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RUSSIAN EDITOR PROF. S. MOZIINYAGUX
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__COPYRIGHT__ First Printing 1969PUBLISHERS' NOTE
The essays in this collection Problems of Modern Aesthetics written by a team (if Soviet specialists deal with the most vital issues in modern aesthetics. They cover such topics as the ideal and the hero in art, the historical development of realism, the scope and limits of realism, tradition and innovation in the arts, the beauty of nature, and labour as a source of aesthetic feeling. Apart from treating current problems, the collection also offers material on the development of the concept of the popular nature of art, on international and national features of Soviet culture and discussions which have taken place in Soviet aesthetics on the nature of aesthetic sense.
The book is intended for the general reader with an interest in the cultural problems of the present day.
[3] ~ [4] CONTENTS Alcxci Metchcnko. THE BASIC PRINCIPLES OF SOVIET LITERATURE. Translated by Kate Cook........ 7 Ariatoly Dremov. THE IDEAL AND THE HERO IN ART. Translated by Kate Cook.............41! Georgy Lomidze. INTERNATIONAL AND NATIONAL FEATURES IN SOVIET CULTURE. Translated by Olga Slmrlse .... 5r> Pavel Trofimov. MUTUAL ENRICHMENT OF NATIONAL ARTS IN THE U.S.S.R. Translated by Mariam Kats......84 Nikolai Silayev. LABOUR---A SOURCE OF AESTHETIC FEELING. Translated by Lenina Ilyitskaija.......102 Victor Ronianenko. THE BEAUTY OF NATURE. Translated by Bernard Isaacs.................121 Ivan Astakhov. THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN AN OBJECT AND AESTHETIC FEELING. Translated by Bryan Bean . . 158 Alexander Myasnikov. TRADITION AND INNOVATION. Translated by Kate Cook...............187 Mikhail Ovsyannikov. THE ARTISTIC IMAGE. Translated by Kate Cook...................214 Sergei Mozhnyagun. UNADORNED MODERNISM. Translated by Don Donemanis.................227 Alexander Dymshits. REALISM AND MODERNISM. Translated by Kate Cook.................261 Nikolai Leizerov. THE SCOPE AND LIMITS OF REALISM. Translated by Kate Cook.............299 Boris Suchkov. REALISM AND ITS HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT. Translated by Kate Cook...........319 [5] ~ [6] __FIX__ In previous .tx files, just move author above title, combine author into title, and remove note that says: "Author moved..." __ALPHA_LVL1__ Alexei MetchenkoThe French newspaper Le Monde recently delected in Soviet writers ``a keen sense of longing" for the twenties. The same old story. The attitude of a few writers is taken to be the predominant attitude ``among the intelligentsia'', with the twenties naturally being represented as the period when modernism allegedly flourished in the Soviet Union.
We cannot remain indifferent to the fact that in addition to the constant attention which the bourgeois press pays to the ``longing for modernism" exaggerating it in every possible way and presenting it as the expression of ``freedom-loving'', ``progressive'' aspirations, the speeches of certain Soviet writers thrown off balance by the original, complex and demanding nature of the tasks facing the intelligentsia in the present day, have also contained vindications of modernist trends---not without foreign influence.
We arc building communism before the eyes of all mankind. It is not, therefore, surprising that in the modern world, which is still a long way from attaining unified aims and views, alongside the intense interest and sincere respect for our unparalleled new experiment we also encounter at every turn attempts to discredit this experiment and cast doubt on genuine works of artistic merit which reflect the heroic triumphs of the socialist society.
Among the great achievements of Soviet aesthetics constantly being subjected to savage attacks, Lenin's doctrine concerning the commitment of literature and the arts to parly and people occupies a central position. These 7 principles constitute the basis of socialist realism. They are not, and never can be, reconcilable with modernism. It is no accident that those who seek to reconcile them usually wish to do so at the expense of these basic premises.
__*_*_*__The twentieth century is rich in great scientific discoveries. Among these Lenin's principle of commitment to party ideals has played a special role in the development of social thought and the transformation of the world on a new socialist basis.
It is a scientific principle which gives succinct expression to the natural laws present in ideological phenomena from time immemorial.
The idea of ideological commitment was discussed by Goethe and Kant who differed in their assessment of it. It was Marxism, however, that created the necessary conditions for transforming it from a phenomenon accompanying the ideological struggle into a scientific principle capable of exerting a powerful influence on the outcome of this struggle. The principle of commitment to party ideals demanding: ``the direct and open adoption of the standpoint of a definite social group in any assessment of events"^^1^^ could assume the status of a scientific criterion only after Marx had discovered the laws of social development.
The Leninist principle of the commitment of literature and the arts to party ideals was first formulated concisely but penetratingly in the article ``Party Organisation and Party Literature" written in 1905. It shows that already the conditions of the bourgeois-democratic revolution required from the working class and its party a clear statement of their position not only on political questions, but also in the sphere of the arts. Nothing could be more misguided, however, than attempting to limit the validity of this principle solely to the conditions of 1905, and reducing it to a way of solving the organisational problems facing the Party at that time. Like many great discoveries _-_-_
~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 1, p. 401.
8 linked with the fulfilment of definite requirements, which burst the framework of their time, the principle of commitment in literature and the arts was of vital significance for the solution of basic aesthetic problems during the period of the struggle for socialism and the building of the new world.The whole history of socialist realism, which now covers more than half a century, is a process of extending, deepening, giving concrete expression to and revealing the creative possibilities opened to the artist by communist commitment.
Communist devotion to the Party shows most clearly the effectiveness and sense of purpose of the Marxist-Leninist world view and the unity of the artistic and scientific mastery of the world, in spite of their dissimilarity.
The principle of commitment to party ideals was first formulated by Lenin in his dispute with subjectivism on the one hand and ``narrowly conceived objectivism" on the other.
Commitment as a scientific category has nothing in common with either subjectivism, since it demands an ``inexorably objective analysis of realities'',^^1^^ or with a blind, fatalistic reverence for the natural course of events.
In his work ``The Heritage We Renounce" Lenin again emphasised that ``no living person can help taking the side of one class or another (once he has understood their interrelationships), can help rejoicing at the successes of that class and being disappointed by its failures, can help being angered by those who are hostile to that class, who hamper its development by disseminating backward views, and so on and so forth".^^2^^
Happiness, sadness, discontent, the most fervent passion, and the most violent anger.. . . This whole range of intensely personal human emotions Lenin found in a work as strictly scientific as Marx's Capital. Literature and the arts have always been the expression of the sphere of human feelings, the conflict of passions, and not only ideas. Speaking of an artist's or writer's work Lenin always draws attention to the forcefulness and sincerity of the _-_-_
~^^1^^ Ibid., Vol. '2. p. 531.
~^^2^^ Ibid.
9 passions portrayed in it. He observed Lev Tolstoi's passionate indictment of autocracy and the church, his constant exposure of capitalism, full of the most profound feeling and total indignation.^^1^^Thus any interpretation of Lenin's principle of commitment exclusively as a category of outlook on life ignoring the emotional nature of literature and the arts and the originality of the artist's talent, which we still come across in our press, impoverishes this concept. Only a comparatively short time ago it was still necessary to prove the aesthetic quality of the commitment principle in artistic work in spite of the fact that the article ``Party Organisation and Party Literature" already mentions that the mechanical identification of literature ``with other sides of the proletarian party cause" is inadmissible, that literature is ``least of all subject to mechanical adjustment or levelling, to the rule of the majority over the minority'', to schematisation or to inclusion in ``any uniform system" and that ``greater scope must undoubtedly be allowed for personal initiative, individual inclination, thought and fantasy, form and content.''^^2^^
In short this small article, which clearly formulates the ``new task"---new both for the proletariat and for the writers and artists, contains a definitive statement concerning artistic creation as a special type of activity demanding a different approach as compared to other forms of activity.
But the point of the article is that it recognises literature as an integral part of the proletarian cause. Strangely enough, this vital point has been relegated recently to a position of secondary importance, and occasionally completely ignored. This leads to extolling the specific nature of art to an extent almost tantamount to a declaration of its autonomy. Quite recently a certain Marxist acsthetician claimed that modern art had realised its own autonomy in relation to the external world and that it was now governed by new laws independent of the natural laws of the material world. There is no denying that certain schools of contemporary bourgeois art are indeed striving to cut _-_-_
~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 15, pp. 202--09.
~^^2^^ Ibid., Vol. 10, p. 4R.
10 themselves off from both the material world and the spiritual requirements of normal people. It is regrettable that this unhealthy trend should be represented as a natural process in the development of art and as the new Marxist approach to it.Lenin was only too familiar with such attempts. It was in criticising them that he developed his views on the nature of commitment to party ideals and artistic creativity.
The theoreticians of the Second International adopted an idealistic (Kantian) position on questions affecting the arts, defending the idea of the neutrality of artistic creativity. In 1902 a Russian translation was published of a brochure by Karl Kautsky entitled On the Day After the Social Revolution (this brochure was republished in 1917 and even after the October Revolution was regarded by certain Marxists as their ``programme of action''). Kautsky declared that ``communism in material production, anarch]] in intellectual production, this is the form of socialist means of production to which the rule of the proletariat leads by virtue of economic laws".^^1^^
Thus the intellectual sphere, including the arts, was presented as an element not subject to influence or guid ance. Five years later the Dutch socialist. H. HollandHoist, in her Studies on Socialist Aesthetics asserted as an indisputable fact that: ``It is common knowledge that art does not recognise any goal outside itself. It sees its mean ing in itself.''^^2^^
This declaration of neutrality, ``freedom of artistic creation" objectively strengthened the forces of reaction, particularly in the revolutionary situation which existed at the beginning of the twentieth century in Russia.
Such was the true essence of defending the principle of ``neutrality'' and ``freedom of artistic creation''. It was no accident that the main theme of the notorious collection of articles entitled Vekhi was mockery of national and civil traditions, which were dismissed as ``sheer abomination'', and assertion that the people were something alien _-_-_
~^^1^^ Karl Knulsky. Die soziale Revolution, Berlin, 1903, S. 45.
~^^2^^ Henrietta Rollnnd-Holst. Studies on Socialist Aesthetics, linss. cd. 1007. p. 31.
11 and that society and politics only harmed individual con sciousness. Revolutionary, democratic criticism was ana thema because it had ``set up the party tribunal on free, true creation".^^1^^In this way the theoreticians and aestheticians of the Second International gave a helping hand to the theoreticians and artists of bourgeois decadence. Today they are doing exactly the same thing.
But it would be a dangerous over-simplification of a complex problem to condemn each artist who supports ``creative freedom" as a supporter of the bourgeois way of life. The bourgeoisie because of its mercenary class views ``cannot help inclining towards the non-parly principle, for the absence of parties among those who arcfighting for the liberation of bourgeois society implies that no fresh struggle will arise against bourgeois society itself".^^2^^ In this case the lack of party commitment is nothing but a mask for commitment of a different kind. Naturally this latter type of commitment is unable to win support among honest representatives of the artistic intelligentsia. For them the ideas of independence, artistic freedom, and lack of commitment are considerably more attractive. And although dreams of artistic freedom in a bourgeois society are always illusory, they are often of an anti-bourgeois nature. For example, A. Blok and the young Mayakovsky advocated the idea of artistic freedom without accepting or understanding the principle of commitment. But the most important thing for them at that time was the active defence of art against the encroachments of bourgeois society. The two of them both upheld civic traditions in their work. In 1917 Blok proclaimed his sympathy with the Bolshevik cause, and Mayakovsky was soon to become one of the most passionate defenders of the Leninist principle of commitment. His selfless work for the revolution was to lead him to adopt this position.
But the fact that the principle of commitment, the sharp and flexible weapon of Bolshevik thought, had been shaped even before the victor;/ of the socialist revolution, _-_-_
~^^1^^ Vekhi, 4th ed., Moscow, 1909. See M. O. Gershenzon, ``The Creative Self-Consciousness'', pp. 82, 84.
~^^2^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works. Vol. 10, p. 78.
12 has a special, profound meaning. Is it not surprising that the exploiting classes have always feared and particularly in our time not dared to defend their committed position openly'! Whereas the working class, possessing neither power nor rights, apart from the right to struggle, bravely and openly appealed, through the person of its leader, to the millions of people sympathetic to the revolution, setting out its party's aims with regard to politics, science, philosophy and literature, in the conviction that these aims were the aims of the whole people, all workers everywhere.Lenin's statement that ``literature openly linked with the proletariat"^^1^^ was truly free, was based on the mate rialist view of freedom as a conscious necessity and the active role of man in the historical process. This view has become fully embodied in the literature of socialist realism. It has become the foundation of a new ethic and aesthetic and is the basis on which the concept of the duty and responsibility of the artist rests. This concept of freedom is well expressed in one of Leonid Martynov's recent poems, which the poet has, in fact, called ``Freedom''.
At last it's clear to me What's meant by being free. I've come to understand it, that sensation, One of the most involved and intimate in all creation. Now, shall I tell you what we mean by being free? It means to be responsible, without discrimination For all the tears and sighs and losses in the world, For faith and faithlessness, for truth and
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ superstition,And so an obligation lies to me,
A free bird now, no bonds or chains or strings---
To help all living beings
Get free.
After the people had gained power, the Soviet state and the party of the working class which had moved from opposition into leadership were faced with the urgent task _-_-_
~^^1^^ Ibid., p. 48.
13 of building a new society, as well as a whole number of vital problems including the policy to be adopted towards the arts, the artistic intelligentsia and the artistic heritage.The simplest way out was that suggested by Kautsky in the above-mentioned brochure. But what would non-- interference in artistic life have meant in the conditions prevailing during the revolution and Civil War? Who would have gained from a policy of non-interference----the victorious people or the overthrown upper classes? An analysis proves conclusively that it would not have been the people, and that the arts themselves would have bencliled least of all.
The revolution gave the people free access to everything of artistic value and the right to create. But this right could easily have become a fiction had not steps been taken to guarantee it.
In his ``Pages from a Diary" Lenin quotes some pathetic figures: in 1920 even in the European part of the Soviet Union which was comparatively more developed than the other regions, only 330 out of every 1,000 people were literate. And universal literacy is only one of the features of any ``ordinary, civilised country".^^1^^ The socialist revolution had to make up for what bourgeois society had failed to do. And this was by no means the most difficult of the numerous problems involved in the building of a new world.
That mass illiteracy seriously impedes development in literature and the arts goes without saying. It restricts the reading public to the exclusion of the ordinary people.
Even before the revolution the inaccessibility of Htcra ture to the masses was recognised by those Russian writers and artists with a keen social sense as a tragedy for the people and the artist. For example, once Blok had realised the destructive nature of decadence, he saw that the only salvation for the arts was for them to become rooted in the people. He began to speak passionately of the importance to the writer of ``everyone's'' opinion, as if it were his last hope. ``The silence of the people,'' he wrote, ``is particularly terrifying since it threatens the writer with loss of identity. One's own voice begins to _-_-_
~^^1^^ See V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 33, p. 462.
14 mingle with the voices of one's close neighbours with the result that laces and souls begin to resemble one another like in a tavern.''Lenin wrote that only socialism was capable of removing the obstacles which prevent great works of art from becoming the property of the whole people. This thesis still holds true today. Its critical far-sightedness helps us to understand what is happening in [he capitalist world and its prophecy has been fulfilled in those countries which have embarked on the road to socialism.
Capitalism has shown itself incapable of eliminating entirely even those obstacles which prevented the works of Pushkin and Tolstoi from reaching the Russian people; namely, illiteracy and poverty. Even now, according to UNESCO statistics, two-fifths of the world's population are illiterate, and millions of people, chiefly those of the colonial and semi-colonial countries, are in the deathly grip of starvation.
In the period of the revolution and dictatorship of the proletariat Lenin's policy with regard to literature and the arts was directed towards creating conditions in which the people could not only become acquainted with earlier works of art, but also produce new ones. The dynamic of Lenin's policy towards literature and the arts was in its concern for and help to the people.
Devotion io the people is vastly important and is one of the main manifestations of the principle of commitment at this stage.
Art belongs to the people. In all Lenin's pronouncements concerning the role of the masses these words contain more than.(he simple truth that the people have become masters by gaining power. Lenin sees the creative role of the masses as the main feature of the socialist revolution. Let us recall the leit-motif of his speeches: ``Victory will belong only to those who have faith in the people, those who are immersed in the life-giving spring of popular creativity.''^^1^^ Or ``the minds of tens of millions of those who are doing things create something infinitely loftier than the greatest genius can foresee".^^2^^
_-_-_~^^1^^ Ibid., Vol. 26, p. 292.
^^2^^ Ibid., p. 474.
15At the same time Lenin was least of all inclined to idealise the people. His unswerving faith in the inexhaustible talent latent in the people and aroused by the revolution is always accompanied in his speeches by the most lucid analysis of the behaviour of the different social groups during the revolution. From a social point of view the people had not yet become united. The petty bourgeois behaved differently in the revolution from the working class. They acted instinctively and their revolutionary fervour was soon exhausted. The peasants tended to look for a ``third way" when this did not exist. Participation in the revolution could not immediately rid them of their patriarchal nature and pride in possession, etc. Only the work ing class was able ``to win over to its side the majority of the working and exploited people".^^1^^
One of the most important factors in the rapid development and free expression of the people's creative talent during the cultural revolution initiated by Lenin, was the successful attempt to gain the active support and participation of the intelligentsia in the vast process of the spiritual rebirth of society.
What was the intelligentsia, the most cultured sector of the old society, like at the time of the socialist revolution?
Nowadays we recall with great pride and gratitude the names of writers, artists, actors and scientists who broke with the old world and placed their knowledge and talent at the disposal of the revolutionary people. The names of those members of the intelligentsia who joined Lenin's guard are illustrious ones indeed. But these were comparatively few in number ``on the day after the social revolution'', far more of the intelligentsia being ``terrified by the collapse of the old world" and opposed to the socialist revolution. The overwhelming majority of the intelligentsia were not prepared for the task of developing a socialist culture and producing art which was in keeping with the socialist revolution. Nevertheless, by the middle of 19f9 Lenin noted that ``month by month the Soviet Republic acquires a (jrowiny percentage of bourgeois intellectuals who are sincerely helping the workers and _-_-_
^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 27, p. 265.
16 peasants, not merely grumbling and spitting fury".^^1^^ These changes in the behaviour and attitude of the intelligentsia were no mere accident of fate, of course. They resulted i'rom the carefully planned policy of Party and stale with regard to culture, literature and the arts, a policy which succeeded in clarifying and ennobling the role of arl and curbing the anarchistic tendencies inherited I'rom the recent past.The artistic intelligentsia could not simply be used as a cultural force. First it had to be instilled with a new world outlook and understanding of the historical tasks facing it. Like the petty-bourgeois sections of society it, loo, had to be re-educated---tactfully, carefully, without regimentation but also without any concessions to prejudice. Lenin's skill together with the will of the Party won a brilliant victory here as well.
The main feature of Lenin's policy for educating and changing the outlook of the intelligentsia was to harness its energies to the common cause of building the new society, to bring it closer to the people and convince it of the need lo work side by side with them.
It was not only that the people needed the help of the intelligentsia. The intelligentsia itself also needed the help of the people. Many tigures in the realm of the arts who saw themselves as guardians of the ``sacred mystery" of their profession, were considerably more tainted by the bourgeois world than the masses, and this led them to lose control over their art. ``Ninety-eight per cent of modern literature is open lo all manner of interpretations. This decline has turned modern poets into narrow specialists brandishing mandates and patenls for sound, rhythm, imagery, abstruseness, etc., and no regard for poelry as a whole,"^^2^^ said one of the literary manifestos in the early years of the revolution.
Many writers and artists of that period (and also a few in our day as well) saw this decline as the height of refinement rather lhan as a loss of richness, clarity, vitality, life-like vividness and truthfulness, which is how Alexander Blok described decadence. These illusions would _-_-_
~^^1^^ Ibid., Vol. 35, p. 411.
^^2^^ i Vi'kh, Moscow, 1924, p. 8.
17 not have disappeared of their own accord. In destroying the sham values the revolution revealed the true ones. But many people needed to have their spiritual vision adjusted in order to realise exactly how unreal the `` complications" and ``refinements'' of decadence we're compared with the real spiritual riches embodied in the Marxist Leninist view of life, in the ideals of communism. This sometimes took years and in a few individual cases, decades, to achieve.How many times had representatives of the artistic intelligentsia expressed their misgivings for the fate of culture and the arts if the people were to come to power? Then the revolution became a reality and the new state did indeed have to struggle against undermining influences in the arts not so much from the people as from certain circles of the intelligentsia.
It is not surprising that the person who renounced the cultural heritage and proclaimed the idea of ``a naked man on the naked earth" should be the same literary critic, who had shortly before in Vekhi thanked autocracy for protecting the intelligentsia, who had repented of its ``sins'', with bayonets and prisons from the wrath of the people.
``Since the recent October Revolution,'' wrote M. O. Gershenzon, ``I have felt weighed down, as if by a tiresome burden, as if by heavy and stifling clothing, by all the spiritual achievements of mankind, all the riches of human knowledge and values that have been accumulated and mastered over the centuries. I think how wonderful it would be to plunge into Lethe and cleanse one's soul of the memory of all religious and philosophic systems, of all knowledge, of poetry and the arts, and then to emerge on the bank as naked as Adam, light and joyful, stretch up and raise one's naked arms to the sky, remembering one thing only---how heavy and stilling those clothes were and how light it is without them.''^^1^^
Levidov belonged to the leftist group of writers and artists who accepted the revolution. But the idea of the _-_-_
~^^1^^ V. Ivanov and M. Gershenzon, Pcrepiska iz duukh uglov ( Correspondence Between Two Corners), Alkonost Publishers, Pelrograd. 1921, p. 11.
18 ``organised simplification of culture" which he advocated in trenchant pamphleteering style was as far removed from the true aims of the socialist revolution as Gershen /oil's nostalgia for naked Adam. A country where there was ninety per cent illiteracy, argued Levidov, had pro duced Pushkin, Chekhov, and Bunin and even Skriabin. Vrubel and Blok. This was a monstrous contradiction of the laws of nature. The lime had come to put an end to it. But how? ``The museum bottle in which culture floated on sweat, blood and tears like a proud white swan, must be smashed.''^^1^^ It was essential to embark on the process of simplifying culture and discrediting cultural values. The word ``destruction'' could easily be substituted for `` simplification" without changing the author's meaning. ``The peasant should come back from the market with a book on how to grow foddergrass, not a copy of Belinsky or Gogol.''^^2^^ Art should be replaced by colourful reporting and exciting adventure stories.Neither Gershenzon nor Levidov, of course, represented the attitude of the intelligentsia as a whole, but their views were typical of those held by extreme groups. Moreover the group to which Levidov belonged was an extremely active one and often held important posts. Certain people saw the idea of ``simplifying culture" as a programme for building a new world and communist behaviour (see, for example, Ilya Ehreiiburg's novel The Self-Seeker).
It is not difficult to imagine the chaos which would have ensued in the sphere of culture and the arts if the new slate had not been armed with Lenin's programme for a cultural renaissance and had adopted, instead, a policy of non-interference.
The nineteenth-century conception of art rooted in the people and the Leninist conception of it in particular meant the flowering and elevation of art after the transfer of power to the people, not a simplification or renunciation of it. The workers and peasants who brought about the socialist revolution by sacrificing everything, even their own blood, and finally set up the new state, won ``the _-_-_
^^1^^ M. Levidov, ``The Organised Simplification of Culture''. Krasnaya Nou, 1923, Book 1, p. 307.
^^2^^ Ibid., p. 315
19 right to true, great art".^^1^^ Great art is, in turn, a powerful source of spiritual enrichment i'or the people. With its deepest roots in the hroad mass of workers, understood and loved by them, ``it must be rooted in and grow with their feelings, thoughts and desires. It must arouse and develop the artist in them.''^^2^^The intensity of the creative explosion among the people themselves may be judged from the fact that by the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution the famous bibliographer I. V. Vladislavlev noted that ``whereas before the revolution books were written by the dozen, they are now appearing by the hundred, the majority by completely new authors.
``The history of most of them is no less remarkable than the history of the country which gave birth to them. When you learn about their biographies and autobiographies you cannot help thinking that the path once trodden by the leading figure in our new literature, Maxim Gorky, has now become a common phenomenon. A powerful stream of creative energy is flowing into literature from everyday life."^^3^^
The unprecedented, spontaneous surge of interest from the masses in knowledge, culture, and artistic creation had to be guided along socialist lines---for the first time in the history of mankind. And this was the most difficult task of all, since socialism was, of necessity, being built ``with people who have been thoroughly spoiled by capitalism".^^4^^
Thus the problem of creating a literature committed to people and party in these conditions entailed not only rais ing the cultural level of the masses, but also winning over intelligentsia, and securing its spiritual recovery and the (lowering of its creative power, in the face of the prejudices and bias which it had absorbed under the old bourgeois order.
It is most instructive to read the admissions of writers themselves, such as Bryusov, Blok, Mayakovsky, Yesenin, _-_-_
~^^1^^ Clara Zelkin, Reminiscences of Lenin, p. 15.
~^^2^^ Ibid., p. 13.
~^^3^^ I. V. Vladislavlev, Literatura velikogo desyatiletiya (1917--1927) (Literature of the Great Decade), Gosizdat, Moscow-Leningrad, 1928, pp. 17, 19.
~^^4^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 28, p. 214.
20 Aseycv, Gorodetsky, Selvinsky, Lavrenyov and Fedin, who had once been influenced by bourgeois aeslheticism. They all describe their artistic development as a search, in which important discoveries relating to life and art went hand in hand with the rejection of false artistic values. This rejection is seen by them as the attainment of new heights.Is it not significant that the most talented symbolists, Blok and Bryusov, broke away from this school, condemning it as degenerate and sterile, and turning to the new sources of creative energy which had been released by the socialist revolution? Mayakovsky, himself once an ardent supporter of futurism, denounced both futurism itself and the conslruclivists for repeating the mistakes of the futurists. Yesenin broke away from imagism which he later de fined as clowning for clowning's sake. The former construclivist, Selvinsky, perceived a common feature of all the ``-ists'': ``they did not care about the people'', and ``were not interested in anyone but themselves in their poetry".^^1^^ One of the representatives of Russian formalism, Victor Shklovsky, wrote in 1919: ``Art used to ignore life and its spectrum never reflected the colour of the flag on the town's fortress.''^^2^^ The years passed and looking back over his own literary development and the development of Soviet literature as a whole, Shklovsky wrote: ``The colour of the banner is everything in poetry. It is the colour of the soul, and the so-called soul has yet another embodiment ---art.''^^3^^
These admissions (there are enough of them to fill a large volume) show how unfounded and tendentious the statements of foreign critics arc, who declare that cubism, the abstract art of Kandinsky, the abstruseness of the futurists and the formalist writing of the young Shklovsky, etc., were not appreciated in our country in those days because of the low cultural level of the masses. Thev _-_-_
~^^1^^ Sovietskiye Pisatt'li. Avtobiografu it dinikh tomakh (Soviet Writers. Autobiographies in Two Volumes), Goslitizdat, Vol. 2, Moscow 1959, p. 335.
~^^2^^ V. Shklovsky, ``Communism and Futurism." Iskusslvo Konimiiny No. 7, 1919.
^^3^^ V. Shklovsky, Khudo;hestvennui/a prozii. liaziuyshleniya i ra:bory (Literary Prose Reflections and Analysis), Sovietsky Pisatel Publishers, Moscow, 1959, p. 9.
21 repeat the same arguments which this very ``avant-- garde" put forward to comfort itself. The point was that both decadent art and its theoretical basis were a subtle but pointless play of fantasy quite divorced from reality, which would not stand any more chance of success with the Soviet public of today.Lenin realised that on the day after the revolution there would still be many writers and artists as well as some considerable sections of the population who were not prepared to allow themselves to be guided by the principle of commitment to party ideals. In those days many writers and artists connected with modernist trends regarded even the traditional Russian themes of the popular and civic nature of art as a threat to the creative ``ego''. According to Zamyatin, writing for the people meant renouncing art and leaving the dense forest, where each writer blazes his own trail in solitude, for the ``beaten track".^^1^^ But when Andrei Bely announced that ``the taste of commitment acting consciously for the 'good of others' revolts me'',^^2^^ he was rejecting not so much the principle of commitment, which he did not understand, as the idea of the civic nature of art. He rejected it in the name of individualism.
However, such is the logic of the development of art in the socialist epoch that even a writer temporarily preju diced against the principle of commitment, but making an honest study of life, would eventually become convinced of the wisdom and validity of this principle.
A deep affection for Russian art and appreciation of its sources in the people were the main reasons which impelled Alexei Tolstoi to return from emigration in 192.'?. In his article ``Descent and Transformation" published in Berlin in 1922 he wrote admiringly about those Russian painters ``whose Russian landscapes were illuminated not by the Italian sun, but by the spirit of the people. For centuries the Russian people has been storing up the secrets of transformation in its soul. They have scarcely been touched. Pushkin, Tolstoi, Dostoyevsky, Glinka, Moussorgsky. _-_-_
~^^1^^ Dom Iskusstv No. 1, Petrograd, 1921, p. 44.
~^^2^^ A. Bcly, ``O malenkom clieloveke i cheloveke velikom" (The Small Man and the Great ^fan). Xapiski Mechtntelei No. 5, Petrograd, 1922, p. 121.
22 Rimsky-Korsakov and others, have brushed against the soul of the people and discovered buried treasure.''^^1^^ Later, talking about his attitude towards the Bolsheviks at that time, Tolstoi said: ``I was a long way from them politically, but I was filled with a great desire to work with them and for them.'' Shortly afterwards the writer announced thai he had not found true artistic freedom until he began to understand the Marxist interpretation of truth and that ``the great teaching (Marxism-Leninism---Author.} which was put to the test during the October Revolution" gave him ``a sense of purpose and a method for reading the book of life".^^2^^ __*_*_*__The principles of commitment to people and party determined the development of literature and the arts from the early days of the October Revolution, but it was not until much later that their ideological aesthetic significance was fully grasped. Even the relevant volumes of the Literary Encyclopaedia which came out in 1934 do not contain any articles about commitment to people and party. It is not easy for the reader in the sixties to understand why these basic criteria were not applied by the literary organisations which called themselves ``proletarian''.
Lenin's writings and the famous letter of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) about the Proletkult were intended first and foremost as an explanation to the members of that important proletarian organisation of the importance of applying the principles of commitment to people and party to all ques tions of cultural development and artistic production during the period of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
The clear demarcation which the Party made between the workers' intelligentsia which was the backbone of the Proletkult and the bourgeois artists and philosophers who often seized leadership of it has nothing to do with either the altitude prevalent several years ago to the artistic _-_-_
~^^1^^ A. N. Tolstoi, Niskhozhdeniye i Prcobrazheniye, Berlin, 1922, Mysl Publishers, p. 3.
~^^2^^ A. N. Tolstoi, Collected Works, Russ. ed.. Vol. 13, 1949. p. 323.
23 organisations of 1917--32 as the personification of evil, nor the apologia for them which was frequently met recently.Today il hardly needs to he said that the work of the Proletkull poets is not merely an illustration of Bogdanov's theories, which it was held to be in the 40s and 5()s. The most gifted proletarian poets (Alexei Gastyev, Vasily Alexandrovsky, Nikolai Poletnyev. Mikhail Gerasimov. Via dimir Kirillov and others) gave unique and forceful expression to the mood of the working masses aroused by the revolution. Some of these poets wrote for the Party press. But it would be a serious error to overlook the influence on a certain section of these poets of Bogdanov's Menshevist views which determined his interpretation of ``proletarian culture''. It was this influence which aroused the concern of Lenin and the Party.
Bogdanov's subjective idealistic conception is irreconcilable with the principles of commitment to parly and people. It led writers and artists astray. Its supporters, who declared themselves to be ``immediate socialists'' on questions of culture, emphasised the isolation of proletarian art. In their view, one of the most important tasks facing the Proletkult was to protect the worker poets and artists from contact with the great mass of the people---the peas antry and the petty bourgeoisie of the towns. The class nature of this concept excluded the idea of commitment to the people and encouraged the idea of an exclusive caste or sect. It was for this reason that the proletarian poets who wrote with such sincere enthusiasm about their class as a ``Messiah'' called to perform miraculous feats, barely touched upon the real historical task of the working class of bringing the whole people to socialism.
__*_*_*__The proletarian writers' and artists' organisations of the twenties no longer tried (as the Proletkult did) to disassociate themselves from the Party and the Stale, but rather saw themselves as organisations whose role it was to exert an ideological influence on peasant writers and sympathisers. And however great were the mistakes made by the leadership of RAPP (the Bussian Association of Proletarian 24 Writers), they should not be allowed to obscure the valuable contribution which this organisation made to the literary life of the country.
It is undoubtedly to the credit of the members of BAPP that they wanted to bring literature closer to the ideas of Marxism and Party policy, to subject it to the aims of proletarian dictatorship and to encourage writers to deal with pressing contemporary problems, and important general aesthetic questions (method, characterisation, tradition and innovation, etc.). This was predominantly the work of voung people lacking in knowledge and experience. Whatever these young people were guilty of, it was not lack of energy or readiness to fight for proletarian art or lack of devotion to the revolution.
The Rappists were not slow to detect the anti-Leninist, rapilulatory nature of the Trotskyite view of the develop ment of literature and the arts in the transition period, which sprang from lack of confidence in the ability of the working class, the revolutionary people, to make their own. new, original contribution to culture, and which rejected the guiding role of the Party in artistic creation. They spoke out energetically against the Trotskyite slogan ``the methods of Marxism are not the methods of art'', seeing il rightly as an attempt to deflect art from the ideological arena and declare peaceful coexistence in the ideological sphere which during the period of NEP could only have meant succumbing to the influence of bourgeois elements. But in spite of all this, there are no grounds for identifying the position of BAPP with the policy adopted by the Parly on literature, as our foreign critics do. The Parly has always been concerned with the whole litcrari/ process and never limited its interest to a single organisation.
The Bappists did not follow a consistent Leninist line in their defence of proletarian literature and art. Their political errors of judgement (for example, their confused idea of the interaction of the working class with the intermediate sections of the population during the dictatorship of the proletariat) were combined with, wrong aesthetic ideas (a subjectivist approach to the question of the interaction of art and reality).
For a long time the Bappists and members of the Pro letc.ult based their art not on Ihe Marxist-Leninist principle 25 of the reflection of reality, but on Bogdanov's subjectivist concept of art as ``the organisation of psychology''. And this inevitably affected their attitude towards ``non-prole larian" elements. In their usual categorical manner the Rappisls asserted: ``The only socially useful literature at (he present time is that which organises the psychology and consciousness of the reader, the proletarian reader in particular, towards the ultimate tasks of the proletariat as the creators of a communist society, in other words, proletarian literature.''^^1^^ This meant that a big group of writers who were not members of RAPP, but were nevertheless anxious to take part in the constructive work of the victorious people and ``organise their psychology" in the right direction, could not do so. It was proposed that their work should be used for the ``disorganisation of the enemy".^^2^^ Although the Rappists changed their line of argument, their mistrust of ``non-proletarian writers" remained. They regarded these ``non-proletarian writers (i. e.. non-- members of RAPP) as actual or potential opponents, and whilst remembering the need to convert them on to the ``path of proletarian ideology" they ignored the Party's instruction that this should be done with great tact, caution and patience. This soon caused RAPP to degenerate into a bureaucratic organisation that was to hinder literary development.
Today when we talk about the first fifteen years of Soviet literature we do not divide writers into ``proletarian'', ``peasant'' and ``sympathisers''. Does this necessarily mean that these divisions did not exist? They did in fact exist, but only for a short lime. However the dividing line be Iwecn these categories was extremely hazy and mobile, which is what the Rappists did not take into ac count.
The October Revolution was immediately followed by the vast process of establishing a new social'structure. The dynamism, ``instability'', and ``permeability'' of the division between the various sections of the population and the literary groupings bear witness to the historic _-_-_
^^1^^ Literaturniye manifesty (Literary Manifestos), Moscow, 1929, Federatsiya Publishers, p. 187.
~^^2^^ Ibid,, p. 188.
26 victory of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the Leninist cuKural revolution.Unlike the bourgeois dictatorship which exploited both the people and the intelligentsia in its own narrow, selfish interests, the dictatorship of the working class succeeded, by drawing all levels of society into the building of socialism, in ensuring that their talent nourished on behalf of the whole of society, and also laid the foundation for the moral and political unity of Soviet society.
One cannot consider the aesthetic discussions of the twenties without referring to the Pereval group who considered the most important element in art to be ``direct impressions''. The group accused anyone who insisted on the crucial importance of progressive ideas and world outlook of being rationalist, insincere and lime servers.
II now seems paradoxical, but the logic of the group struggle was such that having rejected the aesthetic value of progressive ideas and taken on trust the trenchant phrase: ``the methods of Marxism are not the methods of art'', and attaching supreme importance to intuition, the Pereval supporters then proceeded to accuse a large section of Soviet writers and, in particular, the greatest poet of our age and one of the most sincere lyrical writers, Mayakovsky, of insincerity, professional envy and rationalism. Mayakovsky was attacked in this way simply because he had staled openly for the whole world lo hear that he had put ``his pen to the service, note, the service of the present day and hour, of true reality and its champion, the Soviet Government and the Parly".^^1^^
Attempts to represent the principle of devotion to party ideals as being opposed to sincerity showed that this prin ciple was completely misunderstood. Neither Lenin nor prominent Soviet writers who stood for the principle of party commitment, denied the great importance of sincer ily as a condition of artistic creation. Gorky valued `` sincerity and inspiration"^^2^^ above all else in writing. Mayakovsky was always appealing to the heart, and Sholokhov has on many occasions spoken fervently of the heart as being the focus of the writer's commitment to party.
_-_-_~^^1^^ V. Mayakovsky, Collected Works, Russ. cd., Vol. 12, pp. 358--59.
^^2^^ M. Gorky. Collected Works, Rnss. ed.. Vol. 30, p. 442.
27Just as a person without literary talent cannot become a writer, so a writer, however gifted he may be, cannot win the reader's heart with insincere, false writing. Marx ist-Leninist aesthetics sees sincerity as being indissolubly linked with such objective artistic criteria as knowledge ol life, a profound, comprehensive portrayal of life and the standpoint of the author be it progressive or reactionary. Sincerity plays a positive role in writing when, in the struggle between hostile forces and contradictory tendencies the writer sides with that which is new and progressive, regardless of which side has the upper hand at any given moment. Sincerity as such, however, by no means guarantees the truthful, objective reflection of life.
The Rappists were not far from the truth in attaching great importance to politics for the development of Soviet literature. The best writers of the age, regardless of their diversity as individual artists, were all united by an acute awareness of political ideas and events as being the most important feature of their time. During his development the writer carries within him features of the politician, the servant of society and the revolutionary true to the ideas of the Party. Serafimovich's evaluation of Furmanov is a good illustration of this: ``He was one and the same in Party work, in the Civil War and sitting at his desk with pen in hand. One and the same: a revolutionary fighter and builder. . . ."^^1^^
It was, of course, no accident that the political aspect was brought to the fore during the period of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Lenin noted that in Marxism as well, the world outlook of the most advanced class of the age, distinguished by an unusual richness of content, `` various historical periods give prominence now to one, now to another particular aspect of Marxism''.^^2^^ At the same time, he emphasised: ``the prevalence of interest in one aspect or another does not depend on subjective wishes, but on the totality of historical conditions.''^^3^^ When, for the first time in history, millions of people took politics into their _-_-_
~^^1^^ A. Serafimovich, Collected Works. Goslitizdat, Vol. 10, Moscow, 1948, p. 335.
^^2^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 17, p. 75.
^^3^^ Ibid., p. 76.
28 own hands and when politics came to mean the actual fate of these people, it was only to be expected that these millions should produce their own writers and artists for whom the politics of the new, people's slate had come to be their own lives.In the words ol Maj^akovsky mail}' artists realised for the first time during the revolution ``that apart from oil paints and prices on a picture there were certain political questions as well''.^^1^^ This apolitical attitude gave rise to serious difficulties in their artistic development. The so cialist revolution brought everyone face to face with the central problem of the age: that of choosing which way to go. In each individual case this problem look on an individual aspect: moral and psychological, aesthetic, philosophical, etc. But the crux of the matter was the question: which side---the revolution or the counter revolution, with the people or against the people. Politics, which had been permeated by the stormy atmosphere of social life, had now invaded the personal sphere.
One of the powerful factors contributing to the revival of literature and the arts was the bold way in which the artists of the revolution found material in the politics of the new socialist stale, in which the aims of the Communist Parly coincided with the interests of the people. Mayakovsky's writing simply gives stronger expression to this novel feature of the literature of that period than thai of other writers.
Leninist politics became a source of poetic inspiration. What was it thai opened up this broad, free path into art?
First and foremost it was Ihe inspiration of truth. ``We can counlcr hypocrisy and lies with the complete and honest truth,''^^2^^ declared the founder of the Soviet stale. And unswervingly followed this principle of not concealing the truth from the masses, however biller il may be, and of ``stating the issues plainly" and openly because ``you can't fool a class".^^3^^
The tremendous influence which the Communist Party exerted on the artistic consciousness of the age, unparalleled _-_-_
~^^1^^ V. Mayakovsky, Collected Works. Russ. cd.. Vol. 12, p. 150.
^^2^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 28, p. 87.
^^3^^ Ibid., Vol. 32, p. 215.
29 in the whole history of mankind, also had as one of its consequences the fact that up to this day the principle of commitment to party ideals is frequently understood primarily as a political one. The leading role of the politics of the Soviet state does not mean the elimination or even restriction of other factors. Marxism-Leninism is an all embracing teaching. This is why even as early as the twen ties the political point of view, whilst helping to discern the truth of the new world from the falsehood of the old one, did not supersede Ihe moral criterion or remove the need for psychological analysis, etc. ``What is the task ol' art if it is not the portrayal of human life,''^^1^^ wrote D. Fur manov.By entering the sphere of art Leninist policy helped the artist to open up and illuminate vast continents hitherto unexplored by art: the movement of the peoples, the class struggle, the fate of the individual in an age of fundamental historical change and so on. Likewise literature in its turn, by concentrating attention on human life, was able to reveal with great force the humanitarian nature of the politics of the new stale. Leninist policy has close lies with the moral and aesthetic ideal of Soviet society and aims at the same goal: the education of the new man. Us beneficial elfecl is reflected not only in Ihe works of Furmanov, Seralimovich, Demyan Bedny, Mayakovsky and Fadeyev. but also in Armoured Train 14--69 by Vsevolod Ivanov, Virincya by Lydia Seifulina, Lyubov Yarouaya by Konstantin Trcnyov, and The Debacle by Boris Lavrenyov and the works of oilier writers who affirmed the popular spirit and humanism of the socialist revolution. It is well known that in the late twenties a particularly fierce debate raged around Ihe question of class themes and general human problems in art.
In pushing general human questions to the fore the critics from Ihe Pereval group ignored class themes. This was bound lo be the case once they had announced thai the most primitive, direct sensations were the source of art. By championing the general human aspect the supporters of the Pereval school put art outside politics and _-_-_
~^^1^^ D. Furmanov, Collected Works, Goslili/dat, Vol. 3, Moscow, 1961, p. 274.
30 outside the ideological struggle. The supporters of RAPP and LEF defended the class character of art in their con troversy with the Pereval and were ready lo condemn any move lo defend the general human aspect as a deviation from Marxism. Both the former and the laller were out of louch with real life.As early as 1925 Gorky drew attention lo the fact that communism is ``truly and entirely revolutionary because it has made its aim the eradication of the class society".^^1^^ This means the growth of a new type of general humanity. It is taking place in the Soviet Union ``where the worker is becoming the master of the state and where .. . more and more people are growing up with the most striking artistic energy, spiritual purity and = __NOTE__ Missing close double-quote after "talent." ?? talent. ``In this country,'' the writer emphasises, ``one should always remember the emergence of a new and real general humanity.''^^2^^
This was a fundamentally new solution of the general human question which diverged widely from generally accepted views. Firstly, it was by no means the same as the concept of humanity as something eternal, unchanging and above class. Once the exploiter social formations have been removed the soil on which various types of money-grubbers, misers and scoundrels sprout up disappears. The emergence of a classless society brings with it the emergence of a new, real type of humanity. Real because it responds most of all lo the positive, creative possibilities of man. It is precisely this real type of humanity which has the deepest roots in the history of mankind and its creative labour.
In the course of these discussions the artistic intelligent sia came to realise the decisive importance of commitment to party and people for the development of Soviet literature and the arts. It was this (hat became the main prerequisite for recognition of socialist realism, which had long since shown its superiority over other methods as the basic method of Soviet literature. The aesthetic altitude towards reality was raised to a new level. Artists, both those who were Parly members and those who were not. saw the most important thing in Soviet life and history--- _-_-_
~^^1^^ M. Gorky, Collected Works, Russ. cd., Vol. 24, p. 324.
^^2^^ Ibid.
31 ``the main arteries of natural laws'',^^1^^ and the creator ol history---the people and the Party embodying the mind, conscience and honour of the modern age.Recognition of the principle of commitment to people and party as the basis of the new artistic method brought to the fore the problem of the positive hero which had already been troubling a large number of Soviet writers. During the heroic Five Year plans it was seen as the most responsible artistic task of the age, without the successful solution of which there could be no talk of literature having achieved anything, or the writer having fulfilled his moral duty to the people and the Party, Writers always have a healthy discontent with their work. ``The central hero of our age will not fit into such a small mirror as ours. But we all know perfectly well that he has already gone out into the world, its new master, the great planner, the future geometrist of our planet. In the richness of his ideas and plans he has already won himself a place among the constellation of human types, which includes such figures as Robinson Crusoe, Don Quixote, Figaro, Hamlet. Bezukhov, Oedipus, Foma Gordeyev and Raphael de Valentin.''^^2^^
These words by Leonid Lconov express the mood of writers at the First Writers' Congress and throughout the following decade.^^3^^ It fed on the inspiring atmosphere of socialist victories and the growing moral and political unity of Soviet society which had shown its strength during the war years.
The Stalin personality cidt, which had begun to have an adverse effect on the arts by the end of the thirties, delayed the development and deepening of the idea of commitment to party and people. In theoretical statements and _-_-_
~^^1^^ A. N. Tolstoi, Collected Works, Russ. ed., Vol. 13, 1949, p. 323.
~^^2^^ L. Lconov, Speech at the First Ail-Union Congress of Writers. In his book Literature and Time, Molodaya Gvardiya Publishers, 19G4, pp. 41--42.
^^3^^ This is why the description of literary life during those years in the memoirs of I. Ehrcnburg, People, Years, Life, seems strange and extremely subjective. The writer asserts that ``the Congress was not, and could no! be business-like. It developed into an enormous political demonstration''. The writers ``spoke sincerely, although sometimes the content of their speeches did not coincide with the spiritual condition of Ibis or that writer''. (Nouy Mir No. 4, 1962, pp. 28--29.)
32 critical works on commitment one was to hear occasional relapses inlo vulgar sociology I Hie typical as the main sphere of showing commitment to party) and sometimes echoes of the bourgeois theory of Hie single stream (an in lerprelalion of popular spirit as being outside history and class). The work of certain writers began to show that very illuslraliveness which Lenin and Lunacharsky warned against. A certain seclion of writers, in particular play wrighls. fell victim to Hie no -conflict theory which is alien to the Leninist principle'.But however difficult these manifestations of the cult of personality which limited artistic freedom were for writers who remained true to the spirit of Lenin, one can hardly call any decades in the history of Soviet literature ``the period of Ihe cult of personality'', as some critics do. if one takes a Marxist Leninist view of the question. During Ihe periods of both the ``frosts'' and ``Ihaw'' the best of the Soviet writers who possessed linn convictions and a clear underslanding of the aim of art measured their work not by the barometer, but by the compass of commilmenl lo parly and people. This is not to say Ihal Ihey went their own way regardless of their age. but Ihal Ihey understood Ihe profound natural laws of historical development.
For Mikhail Sholokhov, Leonid Leonov, Alexander Fa deyev, Konslanlin Fedin. Leonid Sobolev. Alexander Pro koliev, Pelrus Brovka and main- other Soviet writers their supreme judge at all limes has been I he- Parly and Unpeople.
__*_*_*__The Twenty-Second Parly Congress ascertained that at Ihe given slage the state of the dictatorship of the prolelariat, having fulfilled its historical mission, had become a stale of the whole people, and the Communist Parly which had originated as the party of the working class had become the parly of the whole people.
What do these changes indicate? First and foremost the growth of Ihe people, the new quality of the socialisl and spiritual face of Soviet society, the rise in its material and spiritual culture and Ihe development of socialisl democracy. All the layers of Soviet society are now united __PRINTERS_P_33_COMMENT__ 3---862 33 and inspired by a common aim, that of building communism. This was bound to influence the development ol literature and the arts as well.
It was quile natural that the new stage should he marked by intense searchings (''. . . never before has there; been such an acute need for us to think, search and ponder on the way ahead'',^^1^^ said Leonid Leonov) and impassioned argument. Many ``old'' problems appeared in a new light: the nature of art, the writer's attitude towards reality, the essence of artistic truth, tradition and innovation and so on. A war was declared on everything which hampered initiative and artistic thought, as being incompatible with the nature and aim of communism: ``Everything in the name of man for the good of man''. Views on the richness of the art of the Soviet age became broader and more precise. In order to re-establish the truth, which had frequently been distorted during the cult of personality, and to achieve a belter solution of the new and complex problems, it was essential that the valuable artistic works accumulated by the Soviet people should be correctly evaluated. The fact that the writer helped to achieve the common aim of the people, to develop in Soviet man the qualities of a builder of the new world and to educate the new, com munist individual, demanded that lie should make the most responsible decisions (which also correspond most closely to the role of literature as the study of man).
It is clear why the task of portraying the individual as a unique phenomenon should be such a pressing one, and why writers are so concerned with the moral and psychological motivation of the behaviour of the individual and the psychology of the artist, etc. Literature is striving to penetrate into the most delicate areas of the human spirit. It is here, in the approach to these problems that different conceptions of the individual and equally various conceptions of art collide.
Soviet literature is governed by the conception which links the fulfilment of the individual with the struggle for the happiness of the people and mankind as a whole; only within the framework of this struggle can the individual find his true value and uniqueness. According to this view _-_-_
~^^1^^ L. Leonov, Literature and Time, Moscow, 1964, p. 257.
34 the artist is Ihe ``son of his people and a liny particle of the human race'',^^1^^ with all his heart, talent and being lie belongs to the parly which is rebuilding the world for the good of mankind. He sees ``the highest honour and the highest freedom"^^2^^ in serving the people and the Party.For him service to people and parly means, above all, Ihc opportunity of making a more profound study of the people themselves, and presenting them with the, complete truth, honestly and without reservations. For him the people are both Ihe main character and supreme judge. By making the study and portrayal of the life of the people of prime imporlance, he by no means beliltles the role of self-analysis and self expression, but treasures the response of Ihe reader.
A high opinion of the purpose of art, love of life, devotion lo the trulh and the urge lo slrive ahead inlo Ihe future make the wrilers who share this conception unable to reconcile themselves to anything which may dislorl il: embellishmenl, all forms of subjeclivism and descriplion allegedly bereft of emotion.
I do not think that anyone has objected so forcefully to the formulae by which certain writers, dramatists in particular, constructed Iheir ``posilive hero" during the cult of personality, as Leonid Leonov, who insisted thai ``base ness and falsehood in art achieve results which are politically diametrically opposed to the tasks set by society''.^^3^^ This vehemence does nol result from doubt in the existence of the object itself, i.e., the positive hero, but from the conviction that the heroic; achievements of the Soviet people deserve a differenl approach and that our contemporaries should be shown ``in all their potential variety, in all their richness of character, fate and action".^^4^^ For ``Soviet man is worthy of careful reverent study. lie has undertaken the great task of showing mankind through his own experience of life all the phases, fortuitousness, dangers _-_-_
~^^1^^ M. A. Sholokhov, Spcecli on the Awnrd of the Nobel Prize, Pravda, December 11, 1965.
^^2^^ Ibid.
^^3^^ L. Leonov, Literature and Time, p. .'!()!).
^^4^^ Ibid., p. 310.
__PRINTERS_P_35_COMMENT__ 3* 35 and possibilities involved in Hie realisation of an ancient dream (Ihe golden age----Author). It is small wonder that in this role he performs deeds of outstanding valour, or forces ahead of his lime or is plunged into the depths ol despair, all on a scale which is inconceivable to the West. In this connection one instinctively recalls the figures of Prometheus and Atlas, Icarus and Heracles. How far removed they are from the carefully polished, ideological blockheads which the criticism of the period of the cult of personality spent vast resources on encouraging us to create!''^^1^^These views contain much that is typical of Lconov personally, just as the preceding contemplations of Sholokhov relied the views of the author of The Incite of a Man. But these are individual factors.
This interpretation of the individual and the purpose of art in the modern world, based on the experience and aims of building a new society, is in sharp contradiction to the anti-democratic and anti-humanist interpretations which are widespread in the West. Neo Freudism, existentialism and similar schools of bourgeois thought, which see man as an unreliable creature incapable of escaping from the hold of dark, irrational forces and base instincts, have been responsible to a considerable extent for the de humanisalion of literature and the arts and the destruction of the individual. The lack of respect for man found in avant-garde literature must be regarded as an expression of an atrophied sense of responsibility lo mankind for human destiny on the part of its advocates. Although modern bourgeois art is on the decline reactionary ideas in new clothing frequently influence the work of progressive writers as well.
Many years have now passed since Soviet literature took its place in the international arena, and a clear understanding of its achievements and the sources of its ideological and artistic richness is essential not only for Soviet literature itself, but for its friends all over the world. Its successes and failures are bound up not only with isolated individuals but with the communist cause as a whole. This _-_-_
~^^1^^ L. Leonov, Literature and Time, p. 311.
36 explains why the Western press reacts so strongly to everything which is happening in Soviet literary life, eager to present its own interpretation of these events.Naturally enough, the Western bourgeois press distorts the picture by presenting the Soviet literary journal Noinj Mir as a ``bastion of modernism".^^1^^ Nevertheless a fair amount of the material published by this magazine over the last few years docs go to show that its editors are all too often liable to subjective predilection and half-baked ideas.
These ideas are often based on correct assumptions. One can hardly object, for example, to Alexander Tvardovsky's assertion that ``it is the author's personality which determines the merit of a work as a literary entity".^^2^^ But what conclusion should be drawn from this indisputable assertion? That the author and the author alone is the basic and only criterion for judging the value of what he has written.
One of the magazine's critics. V. Lakshin, claims that one should judge a piece of writing and the life which it depicts solely ``on the basis of the writer's testimony"^^3^^ (author's italics), By regarding this principle as part of the ``ABC of materialist aesthetics" the critic rejects all other points of view as being dogmatic.
But how can one determine the extent to which a work gives a true picture of life solely ``on the basis of the writer's testimony'', without measuring this testimony against life itself? Surely the most reliable indication of authenticity and. to a certain extent, of literary merit is to be found in the degree to which the work reflects the basic objective trends in the development of our society. This type of approach is much more in keeping with human development and artistic progress. It inspires the writer by reminding him of his responsibility to something higher than himself, although the latter must also not be excluded. The writer who brings his ideals and their embodiment into line with the real world and the most progressive ideals of his age towards which the party and people _-_-_
~^^1^^ Le Mande, Dec. 22. I0()5.
^^2^^ Noini Mir No. 1, I0f>>, p. 14.
^^3^^ Novy Mir No. 1, 1904, p. 220.
37 are striving, is bound to feel himself in a constant stale of creative emulation and mobilisation of his talent and spiritual inspiration. This was beautifully expressed by Sholokhov when he was being presented with the Nobel Prize. A writer who is convinced of his uniqueness, who maintains that his main interest is in himself and that the only way of finding truth is through self-knowledge, selfanalysis and self-expression, is condemning himself to the fate of the mythical Narcissus who pined away through self-love. In such cases what is apparently literary freedom turns into a severe limitation for the individual writer and literature as a whole. This idea of freedom was expounded with great consistency on the pages of NOUIJ Mir by Ilya Ehrenburg. It would appear that the author and those who share his views sincerely believe that they are opposed to the spirit of the cult of personality. But alas, on the contrary, these views arc a return to the past, to those forgotten idealistic paths from which all talented Soviet writers have long since turned aside, preferring the great literature of and for the people. __*_*_*__A correct understanding and portrayal of the process of democratisation of Soviet society at its various stages and especially at the present stage is of vital importance.
Soviet literature has recorded the outstanding triumphs and tremendous difficulties involved in this process. Immediately after the Oclober Revolution it was the people who became the central figure and adjudicator of literature, while the themes of labour, construction, the break with the past and the emergence of a new life, the bridging of the gulf between the people and the intelligentsia, etc., commanded the attention of writers. This bears eloquent witness to the fact that Soviet literature was developing as truly democratic literature, both in the sources from which it gained inspiration and in its aims. The cult of personality delayed the demoralisation of Soviet society, occasionally distorting it. hut was forced to give way to this irreversible process. Since the transition to the building of communism and the liquidation of the cull of personality this process has been developing at a particularly fast rate.
38Soviet lileralure of the lasl decade provides a convincing picture of the development of popular initiative, the growth of the new individual and the efforts of the Party to restore the Leninist principle of leadership of the masses. Few works, it is true, show these new features as strikingly as Sholokhov's And Quiet Flows the Don and Virr/in Soil Upturned, but the inspired fervour of such works as Enter Euc.ri] Uninc by Yelizar Maltsev. Lipi/fifji by S. Krutilin. Hreud: Hie Stuff' of Life by Mikhail Alexeyev. Hitter Grass by Pyotr Proskurin. Meet Haliit/ev by Vadim Ko/hevnikov. Tronkci by Oles Gonehar, Truth and Fdhchnod by Mikhailo Slelmakh and many others, lies in their concern with the development in ordinary Soviet people of a sense of responsibility for everything which is being done in their country. These writers seek to discern in the ``masses'' a vital unique individual and new forms of presenting the interconnection between the individual and (he collective. Thus in Alexeyev's study Bread: the Stuff of Life almost all the characters, the ordinary farmworkers (Kaplya, Akimushka, Zhuravushka, etc.) be come the hero of the narrative for a certain time. First one and then the other assumes the leading role, and in this way the author is, as it were, showing a new method of portraying the ``masses''. It is as if he is saying through the very structure of his ``tale in short stories" that the masses are not anonymous, but that each person being part of the people is unique and original.
This is why it is difficult to agree with the interpretation of the demoralisation of literature which has been given most concrete expression in Novi] Mir. According to these writers, the essence of this process of democratisation lies in the fact that literature has finally switched its attention from portraying ``leaders'' and ``outstanding'' personalities to those who are ``led'', the ``ordinary'', ``little'' man. In an attempt to justify this unconvincing theory, they recall that ``the greatness of Russian literature lies first and foremost in its constant concern for ordinary people, for the 'little man' as he was called".^^1^^
It is certainlv true thai the figure of the ``little man" in Russian literature is bound up with the development of _-_-_
~^^1^^ \tntji Mir No. 1, Mmr>, p. 14.
39 democratic and humanist traditions. But was this the only factor? Did not Belinsky regard the novel Eiujene Onef/in as one of the finest examples of art imbued with the spirit of the Russian people? There are no grounds for the categorical assertion that the greatness of Russian literature lies first and foremost in such characters as Samson Yy rin. Akaky Bashmachkin. Makar Devushkin and Anton (lo remyka. and not in the figures of Taliana Larina, Pecho rin. the auto-biographical hero of Past and Thmif/lils. Pierre Bezukhov. Natasha Roslova. Rakhmetov. Bazarov or Dymov.But this strange theory of demoralisation is most strikingly disproved by the facts of Soviet literature. Let us assume that the supporters of this theory were in such a hurry that they forgot about f.orky's interpretation of the ``little man''. Such things do happen in the heat of the argument. But how could they possibly overlook such figures as Chapaycv. (lodun. Levinson. Davydov. Korchagin and. last but not least. Yasily Tvorkin? Who could dare call them ``little'', ``ordinary'' characters, although they are all from the ``lower classes''. Nor can one possibly justify any attempt to represent Grigory Melekhov as an ordinary hero. When reading Sholokhov's epic we are constantly aware of the fact that if this man had been in the Red Army he would have become a Chapayev. Then there is Yasily Tvorkin. the embodiment of all that is truly popular in the original meaning of the word. Could one really see this soldier and ``political instructor" sparkling with wit as a ``little man"? He feels himself to be the master of his country and evokes pride, not pity. Were it not for the fact that he dies, one could well imagine him as the chairman of a collective farm or in an even higher posl, and it would not be a violation of the truth of life.
It must be emphasised once again: the author of this strange theory of demoralisation grasped al an all-- toohasly, false generalisation of individual facts. Among the hundreds of new titles which have appeared over the years, there have been those which have shown the development of man under socialism as a constant climb up the professional ladder. This is an over-simplified solution of a complex problem. In a country where the slate is run by the workers and peasants themselves, where the children 40 of shepherds, miners, cooks and teachers constitute the basis of the intelligentsia, the transformation of the ``led'' into the ``leaders'' is a natural process. So we are dealing with cases of the banal, over simplified and sometimes hackneyed portrayal of a complex phenomenon. In the greatesl works attention is concentrated on the spiritual development of man. II is impossible to formulate a viable concept of demoralisation by referring lo works which are often outside the sphere of art and ignoring real life and those works which give a true picture of things as they are.
But the emergence of such a concept shows thai even at the present stage of development not all interpretations of commitment to the people are firmly linked with commitment to the Communist Party.
This error may be of use if one draws the correct conclusion from it. For if even the great Tolstoi gave an inaccurate portrayal of the formation of bourgeois Russia and the revolutionary rise of the masses, because he saw these new. and for him unfamiliar, phenomena from a patriarchal point of view, it is hopeless lo try and understand the nature of a people building communism if one still sees that people as they were a hundred years ago. No amount of talent will overcome this obstacle. And those who really value talenl and are concerned wilh finding the true role of literature and the arts in the building of communism should make a closer study of the literary discoveries made at earlier stages in the development of Soviet society.
These discoveries were made in the course of implementing the method of socialist realism and the principle of commitment lo Communist Party and people.
[41] __ALPHA_LVL1__ Anatoly DremovThe creation of characters personifying high ideals lias always been a distinguishing feature of art. provided that the artist was aware of his responsibility to society and had his finger on the pulse of the people.
The ideal is determined by reality or to be more precise social reality. But this ideal is by no means a mirror image, for it docs not reflect every aspect of life but only the most vital, valuable and desirable, or in the words of Lenin ``morally higher" aspects. In giving expression to life's highest manifestations, its most progressive trends and concepts, the ideal becomes the highest criterion of the desideratum, the highest expression of a given purpose. ``Man needs an ideal,'' slates Lenin in one of his philosophical treatises, ``but a human ideal corresponding to nature and not a supernatural ideal.''^^1^^ The wisdom of these words is immediately apparent when they are seen in relation to the life of the Soviet people and their unceasing daily toil, as in the book Heroes of Our Time, which contains seven hundred essays on outstanding national figures. These ``heroes'' are no imaginary ``supermen'' but typical Soviet workers, such as steel founder Mikhail Privalov or virgin land farmer Mikhail Dovzhik. They all personify the moral features so typical of the Soviet people and their communist ideals. Yuri Gagarin, an ordinary Soviet citizen, blazed the trail into space for mankind. His breakthrough to the stars _-_-_
^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 38, p. 75.
42 was a triumph for the whole Soviet people. II was made possible by economic and cultural achievements and by ihe efforts of scientists, designers and ordinary workers over the decades.The heroism of the Soviet people is a mark of I heir spiritual stability. For example, it look a lot of intelligence and generosity for Shaakhmed Shamakhmudov, a Tashkent blacksmith, and his wife Bakhri Akramova to adopt fourteen war orphans and turn them into useful members of society. Then there was Olga Forsh's article entitled ``Spring `61" published in I'ravdri. In this tragic yet remarkably optimistic article, the old authoress writes of her twilight years, even of her impending death. Every line exudes the fresh vigour of youth. It is difficult to believe that it was written by a woman nearly ninety years of age. The calm dignity of the following lines is particularly impressive: ''. . .eight years ago they removed a cataract from both eyes. I was almost blind before the operation and had fo make an enormous menial effort to get used to the idea of being blind and to imagine life without light. It was then that I realised that life in darkness is not death and that even without light one can still live a real life. During these difficult days I began to plan my new book Pioneers of Freedom which appeared when I was eighty after Ihe doctors had brought light and colour back into my life.'' The article ends with a description of lilac coloured bluebells, Ihe fresh green buds of the trees, ``life with its constant renewal and the immortality of our cause''. Little did we know reading these moving words that this was to be the writer's last testament. To produce such a courageous piece of writing with death just around the corner is no mean feat.
Our ideal is no abstract concept of Ihe desirable. It is firmly rooted in Ihe actual stale of the world. It is not opposed to reality but rather synlhesises its principal qualities in the light of its future development.
People need an ideal not so that they can indulge in idle daydreams, but to bring about a practical transformation of life. Lenin said that ideals are a question of everyday life and that ``the loftiest ideals arc not worth a brass farthing so long as you fail to merge them indissolubly . . . with those `narrow' and petty everyday problems of the given 43 class.''^^1^^ An ideal is capable of inspiring and transforming, only if it coincides with the vital interests of the people, and if they accept it as the embodiment of their heart-felt hopes and inspirations.
An ideal has a dual aspect. It embodies all that which is most advanced, all the highest achievements which bear the seeds of the future. As well as being related to the past and present the ideal points the way forward to the future indicating the aoal and means hi/ which it is to be achieved. As it grows in the social, popular and class consciousness, the ideal lakes on various forms of expression, political, moral and aesthetic. It exists in the mind of people, first and foremost in that part which is most progressive, most conscious. It is given theoretical expression in the works of philosophers and scientists and embodied in works of art.
Consequently the ideal first emerges as the product of thought and is only then realised in life. This demonstrates the activity of the human mind, its ability not merely to see but to foresee, not only to reflect, hut to create new reality.
Marxism recognises scientific foresight. Scientific investigation acquires scope and daring from hypothesis, creative surmise, and hold leaps of the imagination. Imagination plays an even greater role in the work of the artist. Detecting the features of the man of the future in presentday life and one's contemporaries is not only the right, but the duty of the true artist. He emphasises these features in his work, showing people the ideal in all its beauty and inspiring them with faith in the future and the ardent desire to fight for it. The most important feature of socialist realism is to show life in its revolutionary development, the struggle and victory of the new over the old, and reveal a picture of the communist future.
Literature contains many examples of artists who were able to foresee the future of mankind. Chernyshevsky uses Yera Pavlovna's dreams, in his novel What Is To Re Done. to give a very concrete picture of the life, work and human relations of the people of the future. Naturally, modern socialist society differs in many respects from the utopias _-_-_
~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Colkftcd Works, Vol. 1, p. 391.
44 of the great artists and scholars of the past, hut some of their predictions have already turned out to be true.Modern Soviet artists concentrate on depicting the development of communist society. The novel Andromeda by Ivan Yefremov contains such a panorama of this future. The exploits of the conquerors of space and the brilliant scientific and human achievements of people at the end of the twentieth century are described in the tragedy Faust and Death, by the Ukrainian playwright A. Levada. This play deals with the unprecedented development of science and technology and, what is even more important, the ardour and daring of the people of the future in their conquest of nature.
In his Talk witli the Young Maxim (iorky expounded his views on the artistic reflection of reality: ``It is not enough to depict only that which exists, we must also bear in mind that which is desirable and attainable. It is essential to typify phenomena. Producing something significant and typical from that which is insignificant yet characteristic--- therein lies the real task of literature.''
__*_*_*__Several writers who consider the most important, progressive feature of modern Soviet art to lie in emphasising the negative and concentrate their attention on deficiencies resulting primarily from the Stalin cult, ``forget'' to stress the importance of the writer's ideological position. They display ramarkable indifference to the most important questions, i.e., in the name of whicli and whose ideals the author is exposing these faults. They would do well to remember that even Saltykov-Shchedrin. unrivalled in his merciless exposure of such transgressions, said: ``The writer's social importance (and what other importance could he have?) lies in illuminating all types of moral and intellectual shortcomings so that the fresh wind of the ideal may dispel stagnation of all kinds.''
In recent discussions about the positive hero opponents of the heroic image rightly stressed the significance of the critical function of art, often ignoring its educational function, and it is now almost fashionable to speak ironically of education by the force of example. It is often said that this is just for the children, a prop for teenagers, etc. As 45 if a work of art can really influence our minds and emotions particularly through the positive hero without at the same time penetrating the main trends of social develop merit, and irrespective of whether it is truthful and profound or false and shallow. It is not also surprising that the educational influence of ``critical research" should be ignored, as in V. Lakshin's comparison of And Quiet Flows the Don with How I he Steel Was Tempered. Ac cording to his line of argument And Quid Flows the Don does not inspire the reader with any noble ideal, and How the Sleel Was Tempered gives us no insight into life, since it does not give ``a truthful reflection of reality or portray the characters with sufficient freshness and courage''.
One cannot separate the educative and cognitive functions of a work of art. It is impossible to grasp the whole complexity of this question without taking into account the author's attitude towards his subject-matter, the nature of the aesthetic ideal behind his images (provided that we are dealing with a genuine work of art and not a didactic treatise or an occasional venomous attack). But this is precisely what some critics neglect to do. They ignore the fact that socialist realism aims at portraying life in all its diversity arid complexity. It docs not simply choose to portray positive or negative phenomena (this depends on the writer's individual style and choice of subject matter), but aims at presenting a truthful, pen elraling picture of the conflict between the positive hero and the forces opposing him---both elements shown in their dialectical unity.
The author's ideal casts its light upon the darkest corners of life and inspires people to struggle against ``human imperfection''. In the absence of a sufficiently strong ideal truth becomes distorted either intentionally or unintentionally or the work degenerates into a meaningless lament. A tendency to depict the worst in people, without stating the author's own position or ideal may be detected, for example, in the novel Seven in One House by the talented writer V. Syomin.
Much of what is portrayed in his novel is accurate, and penetrating. He knows suburban life extremely well and is able to depict it in a few deft strokes. But however accurate individual facts may be, they are selected and 46 presented in such a way as to give a distorted picture of life. No one can seriously claim that the mainstream of life is to be found in the suburbs described by Syomin.
It could be argued that although this is the case it still does not mean that the author is not entitled to show these suburbs. Of course he is entitled to do so. But this immediately poses the important problems of how and why he treats such questions, by what principles and aesthetic ideals he should allow himself to be guided. Unfortunately, there is 110 definite answer to these questions in V. Syomin's novel. The author depicts an artificially isolated microcosm divorced from society, engrossed in its own petty worries, joys and sorrows, which have nothing in common with the basic concerns of society.
Syomin's weak point is that he does not see (or rather does not show) the general relevance of isolated facts to real life. This results in the portrayal of trivial rather than the whole truth. Instead of castigating defects and struggling against them, the author laments them showing his characters sinking into the mire of philistinism.
In such cases the writer would do well to recall Gorky's astute observation that facts in themselves do not constitute the whole truth and that the writer's interpretation of them is of prime importance.
The absence of an ideal, the fear of raising one's voice in praise of the heroic quality of the life and aspirations of the ordinary man and the reluctance to expose evil are inevitably detrimental to the ideological and artistic content of the work.
To give a really true picture, the artist must portray thai which exists in such a way as to reveal the main trends of development. He must be able to envisage the time when the young shoot before him will be a great, blossoming tree. It is impossible (apart from the literature of science fiction) to portray the future in the present without some degree of aesthetic exaggeration. In other words without showing people, as Fadeyev put it, both as they are and as they should be or will be. Here the artist draws on dreams and visions of the future. But it would be quite wrong to regard this as a distortion of the truth, or a flight from reality.
47Obviously, 1)}' ideals we do not mean castles in Hie air, but aspirations rooted in reality, just as man likes to imaghie the lime when the liny shoots of the future peeping forth today will burst inlo full bloom. The artist takes these shoots which, though J'ew in number, portend a new and belter future, condenses and transforms them inlo a ``pearl of creation" (Belinsky). Thus, socialist realism is concerned not only with objective reality, bill also with the desirable, necessary and ideal as a vision of the future, based on a profound understanding of the objective laws and principal trends of social development.
This gives birlh to an heroic figure, combining the real and the ideal in an organic oneness.
In my opinion, Yadim Kozhevnikov, whose earlier writing shows his search for heroic characters, which helped him produce the interesting novel To Meet the Dawn, has succeeded in portraying an heroic character in his new novel, The Shield anil the Sword.
Occasionally we read thai a reckless, devil-may-care person or ``nihilist'' will seize a machine-gun and perform an act of heroism when the situation demands it. In my opinion this is simply not possible. Heroes are shaped In circumstances, by education and overcoming obstacles. This is the case with Alexander Belov, the hero of The Shield (ind the Sword. Were il not for his former way of life he would probably not have acquired the necessary qualities for a Soviet intelligence officer. His education and the high moral principles which were instilled in him by his family, school and Soviet upbringing, combined with his positive personal qualities, made his whole life a series of exploits.
If we ask ourselves whether everyone can be like Alexander Belov, the honest answer would be ``no, not everyone by any means''.
Heroic characters in life, like ideal characters in art, are an inspiring example, shining in the darkness like the heart of Danko, lighting the path to the future. They are the embodiment of the ideal and have the power to open up (he future; moreover, they are truthful and realistic. People do follow such heroes not blindly, bill because they recognise their historical truth.
This poses the following question. Recent literary 48 critieism contains frequent mention of Lenin's references to the ``heroism of the individual impulse" and Hie ``heroism of the people's daily work''. Particular emphasis is placed on the word ``daily'', in other words, the accent is on rou line, ordinary, everyday events and their portrayal by the arlist. However, in the second case Lenin is specifically emphasising the heroism of daily work and does not mean that all routine work is necessarily heroical just because' it is carried out by the masses. Lenin stressed that daily work during the revolution. Civil \Yar and the period of reconstructing the nation's devastated economy bore ample witness to the courage and heroism of the working man. The building of communism is an heroic task; but Ihis by no means implies thai every single participant in this worthy endeavour is himself a hero. Empty talk about the heroism of each and every citizen more often than not serves to discredit Irue heroism and overshadow the example set by the vanguard.
It is obvious that only an honest and conscientious altilude to work can create the conditions necessary for a worthwhile existence, and that this does nol necessarily imply any heroic endeavour on the part of the individual. But when a man puts his whole heart and soul into his work with no thought for himself, even the most ordinary routine lasks lake on an heroic quality. And this is precise!}' what Lenin meant by the heroism of everyday work. There may or may nol be a disparity between the hero's external and internal qualities, his unusual personality and the apparently modest role which he plays; but this is no justification for ignoring or belittling true heroes.
Marxists resolutely oppose all attempts to make the ideal absolute. Everything depends on the material conditions obtaining in the epoch, the class structure and general outlook on life. The ideal is a factor of social development. It too lives and develops. The same also applies in equal measure to the communist ideal.
It would be wrong to say that the communist ideal is now being /<///;/ realised. Engels said: ``History, like cognition, cannot be realised in some perfect, ideal human condition, for a perfect society or a ``state' exists only in the imagination.'' Even in the most perfect ``human condition" progress will not cease. It may be perfect in comparison with __PRINTERS_P_49_COMMENT__ 4---862 49 the preceding stages of social history, but even at this new stage there will be wide scope for further progress, for the conquest of the universe, for the perfection of man. New and even more complex tasks present an even greater challenge to man's creative powers. This means that at the same time as the present ideal is realised, society will sow the seeds of a new ideal which even at its initial stages will serve as an inspiration to man and show him the way forward.
At this point I should like to refer to The Problems of Realism, by V. Dneprov in which the author devotes a great deal of space to the question of the ideal and its connection with reality, the communist ideal in particular.
His line of reasoning implies that former ideals did not ``become a reality" because the right conditions did not obtain. This being the case, does it mean that people were not guided by these ideals in their practical activities?
It is well known that the progressive ideals of past epochs, like those of today, were born of life. The struggle for their realisation determined the aims and actions of progressive social forces and individuals. To some extent these ideals did ``become a reality''. Gradually new and higher ideals took their place. This conclusion is inescapable, if one takes into account the real facts and their dialectical meaning, and if the term ``ideal'' is understood as a real ideal.
``Why do we need an 'ideal man', when we have real people who are a thousand times more interesting and orig inal than any ideal?" asks Dneprov. This point of view is nothing but a complacent and self-satisfied attitude to what has already been achieved, a sugary idealisation of modern life!
There are still many remnants of the past in Soviet society and very few people measure up to the communist ideal or possess those properties which, according to Dneprov, are ``a thousand times" greater than those of the ``ideal man''. Even the best Soviet citizens strive for perfection. They know their aims and how to achieve them, and accordingly develop in themselves qualities necessary for life in a communist society. But even when they have achieved the present ideal of communist man, they will still 50 be inspired to strive for even greater perfection by a new vision of unsealed heights.
In discussing the communist ideal and its realisation in the activities of the people, Dneprov ignores the fact that a Irue understanding of that ideal cannot lie gained without a concrete historical approach. That is why he limits it, declaring that ``in our time the ideal i^ becoming a reality'', and thereby considering the question solved, lie does not give serious consideration to the questions: what ideal is being realised and to what c.iient or what new ideal is simultaneously maturing and inspiring our contemporaries to further self-improvement. There is little evidence in the book that the author is aware of the simple fact that every ideal is limited historically and is therefore a product of its age. Howevei, it is only within such a concrete, historical framework that we can assess the possi bility of the ideal being achieved. The ideal itself should not be understood as being absolute, and consequently one should not adopt an abstract approach to the question of its realisation. An ideal cannot ``become reality" or be fully achieved in contemporary historical conditions. The opposite view would be a Utopian one, tantamount to an assertion that the development of society and human consciousness has ground to a halt.
Gorky had this to say about the replacement of one ideal by another.
``Life progresses towards perfection guided by the ideal, by that which does not yet exist but which we believe it is possible to achieve.
``Reality is always the materialisation of an ideal, and when we renounce and change that reality, we do so because the ideal we have succeeded in creating no longer satisfies us, and because we already possess a new and belter ideal created by our imagination.''^^1^^
Thus ideals change as life develops. There arc no eternal, petrified ideals relevant to all epochs and all classes. The ideal is a call to fight for a belter life, not an expression of complacency with the existing one.
In short every writer must proceed from reality to the image, with his understanding of life illuminated by an _-_-_
~^^1^^ M. Gorky, Cnllrrlrd Works, Russ. od., Vol. 24, p. 22(>.
51 ideal. Otherwise what is the signilicanee of world outlook and individual consciousness in art? The writer is a creator and therefore his starling-point is life, not some logical, didactic system to be followed blindly. The writer's task and that of art as a whole is conscious creation. Logical systems and the formulation of general qualities lie beyond the scope of true art.The writer forms his hero from his accumulated experience of life interpreted in the light of his ideal of man.
Since man is the principal subject of art, the ideal of beauty, the highest level of aesthetic perfection, is particularly strongly expressed in the shape of a person whose appearance and behaviour provide us with an example of inner beauty, worthy of imitation. ``Beauty is the main quality of the exalted,'' observed Denis Diderot. And it is in this struggle for the achievement of an ideal that man's activities can be seen in their most ``exalted'' form.
Art which is anti-social and lacks exalted ideals or which ignores the class struggle and the fundamental problems of life, is both decadent and corrupt.
The de-humanisation of art is the predominant feature of bourgeois modernism, and the greatest danger to creative art.
Bourgeois theoreticians seek to explain this repudiation of the ideal not as a result of the corruption and inevitable collapse facing the capitalist system, but as a general law of human development, a fatal inevitability inherent in human nature.
Soviet writers recognise the need to create positive heroes representing the new man who will inspire millions by their example. This is a task of great historical importance, the burden of which rests upon the writer. Many modern writers are striving to accomplish this; they do not i'ear bold words, daring strokes of the pen and brush and the aesthetic exaggeration of characters, following in the best traditions of classical and popular literature. The popular concept of the ideal was always expressed most vividly and boldly in truly artistic images of man; for example. Hellenic art depicts man most forcefully exaggerating his beauty, perfection, strength, courage and virtues. Legendary figures the world over---Ilya Muromels, Othello, Taras Bulba, Rakhmetov, Karl Moor, William Tell 52 and Felageya Nilovna display the same aesthetic exag geration of positive traits. Mikhail Sholokhov explains the artistic portrayal of man as follows: ``Let us assume that 1 am writing about a soldier, a man who is near and dear to me. How could I portray him badly? He is my flesh and blood, from head to fool. Therefore I try not to mention his pock marked face or certain faults in his character. But if 1 do mention them I try to write in such a way that the reader will love him for what he is, even his pockmarks and faults.''
It is interesting to note that some of the views published recently on this controversial question of the ideal hero and artistic idealisation, have been well thought out, in contrast to the irritated outbursts which one was so accustomed to hear in the not so distant past. Several serious scholars have returned to this complex question, to which Soviet aesthetics has not vet found a satisfactory answer. In his article ``Paradoxes of Criticism" (Voprosy Litcralury No. 8, 1965) Y. Osetrov rightly objects to the unscientific, interpretation of the ideal hero as a distillate `` including all of man's virtues and none of his faults''. In this article the author states that ``Vasily Tyorkin, who embodies the best and most heroic national features, can be called an ideal hero without any reservations''. He goes on to say that Thyll Ulenspiegel and Colas Breugnon are so close to Tyorkin in character that they may be considered brothers.
In a recent publication entitled Methods of Literary Criticism N. F. Belchikov. Corresponding Member of the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences, stales that ``discussions (about the ideal hero---Author) were found to be useful because they helped writers to define certain methodological principles more precisely, condemn, for example, the tendency lo deprive lileralure of its hero and clarify some of the tasks of modern literary study''.
__*_*_*__Man must always have a hero, said Gorky. Every epoch has given birth to people who have epitomised the noblest qualities, the vital interests and the fundamental needs of their limes. Qualities present lo some degree in the 53 ordinary working man were greatly magnified in the hero. True writers have always attempted to create characters whose noble qualities made them an ``ideal'' lighting the way to a brighter future like a flaming torch.
Gorky's statement that if socialist realism is to flourish its main concern must be the typification of life's phenomena is just as true today. Only this attitude will guarantee the success of our writers, the creation of works giving powerful expression to our lofty and noble ideal---the ideal of communism.
[54] __ALPHA_LVL1__ Georgy LomidzeIt is a generally accepted notion that nations are formed in conditions of bourgeois society when the fellers of feudalism, with its policy of dismembering and isolation, drop and the life of people becomes united by numerous links- economic, spiritual, and so forth. But having given birth lo nations, bourgeois society denies them national sovereignty. Does not the whole history of the inglorious colonial regime prove eloquently enough Ihal Ihc exploiter class, for mercenary motives, has always been anxious to keep its subservient nations ignorant, poor, mule and slavishly obedienl?
Nalurally, Ihe reaclionary bourgeoisie does nol want the peoples it exploits to develop a sense of national self-- awareness. The entire system of the bourgeois law and order which is based on the principle of the strong oppressing the weak prevents the development of national cultures. The bourgeoisie as a class that feeds on the peoples it oppresses fears their solidarily. Consolidalion of Ihe enslaved peoples is a mighty force capable of wiping the rule of Ihe oppressors oil' Ihe face of Ihe earth. And for this reason the reactionary bourgeoisie does everything to set peoples against one another, to fan national enmity and mutual hatred. The ideology of racism is a tried and tested weapon in the hands of the bourgeoisie.
Socialism liberates peoples and tremendously accelerates their economic and cultural growth. The solid foundation on which Ihe communal existence of socialist stales is based is compounded of brolherhood, equality, mutual respect, assistance, and concern for everyone's welfare. Every 55 nation, big or small, is provided with truly boundless opporlunities Tor the development of all the aspects of its economy and culture. The national arts begin to blossom. The remarkable fruit yielded by this combination of political and spiritual liberation was spoken of by Suniti Kumar Chatter]!, a well-known Indian scholar, at the seminar on the study and translation of Asian and African literatures held in .Moscow in 19(>4. From the first, he said, the Soviet Government adopted a new approach to the basic problems of life, to problems of philosophy, culture and politics as applicable to the world in general and to the countries of Asia and Africa in particular. The essential distinction of this new approach is that human values are taken into equal account with political values.
The community of aims and views, and the feeling of sincere mutual respect engender in the Soviet peoples a natural desire to become closer acquainted and to exchange with one another all that is finest, unique and beautiful in each national culture. These contacts enable the national cultures---both the highly developed and the relatively young---to assimilate what the others have lo oll'er of value and thus go a step higher in their development.
This growing closeness between the Soviet national cultures is part of the objective historical process in conditions of socialist and communist society. The rapprochement between nations and the (lowering of national cultures are not conflicting processes. They are two mutually and dialectically connected aspects of the same phenomenon. The closeness between the socialist nations is based on their community of views, historical aims and aspirations. United by these all-important and all-determining tasks, and working for the attainment of a common ideal, these nations must naturally grow closer. Spiritual kinship makes for a better mutual appreciation of artistic values and for a more vigorous exchange of creative ideas. Cultures which have been reared in the same social soil, for all their national uniqueness, find a common language much more quickly, of course, than backward and advanced cultures, the more so if they differ ideologically and aesthetically. A rapprochement between national cultures, conditioned by the very course of history, speeds up their development. Needless to say. a national culture does not owe 56 its development only to the assimilation of experience. It has its own roots and its own national motive power. But once again there is no conflict between the development of this national artistic power and the rapprochement between nations. This latter process is a constant source of light, so to say. it brings out the new capacities latent in national cultural creativity and raises its standard. Thus, it becomes a law in the life of the national cultures and the most reliable means of attaining perfection. V. I. Lenin taught that the road to a single culture of communist society lies through the development of the national culture of each nation which has freed itself from the capitalist yoke.
In the Soviet Union there are no major or minor literatures. Each national literature, however young, has something to be proud of.
Author Georgy Gulia in .1 Slori/ About Mi/ Father quotes his father, a celebrated folk poet, on the need to evaluate literature, to whatever people it belongs, from the aesthetic point of view as an equivalent part of the entire Soviet society's spiritual culture. ``Literature is like gold,'' Dmitry (iulia said, ``the pieces can be big or small, but all are gold. The small ones are not made of clay. Gold will always be gold. Size does not matter.''
A great deal has been written about the role played by Russian culture and Russian people in the progress achieved by the Kazakh nation: it has been described in the novels of Mukhlar Auezov, Gabit Musrepov, Sabit Mukanov, Gabiclen Mustafin, Takhavi Akhlanov. and in numerous articles and monographs.
The purpose of bringing the national cultures closer together is to strengthen their unity. For unity is the source that feeds the roots of national art and gives it strength and vitality. The community of the Soviet people's views and aims is spreading to include more and more spheres in their spiritual life. New common features arc also emerging in the aesthetic awareness of people. The Socialist Revolution has ``flung open" all the ``windows'' in the consciousness of men and awakened their sense of the beautiful and harmonious. A difference in perception still exists, there is no doubt of that, and picture galleries and operas do not evoke the same associations in a Ukrainian, a Kazakh, an Estonian, or a Georgian. But. aesthetically, thev 57 think alike in many things. That sharp contrast which at one lime would have made it extremely difficult to find artistic criteria that would answer, if only to some degree, the tastes and ideas of all the peoples inhabiting the U.S.S.R. no longer exists. The cultures of the Soviet peoples have developed in every respect to modern standards.
The peoples of the U.S.S.R. were so quick to assimilate the greatest values of world culture and to develop them so creatively that there docs not seem to be anything im ported or foreign about them. It seems incredible that novels and short stories are new genres, relatively speaking, in Byelorussian, Kazakh, Kirghiz, Uzbek and Turkmenian literatures. And yet these republics have produced such outstanding prose writers as Petrus Brovka and Vasil Bykov (Byelorussia); Mukhtar Aue/ov and Sabit Mukanov (Kazakhstan); Berdy Kerbabayev (Turkmenia) and Chinghis Aitmatov (Kirghizia).
The international (or universal) and the national make a natural harmony, like the two wings of the eagle, without which there would be no flight. ``An eagle that does not fly far from its mountains is no eagle, it's just a chick,'' said the poet Rasul Gamzatov. ``And the bird that does not fly home to its nest from far away is no eagle either, nor even rarn avis."
Bold, daring thought and the ability to see not just the rectangle of sky through the window but also the distant worlds beyond give the artist wings which carry him aloft. But to attain this altitude he must have strong moral and emotional roots anchored in some concrete national soil which has nurtured his talent and launched him in world art. A person who potters in his own kitchen garden all the time, paying scant attention to the world about him, will miss the main thing. He will not feel the trcmendousness, the complexity and the singleness of life, nor will he hear the beating of its heart. But it is as dangerous to neglect one's native language, culture, people and history; in short, all that which has granted one the gift of feeling, reasoning, seeing and hearing---the gift of life. Genuine art is an organic compound of the two conditions, one giving the other support and strength.
In socialist internationalism the general is combined with the particular, and the international with the 58 patriolic. Soviet patriotism is a mighty spiritual force which unites the peoples of our country into a single invincible whole.
Internationalism neither precludes nor substitutes for the national, but is actually based on it. International fusion is the surest and the only guarantee of the socialist peoples' genuine national revival and prosperity. Socialist internationalism treats the national feelings of people and their national culture with consideration, and gives the finest national traits an opportunity for sell expression.
There are different sides to the life of a nation. There is that which comprises its intellect, its new socialist essence, and its past which, developed and enriched, makes the basis for its future. There is also the obsolete, the dead tissue which we do not want to take into the future with us and therefore must overcome and shed. National narrowmindedness does not simply mean self-isolation within the bounds of one's own nation, nor does it imply national arrogance, conceit and smugness alone. In the socialist world it means a clutching at (he moribund, at nationalistic bigotry. National narrow-mindedness is incompatible with genuine love of one's own nation and such of its qualities demonstrated in its past or modern history which elevate a nation and link its life with that of other peoples.
For those who are narrow-minded nationalists there is only the narrow concept of ``mine'', and only the peculiarly national in this ``mine'', never mind if it is obviously obsolete, useless or even harmful. This attachment to the backward, decaying or already dead, so long as it is national, cannot be accounted lor. And for all the assurances of these people that in their actions they are guided by devotion to their nation, it is difficult to believe them. Devotion to one's nation is not measured by blind worship of all that has become deposited in or got stuck for different reasons in the national mentality or in the way of the nation's life.
Genuine devotion to one's nation is inseparable from a feeling of respect for other nations, from a sense of unity of the socialist nations, for it is from this unity that one's own nation receives its lifeblood.
The U.S.S.R. is so vast that naturally it has a great diversity of scenery, climate and local colour. But a Soviet 59 poet will discover something of the Motherland, something dear and necessary to him, wherever he goes and however unfamiliar the view that opens before his eyes.
The life of each Soviet person is inseparable from the life of the entire nation. There is a small village in Moldavia which, in view of its remoteness from the busy thoroughfares and towns, was in pre revolutionary limes doomed to a wretched existence with nothing to look forward to. Misfortunes, tragedies and the rare sparks of shortlived happiness remained purely local matters, with none to hear about them or care. And this backwoods, as it was once called, is developing splendidly. It has become a necessary and inseparable part of the vast Soviet home. The Moldavian poet Andrei Lupau writes:
``My native uillaae in no longer just a uillaae. Il nun] be culled the counlnj. And Hie people."
For a Soviet writer the image of Motherland is inseparable from his native parts, from the place where he was born. Unfamiliar sights in his country make him think of home not because there is any real likeness. Everything that is associated with the concept of Motherland finds an instant response in his heart.
A wide range of national interests does not at all mean that a person must renounce his nation, sever his roots, and imagine himself a citizen of the universe. An author who lloats in space and writes about everyone and everything, snatching pieces out of the life of different nations, can hardly think he is serving humanity. His success cannot depend on his choice of theme. II depends on how powerful is his talent, how large-scale his thinking, and how keen his ideological vision.
Books which have an international impact are never the kind of novels that soar on the wings of fantasy above reality, above environment, above circumstances, rambling on about everything under the sun and only saying a little about anything concrete. A book of truly universal popularity is Mikhail Sholokhov's And Quiet Flown the Don. Yet it is completely immersed in Russian life, practically all the characters are Russian, the land, the skies and the setup are all Russian. But in his epic novel Sholokhov raises 60 problems of universally historical importance. It tells the story of an individual who strove to lind his place in the titanic struggle between the forces of the revolution and the forces of reaction, and who paid a tragic price for the mistakes he made along the road he travelled in those difficult years when the old was being broken up and the new was emerging in the life of the country.
Sholokhov's And Quiet Flown Ihc Don is international in essence, in the powerfully expressed philosophy of life, and in the scale of the social conllicts described.
A writer cannot introduce a lot of people of dilferent nationalities into his novel just as the fancy takes him. without giving due consideration to the ``cast of characters" and the peculiarities of the reality he is describing, simply in order to make his story sound more international. He may mean well, but he may produce a lie. Even if his material does allow him to touch upon the subject of international unity, he must make a careful choice of the events and characters he will describe.
People of all Soviet nationalities fought in the Great Patriotic War against fascism. But Alexei Tolstoi wrote only about Russians, and entitled his famous cycle of short stories: The Russian Character. Leonid Sobolev's The Call of the Sea is also about the war, and also about Russian sailors and soldiers. Take Mikhail Sholokhov's The Fate of a Man, Konstantin Fedin's Conflagration, Alexander Tvardovsky's Vastly Ti/orkin, Boris Polevoi's A Story about a Heal Man, and Emmanuil Kazakevich's Star. I could name a great number more. Speaking from positions of internationalism in the narrow understanding of the word, we would be perfectly justified in holding a grudge against Alexei Tolstoi, Sholokhov, Fedin, Tvardovsky, Polevoi and Kazakevich for not availing themselves of the opportunity they obviously had to touch upon the theme of international brotherhood, and what is more, for actually scorning this chance!
Should we accuse them of national narrow-mindedness lor it'.' Or shall we call the authors incapable of looking at life from the universal, or international, point of view? A conclusion verging on downright silliness, wouldn't it be? But still, why did these writers ignore the theme of international cooperation when the factual material they had 61 was actually inviting them to take it up? The answer is very simple. The writers selected a chunk of life and focussed their attention on it in a desire to iind an answer to those moral, spiritual and human problems which worried them. By imaginatively recreating a true picture of the happenings they had chosen to interpret they gave expression to what was uppermost in their minds, to what appeared most important to them, what tormented and agitated them. Compare their novels with the books of those few authors who write with readiness and astonishing lightness about all the different countries of the world, whether they have ever been there or not, and about all the nations whether they know anything about them or not. Now then, would you call these writers who keep jumping from one subject to another-internationalists, and those who write nationally about their own people--- narrow-minded? This primitive way of thinking will not solve such sophisticated problems as the correlation between the international and the national. A more flexible and dialectical criterion is needed, one that would determine the depth and significance of the international feeling in the first case, and the ideological content, the inner connection between the national and the international in the second.
Internationalism in art is determined by the following factors: the aspects of life which the author describes, the depth, the measure of talent and the ideological perspicacity with which he reproduces what he has seen, and the importance of his story to others. Internationalism is a social and not a thematic quality, although the theme of internationalism is essential in itself too, of course. Hut for a book to achieve a powerful international impact the author must have a progressive world outlook, he must be able to open the broadest vistas before the reader and help him to understand events in their true meaning, in their irrepressible movement, their intricate links and contradictory interconnections. In Soviet literature, the pathos of internationalism and humanism is rendered through the moral principles, thoughts, deeds and character of the heroes, born and reared in socialism, and shown in relation to those aspects of life whose significance is universal.
62No matter how impressive the ``local colour" in a book (in other words, the specific peculiarities of a national life), it can aspire to universal importance only if the author has recorded in it---from the standpoint of