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p Aesthetic qualities, tastes, the ability to appreciate and create artistic values and build life according to the laws of beauty are part and parcel of the all-sidedly developed individual.

p Man is born with definite aesthetic feelings and a predisposition for art, but these qualities do not come forward by themselves, they have to be cultivated and trained. “The aesthetic feeling that ni(an receives from nature,” wrote V. G. Belinsky, “must be raised to the level of aesthetic taste, which is acquired by study and development.” The task of aesthetic education is, therefore, to give shape to man’s aesthetic capabilities, tastes and habits.

p When we speak of aesthetic education we mean chiefly the training of man’s artistic feelings and emotions. But this does not mean that aesthetics are free of the intellectual factor. Aesthetics are always intellectual, but the 327 significance of the emotional side is particularly great in art: the emotional appeal makes the profound intellectual content of genuine works of art attractive and understandable. Thus aesthetic education implies training the mind and emotions, and the mind through emotions. Aesthetics play a particularly great role in socialist society, which gives its citizens every opportunity to engage in the creation of artistic values and to enjoy these values. This role, the role of art and literature, grows in proportion to the successes of communist construction, and this explains the great significance that the Communist Party attaches to aesthetic education. Today, the Programme of the C.P.S.U. declares, the Party is seeing to it “that the people are educated aesthetically and develop a fine artistic taste and cultural habits. The artistic element will ennoble labour still more, making living conditions more attractive, and lift man up spiritually.”

p Aesthetic tastes and habits founded on a scientific philosophy and permeated with lofty ideals ennoble man, enrich him, make his life more interesting and purposeful and precondition his emotional attitude to reality. They enable man to distinguish the beautiful from the ugly, establish the beautiful in work and life, and to understand the real purpose of artistic values and create them. Aesthetic principles are being firmly established in the work and life of Soviet people. By making higher aesthetic demands of the products of labour, people have to satisfy, these demands in their own work, and this cannot be done without developed aesthetic habits and tastes. These habits and tastes are needed not only by the artist, who creates works of art, but also by every person who creates material values.

p Art is a major vehicle of aesthetic education. It mirrors the beauty of nature, the rhythm and harmony of the processes taking place in it and the abundance of colours and sounds. It lauds the beauty of man and human relations, the beauty of human labour. Its aesthetic impact on man is particularly great when works of art are strikingly fascinating and combine an ideological content with flawless artistic form. On the other hand, formalist and naturalist art, which is devoid of ideals and principles, destroys the aesthetic appeal. The most precious 328 achievement of man’s artistic genius is realism, particularly socialist realism, which is the only reliable medium of aesthetic education and making creative art understandable to the masses. The value of socialist art is judged on the basis of its fidelity to Leninist principles of its folk character, Party partisanship, and link with life, of how truthfully and artistically it reflects the wealth and diversity of socialist reality from the standpoint of communist views, and its opposition to all manifestations of hostile bourgeois ideology, formalism and aestheticism. An artist can help to cultivate artistic tastes only if he combats works which display a lack of principles and ideals, indifference to politics, drabness and hack-work, schematism and poverty of images and an absence of vivid folk language.

p Amateur art, through which broad sections of the people learn to appreciate and create artistic values, is becoming increasingly more important as a means of aesthetic education.

p Art does not tolerate looseness, slovenliness, or coarseness and its irresistible power as a means of education is such that the unwritten laws of human behaviour and the neatness, beauty and harmony it brings to people gradually become the rules of behaviour in work and everyday life.

p The acquisition by every member of society of the ability to create works of art does not signify the abolition of art or its dissolution in other forms of human activity. It will continue to exist as a specific form of activity and as an important means of aesthetic education in communist society as well. In one form or another art will evidently remain a profession. This implies that not every citizen will be a Raphael, Chaikovsky or Pushkin, but, as Marx wrote, “every person in whom there is a Raphael must have the opportunity to develop without hindrance”. Under communism art will cease to be the realm of the professional, for every person will have the possibility to develop all his talents, including his aesthetic talents.

p Soviet art, which has won the recognition and respect of the people, has played and will continue to play an important role in aesthetic education.

p A theory underlying idealist aesthetics is that labour cannot be a partner of beauty, that man can acquire 329 beauty only outside the sphere of production, only in art, in fantasy, in dreams.

p Yet labour is not only the means of man’s existence but also the foundation on which he forms and develops all his capabilities and qualities, including his aesthetic tastes. Moreover, labour contains the possibility of material creative work according to the laws of beauty, which is close to art proper, while the enjoyment of the beauty of labour and of its products is kindred to aesthetic enjoyment of a work of art. At the same time, this possibility is turned into reality only under certain social conditions, only when productive labour itself becomes free and creative.

p By liberating labour, socialism has turned it into a sphere in which people can display creative energy and initiative in all fields, including aesthetics. “For them,” Maxim Gorky said, “labour is becoming an art, and already now they see that the art of their labour is changing and remaking their country.”

p The aesthetic side of labour becomes more and more clear-cut with progress in communist construction, and this is markedly advancing the aesthetic education of the masses. Under communism, when labour becomes a vital inner need it will be a source not only of a livelihood but also of genuine aesthetic pleasure.

A steadily growing role is played by technical aesthetics, the science of the laws of artistic development in technology. This science studies the ways and means of creating harmony of forms, lines and colours in man’s labour activity, harmony that cultivates an artistic taste in man, awakens his interest in art and teaches him to appreciate and value beauty. It must be added that working conditions satisfying aesthetic requirements help to increase labour productivity and reduce fatigue.