ABSTRACT
In the Soviet Union, socialist realism is the official doctrine from which people can hardly escape. Since the 1930s, this is most evident in the visual arts. Artists such as Gerasimov devote themselves to magnifying the cult of Stalin and celebrating the success of his regime in every area, as well as the happiness of the entire population. The artists not in possession of the rare talents of Deyneka merely present a sycophantic naturalism, a new Soviet academicism. The other cultural sectors obey the new order, expurgating the literature of authors or ideas regarded to be reactionary, or producing films that do not hesitate to portray historical untruths. Following Zhdanov, who drags Anna Akhmatova and Mikhail Zoshchenko through the mud, many socialist realist writers rush to defend the official national culture. Konstantin Simonov, Alexander Fadeyev, and other lesser known figures attack cosmopolitanism and any interest people may have in foreigners. In 1947, Fadeyev cites Rainer Maria Rilke as an example of these mystical and harmful foreigners. However, so as not to contradict international Marxism, a point is made of applauding a few foreigners with clear social concerns and sympathies for “left-wing ideas”: Bertolt Brecht, Romain Rolland, Louis Aragon, Nicolas Guillén. Even some Americans are commended, despite the defamation campaign targeted at the United States during the entirety of the Cold War and well beyond: Upton Sinclair, Theodore Dreiser, Richard Wright, the singer Paul Robeson and, later, the painter Rockwell Kent. They were to be set in contrast to those classed, right up to the period 1978–82 when I was staying in the USSR, as the “major enemies of the Soviet Union”: Arthur Koestler, George Orwell, and, above all, André Gide.
