Socialist Realism: How and When was the Art and Literature Creation Principle of Socialist Realism Emerged

January 2008

Author Prof. Zhou Zhonghou is from School of Liberal Arts, Renmin University of China, Beijing

The creation principle of socialist realism in art & literature had emerged due to social history and literary reasons.

Firstly, Art and Literature Creation Principle of Socialist Realism met the need of the times.

In the struggle against the tsar and the bourgeoisie and the fight for the victory of the October Socialist Revolution, the proletariat of Russia displayed the heroic spirit; in the work for the construction of the Soviet motherland, the Soviet people glowed with unprecedented enthusiasm and creation spirit.

Gorky felt that a new group of humans at a new era was born. Literature and art should be employed to praise new characters and the new era with more vibrant colors and a more lofty tone. It was the general starting point where Gorky explored new  creation principles. Secondly, the development on literature and art itself also requires new creation principles. Although Gorky once said that main trends or genres on literature and art were limited to realism and romanticism, he mentioned that outstanding artistic traditions used to be the integration of the two. These traditions were bound to have an impact on the development of the present literature and art.

Since the publication of Gorky’s The Mother, a series of works with new characteristics appeared in the Soviet Union, including, Serafimovich’s The Iron Flood and Fadeev’s The Rout. They inherited fine traditions of progressive literature and art, and also accumulated new experience in the performance of the new ear and new characters, laying another foundation for the birth of socialist realism. Furthermore, its birth was the inevitable outcome from the struggle in the academic and artistic fields in the Soviet at the moment. From 1920s to the early of 1930s, the struggle in the Soviet academic and artistic fields was quite complex.

In terms of  creation thoughts, some people advocated “Dialectical Materialist  creation Method” (it should be principle—the citer) proposed by “Rapp” which mixed up artistic principles and philosophical ones; some supported Lev’s theory of “Documentary Literature” which made accurate records of facts; some publicized irrationality and suggested writing about intuition and sub-consciousness; some others advocated recognizing social psychology by writing about personal psychology, which was called “Theory of Living People”. These “left” or “right” theories had a serious impact on the development of Soviet literature and art. Therefore, Gorky believed it was of great necessity to uniform thoughts in literary and art circles, considering current artistic development and  creation principles.

A writers’ symposium with the presence of Stalin was held at Gorky’s apartment on October 26, 1932, when  creation principles of socialist literature and art were discussed. He said in his speech: If the artist “truly represent our life, then he is sure to see and portray things leading life to socialism. This is the socialist art. This is socialist realism”[1].

Stalin stressed the influence life exerted on art and connected authenticity and socialist realism. In July of the next year, Gorky summed up his view and those of other writers, and published a paper entitled “On Socialist Realism”, openly introducing the name and meaning of this new  creation principle to the literary and art circles and making a preparation for the official promotion of this principle.

In August 1934, the Soviet Representative Writers Congress was convened, where the  creation principle of socialist realism in the name of Gorky was adopted. It was set as the principle of creation and criticism of socialist literature and art, and was affirmed as part of the statute of the Writers’ Union, demanding all Soviet artists to follow. Since then, a new art & literature creation principle—socialist realism—was officially born after 30 years of exploration and practice.

This new  creation principle in socialist literature and art was stated in the statute of the Writers’ Union as follows: “As the basic method in the Soviet literature and the Soviet literary criticism, socialist realism requires artists to truly and specifically describe the reality from the real development of the revolution; meanwhile, the authenticity and historical concreteness of artistic description must be integrated with the task of the ideological transformation and education of the working people with the socialist spirit.”[2] According to this provision, we can know that “the  creation method of socialist realism” mentioned here possesses the following features:

Firstly, it understands and expresses life from the perspective of revolutionary development. Life develops in the contradictory struggle, and artists are supposed to describe the development trend of the reality in such a struggle and thus point out laws of social development for people. It is consistent with one of Gorky’s frequently mentioned views that artists displayed “the third reality—the reality in the future”. If this point is emphasized, it can be distinguished from the static description of old realism.

Secondly, revolutionary romanticism is its essence. The  creation method of socialist realism not only requires it to profoundly reveal the life, but also puts an emphasis on the portrait of ideal factors and heroism in the life. It has no longer been the pure realism or romanticism. It shows ideals in the real revolutionary development and displays the developing reality through ideals. Therefore, ideals and the reality are effectively combined in its works. Works composed in this way should have more vibrant colors and lofty language. To emphasize this feature, Gorky simply said, “Revolutionary romanticism, in fact, is the alias for socialist realism. Besides the task to critically describe the reality of the past, it mainly stresses what the revolution can accomplish in the reality and sheds an explicit light on lofty goals of socialism in the future.”[3]

Thirdly, it places an emphasis on the socialist spirit as a way to educate the people. Engels had long affirmed the ideological tendency of realistic works. Socialist Realism requires artists to consciously educate the working people with the socialist spirit. This kind of education should not be abstract preaching, but rather the combination of instruction and specific description of life. It should be inspired by laws of revolutionary development. Thus, its ideological and aesthetic forms of education are perfectly integrated.

From the above three points of view, socialist realism cannot simply be regarded as a method, and it is virtually a  creation principle. The formal establishment of the  creation principle of socialist realism played a decisive role in summing up the experience of revolutionary literature and art and promoting its development in the Soviet Union. Since then, as a guideline instructing revolutionary artists around the world to march forward, socialist realism had exerted a profound impact on the development of socialist movement on literature and art across the world for a long period.

[1] Aesthetic Principles of Marxism and Leninism, the first edition, (Beijing: Joint Publishing, 1961), 698.

[2] Soviet Literature and Art, the first edition, (Beijing: People’s Literature Publishing House, 1953), 13.

[3] Gorky’s Comments on Literary, the first edition, (Nanning: Guangxi People’s Publishing House, 1980), 207.