Month: February 2021

Socialist realism is essentially the glorified depiction of communist values, however, one must find it ironic when Zhdanov says:

“Never before has there been a literature which has organized the toilers and oppressed for the struggle to abolish once and for all every kind of exploitation and the yoke of wage slavery. Never before has there been a literature which has based the subject matter of its works on the life of the working class and peasantry and their fight for socialism. Nowhere, in no country in the world, has there been a literature which has defended and upheld the principle of equal rights for the toilers of all nations, the principle of equal rights for women“

He is calling for a push against the decaying “bourgeois literature”. The citizens of Russia must know “life so as to be able to depict it truthfully in works of art, not to depict it in a dead, scholastic way, not simply as “objective reality,” but to depict reality in its revolutionary development”.

This speech is meant to move the people to better help Stalin push his second wave of development, but who is the speech really for? Sure, as Russia leans more toward a fascist regime behind the socialist facade, people will need encouragement, but as we look back into history and see just how many lies the Soviet Union told, it makes one wonder if this speech was there to keep foreign powers away. If they think Russia is fine, then no one will care to look deeper. The citizens have no power to really rebel against the system ever. All they can do, is listen to this brain washing speech of new regulations on their forms of expression.

Zhdanov pushes positive vocabulary in this speech when it comes to Russia and calls the rest “capitalist slaves”. Do you think this speech had a significant impact of the movement of socialist realism? What could have been the true intent behind this speech? Is there any sincerity behind it?

In studying Soviet history, I often find that primary sources are my favorite way to really understand what is happening. Andrei Zhdanov’s speech to the first Congress of Soviet Writers contains a few points that I think would be worth discussing. The overall tone of the speech closely follows the format often employed by Stalin: make claims about some major “achievements,” and follow it up with some “minor” adjustments to make things even better. One claim that “Only Soviet literature, which is of one flesh and blood with socialist construction, could become, and has indeed become, such a literature-so rich in ideas, so advanced and revolutionary” stands out to me. This is something that Zhdanov really leans on as a core objective. He recognizes how powerful literature can be in a propagandist’s tool box. What does it mean for the “flesh and blood” of literature (and other arts) to be constructed in a socialist way? Is it ok to include portions of the Soviet Union’s not so socialist past during the Imperial era?