ABSTRACT

Communist intellectuals were committed to beauty and the arts.1 Their upbringing and education always instilled in them love for cultural refinement (see the Introduction). In addition, they were reared and educated in a historical milieu marked by intellectuals’ interest in the issue of aesthetics (see Chapter 5). After exploring the ways in which Communist intellectuals created themselves as leaders and heroes, I shall in this chapter examine the dimension of aesthetic elitism in their self-construction—their belief that they had better taste in and superior knowledge of art, literature, music and other intellectual and symbolic expressions of human society and life.2