An international perspective on the aesthetics of socialist realism

Bringing together the Soviet historical experience and Stalin-era art in novels, films, poems, songs, painting, photography, architecture and advertising, Dobrenko examines Stalinism's representational strategies and demonstrates how real socialism was begotten of Socialist Realism.

The past fifteen years have seen an important shift in the way scholars look at socialist realism. Where it was seen as a straitjacket imposed by the Stalinist regime, it is now understood to be an aesthetic movement in its own right, one whose internal logic had to be understood if it was to be criticized. International specialists remain divided, however, over the provenance of Soviet aesthetic ideology, particularly over the role of the avant-garde in its emergence. In The Cultural Origins of the Socialist Realist Aesthetic, Irina Gutkin brings together the best work written on the subject to argue that socialist realism encompassed a philosophical worldview that marked thinking in the USSR on all levels: political, social, and linguistic. Using a wealth of diverse cultural material, Gutkin traces the emergence of the central tenants of socialist realist theory from Symbolism and Futurism through the 1920s and 1930s.

Socialist Realism in Central and Eastern European Literatures' is the first published work to offer a variety of alternative perspectives on the literary and cultural Sovietization of Central and Eastern Europe after World War II and emphasize the dialogic relationship between the ‘centre’ and the ‘satellites’ instead of the traditional top-down approach. The introduction of the Soviet cultural model was not quite the smooth endeavour that it was made to look in retrospect; rather, it was always a work in progress, often born out of a give-andtake with the local authorities, intellectuals and interest groups. Relying on archival resources, the authors examine one of the most controversial attempts at a cultural unification in Europe by providing an overview with a focus on specific case-studies, an analysis of distinct particularities with attention to the patterns of negotiation and adaptation that were being developed in the process.

Drawing from Life explores revolutionary drawing and sketching in the early People's Republic of China (1949-1965) in order to discover how artists created a national form of socialist realism. Tracing the development of seminal works by the major painters Xu Beihong, Wang Shikuo, Li Keran, Li Xiongcai, Dong Xiwen, and Fu Baoshi, author Christine I. Ho reconstructs how artists grappled with the representational politics of a nascent socialist art. The divergent approaches, styles, and genres presented in this study reveal an art world that is both heterogeneous and cosmopolitan. Through a history of artistic practices in pursuit of Maoist cultural ambitions--to forge new registers of experience, new structures of feeling, and new aesthetic communities--this original book argues that socialist Chinese art presents a critical, alternative vision for global modernism.

The Routledge Companion to Russian Literature is an engaging and accessible guide to Russian writing of the past thousand years. The volume covers the entire span of Russian literature, from the Middle Ages to the post-Soviet period, and explores all the forms that have made it so famous: poetry, drama and, of course, the Russian novel. A particular emphasis is given to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when Russian literature achieved world-wide recognition through the works of writers such as Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Nabokov and Solzhenitsyn. Covering a range of subjects including women's writing, Russian literary theory, socialist realism and émigré writing, leading international scholars open up the wonderful diversity of Russian literature. With recommended lists of further reading and an excellent up-to-date general bibliography, The Routledge Companion to Russian Literature is the perfect guide for students and general readers alike.

This wide-ranging cultural history explores the expression of Bolshevik Party ideology through the lens of landscape, or, more broadly, space. In painting, architecture, literature, cinema, and song, images of landscape were enlisted to help mold the masses into joyful, hardworking citizens of a state with a radiant, utopian future. From backgrounds in history, art history, literary studies, and philosophy, the contributors show how Soviet space was sanctified, coded, and ‘sold’ as an ideological product.

The social realist movement, with its focus on proletarian themes and its strong ties to New Deal programs and leftist politics, has long been considered a depression-era phenomenon that ended with the start of World War II. This study explores how and why African American writers and visual artists sustained an engagement with the themes and aesthetics of social realism into the early cold war-era--far longer than a majority of their white counterparts. Stacy I. Morgan recalls the social realist atmosphere in which certain African American artists and writers were immersed and shows how black social realism served alternately to question the existing order, instill race pride, and build interracial, working-class coalitions. Morgan discusses, among others, such figures as Charles White, John Wilson, Frank Marshall Davis, Willard Motley, Langston Hughes, Sterling Brown, Elizabeth Catlett, and Hale Woodruff.

"In its sure grasp of a huge subject and in its speculative boldness, Professor Clark's study represents a major breakthrough. It sends one back to the original texts with a whole host of new questions.... And it also helps us to understand the place of the 'official' writer in that peculiar mixture of ideology, collective pressure, and inspiration which is the Soviet literary process." —Times Literary Supplement "The Soviet Novel has had an enormous impact on the way Stalinist culture is studied in a range of disciplines (literature scholarship, history, cultural studies, even anthropology and political science)." —Slavic Review "Those readers who have come to realize that history is a branch of mythology will find Clark's book a stimulating and rewarding account of Soviet mythopoesis." —American Historical Review A dynamic account of the socialist realist novel's evolution as seen in the context of Soviet culture. A new Afterword brings the history of Socialist Realism to its end at the close of the 20th century.

This work considers aspects of the art and architecture of the Soviet Union during the turbulent period of 1917 to 1922, covering a broad range of art, some modernist, some anti-modernist, but all to some degree guided by (and sometimes coerced by) the apparatus of the over-arching state.

Provides a broad European and cross-cultural perspective on the theory and practice of literature and the Left over the past 50 years.

Abiding by the Soviet model, the concept of socialist realism in the GDR is identified by five chracteristics: 1) Objective Reflection of Reality, 2) Partiality, 3) National Orientation, 4) The Typical and 5) The Positive Hero. By adhering to these criteria, works of socialist realism promote the precepts of socialism as a «Wegweiser» in the transition from capitalism to communism. Moskauer Novelle, Christa Wolf's first work, may be characterized as a model of socialist realism in that it faithfully abides by all five prerequisites of that literary phenomenon. However, marked deviation from the expected norm of socialist realism literature is already evident in Der geteilte Himmel, the second novel by Wolf, in that a search for truth replaced earlier political subservience. Personal isolation and alienation presented in a stream-of-consciousness format in Nachdenken über Christa T. and Kein Ort. Nirgends mark the death of this literary phenomenon.