Socialist Realism

         a form of realist art originating in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in the 1930s and spreading to other Communist countries after World War II (1939-1945). Intended to glorify the workers, the Communist Party, and the national leader, socialist realism transformed art into a form of government propaganda.

Socialist realism was forged in the USSR under Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. The first move towards its establishment as the country’s official artistic doctrine came in 1932 when the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party decreed that all independent artistic groups be disbanded in favor of new party-controlled unions. In 1934 Communist Party official Andrei Zhdanov gave a speech at the All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers in which he asserted socialist realism to be the only form of art approved by the Communist Party. Henceforth, artists would be required to provide a “historically concrete depiction of reality in its revolutionary development ... combined with the task of educating workers in the spirit of Communism.” Zhdanov also used a phrase of Stalin’s, describing the artist as an “engineer of the human soul.”

As there was little supporting aesthetic theory to be found in the writings of the founding fathers of Soviet Communism—Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Vladimir Lenin—the substance of socialist realism developed gradually from these initial, rather vague statements and subsequent criticisms and comments by the party. Broadly, it came to mean that the artist should depict actual events and people in an idealized, optimistic way that provided a glimpse of a glorious future for the USSR under Communism. Art was to serve society and be accessible to the masses. Artists who did not conform to the rules of socialist realism might be either ousted from employment, exiled, or killed. In stark contrast to the atmosphere of the 1920s, in which avant-garde art was encouraged as part of the revolutionary spirit, all so-called formalist, progressive art, especially abstract art, was decried as capitalist and bourgeois, and thus devoid of any relevance to Communist workers.

Although party decrees drastically narrowed artistic freedom, artists nevertheless offered a variety of interpretations of socialist realism through style and subject matter. Popular subjects included scenes of workers laboring in fields or factories, portraits glorifying Stalin and other party figures, historical scenes of the Russian Revolution, and idealized depictions of domestic life. Stylistically, artists were encouraged to imitate the work of Russian painter Ilya Repin, although some produced timid imitations of Impressionism or employed a deliberately naive manner. A favored exponent of socialist realism was painter Sergei Gerasimov, who produced such exemplary images as A Collective Farm Festival (1936-1937) and Stalin and Voroshilov in the Kremlin (1938), both in the State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

Following the end of World War II, socialist realism became more strongly nationalist, and foreign influences were especially criticized. This led to a highly polished official style and an emphasis on scenes of past glory—for example, Vladimir Serov’s The Entry of Aleksandr Nevski into Pskov (1945, Russian Museum, Saint Petersburg). Eastern European countries that came under Soviet control after World War II had socialist realism imposed on them by the USSR. However, with the death of Stalin in 1953 and the decline of Stalin’s reputation under his successor, Nikita Khrushchev, socialist realism was less forcefully upheld, although it remained the official aesthetic. It was eagerly taken up in Communist China, where it remained the only acceptable style until the death of Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong in 1976. With the collapse of Communist power in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in the late 1980s, socialist realism fell out of favor and instead began to be used ironically by some artists as a means of attacking the old Communist system.