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p Material factors, i.e., economic progress, are of decisive significance in the moulding of the new man. Along with material factors, the social environment under whose influence man is formed embraces spiritual factors, which, despite being of a secondary nature with regard to the former, play an important role in the upbringing of man. These factors include science, education, art, literature and the moral code of society—in short, society’s spiritual culture.

p Socialist culture is one of the major vehicles making it possible to surmount the’ age-old antithesis between mental and physical labour and to form a new type of intellectual, who comes from and is devoted to the people. To mould the man of the new system, an intellectual with a high cultural and technical level, it is necessary to promote communist culture.

p In order to utilise cultural achievements for the development of the individual, it is necessary to make culture accessible to the masses. Socialism has resolved this epic problem. In socialist society culture—education, science, art and literature—serves the people with the object of improving them and developing their capabilities and talents. In proportion to the progress made by socialist culture towards the formation of communist culture, its ennobling influence on man becomes more and more tangible.

p Labour is the foundation of man’s all-round development. But in order to work fruitfully and creatively and thereby remake the world, man requires knowledge. Knowledge of the laws of development of nature and society and skilled application of these laws for the benefit of man constitute the foundation of his freedom, of his ability to act expertly, and make him ^ creative personality. The key to the blossoming of the individual lies in unity between his cognitive and practical, transforming activity. The individual develops all-sidedly not 301 by performing any kind of work, but by working freely, by absorbing knowledge and culture. This unity is achieved in the period of communist construction, when communist work and communist culture take final shape and become integrated in everyday life. By mastering new achievements of spiritual culture, the individual becomes enriched intellectually and this, in its turn, has a positive effect on his labour activities.

p Scientific progress in socialist society, where it has become the affair of the whole people, creates the most favourable conditions for the development of the individual. In order to keep pace with the requirements of modern production, Soviet people, primarily young people, constantly improve their knowledge, mastering the latest achievements of science and technology and advanced experience and raising the level of their professional and general education. Knowledge is strength. Never before has this time-honoured aphorism been so urgent and never before has it served as a guide to action for such a huge number of people as it does today.

p The mastering of science and knowledge is facilitated under socialism by an expanding system of education. This system is characterised chiefly by its mass nature, by the fact that it embraces the entire people, and therefore it shapes a h|igh intellect not in individuals or groups of people but virtually in millions upon millions of people. Suffice it to say that the number of people studying in Russia during the 1914/15 school year was 10,588,000, while in the U.S.S.R. some 72 million people studied during the 1965/66 school year. As a result of the institution of compulsory eight-year education, study in school has become not only a right but also a duty dictated by the economic and cultural progress of socialist society. The transition to universal ten-year education is to be, in the main, completed during the present (1966-70) five-year plan. A specific feature of the socialist system of education is that it is indissolubly linked up with life, with practical activities, and this means that unity between cognitive and practical activity, which is the only foundation for the moulding of the harmoniously developed individual, is achieved in the process of education.

p The number of evening and extra-mural secondary 302 schools for young workers and collective farmers as well as of secondary special schools and institutions of higher learning is steadily growing in the U.S.S.R. More facilities are being opened to enable people to learn a new trade or improve their qualifications directly at factories.

p Art, which promotes the advancement of the individual, is an important element of spiritual culture. Having made art the property of the people, socialism has turned it into a vehicle for the self-assertion of the individual, for his all-round development. Maxim Gorky called literature and art a science of the study of man, and always believed that it was the duty of writers and artists to educate people in the spirit of socialism.

p Because of its great cognitive value science enriches man’s spiritual world and affords him incomparable aesthetic pleasure. The lofty ideals and morality of socialist art and its genuine humanism enable it to shape the individual’s political, philosophical and moral outlook, expounding lofty ideological and moral principles not in the dry language of placards, slogans, figures or moral admonition, but by means of positive examples which it presents in stirring artistic form and by the powerful language of feelings, which all people understand. Without superfluous clamour and without obtrusiveness, a real work of art holds a person’s attention without his noticing it and makes him think of the purpose of life, of the great accomplishments of people of the new society and of his own part in these accomplishments. It inculcates lofty humanism, stirs the individual to the performance of feats that bring glory to his people and country and infuses him with devotion to the ideals of communism and with unrelenting hate for its enemies.

p Real art lauds industrial labour, the working environment and modern technology. It glorifies the land and the poetry of farming. It extols science, the human mind and the poetry of scientific quests. Works of art, states the Programme of the C.P.S.U., “are great factors in ideological education and cultivate in Soviet people the qualities of builders of a new world. They must be a source of joy and inspiration to millions of people, express their will, their sentiments and ideas, enrich them ideologically and educate them morally".

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p Partisanship, revolutionary ideals, implacability to evil and admiration of the working man are what distinguish socialist art. It combines solicitude for the best traditions of world culture with quests for new ways and means of showing revolutionary reality, with unvarnished truth and optimism.

Socialist art mirrors life in all its fullness, complexity and diversity, its difficulties and contradictions, its sharp conflicts and dramatic situations. It shows the joy of victory and the misery of error and miscalculation. The life of the Soviet Union in its advance towards the new society is joyful bul there are thorns, too. Bright hues predominate but their brightness does not rule out dark spots. Socialist art seeks to present this life truthfully and does not allow adversity and setbacks to obscure historical prospects or confidence in the triumph of the great cause. On this road it attains its most brilliant successes. The grandeur of the work of building the new society and the heroism of contemporary man have been and remain the principal theme of Soviet art.