Socialist Realism

The closest context for East European monumental sculpture was that of the experience of Soviet monumental sculpture. The Soviet model was well publicised through the press, exhibitions and artist exchanges, and both artists and critics had to come to terms with the Soviet theory of socialist realism and the official canon of Soviet art and sculpture.

The Soviet theoretical definition of socialist realism has been described and explained by numerous Western authors, and was indeed grappled with by all East European art critics of the Stalin era, who had to try and apply its principles to domestic art production. In accordance with the theory of reflection, art was obliged to truthfully reflect reality, and at the same time comply with the requirements of obedience to the party (partiinost'), was to be for and about the people (narodnost'), and was to be associated with the positive hero (tipichnost'). The 'pivotal tenet' of the theory was the requirement that artists 'in documenting the present, find in it those elements that foreshadow the dazzling future of Communist paradise-on-earth.'

The first formulation of socialist realism was made by Andrei Zhdanov in August 1934 at the first All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers. Although his speech was aimed primarily at writers, it was also applicable to the other branches of the arts. The obligations incumbent on cultural producers, whom Stalin had called upon to become 'engineers of human souls', included the demand that they 'depict life faithfully', while showing 'reality in its revolutionary development.' At the same time, 'faithfulness and historical concreteness' were to be combined with the task of 'the ideological refashioning and education of the working people in the spirit of socialism.'

It is important to emphasise that socialist realism was not simply an arbitrary theory dreamed up by Stalin and Zhdanov in 1934, but a movement with an intellectual background within Marxist and utopian thought of the early twentieth century. It also had a practical foundation in the traditions of Russian realist painting going back to the nineteenth century Itinerant Painters. It should also be seen as part of the international trend towards classicism and figuration after World War I, whose significance has been obscured by later modernist theorists' exclusive concentration on the achievements of the avant-garde. Most of all, it should be noted that socialist realism was not simply a 'style', but a method or approach that could lead to varied and complex results.

The question of how Soviet experience functioned as a model for East European artists is one of the core issues running through this study. The literature on Soviet art makes clear that there were a variety of 'Soviet models' that could be looked to as sources for East European socialist art. In addition to the experiments of the Russian avant-garde in the early 1920s, there were stylistic and thematic differences between the modernist proto-socialist-realism of the period of 'cultural revolution' between 1928-32; the optimistic and dynamic socialist realism of the mid-1930s typified by Mukhina's Worker and Collective Farm Girl; and the static and highly-varnished academic realism 'encouraged in the grim post-war years.' Even during the so-called Zhdanovshchina from 1947-53, representatives of the more varied socialist art produced in the 1920s and 1930s were always threatening to return. During de-Stalinisation, the authorities sanctioned renewed public interest in the alternative models of Soviet art that had held sway before the War and before Stalin came to power.

One element of socialist realist theory had particular significance for its export outside the Soviet Union, and that was its attitude to the question of national identity and style. Stalin himself made contradictory statements on this issue. At the Sixteenth Party Congress of 1930 he had warned of the twin dangers of Great Russian Chauvinism and nationalism [of the non-Russian peoples in the Soviet Union], and gave the following memorable definition of socialist culture: 'What is culture during the dictatorship of the proletariat? It is a culture socialist in content and national in form, having the aim of educating the masses in the spirit of socialism and internationalism.' This mantra was often invoked by those attempting to defend themselves against charges of Formalism using the argument that what looked like modernism in their work was actually a reflection of the decorativeness of the artist's non-figurative national tradition.

By the late 1940s, however, the dictum of 'socialist in content, national in style' had been considerably watered down by the insistence that all artists, whatever their nationality, study 'the great realist heritage of Russian art.' According to the colonialist ideology of the Zhdanovshchina, a unified artistic culture was to be imposed across the USSR based on the supremacy of Russian culture. What is more, and most importantly for our subject, this ideology was applied beyond the borders of the Soviet Union to all countries within the Soviet sphere of influence: during the Stalinist period in Eastern Europe there could be no 'separate national paths' to socialist culture, the Soviet (Russian) model was to be followed slavishly.

Extract from the introduction to 'Monumental Sculpture in Post-War Eastern Europe,' Ph.D thesis, Essex University, 2002.

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