Socialist Realism

Socialist Realism, officially sanctioned theory and method of literary composition prevalent in the Soviet Union from 1932 to the mid-1980s. For that period of history Socialist Realism was the sole criterion for measuring literary works. Defined and reinterpreted over years of polemics, it remains a vague term.

Socialist Realism follows the great tradition of 19th-century Russian realism in that it purports to be a faithful and objective mirror of life. It differs from earlier realism, however, in several important respects. The realism of Leo Tolstoy and Anton Chekhov inevitably conveyed a critical picture of the society it portrayed (hence the term critical realism). The primary theme of Socialist Realism is the building of socialism and a classless society. In portraying this struggle, the writer could admit imperfections but was expected to take a positive and optimistic view of socialist society and to keep in mind its larger historical relevance.

A requisite of Socialist Realism is the positive hero who perseveres against all odds or handicaps. Socialist Realism thus looks back to Romanticism in that it encourages a certain heightening and idealizing of heroes and events to mold the consciousness of the masses. Hundreds of positive heroes—usually engineers, inventors, or scientists—created to this specification were strikingly alike in their lack of lifelike credibility. Rarely, when the writer’s deeply felt experiences coincided with the official doctrine, the works were successful, as with the Soviet classic Kak zakalyalas stal (1932–34; How the Steel Was Tempered), written by Nikolay Ostrovsky, an invalid who died at 32. His hero, Pavel Korchagin, wounded in the October Revolution, overcomes his health handicap to become a writer who inspires the workers of the Reconstruction. The young novelist’s passionate sincerity and autobiographical involvement lends a poignant conviction to Pavel Korchagin that is lacking in most heroes of Socialist Realism.

Socialist Realism was also the officially sponsored Marxist aesthetic in the visual arts, which fulfilled the same propagandistic and ideological functions as did literature. Socialist Realist paintings and sculptures used naturalistic idealization to portray workers and farmers as dauntless, purposeful, well-muscled, and youthful. Socialist Realism remained the official aesthetic of the Soviet Union (and of its eastern European satellites) until the late 20th century, at which time the changes in Soviet society initiated by the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev led to abandonment of the aesthetic.