25 Years of Soviet Russian Literature (1918–1943)

Gleb Struve

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000386370
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Biographies
• Index: Literature

This book, first published in 1944, is a comprehensive survey of post-revolutionary Russian literature up to the early 1940s. A huge range of writers are examined, and the analysis is made in the knowledge of the sometimes considerable pressure brought by the Government on writers in Soviet Russia. Links are made by the author between the writers being assessed, as well as to the Russian writers that had come before them. As a wide-ranging analysis of Soviet literature, this book has rarely been bettered.

Chapter XIV

Latest Developments : Socialist Realism.—Nationalism Versus “Westernism”, and “Classicism” Vetsus “Modernism”

THE principal object of the literary “reform” of 1932 was to do away with the group spirit in Soviet literature, to put an end to the exclusiveness and mutual competition of various literary organizations, and to achieve the maximum possible degree of unity and homogeneity. Its practical outcome in the sphere of organization was the foundation of a pan-Soviet Writers’ Union. This Union differs from all similar bodies in bourgeois countries in that it is not merely a professional organization, but its members are held together by certain common political and literary principles. The statute of the Union provides that all its members shall adhere to the political platform of the Soviet Government, and that in their works they shall apply the method of Socialist Realism. In the Statute of the pan-Soviet Writers’ Union its aim is defined as “the creation of works of high artistic significance, saturated with the heroic struggle of the international proletariat, with the grandeur of the victory of Socialism, and reflecting the great wisdom and heroism of the Communist Party . . . the creation of artistic works worthy of the great age of Socialism.”

Although, by comparison with the situation prevailing during the period of 1929-32, the “reform” of 1932 may be regarded as “Liberal” in spirit, it is obvious that, as compared with the state of things created by the resolution of 1925, the explicit demand of adherence to the Soviet political platform imposed on all the members of the pan-Soviet Writers’ Union was a step backwards. But from the literary point of view the second of the above-mentioned stipulations is even of more importance for it signifies an attempt, unique in the history of literature, to impose on the whole body of writers of a given country a definite literary method. The unique character of this measure is made still more obvious by the fact that this literary method—designated as Socialist Realism—is not an invention of that body of writers itself, but has been dictated to it by the political leader of the country, a man who has not and never had anything to do with literature. The catchword of Socialist Realism—this has been especially emphasized on the occasion of the first pan-Soviet literary congress in August 1934—was coined by Stalin, and it was he who formulated the role of Soviet writers as “the engineers of human souls.”

It remains to be seen, however, what is really meant by Socialist Realism and what are its practical manifestations in present-day literature. In interpreting the meaning of this newest catchword the leading Soviet literary commentators seem to admit that it must be taken in a rather broad sense, and that it includes a great variety of styles. But in their theoretical disquisitions they fail to define it more or less precisely even as a broadly understood method, and when it comes to its practical manifestations the position becomes still more confused. Inasmuch as the stress in this latest literary formula is laid on the word “Realism”, its point is directed against Romanticism on one hand, and against certain formalistic and stylistic innovations which tend to subordinate the description of real life and living men to formal and stylistic designs. But inasmuch as this is so, the new method merely sanctions the tendency which has been dominant in Soviet Russian literature ever since 1924-25. “Back to Realism”, such has been in fact the implied slogan presiding over the evolution of the Russian novel since its revival in 1924. And the further away from 1924 we are, the more pronounced is the tendency to clothe this Realism in its traditional classical garments. Fedin’s Brothers is more realistic and more true to tradition than his Cities and Years, while most of the novels of the Five-Year Plan and of the proletarian Realists are nearer to the old-fashioned realistic school than the earlier works of Fedin and Leonov. It seems paradoxical at first glance that, as soon as the proletarian literature outgrew its infancy, the period of its revolutionary transports, it became even more conservative, more traditional and old-fashioned than the literature of the Fellow-Travellers. But it will appear natural if we remember that the champions of proletarian literature always laid stress on the content to the detriment of the form. It is significant that the invitation to learn from the classics has come not only from Gorky, not only from the Communist novelist Fadeyev, who takes Tolstoy for his literary master, but also—and in point of time even earlier—from Bezymensky, who in his early poetry tried to combine revolutionary ideas with the revolutionary technique borrowed from Mayakovsky. In the fragments of his poem Guta he deliberately adopts Pushkin’s epic metre and form and calls his fellow-poets back to Pushkin. Simplicity is a great thing, and we must learn the secret of it from the classics—such is the gist of the numerous articles of Gorky and the brunt of his advice to his younger contemporaries who, in his opinion, spoil their work with stylistic innovations. This latter tendency has become very prominent since the Revolution. A number of younger writers, especially those of peasant and proletarian extraction, have brought with them into literature their local dialects or occupational slang. Works like Panferov’s Bruski abound in words and locutions for which the great majority of readers require a special glossary. Hence the significant fact of a campaign for the purity of the Russian language launched, after sixteen years of Revolution, by Gorky and other Communist writers.

Most of the critics and writers now writing about the failure of the post-revolutionary literature to produce anything really great and urging the necessity of learning from the classics are merely repeating what one of the most broad-minded Communist critics, Voronsky, the former editor of Krasnaya Nov, said seven or eight years ago when the champions of proletarian literature ran him down for his “bourgeois” tendencies. In the preface to his book Literary Types, Voronsky wrote:

“... Alas, we are still very far from Pushkin, from Tolstoy or from Gogol. . . . For the time being we are confronted with the task not so much of overcoming and doing away with the art of the past, as with that of critically assimilating, studying and adopting it. And after all, will our transitional period produce any Tolstoys, Gogols and Dostoevskys ? No doubt that with us at present intelligence, talent, and will are focused on the social struggle and construction. It is not an accident that our age has produced Lenin, but is so far powerless to oppose its own artists to the brilliant pleiad of classics. . . . The ‘hero of our days’ comes from Lenin, and not from Tolstoy, Belinsky and Pushkin. ... To find and embody him in art is the main task of contemporary literature. It has by no means been solved yet. Our novelists and poets see at present only some of his features; the synthetic image has not yet been recreated. What we want is less scolding, less officialdom and clichés, and more of individual interpretation. We must learn from the masters of the past to look and see with our own eyes.”

In the period 1929-32 this pronouncement of Voronsky was regarded as a downright heresy, now it is exactly what the official Soviet Russian critics and literary leaders have come to admit, after several years of “scolding and officialdom” in literature. The same longing to be able to look with one’s own eyes is expressed in the words of the young Communist writer Poshekhonov when he protests against those who demand that all writers should go to factories, and says: “It is bad for a writer to see everything as it is and have no power to say what is good and what is ugly.” Or when Leonov, in an article entitled Appeal to Courage, thus characterizes the recent period in Soviet literature:

“And there you have books of nondescript colour and form, without the ‘upper floor’, without that indispensable hormone which would save them from death for at least a quarter of a century. A standard type has been created for an industrial sketch, a novel, a play (with the inevitable disaster in the middle and the heroism of the masses), for a collective farm epic (with the inevitable cunning peasant who is at first ‘for’ and then ‘against’), for a current newspaper or magazine poem (where the revolutionary thought of the poet is replaced by the beating of some rather inaudible witch-doctor’s tambourine). Titles are prepared in advance just as labels: the birth of a guild, the birth of a hero, the birth of a factory, the birth of an artisan, the birth of a woman: this sounds majestic and saves the author’s mind all trouble. Many pages of such books are known to the reader long before they have been written. A friend of mine, a voracious reader, told me while perusing on the counter of a bookshop a well-known book: ‘I think I’ve already paid for it.’“

But if the proclamation of Realism as the dominant school of the age does no more than consecrate the status quo that has long been in existence, its qualification by the word “Socialist” hardly helps make the matters clearer. Wherein lies the difference between Realism pure and simple, and Socialist Realism ? Is it only the Socialist contents of a work, its Socialist “message that”, makes all the difference ? But then why speak of a new literary method and style ? Some of the Soviet critics draw a parallel between Socialist Realism and what a Russian critic of the seventies of the last century, Shelgunov, called “Popular Realism” (in this connection one recollects the movement of “Populism” started a few years ago by a group of French writers) which he opposed to the “aristocratic Realism” of the majority of Russian writers of the nineteenth century (Turgenev, Tolstoy, Goncharov, Pisemsky). As a typical representative of Popular Realism Shelgunov took one of the minor “Populist” novelists of the sixties, Reshetnikov. He described the essence of Popular Realism as the preoccupation with social psychology above all. Instead of individuals and representatives of the upper classes it focused its attention on the “masses”, on the middle class and the peasants. According to the Soviet critics, Popular Realism, which in different forms has survived till the October Revolution, ceased to satisfy the requirements. And just as in the sixties, after the peasant reform, the Realists were now confronted with the task of discovering a new realistic method that would fit in best with the historical realities of the moment. First of all they were bound to realize that this new form of Realism must oppose itself to popular Realism as a lower and obsolete form expressing the small-bourgeois mentality. Socialist Realism is called upon to reflect the Socialist realities and the socialistic mentality. It is thus, historically speaking, a lawful successor of Popular Realism. The value of this term, says the critic in question (Pereverzev), lies in that it naturally and inevitably presupposes its historical antithesis and at the same time its inevitable premise—“Popular Realism𔄣. But this really leads us nowhere.

Some other critics, who have tried to explain the meaning of Socialist Realism, have opposed it to bourgeois Realism, as a positive form may be opposed to a negative. The traditional bourgeois Realism in all its varieties was rooted, according to those critics, in a critical, more or less negative, attitude to reality. It was born of a protest against that reality and was potentially revolutionary. Socialist Realism, on the contrary, is founded on a positive attitude to the new realities of a collectivized society. It is fundamentally optimistic, it says “yes” to life, while the pre-revolutionary bourgeois Realism was fundamentally pessimistic and often led to a morbid and unhealthy attitude to the world. Drawing the antithesis a little further, we may come to the conclusion (though this conclusion is not to be found in the discourses of the Communist critics) that Socialist Realism is potentially conservative, and in doing so we should not be wide off the mark.

Finally, there was a tendency to oppose Socialist Realism to revolutionary Romanticism which had been prevalent during the first years of the Revolution and which still characterizes the work of some of the Soviet writers. But the outcome of the long and heated discussions in the Soviet literary circles on this subject has been the admission of revolutionary Romanticism as a necessary component part of Socialist Realism. Gorky went still further when, in one of his articles published in the summer of 1934, he proclaimed revolutionary Romanticism to be “ a pseudonym of Socialist Realism.” A formula was thus found to solve the problem and to reconcile the contending literary factions, but it did not add to our understanding of Socialist Realism as a literary method.

Recently a Soviet critic (Nusinov) has discussed Socialist Realism as a method of psychological presentation essentially antithetical to the psychological methods of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. The object of Socialist Realism, he said, was the exact opposite of Dostoevsky’s psychologism which reduced man’s actions to the struggle of eternal forces of good and evil within him and sought a religious solution and explanation. Some of the Soviet writers, went on Nusinov, seemed to think that the psychological method of Tolstoy was much nearer to Socialist Realism than that of Dostoevsky. But in fact Tolstoy was nearer to it only in one point—in his moral optimism. Both Tolstoy and Dostoevsky showed human beings in their individual, not their social aspect. With Tolstoy, a man is an embodiment of good so long as he is left to himself, but becomes an agent of evil whenever he is, or feels himself to be, a part of a social collective. Therefore, according to Nusinov, Tolstoy’s method is even more dangerous than Dostoevsky’s, for Dostoevsky at least “shows the man of the past in all his iniquity.” If a Socialist writer wants to assimilate Dostoevsky’s and Tolstoy’s psychological methods, he must needs replace their non-class and non-historical, religiously-pessimistic and abstractly-ethical, attitude to man and his emotions, by a social and historical interpretation. Therefore, of the classics of bourgeois Realism, Balzac and Stendhal, with their social and historical approach to their themes, are nearer to Socialist Realism than either Tolstoy or Dostoevsky. At the end of his article, however, Nusinov lets the cat out of the bag and brings us back to the starting-point by disclosing the essentially poli...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface to the New Edition
• Introduction
• I. Pre-revolutionary Writers After 1924
• II. Two Revolutionary Romantics
• III. The Revival of the Novel
• IV. Writers of Everyday Life
• V. The Proletarian Writers
• VI. Yury Olesha and his “Envy”
• VII. Literature of the Five-Year
• VIII. “Counter-revolutionary“ Tendencies in Soviet
• IX. The Historical Novel
• X. The Poets
• XI. The Drama
• XII. Literary Criticism and Literary Theories
• XIII. Government Policy in Matters of Literature
• XIV. Latest Developments: Socialist Realism.—Nationalism versus “Westernism” and “Classicism” 1 ersus “Modernism”
• Epilogue: 1935-1943
• Bibliography
• Supplementary Bibliography
• Index