ABSTRACT

Most commentators on Marxist aesthetics outside the socialist countries have passed over the issue of socialist realism with hurried denunciations. The relationship between artistic realism and the writer's ideological position posited by V. I. Lenin differs from that implied in Friedrich Engels' appreciation of Balzac. By the time Mayakovsky died in 1930, the left front of art group had dissolved and its ideas had been officially censured as 'formalist', a term which carried increasing opprobrium as 'socialist realism' became the touchstone of artistic excellence. In 1934, Socialist Realism was officially adopted as the goal of Soviet art at the first Congress of the Writers' Union. The administrator of socialist realism par excellence was A. A. Zhdanov whose keynote speech at the first Writer's Congress marked the beginning of his domination of Soviet cultural life. Amongst scholars, a certain amount of work has been undertaken to provide socialist realism with a more firmly founded Marxist pedigree.