Untitled

Educating the Masses
Did the Central Committee act “conservatively,” was it under the influence of
“traditionalism” or “epigonism” and so on, when it defended the classical heritage
in painting This is sheer nonsense! . . . We Bolsheviks do not reject the cultural
heritage. On the contrary, we are critically assimilating the cultural heritage of
all nations and all times in order to choose from it all that inspire the working
people of Soviet society to great exploits in labor, science, and culture. 3
The discussion of the role of artistic heritage set the framework for the
development of the aesthetics of Socialist Realism, because it indicated some
formal criteria that a Socialist Realist artwork should satisfy in order to be
both Socialist and Realist. The introduction of Socialist Realism initiated a
long and painful struggle against formalism in art in the name of a return to
classical models of art-making. In this way, Socialist Realist art was increasingly
purged of all traces of modernist “distortions” of the classical form—so
that at the end of this process it became easily distinguishable from bourgeois
Western art. Soviet artists also tried to thematize everything that looked specifically
Socialist and non-Western—official parades and demonstrations,
meetings of the Communist Party and its leadership, happy workers building
the material basis of the new society. In this sense, the apparent return to a
classical mimetic image effectuated by Socialist Realism was rather misleading.
Socialist Realism was not supposed to depict life as it was, because life
was interpreted by Socialist Realist theory as being constantly in flux and in
development—specifically in “revolutionary development,” as it was officially
formulated.
Socialist Realism was oriented toward what had not yet come into being
but what it saw should be created and was destined to become a part of the
Communist future. Socialist Realism was understood as a dialectical method.
“What is most important to the dialectical method,” wrote Stalin, “is not that
which is stable at the present but is already beginning to die, but rather that
which is emerging and developing, even if at present it does not appear stable,
since for the dialectical method only that which is emerging and developing
cannot be overcome.” 4 Of course, it was the Communist Party that had the
right to decide what would die and what could emerge.
The mere depiction of the facts was officially condemned as
“naturalism,” which should be distinguished from “realism,” taken to imply
an ability to grasp the whole of historical development, to recognize in the