wheel" of socialist realism. However, nothing changed the essence of socialist realism. It was and remains a method of art designed to capture the “cruelty of the oppressors” and the “madness of the brave.” His slogans were communist ideology and party spirit. Any deviation from them was considered capable of “damaging the creativity of even gifted people.”

One of the last resolutions of the CPSU Central Committee on issues of literature and art (1981) sternly warned: “Our critics, literary magazines, creative unions and, first of all, their party organizations must be able to correct those who are carried in one direction or another. And, of course, to act actively and principled in cases where works appear that discredit our Soviet reality. Here we must be irreconcilable. The Party has not been and cannot be indifferent to the ideological orientation of art."

And how many of them, genuine talents, literary innovators, fell under the “red wheel” of Bolshevism - B. L. Pasternak, V. P. Nekrasov, I. A. Brodsky, A. I. Solzhenitsyn, D. L. Andreev, V. T. Shalamov and many others. etc.

The largest figure of socialist realism was Maksim Gorky. His works, in general terms, really met the requirements of socialist realism, so the writer returned from emigration in a solemn atmosphere and headed the created Union of Writers of the USSR, which included mainly writers and poets of a pro-Soviet orientation. They wrote in accordance with the principles of socialist realism, among which were nationality, partisanship and concreteness. The principle of nationality required that the heroes of the works come from the people (most often they were workers and peasants). Party membership called for abandoning the truth of real life and replacing it with party truth, which glorified heroic deeds, the search for a new life, and the revolutionary struggle for a bright future. And reality, in accordance with the principle of concreteness, was shown in the process of historical development on the basis of the doctrine of historical materialism.

Among the most famous writers of socialist realism are Alexander Alexandrovich Fadeev(1901-1956), one of the leaders of the Union of Writers of the USSR. His most famous works are the novels “Destruction” (1926) and “The Young Guard” (1945). I also received great support Alexander Serafimovich(present, name Alexander Serafimovich Popov, 1863-1949). Already in his early works (early 1900s), he wrote about the lack of rights of the working masses in Russia, about their struggle for freedom. He became a popular proletarian writer after the release of the heroic epic “The Iron Stream” in 1924. It reflects the process of transformation of the anarchic spontaneous mass of the peasant poor under the leadership of the “iron commander” Kozhukh into a conscious fighting force welded together by a single goal of the struggle for the proletarian revolution, into an “iron stream”.

The most popular writer in Soviet times was Nikolai Alekseevich Ostrovsky(1904-1936). His main novel, “How the Steel Was Tempered” (1932), which showed the development of a revolutionary, enjoyed enormous popularity in the country. Dmitry Andreevich Furmanov(1891-1926), author of the novel “Chapaev” (1923), created the iconic image of the hero of the Soviet era. One of the first novels about the paths of the intelligentsia in the revolution and the Civil War, “Cities and Years,” which became a classic of Soviet literary literature, was written by Konstantin Aleksandrovich Fedin(1892-1977).

He became a true classic of Soviet literature Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov(1905-1984), laureate of the 1965 Nobel Prize in Literature for the novel “Quiet Don” (1928-1940). The main merit of Sholokhov as an artist is to identify in the simplest person a bright individuality, sometimes an outstanding personality, turning this person into an image that is memorable to the smallest detail, easily imaginable, convincing, and truly living. Sholokhov is the author of the novel “Virgin Soil Upturned” about collectivization on the Don (vol. 1-1932, vol. 2-1959), the cycle “Don Stories”, and the novel “They Fought for the Motherland.”

Alexey Nikolaevich Tolstoy(1882-1945) began writing even before the revolution; not accepting the revolution, Tolstoy emigrated. He later considered these years the most difficult of his life. At this time, he wrote the story “Nikita’s Childhood” and the fantasy novel “Aelita”. In 1923, Tolstoy returned to the USSR. This was an active period of his work: the trilogy “Walking in Torment”, the historical novel “Peter I”, the fantasy novel “Engineer Garin’s Hyperboloid”, the children’s book “The Golden Key, or the Adventures of Pinocchio” (1936), based on Italian fairy tales. Being a very talented writer, he enjoyed enormous popularity and was promoted in every possible way by the Soviet party press. After Gorky's death, he firmly took the place of the patriarch of Soviet literature.

Creativity has become truly popular Alexander Trifonovich Tvardovsky(1910-1971), who not only became a great poet, but also in this very tough

A.T. Tvardovsky

I was killed near Rzhev,

In a nameless swamp

In the fifth company, on the left,

During a brutal attack.

I didn't hear the break

I didn’t see that flash, - Like falling into an abyss from a cliff - And neither the bottom nor the tire.

In the summer, in forty-two,

I am buried without a grave.

time managed to remain an honest person. The poet became famous only after the publication in 1936 of the poem “The Country of Ant,” which tells the story of the peasant Nikita Morgunk’s search for a country of universal happiness. His poems and poems were readily published in magazines and were received favorably by critics. In 1939, the poet was drafted into the army. He served as a war correspondent during the Finnish and Great Patriotic Wars. From 1940 until the Victory, the poet did not interrupt his literary studies and worked on the “Front Chronicle”, the hero of which was not a soldier, but a peasant who, by the will of fate, ended up in the war. From this cycle grew the poem “Vasily Terkin,” completed in 1945. Vasily Terkin is a real folk hero, a folklore character. Tvardovsky’s poem earned a commendable review even from such a demanding critic as I.A. Bunin, who was categorically opposed to Soviet power. War impressions formed the basis for Tvardovsky’s next poem, “House by the Road (1946), in which the motif of inescapable sadness and grief over losses sounds. In the same year, 1946, the poet created a kind of requiem for the dead - the poem “I was killed near Rzhev.”

In the post-war years, he wrote the poem “Beyond the Distance, the Distance,” in which the author tries to have an honest conversation with the reader, but already understands that this is impossible. Therefore, the poem “Terkin in the Other World” (1963), although it was published, did not receive any responses, and the poem “By Right of Memory” (1969), in which Tvardovsky tried to tell the truth about Stalinism, was published only in 1987. Nationality , democracy, accessibility of his poetry are achieved by rich and varied means of artistic expression.

Tvardovsky played a huge role as editor-in-chief of the magazine “New World”, which became a symbol of the “sixties”. His help and support had a tangible impact on the creative biography of many writers. It was during this period that works were published in the magazine A. I. Solzhenitsyn(1918-2008) “One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich” and “Matryonin’s yard”. Realistic clarity of image, intonation flexibility, richness and bold variation in the strophic structure of poetry, skillfully and with a subtle sense of proportion used sound writing, alliteration and assonance - all this is harmoniously combined in Tvardovsky’s poems, making his poetry one of the most outstanding phenomena of literature.

“Semi-forbidden” literature This includes the works of E. Zamyatin, M. Bulgakov, A. Platonov, M. Zoshchenko, A. Green, as well as those writers who, not wanting to write in accordance with ideological requirements, went into children's literature ( Y. Olesha, K. Chukovsky) or began to write historical novels (Yu. Tynyanov).

Evgeniy Ivanovich Zamyatin(1884-1937) was a Bolshevik in his youth, participated in the revolutionary movement, but over time moved away from it. He began writing even before the revolution; his works received the approval of a number of famous writers, including Gorky. In 1921, Zamyatin became one of the organizers of the group “ Serapion's brothers"(L.N. Lunts, N.N. Nikitin, M.L. Slonimsky, I.A. Gruzdev, K.A. Fedin, V.V. Ivanov, M.M. Zoshchenko, V.A. Kaverin, E .G. Polonskaya, N.S. Tikhonov). In their declarations, the group, in contrast to the principles of proletarian literature, emphasized its apolitical nature, opposed ideology in art, defending the old thesis of idealistic aesthetics about the disinterest in aesthetic pleasure.

In 1921, Zamyatin created his main work - the novel “We” about life in a totalitarian state. This book was the first one not allowed to reach readers. The author's subsequent works were also not published. In 1931, he managed to travel abroad, where his novel was published, which had a significant influence on the dystopias of D. Orwell, O. Huxley, and R. Bradbury that were published later. In Russian, the novel “We” was published in 1952 in New York, and in Russia only in 1988.

M. Bulgakov

One of the peaks of Russian literature of the 20th century. - creation Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov(1891 - 1940). A doctor by profession, he began writing in the 1920s. By the mid-1920s, his creative work included two stories (“Diaboliad”, “Fatal Eggs”), autobiographical “Notes on Cuffs”, dozens of stories, essays, feuilletons - all this made up three books of selected prose, published in Moscow and Leningrad. At the beginning of 1925, the story “The Heart of a Dog” was written, which was not permitted for publication and was published only several decades later.

In 1923-1924. he writes his main work of that time - the novel “The White Guard” (“Yellow Ensign”), biographically correlated with the events of the “quick fall” and “Petlyurism” experienced by the author in the Civil War in Kyiv at the turn of 1918-1919. (the full text of the novel was published in the late 1920s in Paris and in 1966 in Moscow). In 1925, based on the outline of this novel, Bulgakov wrote a play, which in 1926 was staged at the Moscow Art Theater under the name “Days of the Turbins,” but after the 289th performance it was banned. The same fate awaited his plays “Running”, “Zoyka’s Apartment”, “Crimson Island”, “Cabal of the Holy One”. By 1929, all his plays were removed from the repertoire, not a single line of his works was published, he was not hired anywhere, and he was denied travel abroad. The work of this great writer was condemned and not accepted either by the authorities, or by critics, or by his fellow workers. And in this situation, he began to write his main work - the novel “The Master and Margarita”. A novel about the freedom of the artist, about the freedom of creativity, about human freedom, about good and evil, about betrayal and cowardice, about eternal love and mercy. Bulgakov began writing a book that obviously could not be published in the USSR, and wrote it for the remaining 11 years of his life. Over the years of work on the novel, the author's concept has changed significantly - from a satirical novel to a philosophical work in which the satirical line is only a component of a complex compositional whole. The novel was published only in 1967.

Made a great contribution to Russian literature Andrey Platonovich Platonov(present, surname Klimentov, 1899-1951). He began writing during the Civil War as a war correspondent. Gradually, Platonov went from blind faith in revolutionary transformations to the dramatic collapse of hopes of building a revolutionary paradise. This is clearly visible in his stories of the 1920s, the stories “Epiphanian Locks” and “The Hidden Man”. In 1929, Platonov wrote the novel “Chevengur,” which was banned from publication and was subject to severe criticism. In it, the writer brought to the point of absurdity the ideas of the communist reorganization of life that possessed him in his youth, showing their tragic impracticability. The features of reality acquired a grotesque character in the novel, and in accordance with this, the surreal style of the work was formed. The reorganization of life became the central theme of the story “The Pit” (1930), which took place during the first Five-Year Plan. The “common proletarian house”, the foundation pit for which the heroes of the story are digging, has become a symbol of communist utopia, “earthly paradise”. Like Chevengur, it was published only in the late 1980s. The publication of the chronicle story “For Future Use” (1931), in which the collectivization of agriculture was shown as a tragedy, made the publication of most of Platonov’s works impossible. The publication of Platonov's works was allowed during the Patriotic War, when the prose writer worked as a front-line correspondent and wrote war stories. But after the publication of the story “Return” (1946), which was subjected to severe criticism, the writer’s name was erased from the history of Soviet literature. And the discovery of this author occurred already in the late 1980s.

Mikhail Mikhailovich Zoshchenko(1895-1958) is famous for his humorous and satirical stories. By the mid-1920s, Zoshchenko was one of the most popular writers. His stories, which he often read himself to large audiences, were known and loved in all levels of society. In the collections of the 1920s “Humorous Stories”, “Dear Citizens”, etc. Zoshchenko created a new type of hero for Russian literature - a Soviet man who has not received an education, has no skills in spiritual work, does not have cultural baggage, but strives to become a full participant in life , catch up with “the rest of humanity.” The reflection of such a hero produced a strikingly funny impression.

In the 1930s, he moved away from the form of satirical stories - he wrote the story “Youth Restored,” in which he tries to overcome his depression from what is happening around him. In 1935, a collection of short stories, The Blue Book, appeared, which the writer himself considered a novel, a brief history of human relations. It caused devastating reviews and a ban on writing anything beyond the scope of satire for certain minor shortcomings. Nevertheless, Zoshchenko began working on his main book, the novel “Before Sunrise,” in which he anticipated many discoveries of the science of the unconscious. The publication of the first chapters of the novel in the magazine “October” in 1943 caused a real scandal; streams of slander and abuse fell upon the writer. Therefore, the appearance of the resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks “On the magazines “Zvezda” and “Leningrad”” in 1946, which criticized Zoshchenko and Akhmatova, became natural. It led to their public persecution and a ban on the publication of their works. The occasion was the publication of Zoshchenko’s children’s story “The Adventures of a Monkey” (1945), in which there was a hint that in the Soviet country monkeys live better than people. After this, the writer’s difficult mental state worsened; he was almost unable to write. The reinstatement of Zoshchenko in 1953 in the Writers' Union, as well as the publication of the book in 1956, could no longer correct the situation.

The work of a representative of romantic realism occupies a special place in Russian literature. Alexandra Green(present, name Alexander Stepanovich Grinevsky, 1880-1932). Since childhood, Green loved books about sailors and travel, and dreamed of going to sea as a sailor. He tried many professions and participated in the revolutionary movement. His first stories appeared in 1906, but he came to his own style only in 1909, when his first romantic novella, Reno Island, was published. This was followed by other works of this direction (“Lanphier Colony”, “Zurbagan Shooter”, “Captain Duke”). During the years of the revolution, Green began writing his most famous novel “Scarlet Sails”, a book about the power of love and the human spirit (published in 1923 ). In 1924 Green moved to Feodosia. The calmest and happiest years of his life passed here. At this time, at least half of his works were written, including the novels “The Golden Chain” and “Running on the Waves.” Green was not only a magnificent landscape painter and master of plot, but also a very subtle psychologist. He knew how to find traits of courage and heroism in the most ordinary people. And of course, rarely has any writer written so carefully about the love of a man and a woman. After 1925, the writer’s books were no longer published. The last years of the life of the seriously ill Green were spent in lack of money and melancholy. Real fame came to him only after his death, in the 1960s, on the wave of the rise that our country was experiencing.

Fate was sad and Yuri Karlovich Olesha(1899-1960), who became famous for his fairy tale novel “Three Fat Men” (1924, published in 1928). The book was immediately accepted by children and continues to be a favorite children's reading. The genre of a fairy tale, the world of which is naturally hyperbolic, corresponded to Olesha’s need to write metaphorical prose. The novel was imbued with the author's romantic attitude towards the revolution. Nevertheless, the critics were skeptical, because the author did not call for heroic struggle and labor. This was followed by the novel “Envy” (1927) about the “superfluous man” of Soviet reality, stories and plays in which he truthfully wrote about what was happening in the country. In the 1930s, many of the writer’s friends and acquaintances were repressed; the main works of Olesha himself have not been published or officially mentioned since 1936 (the ban was lifted only in 1956). But Olesha continued to write without a single word of falsehood. His autobiographical notes were published in 1961 under the title “Not a Day Without a Line.” Olesha’s narrative style is distinguished by a bizarre combination of colors and unexpected associative connections.

He became famous for his historical novels Yuri Nikolaevich Tynyanov(1894-1943), one of the founders of scientific literary criticism in our country (many of his works on literary criticism and literary criticism were published in the 1920s). Scientific research and artistic prose merged already in his first novel “Kuchlya” (1925), the idea of writing which was suggested by K. Chukovsky after hearing Tynyanov’s brilliant lecture on Kuchelbecker. The novel, written rather unevenly, but remaining one of the examples of reproducing the “spirit of the era” in fiction, was destined to become the flagship of the genre of the “Soviet historical novel” required by the conjuncture. In 1927, Tynyanov’s second historical novel, “The Death of Vazir-Mukhtar,” was published, based on a deep study of the life and work of Griboedov, representing a completely mature work with a unique style. With the novel “Pushkin” (parts 1-3, 1935-1943), Tynyanov intended to complete the trilogy (Kuchelbecker, Griboyedov, Pushkin). Gradually, writing became his second and main profession - from the late 1920s, persecution of “formalists” began. Nevertheless, he headed the research work related to the publication of the “Poet's Library” series, conceived by M. Gorky, and also did translations. Despite his serious illness, he worked until his last day, writing the third part of his novel about Pushkin.

Boris Leonidovich Pasternak(1890-1960) began publishing in 1913. He was part of a small group of poets, the Centrifuge, formed in 1914, close to Futurism but influenced by the Symbolists. Already in these years, those features of his talent emerged that were fully expressed in the 1920s and 1930s: poeticization of the “prose of life”, outwardly dim facts of human existence, philosophical reflections on the meaning of love and creativity, life and death. Although Pasternak's early poems are complex in form and densely saturated with metaphors, they already feel an enormous freshness of perception, sincerity and depth. But Pasternak considered his real poetic birth to be the summer of 1917 - the time of the creation of the book “My Sister is Life” (published in 1922).

Pasternak's literary activity was varied. He wrote prose, was engaged in translations, achieving high skill in this art, and was the author of poems and a novel in verse “Spektorsky” (1925). But the most significant is still his lyrics. He had the talent to express deep and subtle human feelings and thoughts through heartfelt pictures of nature. Admiration for the beauty of the world, the desire to find beauty everywhere is characteristic of Pasternak. His poems were included in the collections “Second Birth” (1932), “On Early Trains” (1943), “When It Goes Wild” (1956-1959).

The late 1920s and early 1930s saw a short period of official Soviet recognition of Pasternak's work. He took an active part in the activities of the USSR Writers' Union and in 1934 made a speech at its first congress, at which N.I. Bukharin called for Pasternak to be officially named the best poet of the Soviet Union. But the poet’s subsequent work was increasingly compatible with the demands of socialist realism. Therefore, from the late 1930s until the end of his life, he was mainly engaged in translations - he translated Shakespeare, Schiller, Verlaine, Goethe.

Pasternak considered the pinnacle of his creativity to be the novel Doctor Zhivago, written from 1945 to 1955. The novel is a broad canvas of the life of the Russian intelligentsia against the backdrop of the dramatic period from the beginning of the century to the Civil War. He touched upon the innermost issues of human life - the mysteries of life and death, issues of history, Christianity, and Jewry. An important part of the book was the poems of the main character, in which the writer summed up his thoughts. Soviet publishing houses refused to publish the novel, and it was published abroad in 1957. This led to real persecution of Pasternak in the Soviet press, his expulsion from the Union of Writers of the USSR, outright insults against him from the pages of Soviet newspapers, at meetings of workers. And the awarding of the Nobel Prize to him in 1958 only intensified the persecution, which continued until the writer’s death.

Socialist realism, socialist realism, is the main artistic method used in the art of the Soviet Union since the 1930s, permitted, either recommended, or imposed (at different periods of the country’s development) by state censorship, and therefore closely associated with ideology and propaganda. It has been officially [source not specified 260 days] approved since 1932 by party bodies in literature and art. Parallel to it, there was unofficial art of the USSR.

Works in the genre of socialist realism are characterized by the presentation of events of the era, “dynamically changing in their revolutionary development.” The ideological content of the method was laid down by dialectical-materialist philosophy and the communist ideas of Marxism (Marxist aesthetics) in the second half of the 19th-20th centuries. The method covered all areas of artistic activity (literature, drama, cinema, painting, sculpture, music and architecture). It stated the following principles: [source not specified 736 days]

describe reality “accurately, in accordance with specific historical revolutionary developments.”

coordinate their artistic expression with the themes of ideological reforms and the education of working people in the socialist spirit.

History of origin and development

Lunacharsky was the first writer to lay its ideological foundation. Back in 1906, he introduced the concept of “proletarian realism” into use. By the twenties, in relation to this concept, he began to use the term “new social realism”, and in the early thirties he dedicated a cycle of programmatic and theoretical articles published in Izvestia.

The term “socialist realism” was first proposed by the Chairman of the Organizing Committee of the USSR SP I. Gronsky in the Literary Gazette on May 23, 1932. It arose in connection with the need to direct RAPP and the avant-garde to the artistic development of Soviet culture. Decisive in this regard was the recognition of the role of classical traditions and the understanding of the new qualities of realism. In 1932-1933 Gronsky and head. The fiction sector of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, V. Kirpotin, intensively promoted this term.

At the 1st All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers in 1934, Maxim Gorky stated:

“Socialist realism affirms being as an act, as creativity, the goal of which is the continuous development of man’s most valuable individual abilities 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 the earth, which he, in accordance with the continuous growth of his needs, wants treat everything as a beautiful home for humanity, united in one family.” The state needed to approve this method as the main one for better control over creative individuals and better propaganda of its policies. In the previous period, the twenties, there were Soviet writers who sometimes took aggressive positions towards many outstanding writers. For example, RAPP, an organization of proletarian writers, was actively engaged in criticism of non-proletarian writers. RAPP consisted mainly of aspiring writers. During the period of the creation of modern industry (the years of industrialization), Soviet power needed art that would raise the people to “deeds of labor.” The fine arts of the 1920s also presented a rather motley picture. 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 soldiers, workers, peasants, leaders of the revolution and labor. They considered themselves the heirs of the “Itinerants”. They went to factories, mills, and Red Army barracks to directly observe the lives of their characters, to “sketch” it. It was they who became the main backbone of the artists of “socialist realism”. It was much harder for less traditional masters, in particular, members of the OST (Society of Easel Painters), which united young people who graduated from the first Soviet art university.

Gorky returned from exile in a solemn ceremony and headed the specially created Union of Writers of the USSR, which included mainly writers and poets of a pro-Soviet orientation.

For the first time, the official definition of socialist realism was given in the Charter of the USSR SP, adopted at the First Congress of the SP: Socialist realism, being the main method of Soviet fiction and literary criticism, requires the artist to provide a truthful, historically specific depiction of reality in its revolutionary development. Moreover, the truthfulness and historical specificity of the artistic depiction of reality must be combined with the task of ideological remodeling and education in the spirit of socialism. This definition became the starting point for all further interpretations until the 80s. “Socialist realism is a deeply vital, scientific and most advanced artistic method that developed as a result of the successes of socialist construction and the education of Soviet people in the spirit of communism. The principles of socialist realism ... were a further development of Lenin’s teaching on the partisanship of literature.” (Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 1947) 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.”

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Principles of socialist realism

Nationality. This meant both the understandability of literature for the common people and the use of folk speech patterns and proverbs.

Ideology. Show the peaceful life of the people, the search for ways to a new, better life, heroic deeds in order to achieve a happy life for all people.

Specificity. In depicting reality, show the process of historical development, which in turn must correspond to the materialistic understanding of history (in the process of changing the conditions of their existence, people change their consciousness and attitude towards the surrounding reality).

The state gave orders, sent people on creative trips, organized exhibitions - thus stimulating the development of the necessary layer of art.

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In literature

A writer, according to Stalin’s famous expression, is an “engineer of human souls.” With his talent he must influence the reader as a propagandist. He educates the reader in the spirit of devotion to the party and supports it in the struggle for the victory of communism. Subjective actions and aspirations of the individual had to correspond to the objective course of history. Lenin wrote: “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.”

Maxim Gorky 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 its bloody intentions are clearly visible, 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.” 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.

Socialist realism is an artistic method of literature and art, which is an aesthetic expression of a socialist-conscious concept of the world and man, determined by the era of struggle for the establishment and creation of a socialist society. The depiction of life in the light of the ideals of socialism determines both the content and the basic artistic and structural principles of the art of Socialist Realism. Its emergence and development are associated with the spread of socialist ideas in different countries, with the development of the revolutionary labor movement. The initial trends in literature and art of a new type date back to the middle and second half of the 19th century: revolutionary proletarian literature in Great Britain (the poetry of the Chartist movement, the work of E. C. Jones), in Germany (the poetry of G. Herwegh, F. Freiligrath, G. Weert), in France (literature of the Paris Commune, "The International" by E. Pothier). At the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th centuries. Proletarian literature is developing intensively in Russia, Poland, Bulgaria and other countries. As an artistic method, Socialist Realism was formed at the beginning of the 20th century. in Russia, primarily in the works of M. Gorky, and also to one degree or another M. M. Kotsyubinsky, J. Rainis, A. Akopyan, I. I. Evdoshvili and others.

This is due to the world-historical significance of the revolutionary movement in Russia, where the center of the world revolutionary struggle moved at the beginning of the 20th century.

Following Gorky, a realistic depiction of social reality and a socialist worldview become essential features of the work of writers in a number of countries (A, Barbusse, M. Andersen-Nexo, J. Reed).

After the October Revolution of 1917, socialist literary movements were formed in various European countries (Bulgaria, Germany, Poland, France, Czechoslovakia, etc.) in the 1920s, and the method of Socialist Realism is already emerging as a natural phenomenon of world literature.

The growth of the anti-fascist movement in the 1930s. contributed to the expansion of the international front of revolutionary literature and art. Soviet literature played a unifying role in this process, which by that time had united ideologically and created outstanding works of art. Socialist realism has become a broad international movement in literature and art.

After the 2nd World War 1939-1945, especially after the formation of the world socialist system, the position of Socialist Realism as the vanguard of artistic progress became even more established.

A significant role in expanding and enriching the artistic experience of Socialist Realism was played, along with the work of Gorky, V.V. Mayakovsky, M.A. Sholokhov, also the theater of K.S. Stanislavsky and V.E. Meyerhold, the cinematic discoveries of S.M. Eisenstein, V. . I. Pudovkin, A. P. Dovzhenko, music by S. S. Prokofiev, D. D. Shostakovich, painting by B. V. Ioganson, A. A. Deineka, B. I. Prorokov, P. D. Korin, R . Guttuso, sculpture by S. T. Konenkov, V. I. Mukhina, dramaturgy by B. Brecht, V. V. Vishnevsky.

The term “Socialist Realism” first appeared in the Soviet press in 1932 (Literaturnaya Gazeta, May 23). It arose in connection with the need to contrast Rapp’s thesis, which mechanically transferred philosophical categories to the field of literature (“dialectical-materialistic creative method”), with a definition that corresponded to the main direction of the artistic development of Soviet literature.

Decisive in this regard was the recognition of the role of classical traditions and the understanding of the new qualities of realism (socialist), determined both by the novelty of the life process and the socialist worldview of Soviet writers.

By this time, writers (Gorky, Mayakovsky, A.N. Tolstoy, A.A. Fadeev) and critics (A.V. Lunacharsky, A.K. Voronsky) had made a number of attempts to determine the artistic originality of Soviet literature; talked about proletarian, tendentious, monumental, heroic, romantic, social realism, about the combination of realism with romance.

The concept of Socialist Realism immediately became widespread and was consolidated by the 1st All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers (1934), at which Gorky spoke about the new method as a creative program aimed at the implementation of revolutionary humanistic ideas: “socialist realism affirms being as an act, as creativity , the goal of which is the continuous development of man’s most valuable individual abilities for the sake of his victory over the forces of nature, for the sake of his health and longevity, for the sake of great happiness to live on earth" (First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers. Verbatim report, 1934, p. 17).

Continuing the humanistic traditions of previous art, combining them with new socialist content, Socialist Realism represents a new type of artistic consciousness. Its novelty is associated with the contribution that Marxism made to materialist philosophy - the affirmation of the role of revolutionary transformative activity ("Theses on Feuerbach" by K. Marx), which served as the source of the idea of depicting reality in its revolutionary development.

The basis of the Socialist Realism method is the concept of revolutionary-effective, socialist humanism, in which the ideas of the harmonious development of man, the fullness of the real manifestation of his spiritual and moral capabilities, and the truly human relationship of people to each other, to nature and society are expressed. This humanistic orientation is inherent in all types of socialist artistic culture (literature, painting, architecture, music, theater, etc.) and constitutes the most important and universal distinctive feature of the art of Socialist Realism.

To understand the principles of socialist art, a number of statements by the classics of Marxism-Leninism are important. Speaking about the art of the future, F. Engels saw its features in “the complete fusion of great ideological depth, conscious historical content... with Shakespearean liveliness and richness of action...” (Marx and Engels, Works, 2nd ed., vol. 29 , p. 492). Engels’s thought about the conscious historicism of artistic thinking was developed in the principle of partisanship in literature and art, formulated by V. I. Lenin.

Lenin actually indicated the main features of the new literature. He noted its conditionality by the objective course of the life process, comprehension of its inconsistency, its development in the most acute conflicts. Finally, he emphasized the partisan assessment of this struggle - that the artist consciously and openly takes the side of advanced trends in historical development. True creative freedom is not the arbitrariness of the individual, but its conscious action in accordance with the requirements of real historical development.

The deeper, more multifaceted and objective the understanding of the world, the wider and more significant the subjective possibilities of a person, the scope of his creative freedom. This is precisely what the Leninist partisanship of art requires - the combination of the depth of objective knowledge with the pathos of subjective activity. When the subjective aspirations of an individual coincide with the objective course of history, then the individual gains perspective and confidence.

As a result, a basis arises for a person’s revolutionary activity, for the comprehensive development of his talents, and in particular for the formation and flourishing of various artistic and creative individuals, which explains the extraordinary breadth of aesthetic possibilities of socialist art. Socialist realism expresses the historical perspective of the development of progressive art, relying in its movement on the entire previous experience of world literature and art. The artistic innovation of Socialist Realism was already felt in its early stages. With the works of Gorky “Mother”, “Enemies”, the novels of Andersen-Nexo “Pelle the Conqueror” and “Ditte, Child of Man”, proletarian poetry of the late 19th century, a reflection of the struggle of the old and new world, the formation of man - a fighter and creator of the new - entered into literature society.

This determined the nature of the new aesthetic ideal, historical optimism - the disclosure of the conflicts of modernity in the perspective of social revolutionary development; Gorky instilled in a person confidence in his strength, in his future, and poeticized the work and practice of revolutionary activity.

From the first steps of Soviet literature, its main theme was the “world fire” of the revolution. At the same time, the theme of the pre-revolutionary world occupied an important place, which, however, was not a simple continuation of the traditions of critical realism: the past was perceived in a new aesthetic light, the pathos of the image was determined by the idea that there is no return to the past. A new quality of historicism in literature emerged: socialist realism compared with the historicism of critical realism ("The Artamonov Case", "The Life of Klim Samgin" by M. Gorky), various genres of satire were developed (Mayakovsky, J. Hasek), S. r. did not copy classical genres, but enriched them, which was reflected primarily in the novel.

Already in the first major works of Soviet prose, folk-epic scale was evident in the depiction of the revolution ("Chapaev" by D. Furmanov, "Iron Stream" by A. S. Serafimovich, "Destruction" by Fadeev). The picture of “the fate of the people” appeared different from that in the epics of the 19th century. In novels of the 20-30s. depicted the people's element in the revolution, and the organization of the element by the "iron will" of the Bolsheviks, and the formation of a socialist collective.

The depiction of the masses of the people was combined with the depiction of individual and holistic characters representing this mass ("Quiet Don" by Sholokhov, "Walking through the Torment" by A. N. Tolstoy, novels by F. Gladkov, L. Leonov, K. Fedin, A. Malyshkin, etc. .). The epic nature of the Socialist Realism novel was also manifested in the works of writers from other countries (L. Aragon - France, A. Segers - GDR, M. Puymanova - Czechoslovakia, J. Amado - Brazil). The literature and art of Socialist Realism created a new image of a positive hero - a fighter, builder, leader. Through him, the historical optimism of Socialist Realism is more fully revealed: the hero affirms faith in the victory of communist ideas, despite individual defeats and losses.

The term “optimistic tragedy” can be applied to many works that convey dramatic situations of the revolutionary struggle: “Destruction” by Fadeev, plays by V. Vishnevsky, F. Wolf (GDR), “Report with a noose around the neck” by J. Fucik (Czechoslovakia). Socialist realism is characterized by works depicting revolutionary heroism and its bearers leading the masses. The first classical image of the proletarian leader was the hero of M. Gorky's novel "Mother" Pavel Vlasov; later - Levinson ("The Defeat" of Fadeev), Korchagin ("How the Steel Was Tempered" by N. A. Ostrovsky), Davydov ("Virgin Soil Upturned" by Sholokhov). Karaslavova

The images of communist leaders are embodied in the books of J. Amadou, M. Puimanova, V. Bredel (GDR), G. Karaslavov (Bulgaria). The positive heroes of Socialist Realism are different in character and scale of activity, in temperament, and mental make-up. The variety of different types of heroes is an integral feature of Socialist Realism. Since the first years of the October Revolution of 1917, the poetry of many peoples has included the image of V.I. Lenin - realistic and at the same time acting as a symbol of the revolution, absorbing all the romance of the era.

The formation of Socialist Realism was inseparable from the pathos of affirming a new life, elation in reproducing the heroism of the revolutionary struggle during the Civil War, the socialist restructuring of the country, and the Great Patriotic War of 1941-45. These features were widely manifested in the poetry of the anti-fascist Resistance in France, Poland, Yugoslavia, etc., in works depicting the people's struggle ("The Sea Eagle" by J. Aldridge).

The work of Socialist Realism artists is characterized by “... the ability to look at the present from the future” (Gorky A.M., see Lenin V.I. and Gorky A.M. Letters. Memoirs. Documents, 3rd ed., 1969, p. 378 ), conditioned by the historical uniqueness of the development of a socialist society, in which the shoots of a visible future clearly appear in the real phenomena of reality.

Socialist realism and internationalism represent a historically unified art movement in the era of the socialist reorganization of the world. This commonality is manifested in the diversity of national paths and forms of development of the new method. According to Amado’s conviction, shared by many artists, “in order for our books - novels and poetry - to serve the cause of the revolution, they must first of all be Brazilian, and this is their ability to be international” (Second All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers. Verbatim report , 1956, p. 88). In this regard, the experience of Soviet literature and art is of fundamental importance for world artistic development.

In the USSR, Socialist Realism is the unifying principle of Soviet literature as a whole, despite all the differences in national literatures, their historical traditions and other individual characteristics. The nature of the development of Socialist Realism and its stages were varied depending on the specific national-historical conditions in which it found support for its artistic originality, acquiring ever new forms and stylistic manifestations, as if being born anew each time, but at the same time maintaining its fundamental commonality. E. Mezhelaitis and A. Tvardovsky, Ch. Aitmatov and M. Stelmakh, V. Kozhevnikov, R. Gamzatov and Y. Smuul are artists, different in style, but close to each other in the general ideological direction of creativity.

The process of the formation of Socialist Realism included the transition to its position of a number of artists whose work developed in line with other methods and directions. So, in Soviet literature of the 20s. a number of writers who formed in the pre-revolutionary era only gradually mastered new artistic trends, the socialist character of the new humanism, sometimes in sharp contradictions (the path of A. N. Tolstoy). A prominent role in the formation of the poetry of Socialist Realism in the West was played by artists associated with the so-called left avant-garde movements of the 10-20s. 20th century: L. Aragon, P. Eluard, I. Becher, N. Hikmet, V. Nezval, P. Neruda, A. Jozsef. Representatives of critical realism of the 20th century also experienced the influence of Socialist Realism: K. Capek, R. Rolland, R. Martin du Gard, G. Mann and others. Profound changes occurred in the work of the masters of critical realism in those countries where the people's democratic system won (M . Sadoveanu, A. Zweig).Zweig

Contributions to the development of the theory of new art were made in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. prominent Marxist aesthetics (works by G. Plekhanov, V. Vorovsky, M. Olminsky, F. Mering, D. Blagoev, Yu. Markhlevsky. In the 20-30s of the 20th century, A. Lunacharsky, whose works played a major role had a wide international resonance. Prominent theorists of socialist art spoke abroad: R. Fauquet, G. Bakalov, T. Pavlov, I. Fick, B. Vaclavek, K. Conrad, E. Urke, J. Jovanovic. The importance of aesthetic judgments themselves is great. creators of new art - Gorky, Becher, Brecht, I. Volcker, Fadeev.

Socialist realism must be understood historically, as a changing and at the same time internally unified creative process. The aesthetics of Socialist Realism now embraces the entire multinational experience of the art of socialist countries, the revolutionary art of the bourgeois West, and the cultures of the “Third World”, developing in a complex confrontation of different influences.

Socialist realism is constantly expanding its boundaries, acquiring the significance of the leading artistic method of the modern era. This expansion, due to the principles that determine it, is opposed to the so-called. the theory of “realism without shores” by R. Garaudy, essentially aimed at destroying the ideological foundations of new art, at blurring the lines separating realism from modernism. At the same time, it makes attempts at dogmatic definitions of the creative techniques of Socialist Realism fruitless. Marxist aesthetic theory, relying on the international experience of socialist art, came to conclusions about its broadest possibilities.

Socialist realism is considered as a new type of artistic consciousness, not closed within the framework of one or even several methods of representation, but representing a historically open system of forms of artistically truthful depiction of life, incorporating advanced trends in the world artistic process and finding new forms for their expression. Therefore, the concept of Socialist Realism is inextricably linked with the concept of artistic progress, reflecting the progressive movement of society towards increasingly multidimensional and full-fledged forms of spiritual life.