Socialist Realism: Continuation Or Cessation?

Nineteenth Century Russian Realism and Socialist Realism:

Continuation or Cessation? In 1917, after the October Revolution, much had changed in Russia. The Russian Empire – the third largest in world history and had lasted for almost two hundred years – was no more. The Bolsheviks and the proletariat replaced the Tsar and the aristocracy. Consequently, everything went through a change: from social values and art to political principles and literature. The change in literature brought forth a new art form – socialist realism. In fact, the Soviet Union enforced socialist realism as the only official form of art and literature. It was officially adopted as state policy at The First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers in 1934. Socialist realism

Finally, I will explain why the term “socialist realism” is incongruent with the ideology that it represents and offer an alternative term.

In terms of content – the subjects in the literary work – socialist realism is a continuation of nineteenth century Russian realism; however, in terms of form – the themes in the literary work – and function, it is a cessation of the latter. Socialist realism was a continuation of the traditions of realism in the nineteenth century Russian literature as it also depicted the social life of common people or the struggle of the nobility and the bourgeoisie towards a common life. The nineteenth century Russian literary realism masterpieces such as Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Rodion Raskolnikov, a poor formal law student) and many short stories by Anton Chekhov have common people as their protagonists. Another monumental realist novel by Lev Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, has an aristocratic protagonist of the same name who despises the conventions and constraints of the society that is embodied by her husband. Also some works that have a member of nobility as their protagonist only does so to criticize or satirize him/her. For example, in Oblomov, Ivan A. Goncharov’s protagonist, Ilya Oblomov struggles in arranging his wedding because he is too lazy to get out of his bed and he ends up marrying an old widow only because she would cook and clean for