User:Kspepple/sandbox

Not to be confused with Social realism or Real socialism.

Socialist realism is a style of realistic art that was developed in the Soviet Union and became a dominant style in various other socialist countries. Socialist realism is characterized by the glorified depiction of communist values, such as the emancipation of the proletariat, in a realistic manner. Although related, it should not be confused with social realism, a broader type of art that realistically depicts subjects of social concern. Socialist realism was the predominate form of art in the Soviet Union from its development in the early 1920s to its eventual fall from popularity in the late 1960s. While other countries have employed a prescribed cannon of art, socialist realism in Russia has persisted longer and has been more restricted than elsewhere in Europe.

Development

Socialist realism was developed by many thousands of artists, across a diverse empire, over several decades. Early examples of realism in Russian art include the work of the Peredvizhnikis, Jacques-Louis David and Ilya Yefimovich Repin. While these works do not have the same political connotation, they exhibit the techniques exercised by their successors. After the Bolsheviks took control of Russia on October 25, 1917 there was a marked shift in artistic styles. After a period of exploration, Russian artists began to return to more traditional forms of art and painting. Shortly after Bolsheviks took control, Anatoly Lunacharsky was appointed as head of Narkompros, the People's Commissariat for Enlightenment. This put Lunacharsky in the position of deciding the direction of art in the newly created Soviet state. Lunacharsky created a system of aesthetics based on the human body that would become the main component of socialist realism for decades to come. He believed that "the sight of a healthy body, intelligent face or friendly smile was essentially life-enhancing." He concluded that art had a direct effect on the human organism and under the right circumstances that effect could be positive. By depicting "the perfect person", Lunacharsky believed art could educate citizens on how to be the best Soviet possible.

There were two main groups debating the fate of Soviet art, futurist and traditionalist. Futurist, many of whom had been creating abstract leftist art before the revolution, believed communism required a complete rupture from the past and therefore so did Soviet art. Traditionalist believed in the importance of realistic representations of every day life. Under Lenin's rule, there was a certain amount of private commercial enterprise, allowing both the futurist and the traditionalist to be supported by their various patrons. But by 1928, the government had enough strength and authority to end private enterprises thus ending support for fringe groups such as the futurists. At this point, although the term "socialist realism" was not being used, its defining characteristics became the norm.

1932 was the first time that the term "socialist realism" was officially used. The term was settled upon in meetings that included the highest level politicians, including Stalin himself. Maxim Gorky, a proponent of literary socialist realism, published a famous article titled "Socialist Realism" in 1933 and by 1934 the term's etymology was traced back to Stalin. During the Congress of 1934 four guidelines were laid out in order to be socialist realism. The work must be:

1. Proletarian: art relevant to the workers and understandable to them.
2. Typical: scenes of every day life of the people.
3. Realistic: in the representational sense.
4. Partisan: supportive of the aims of the State and the Party.

Characteristics

File:Réalisme socialiste (Vilnius) (7622118328).jpg

Socialist-Realist sculpture in Vilnius

The purpose of socialist realism was to limit the notion of culture to a specific, highly regulated faction of creative expression while promoting Soviet ideals.

is the basic method of Soviet literature and literary criticism. It demands of the artist the truthful, historically concrete representation of reality in its revolutionary development. Moreover, the truthfulness and historical concreteness of the artistic representation of reality must be linked with the task of ideological transformation and education of workers in the spirit of socialism.

— Page 148, On Socialist Realism" by Andrei Sinyavsky writing as Abram Tertz, ISBN 0-520-04677-3

Its purpose was to elevate the common worker, whether factory or agricultural, by presenting his life, work, and recreation as admirable. In other words, its goal was to educate the people in the goals and meaning of Communism. The ultimate aim was to create what Lenin called "an entirely new type of human being": New Soviet Man. Stalin described the practitioners of socialist realism as "engineers of souls".

The "realism" part is important. Soviet art at this time aimed to depict the worker as he truly was, carrying his tools. In a sense, the movement mirrors the course of American and Western art, where the everyday human being became the subject of the novel, the play, poetry, and art. The proletariat was at the center of communist ideals; hence, his life was a worthy subject for study. This was an important shift away from the aristocratic art produced under the Russian tsars of previous centuries, but had much in common with the late-19th century fashion for depicting the social life of the common people. In practice, this entailed realistic depictions of objects, so that ordinary people could understand; a theater could not use a box to represent a chair.

The artist could not, however, portray life just as he saw it; because everything that reflected poorly on Communism had to be omitted, and indeed, people who were not simply good or evil could not be used as characters. All characters were poured into a heroic mold, sometimes termed heroic realism. This reflected a call for heroic and romantic art, which reflected the ideal rather than the realistic. Maxim Gorky urged that one obtained realism by extracting the basic idea from reality, but by adding the potential and desirable to it, one added romanticism with deep revolutionary potential; "critical realism" had been appropriate for older, corrupt societies, but criticism of society must now give way to optimism. Art was filled with health and happiness; paintings teemed with busy industrial and agricultural scenes, and sculptures depicted workers, sentries, and schoolchildren. Literature was filled with "positive heroes" that were frequently extremely tedious.

Compared to the eclectic variety of 20th century Western art, socialist realism often resulted in a fairly bland and predictable range of artistic products (indeed, Western critics wryly described the principles of socialist realism as "girl meets tractor"). Painters would depict happy, muscular peasants and workers in factories and collective farms; during the Stalin period, they also produced numerous heroic portraits of the dictator to serve his cult of personality. Industrial and agricultural landscapes were popular subjects, glorifying the achievements of the Soviet economy. Novelists were expected to produce uplifting stories in a manner consistent with the Marxist doctrine of dialectical materialism. Composers were to produce rousing, vivid music that reflected the life and struggles of the proletariat. It was argued that mere photographic replication of facts was merely "naturalism", while socialist realism was distinguished by a will and purpose on part of the artist, and his recognition of these facts as part of a vision of the whole. Even diarists would attempt to fit their accounts of their daily lives into suitable purpose-driven, future-oriented accounts.

Socialist realism thus demanded close adherence to party doctrine, and has often been criticized as detrimental to the creation of true, unfettered art – or as being little more than a means to censor artistic expression. Vsevolod Kochetov is one of the typical representatives who rigorously applied those doctrines even in 1960s and early 1970s. Czesław Miłosz, writing in the introduction to Sinyavsky's On Socialist Realism, describes the products of socialist realism as "inferior", ascribing this as necessarily proceeding from the limited view of reality permitted to creative artists.

Not all Marxists accepted the necessity of socialist realism (Marx's, Engels' and Trotsky's views on art and culture were very liberal and may have balked at the propagandism of Socialist realism themselves). Its establishment as state doctrine in the 1930s had rather more to do with internal Communist Party politics than classic Marxist imperatives. The Hungarian Marxist essayist Georg Lukács criticized the rigidity of socialist realism, proposing his own "critical realism" as an alternative. However, such critical voices were a rarity until the 1980s.

Important groups

Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia (AKhRR)

Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia (AKhRR) was established in 1922 and was one of the most influential artist groups in the USSR. AKhRR worked to truthfully document contemporary life in Russia by utilizing "heroic realism". The term "heroic realism" was beginning of the socialist realism archetype. AKhRR was sponsored by influential government officials such as Leon Trotsky and carried favor with the Red Army In 1928 the AKhRR was renamed to Association of Artists of the Revolution (AKhR) in order to include the rest of the Soviet states. At this point the group had begun participating in state promoted mass forms of art like murals, jointly made paintings, ad production art and textile design. The group was disbanded April 23, 1932 by the decree “On the Reorganization of Literary and Artistic Organizations”

Society of Easel Painters (OSt)

Some prominent members include Aleksandr Deyneka, Yuri Pimanov, Aleksandr Labas, Pyotr Vilyams, all of whom were students or ex-students of Moscow's art school, Vkhutemas. While this group was also focused on the glorification of the revolution they, as per their name, worked individually as easel painters. The most common subjects of the OSt's works fit with the developing socialist realism trope. Their paintings consisted mostly of sport and battle, industry and modern technology. OSt broke up in 1931 due to some members' demand to transition to print and poster work.

Soviet Union

All-Russia Exhibition Centre in Moscow

In conjunction with the Socialist Classical style of architecture, socialist realism was the officially approved type of art in the Soviet Union for nearly sixty years. All material goods and means of production belonged to the community as a whole; this included means of producing art, which were also seen as powerful propaganda tools.

In the early years of the Soviet Union, Russian and Soviet artists embraced a wide variety of art forms under the auspices of Proletkult. Revolutionary politics and radical non-traditional art forms were seen as complementary. In art, Constructivism flourished. In poetry, the non-traditional and the avant-garde were often praised.

These styles of art were later rejected by members of the Communist Party who did not appreciate modern styles such as Impressionism and Cubism since these movements existed before the revolution and were thus associated with "decadent bourgeois art". Socialist realism was, to some extent, a reaction against the adoption of these "decadent" styles. It was thought that the non-representative forms of art were not understood by the proletariat and could therefore not be used by the state for propaganda. Alexander Bogdanov argued that the radical reformation of society to communist principles meant little if any bourgeois art would prove useful; some of his more radical followers advocated the destruction of libraries and museums. Lenin rejected this philosophy, deplored the rejection of the beautiful because it was old, and explicitly described art as needing to call on its heritage: "Proletarian culture must be the logical development of the store of knowledge mankind has accumulated under the yoke of capitalist, landowner, and bureaucratic society." Modern art styles appeared to refuse to draw upon this heritage, thus clashing with the long realist tradition in Russia and rendering the art scene complex. Even in Lenin's time, a cultural bureaucracy began to restrain art to fit propaganda purposes. Leon Trotsky's arguments that a "proletarian literature" was un-Marxist because the proletariat would lose its class characteristics in the transition to a classless society, however, did not prevail.

Socialist realism became state policy in 1934 when the First Congress of Soviet Writers met and Stalin's representative Andrei Zhdanov gave a speech strongly endorsing it as "the official style of Soviet culture". It was enforced ruthlessly in all spheres of artistic endeavour. Artists who strayed from the official line were severely punished. Form and content were often limited, with erotic, religious, abstract, surrealist, and expressionist art being forbidden. Formal experiments, including internal dialogue, stream of consciousness, nonsense, free-form association, and cut-up were also disallowed. This was either because they were "decadent", unintelligible to the proletariat, or counter-revolutionary. In response to the 1934 Congress in Russia, the most important American writers of the left gathered in the First American Writers Congress of 26–27 April 1935 in Chicago at meetings that were supported by Stalin. Waldo David Frank was the first president of the League of American Writers, which was backed by the Communist Party USA. A number of novelists balked at the control, and the League broke up at the invasion of the Soviet Union by German forces.

The first exhibition organized by the Leningrad Union of Artists took place in 1935. Its participants – Mikhail Avilov, Isaak Brodsky, Piotr Buchkin, Nikolai Dormidontov, Rudolf Frentz, Kazimir Malevich, Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, and Alexander Samokhvalov among them – became the founding fathers of the Leningrad school, while their works formed one of its richest layers and the basis of the largest museum collections of Soviet painting of the 1930s-1950s.

In 1932, the Leningrad Institute of Proletarian Visual Arts was transformed into the Institute of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture (since 1944 named Ilya Repin). The fifteen-year period of constant reformation of the country’s largest art institute came to an end. Thus, basic elements of the Leningrad school – namely, a higher art education establishment of a new type and a unified professional union of Leningrad artists, were created by the end of 1932. In 1934 Isaak Brodsky, a disciple of Ilya Repin, was appointed director of the National Academy of Arts and the Leningrad Institute of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture. Brodsky invited distinguished painters and pedagogues to teach at the Academy, namely Semion Abugov, Mikhail Bernshtein, Ivan Bilibin, Piotr Buchkin, Efim Cheptsov, Rudolf Frentz, Boris Ioganson, Dmitry Kardovsky, Alexander Karev, Dmitry Kiplik, Yevgeny Lansere, Alexander Lubimov, Matvey Manizer, Vasily Meshkov, Pavel Naumov, Alexander Osmerkin, Anna Ostroumova-Lebedeva, Leonid Ovsyannikov, Nikolai Petrov, Sergei Priselkov, Nikolai Punin, Nikolai Radlov, Konstantin Rudakov, Pavel Shillingovsky, Vasily Shukhaev, Victor Sinaisky, Ivan Stepashkin, Konstantin Yuon, and others.

Portrait of Stalin by Isaak Brodsky

Art exhibitions of 1935–1940 disprove the claims that artistic life of the period was suppressed by the ideology and artists submitted entirely to what was then called "social order". A great number of landscapes, portraits, and genre paintings exhibited at the time pursued purely technical purposes and were thus ostensibly free from any ideology. Genre painting was also approached in a similar way.

In the post-war period between the mid-fifties and sixties, the Leningrad school of painting was approaching its vertex. New generations of artists who had graduated from the Academy (Repin Institute of Arts) in the 1930s–50s were in their prime. They were quick to present their art, they strived for experiments, and were eager to appropriate a lot and to learn even more. Their time and contemporaries, with all its images, ideas, and dispositions found it full expression in portraits by Vladimir Gorb, Boris Korneev, Engels Kozlov, Felix Lembersky, Oleg Lomakin, Samuil Nevelshtein, Victor Oreshnikov, Semion Rotnitsky, Lev Russov, and Leonid Steele; in landscapes by Nikolai Galakhov, Vasily Golubev, Dmitry Maevsky, Sergei Osipov, Vladimir Ovchinnikov, Alexander Semionov, Arseny Semionov, and Nikolai Timkov; and in genre paintings by Andrey Milnikov, Yevsey Moiseenko, Mikhail Natarevich, Yuri Neprintsev, Nikolai Pozdneev, Mikhail Trufanov, Yuri Tulin, Nina Veselova, and others.

In 1957, the first all-Russian Congress of Soviet artists took place in Moscow. In 1960, the all-Russian Union of Artists was organized. Accordingly, these events influenced the art life in Moscow, Leningrad, and the provinces. The scope of experimentation was broadened; in particular, this concerned the form of painterly and plastic language. Images of youths and students, rapidly changing villages and cities, virgin lands brought under cultivation, grandiose construction plans being realized in Siberia and the Volga region, and great achievements of Soviet science and technology became the chief topics of the new painting. Heroes of the time – young scientists, workers, civil engineers, physicians, etc. – were made the most popular heroes of paintings.

Trumpeter and standard-bearer by Mitrovan Grekov

In this period, life provided artists with plenty of thrilling topics, positive figures, and images. Legacy of many great artists and art movements became available for study and public discussion again. This greatly broadened artists’ understanding of the realist method and widened its possibilities. It was the repeated renewal of the very conception of realism that made this style dominate Russian art throughout its history. Realist tradition gave rise to many trends of contemporary painting, including painting from nature, "severe style" painting, and decorative art. However, during this period impressionism, postimpressionism, cubism, and expressionism also had their fervent adherents and interpreters.

The restrictions were relaxed somewhat after Stalin's death in 1953, but the state still kept a tight rein on personal artistic expression. This caused many artists to choose to go into exile, for example the Odessa Group from the city of that name. Independent-minded artists that remained continued to feel the hostility of the state. In 1974, for instance, a show of unofficial art in a field near Moscow was broken up and the artwork destroyed with a water cannon and bulldozers (see Bulldozer Exhibition). Mikhail Gorbachev's policies of glasnost and perestroika facilitated an explosion of interest in alternative art styles in the late 1980s, but socialist realism remained in limited force as the official state art style until as late as 1991. It was not until after the fall of the Soviet Union that artists were finally freed from state censorship.

Other socialist states

The people of Wuhan fighting the flood of 1954, as depicted on a monument erected in 1969

Murals displaying the Marxist view of the press on this East Berlin cafe in 1977 were covered over by commercial advertising after Germany was reunited.

After the Russian Revolution, socialist realism became an international literary movement. Socialist trends in literature were established in the 1920s in Germany, France, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. Writers who helped develop socialist realism in the West included Louis Aragon, Johannes Becher, and Pablo Neruda.

The doctrine of socialist realism in other People's Republics, was legally enforced from 1949 to 1956. It involved all domains of visual and literary arts, though its most spectacular achievements were made in the field of architecture, considered a key weapon in the creation of a new social order, intended to help spread the communist doctrine by influencing citizens' consciousness as well as their outlook on life. During this massive undertaking, a crucial role fell to architects perceived not as merely engineers creating streets and edifices, but rather as "engineers of the human soul" who, in addition to extending simple aesthetics into urban design, were to express grandiose ideas and arouse feelings of stability, persistence and political power.

Today, arguably the only countries still focused on these aesthetic principles are North Korea, Laos, and to some extent Vietnam. The People's Republic of China occasionally reverts to socialist realism for specific purposes, such as idealised propaganda posters to promote the Chinese space program. Socialist realism had little mainstream impact in the non-Communist world, where it was widely seen as a totalitarian means of imposing state control on artists.

The former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was an important exception among the communist countries, because after the Tito-Stalin split in 1948, it abandoned socialist realism along with other elements previously imported from the Soviet system and allowed greater artistic freedom. Miroslav Krleža, one of the leading Yugoslav intellectuals, gave a speech at the Third Congress of the Writers Alliance of Yugoslavia held in Ljubljana in 1952, which is considered a turning point in the Yugoslav denouncement of dogmatic socialist realism.

Notable works and artists

File:Ciolkovskij2 vdnx sep2008.jpg

The Konstantin Tsiolkovsky monument in Moscow.

Maxim Gorky's novel Mother is usually considered to have been the first socialist-realist novel. Gorky was also a major factor in the school's rapid rise, and his pamphlet, On Socialist Realism, essentially lays out the needs of Soviet art. Other important works of literature include Fyodor Gladkov's Cement (1925), Nikolai Ostrovsky's How the Steel Was Tempered and Mikhail Sholokhov's two volume epic, Quiet Flows the Don (1934) and The Don Flows Home to the Sea (1940). Yury Krymov's novel Tanker "Derbent" (1938) portrays Soviet merchant seafarers being transformed by the Stakhanovite movement.

Martin Andersen Nexø developed socialist realism in his own way. His creative method featured a combination of publicistic passion, a critical view of capitalist society, and a steadfast striving to bring reality into accord with socialist ideals. The novel Pelle, the Conqueror is considered to be a classic of socialist realism. The novel Ditte, Daughter of Man had a working-class woman as its heroine. He battled against the enemies of socialism in the books Two Worlds, and Hands Off!.

The novels of Louis Aragon such as The Real World depicts the working class as a rising force of the nation. He published two books of documentary prose, The Communist Man. In the collection of poems A Knife in the Heart Again, Aragon criticizes the penetration of American imperialism into Europe. The novel The Holy Week depicts the artist's path toward the people against a broad social and historical background.

Hanns Eisler composed many workers' songs, marches, and ballads on current political topics such as Song of Solidarity, Song of the United Front, and Song of the Comintern. He was a founder of a new style of revolutionary song for the masses. He also composed works in larger forms such as Requiem for Lenin. Eisler's most important works include the cantatas German Symphony, Serenade of the Age and Song of Peace. Eisler combines features of revolutionary songs with varied expression. His symphonic music is known for its complex and subtle orchestration.

Closely associated with the rise of the labor movement was the development of the revolutionary song, which was performed at demonstrations and meetings. Among the most famous of the revolutionary songs are The Internationale and Warszawianka. Notable songs from Russia include Boldly, Comrades, in Step, Workers' Marseillaise, and Rage, Tyrants. Folk and revolutionary songs influenced the Soviet mass songs. The mass song was a leading genre in Soviet music, especially during the 1930s and the war. The mass song influenced other genres, including the art song, opera, and film music. The most popular mass songs include Dunaevsky's Song of the Homeland, Blanter's Katiusha, Novikov's Hymn of Democratic Youth of the World, and Aleksandrov's Sacred War.

In the early 1930s, Soviet filmmakers applied socialist realism in their work. Notable films include Chapaev, which shows the role of the people in the history-making process. The theme of revolutionary history was developed in films such as The Youth of Maxim, by Grigori Kozintsev and Leonid Trauberg, Shchors by Dovzhenko, and We are from Kronstadt by E. Dzigan. The shaping of the new man under socialism was a theme of films such as A Start Life by N. Ekk, Ivan by Dovzhenko, Valerii Chkalov by M. Kalatozov and the film version of Tanker "Derbent" (1941). Some films depicted the part of peoples of the Soviet Union against foreign invaders: Alexander Nevsky by Eisenstein, Minin and Pozharsky by Pudvokin, and Bogdan Khmelnitsky by Savchenko. Soviet politicians were the subjects in films such as Yutkevich's trilogy of movies about Lenin.

Socialist realism was also applied to Hindi films of the 1940s and 1950s. These include Chetan Anand's Neecha Nagar (1946), which won the Grand Prize at the 1st Cannes Film Festival, and Bimal Roy's Two Acres of Land (1953), which won the International Prize at the 7th Cannes Film Festival.

The painter Aleksandr Deineka provides a notable example for his expressionist and patriotic scenes of the Second World War, collective farms, and sports. Yuri Pimenov, Boris Ioganson and Geli Korzev have also been described as "unappreciated masters of twentieth-century realism". Another well-known practitioner was Fyodor Pavlovich Reshetnikov.

Socialist realism art found acceptance in the Baltic region nations, inspiring many artist. One of such artist was Czeslaw Znamierowski (23 May 1890 – 9 August 1977), a Soviet Lithuanian painter, known for his large panoramic landscapes and love of nature. Znamierowski combined these two passion to create very notable paintings in the Soviet Union, earning a prestigious title of Honorable Artist of LSSR in 1965. Born in Latvia, which formed part of Russian Empire at the time; Znamierowski was of Polish nationality and Lithuanian citizenship, a country where he lived (for the most part of his life) and died. He excelled in landscapes and social realism, and held many exhibitions. Znamierowski was also widely published in national newspapers, magazines and books. His more notable paintings include “Before Rain (1930)", "Panorama of Vilnius City (1950)", "The Green Lake (1955)" and "In Klaipeda Fishing Port (1959)". A large collection of his art is located in the Lithuanian Art Museum.

Thol, a novel by D.Selvaraj in Tamil is a standing example of Marxist Realism in India. It won a literary award (Sakithya Akademi) for the year 2012.

Impact

A relief from the Soviet military cemetery in Warsaw showing workers greeting victorious soldiers.

Socialist realism had a significant impact on art in Russia and elsewhere. In Russia, the works of authors such as Gorky, Mayakovsky, Sholokhov, Tvardovsky, Fadeyev, Leonov, and many other writers became established classics, achieved worldwide renown, and have become a firm part of the world's cultural heritage. Socialist realism was credited for helping talent to develop and art to flourish in many forms and for making it more accessible to the masses.

Mikhail Bulgakov wrote his work, The Master and Margarita, in secret, despite earlier successes such as White Guard. In 1936 Dmitri Shostakovich was criticized for his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk in a Pravda article entitled "Muddle instead of Music",. Sergei Prokofiev too found his musical language increasingly restricted in the years after his permanent return to the Soviet Union in 1935 (especially in the wake of the 1948 Zhdanov Decree), although he continued to compose until the end of his life five years later.

The political doctrine behind socialist realism also underlay the pervasive censorship of Communist societies. Apart from obvious political considerations that saw works such as those of George Orwell being banned, access to foreign art and literature was also restricted on aesthetic grounds. Bourgeois art and all forms of experimentalism and formalism were denounced as decadent, degenerate and pessimistic, and therefore anti-Communist in principle. The works of James Joyce were particularly harshly condemned. The net effect was that it was not until the 1980s that the general public in the Communist countries were able to freely access many works of Western art and literature.

Paintings

• 
  A. Rylov. In the Blue Expanse (1918)
• 
  S. Malyutin. Portrait of writer Furmanov
• 
  S. Malyutin. Partisan
• 
  I. Brodsky. Lenin in Smolny (1930)
• 
  "They are hearing Moscow" (poster).
• 
  N. Kasatkin. Pioneer-girl with book (1926)

Sculptures

• 
  Socialist-Realist allegories surrounding the Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw.
• 
  Monument in Prague-Letná (1955–1962)
• Kozhomkul Taming a Horse, Bishkek (date unknown).
  Kozhomkul Taming a Horse, Bishkek (date unknown).

See also

• Social realism
• Capitalist realism
• Heroic realism
• Socialist realism in Romania
• Socialist realism in Poland
• All-Union art exhibition (Moscow, 1957)

Further reading

• Bek, Mikuláš, Geoffrey Chew, and Petr Macek (eds.). Socialist Realism and Music. Musicological Colloquium at the Brno International Music Festival 36. Prague: KLP; Brno: Institute of Musicology, Masaryk University, 2004. ISBN 80-86791-18-1
• Golomstock, Igor. Totalitarian Art in the Soviet Union, the Third Reich, Fascist Italy and the People's Republic of China, Harper Collins, 1990.
• James, C. Vaughan. Soviet Socialist Realism: Origins and Theory. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1973.
• Ivanov, Sergei. "Unknown Socialist Realism. The Leningrad School". Saint Petersburg, NP-Print, 2007 ISBN 978-5-901724-21-7
• Prokhorov, Gleb. Art under Socialist Realism: Soviet Painting, 1930–1950. East Roseville, NSW, Australia: Craftsman House; G + B Arts International, 1995. ISBN 976-8097-83-3
• Rideout, Walter B. The Radical Novel in the United States: 1900–1954. Some Interrelations of Literature and Society. New York: Hill and Wang, 1966.
• Christian Saehrendt, Kunst als Botschafter einer künstlichen Nation (Art from an artificial nation – about modern art as a tool of the GDR's propaganda), Stuttgart 2009
• Sinyavsky, Andrei [writing as Abram Tertz]. "The Trial Begins", and "On Socialist Realism", translated by Max Hayward and George Dennis, with an introduction by Czesław Miłosz. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1960–1982. ISBN 0-520-04677-3
• Lin Jung-hua. Post-Soviet Aestheticians Rethinking Russianization and Chinization of Marxism//Russian Language and Literature Studies. Serial № 33. Beijing, Capital Normal University, 2011, №3. Р.46-53.

External links

• Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Sweden: Socialist Realist Art Conference
• Marxists.org Socialist Realism page
• Virtual Museum of Political Art – Socialist Realism
• Sergei V. Ivanov. The Leningrad School of painting. Historical outline.
• Research Guide to Russian Art
• Socialist realism: Socialist in content, capitalist in price

Category:Communism Category:Film styles Category:Socialism Socialist realism Category:Soviet art Category:Realism (art movement) Category:Art movements Category:Propaganda art Category:Socialist realism artists Category:Soviet painters Category:Censorship in the Soviet Union