Socialist Realism

August 1934

there was once a fearsome, one-eyed sultan who decided to have his portrait painted. He summoned the first artist, who painted the sultan just as he was, with one eye. The artist was executed, and this marked the end of critical realism. Then a second artist was summoned, and he portrayed the sultan with two eyes that flashed with blinding lightning. The ruler was outraged by this glaring falsehood, and the second artist was also executed, putting an end to romanticism. Then a third artist was summoned. He portrayed the sultan galloping on a magnificent black steed while brandishing a sword, his head turned in profile to the viewer – and was richly rewarded. This marked the beginning of socialist realism.

This Soviet-era joke, which must have been thought up by an artist (or perhaps a writer or art critic) who, for obvious reasons, preferred to remain anonymous, gets right to the heart of the matter. Nobody ever asked socialist realism to lie. Quite the contrary – the Soviet writers who gathered at their first congress back in 1934 and swore to abide by this poorly-understood art form clearly explained what they had in mind: “As the primary method of Soviet literature and literary criticism, socialist realism demands from the artist a faithful, historically concrete representation of reality in its revolutionary development. Furthermore, this faithfulness and historical concreteness must go hand in hand with the task of ideologically reshaping and educating the workers in the spirit of socialism.” So reality had to be depicted faithfully and nothing was supposed to be hidden from view. True, “revolutionary development” was not to be forgotten. In other words it had to be shown in every instance how the forces of good triumph over the forces of evil, insofar as revolution and the establishment of communism were inevitable.

If the action was taking place in the land of Soviets, then the forces of evil were a delicate matter – they might perhaps take the form of yet unvanquished representatives of a dying breed or saboteurs planted by the imperialists. But if the writer, artist, or filmmaker was creating the inspiring image of a work brigade or harmonious collective farm, then here there would be no place for the forces of evil – here you had the struggle between the good and the excellent. After all, you have to keep in mind the workers’ education and ideological transformation.

In August 1934, 597 Soviet writers gathered in the magnificent building that formerly served as the Assembly Hall of the Nobility, but which had long since been transformed into the Hall of Columns in the Dom Soyuzov (House of Unions) to proclaim the creation of a single Union of Soviet Writers, and at the same time to talk about everything and about nothing. The first Five Year Plan had come to its glorious conclusion and the USSR was proclaimed the country of triumphant socialism. The bones of millions of peasants who had died of hunger had already been covered over by earth. The kulaks exiled to Siberia and Central Asia had by then settled down to their new lives (assuming they survived the trip). Leon Trotsky had been expelled from the country. The oppositionists had been defeated.

Nikolai Bukharin, broken and deprived of real political power, gave a beautiful speech to the writers, peppered with quotations from world classics, about the purpose of literature. Little did he know that in three years he would be back here, in the Hall of Columns, speaking at his own trial and confessing to every imaginable sin, including his traitorous desire to overthrow Soviet power. The people, including, of course, the writers, would join together to demand his execution – and the judge, naturally, would give the workers what they wanted.

Among those listening to Bukharin was Maxim Gorky, a pillar of Soviet literature who had returned from Italy only a year earlier. Whether he finally moved back to the USSR for good because he could not overcome his longing for the motherland, because this offered him a way to pay his mounting debts, because he was being blackmailed, or because he believed that he was eagerly awaited by the entire Soviet people, we may never know. But it was here, at the congress, that Gorky solidified his position as the great, officially recognized paragon of Soviet literature.

Here, at the closing session, Gorky gave a speech in praise of socialist realism and called on writers to work collectively, using the brigade method, to rely on folklore, and to serve the proletariat. He also urged them to build a memorial to Pavlik Morozov, the Pioneer who had, in 1932, informed on his father and was killed by his grandfather and uncles, as the paragon of humanistic literature explained, “for the fact that, when he understood the wrecking of those he was related to by blood, he preferred the interests of working people to his relationship with them.” Gorky had just two years left to live (it is still not clear whether he died of the tuberculosis that had plagued him for years, exacerbated by depression, or, as rumor had it, of poison slipped to him on Stalin’s orders).

In his speech, Bukharin extolled the literary virtues of Boris Pasternak, someone he had long respected and whom he placed among the first ranks of Soviet writers – and contrasted him with the likes of Mayakovsky. Many have praised Pasternak’s behavior at the congress. It is hard to say whether he intentionally turned himself into some sort of holy fool or was really trying to muster whatever powers his wounded soul still possessed to distance himself from what was happening all around him.

Endless delegations of Pioneers, workers, collective farmers, and reindeer herders came to see the writers. Among them were the workers building the metro, wildly popular at the time. Sitting at the presidium, Pasternak spotted a young woman shouldering a huge pneumatic drill among those who had come to pay their respects. He jumped from his seat and ran to take the heavy and completely unfamiliar object from her. His old-regime gallantry and abstraction from the life around him prompted good-natured chuckles from his fellow writers. Pasternak’s main golgotha – the pillorying he underwent after the release of Doctor Zhivago – was still a quarter century in the future.

Sitting next to the great writer at the presidium was a sham poet, an aged Dagestani no one really knew or cared about named Suleiman Stalsky. Gorky was nevertheless not ashamed to call him “the Homer of the 20th century.” This new Homer really did have a penchant for epic subject matter:

Поднявши меч в октябрьский час,

В социализм ведущий нас,

Да здравствует рабочий класс,

К нему как братья мы пришли.

В большой простор нагорный стран

Приветный знак ашугу дан.

И вот я, Стальский Сулейман,

На славный съезд певцов пришел

In October’s hour, with upheld sword,

As they lead us onward, ever forward,

All hail the working class, we roared,

And as brothers, by their side we stand.

Off in a vast and mountainous land

To the ashik* extends the greeting hand,

And so I, Stalsky Suleiman,

To the glorious congress of bards have come.

At this point, the recitation was interrupted by thunderous applause.

Nearby sat the miserable drunk, Yury Olesha, who confessed to being of little use to the new way of life. His remarks were followed by the brilliant wits Mikhail Koltsov and Isaac Babel, who got a few laughs out of the congress. In just a few years they would find themselves staring down the barrels of firing squads.

Meanwhile, the proletarian critics tried to conceal their consternation. Ordinarily, they were not called upon to mince words in their attacks against socially alien writers, but now all writers were supposed to be coming together into a single union, united by the common method of socialist realism. And there were many at the time who really believed that a single creative union would save them from endless attacks by fanatical levaks (leftists). Nobody understood that the union would be more like a camp barracks, escape from which could prove mortally dangerous.

On September 1, 1934, Gorky delivered the congress’ closing speech. Kirov’s murder, which would mark the starting point for the Great Terror, was just three months away. But for now, the writers were preparing to launch their collective efforts working in writers’ brigades. Soon, they would be setting out to the Belomorkanal to write a book about the benefits of hard labor for reeducating prisoners, to sing the praises of one of Stalin’s most infamous construction projects. Artists were vying for the privilege of painting Comrade Stalin, and those who were not granted this honor had to settle for depicting the cheerful life of the collective farm, or writing poetry about the joys of the Five Year Plan. The grandiose pavilions of VDNKh (the Exhibition of the Achievements of the National Economy) were already being built, demonstrating the achievements of socialism for all to see. This would be the setting chosen by film director Ivan Pyryev for the romantic encounter of two workers of collective agriculture in the archetypical Stalinist film The Swine Girl and the Shepherd, so they could sing of their happy lives for all the Soviet Union to hear.

Socialist it all was. But as to Realism, that somehow got lost on the way to the Hall of Columns.

GORKY THE THEORIST: Socialist realism was elaborated between 1932 and 1934... “The theory appears to have been devised by Gorky in consultation with Stalin. For Gorky the principal intention was no doubt to keep Soviet literature in the mainstream of the classical realist tradition of which he himself was the last great representative, but for Stalin... it must have seemed an attractive way of subordinating literature and the arts to his purpose.” (Writers in Russia, Max Hayward, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983)

* ashik: a traveling bard traditional in the Caucasus.