B. Biro Zhadnov's name has been associated with the doctrines of ‘socialist realism’ - but he was little more than a literary policeman, However socialist realism has had a propounder of some Marxist culture - N. Bukharin - especially in his report on Poetry to the 1934 Writers’ Union Congress*, In this report PBokharin discusses in au intelligent way the work of many pocts, ineluding Pasternak. He then makes some veneral points which he enumerates as follows:
It is necessary tu raise poetry to the level of our epoch. 2. We must proceed to the task of summarising Life in
poetry, on the basis of the concrete and individual, we
must proceed to the portrayal of the richly variegated
and dissected whole.
3. <Allthe diversity of life must form material for poetic _
creation,
“Unity should be achieved through the point of view from
which the material is treated by the poet, not by im-
poverishiny the material itself. This point of view is
that of the triumphant strugele of the proletariat." 4. torrig should be the most diverse, unified by the one
preat style or method of socialist realism.
Socistist vealisn: is the method of depicting the real
vorld ofiffering i content from bourgevis realism and
rae hastes ua distinet style.
Om toe first iwo points he dues nol say much, apart from quelinag “tars fo Show that communism aims at an infinitely diversified development of human wants, and from this he conchides the entire diversily of life should serve as poetic material,
On the ports about the diversity of material and forms
H
hbeine achieved within a unified point of view, he says:
"Unity does not mean that we must all sing the same
song at the same time... Unity does not mean the pre-
sentation of the same ideal types and 'villains', not the
abolition, on paper, of all contradictions and evils.
Unity consists in a single aspect - that of building
socialism. All the richness of life, all tragedies and
conflicts, defeats, struggles, must become material for poetic creation."
The demand by Bukharin for a unified poini of view in poeiry seems to be connected in his mind with a vision of Soviet society itself as being essentially a unity. All the diversity of the activities of the citizens are comprehended, he seems to be saying, by the whole system, a system engaged on the construction of socialism. Thus he demands that when an individual or a type e.g. The Red Pilot, is depicted, he should not be taken in isolation, but in such a way as to show he forms a unit of the life of society, a particular focus of this life.
"If not we shall be threatened with the danger of poetic
work becoming departmentally alienated from life and
bureaucratised, orders being issued by the People's
Commissariat of Communications, by the Peoples' Com-
missariat of Education, by the Trade Unions etc."
This use by Bukharin of the term ‘alienation’ is rather interesting. One of the sub-themes of Marx's critique of the alienation inherent in capitalist society is that modern man is not an integral being. Of course in his writings on historical materialism he emphasizes that the life of social man forms a totalily with one history - that it is mistaken to talk of the history of literature, of ethics, of constitutions, or even of economics - that one must always be conscious in each of these fields that they are only abstractions, different articulations, or expressions, of a common human substance: even if the poet you study is a full-time poet he is no
Robinson Crusoe, he has an infinile multiplicity of relationships to the rest of society, from the most material - where does his food come from’? - to the most refined intellectual influences. Thus Marx opposes that account of history which represents it as the mere sum, or resullant, of autonomous so-called 'factors'.
Nevertheless, granting all this, the tendency to write separate histories cannot just be dismissed as a mistake. If we are to be true to our method, this tendency too can be shown to derive from the character of the social whole. Not just in ideology but in reality, the various expressions of social life have been fragmented and estranged from each other. This
has partly to do with the extreme lengths to which the division of labour has been taken. Professional politics, art, philosophy etc. make plausible the separation of these spheres from each other and from the whole. Alienated labour and commodity fetishism are also relevant here.
At all events Marx noted that instead of being an integral being man was at odds with himself - economics says one thing, morality another. In socialism these various contradictions and estrangements in social life were supposed to be transcended and man was supposed to establish himself as the self determined subject of his world instead of having the economy, the state, morality, religion, etc. standing over against him as exteriorised determinants.
Now Bukharin seems to have implicitly acknowledged that in Soviet society the various Ministries he mentions have developed their own bureaucratic empires and may wish to make poetry serve their own narrow interests and identities. He seems to think that poetry can mediate between the individual and the universal by showing the individual in his connection with the whole. This of course will be so much ideological window-dressing if in fact the individual is estranged from the structures which concretely mediate his position in the whole; but Bukharin avoids this problem which obviously existed at the time.
Having stressed this necessity for achieving a unified vision of society against which all the diversity and richness of life should be placed, he then admits no man can grasp the whole multiformity of life. He says:
"But no man can 'embrace the unembraceable'. People approach a problem from different angles until sufficiently broad generalisations are found, ‘Prohibitive'’ measures are therefore absurd."
Now to point five - the nature of socialist realism. He develops this mainly by a contrast with bourgevis realism. Apart from the obvious differences of material in that we are concerned with the building of socialism, he argues that there will be stylistic differences based on different philosophical approaches. He argues that bourgeois realism is based on positivist science which sees its function as that of passively contemplating the world and reproducing it in forms of thought. Socialist realism on the other hand, he defines as dialectical materialism in the field of art. 'le says:
"In the socialist society which is coming into being, the difference between physical labour and brainwork is
gradually being replaced. A new type of man is arising who knows the world in order to change it. Mere contemplation, mere portrayal of the objective, without elucidation of the motive tendencies, wilhout reference to the practical alteration of the objective world, are here receding into the past. Hence, socialist realism cannot base its views on the naturalism of Zola, who proposed to describe reality ‘such as it is' and nothing more. Neither can it accept his other slogan ‘imagination is no longer needed’. Socialist realism dares to 'dream' and should do so, basing itself on the real trends of development." He further argues thal an anlithesis between romanticism and socialist realism is devoid of all meaning because the soaring imagination of romanticism need not now be displaced into metaphysics but can find its heroic themes in the future of the real world.
Actually I think this insight of Bukharin's is valid abstractly What he does not discuss is whether the individual in the U.S.S.R. has the real mediations through which he can impress his purposes on reality. Only such a man might sincerely write revolutionary romantic works, To reverse cause and effect and blame the poet for not writing this way is absurd. When literary criticism became a function of the police department this degenerated into the prohibition of all but 'optimistic' works - a completely unmarxist approach. Bukharin goes on to explain the diversity of forms comprehended by his definition of realism by referring to Faust. "This in its form, is not a portrayal of a concrete
historical process, but the struggle of the human spirit. And at the same time Faust is a philosophical-poetical conception of the bourgeois era establishing itself. It seems to us that poeiry of the type of Faust must
unquestionably find a place as a component part of
socialist realism, and lhat it will create the most monumental form of socialism's poetry.”
He ends by referring once more to the low level of culture in Russia, its provincialism, and says that those who reaily want to create must do their best to make Llhemselves
masters of all the treasure houses of the world's culture - which would not need saying except in Stalinist Russia. It has often been observed that 'socialist realism’ is
neither socialist nor realist. It is not socialist because it is written, not on the basis of socialist conditions, but by conscripts of the bureaucracy. It is not realist because
writers are forbidden to describe the real conditions in which they find themselves. More accurate than 'Socialist realism' is Bukharin's term 'revolutionary romanticism' which really means romanticising the present, i.e. lying.
* All quotations taken from Problems of Soviet Literature
1939