ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the general socio-cultural tension latent in Party policy which fosters other than Party prescribed cultural expression that is the tension between Party promotion of a distinctively socialist art and Party support of various cultural traditions. Two basic realms of culture have received Party support: the new politically derived "socialist" culture, and various traditions of cultural life inherited from the prerevolutionary national past. Party cultural policies foster not only Party prescribed expression, but also expression that falls outside the bounds of Party prescription, and which at times is in opposition to Party goals. Engineers of a special sort, concretizing in artistic form the ideals of the Party elite, providing the masses with general models of behavior. Ironically, the very cultural policies that were constructed to promote socialist realism, have provided a resource for opposing artistic tendencies in the Communist party directed and controlled societies.
