p N. Leizerov

p The artistie development of mankind is an uneven process. While it does not always climb upwards in a straight line it nevertheless knows no stoppages along the way. The indicators of artistic progress are immortal, inimitable works of art which are uncovered again and again. It is they which revive in images the combined feelings and thoughts of eras long since consigned to the past; it is they which excite successive generations with the unquenchable ardour of passions, with searches for the meaning of life, and with the expression ol the beautiful in nature and man.

p Behind the diversity of the graphic generalisation of, reality, which arouses people’s aesthetic feelings in response, can be seen quite definite common typological features. However it is equally incontestable that these tendencies, both in the creativity of a single writer and in an entire artistic trend, almost never appear in a “pure” form. “Type of creativity,” wrote Academician M.B. Khrapchcnko apropos ol the problem in question, “includes a definite aesthetic potential and the prerequisites for general conclusions of a specific nature. But in addition it is evident that only by merging with voluminous graphic generalisations and the universally meaningful aesthetic values created in its sphere does the type ol creativity define artistic progress."  [155•1 

p The conclusions reached by that well-known researcher affirm oner again that without due regard for the aesthetic principles inherent in any artistic method both in its general and exclusively individual interpretations outlining the range of life material and the character of its graphic interpretation, the typology sought for 156 in the present case would be inconceivable. Moreover from the Marxist point of view any typology in the field of art will become metaphysical and hang in the air if deprived of a specific historical grounding. “Ancient Greece had its own classical art, the Middle Ages had their own art, the bourgeiosic has its own art,” said Academician Todor Pavlov, the well-known Bulgarian philosopher. “Socialist and communist society must also have its own art, its own basic or main trend in art."  [156•1 

p After analysing the range of typical indications permitting the understanding of the essence of this or that creative method, it is quite possible to pick out the aesthetic principles most typical of it.

p Thus the critical realism of the 19th century was historically determined, on the one hand, by the vigorous development of capitalism and the crisis of serfdom (the latter referring to Russia) which bluntly exposed the social contradictions and defects of both the completely decaying social formation and those of the one established in struggle with it and, on the other hand, by rich literary traditions, primarily those correlated with a realistic type of artistic creativity. The urge of progressive artists truthfully to unmask the essential aspects of reality unacceptable to them inevitably led to a forming of such aesthetic principles in which bold realism was inseparable from critical inspiration.

p However the purport of the artist’s world outlook appears as a motivating aesthetic principle leading to the desired result only when it is combined with the individuality of the author. This truth was very distinctly formulated by the author of La Comedie humaine. While setting himself the goal of depicting the “social sickness" of his times and of showing the world as it was, Balzac, however, wrote that “the truth of nature can not be and will never be the truth of art".  [156•2  There is no contradiction in this affirmation. On the contrary, here a single initial position leading to the forming of a common aesthetic principle for critical realists is outlined. “The genius of the artist,” writes Balzac in concluding the opinion given above, “consists in his ability to choose natural circumstances and turn them into elements of literary truth."  [156•3  In other words, the task lies in recasting the truth of life into the artistic truth most equivalent to it for portraying the world as it is. For, as 157 the writer insisted, “the secret of universal and eternal success is in truth."  [157•1 

p Critical realism’s paramount service was in its posing of the most basic social and ethical problems of its time and their artistic study. Quite typical in this respect are the titles of many wellknown works by Russian critical realists which can be considered as fixing the ideological and artistic intention of the writers. Some of them directly reflected the class antagonisms and contradictions corroding society: The Insulted and the Humiliated, Wolves and Sheep, Poor People, Messieurs et Mesdames Pompadours. Some of these titles laconically outlined universal human conflicts—Wit Works Woe, Fathers and Sons, Crime and Punishment—while others posed vital questions—Who Lives Well in Rusl, Who is to Blame?, What is to be Done?

p However by extracting characters and conflicts from life and exposing the links of cause and effect which conditioned imaginary and genuinely historical events, and even the actions and emotions of characters, critical realism could not extract from life itself a positive programme for its real transformation. “While exposing the vices of society and portraying the ’life and adventures’ of the individual in the grips of family traditions, religious dogmas, and legal rules,” wrote Maxim Gorky, “critical realism could not show the way out of captivity"   [157•2  Only the realism of a new type—socialist realism—could answer the questions “Who is to Blame?" and “What is to be Done?" while remaining on the firm ground of life and history. The consistently pursued principle of communist partisanship became its primary typological feature.

p In the works of Maxim Gorky, the father of socialist realism, life was seen for the first time through the eyes of the class to which the future belonged—the working class. In his works written from the position of scientific socialism the people began to be portrayed already not so much as a spontaneous force but rather as the conscious maker of history. The new heroes, the workers, shown to the world by Maxim Gorky, were not like their predecessors in classical literature; for example, not like the unfortunate toilers deserving of compassion in Dickens, the loners, enlightenersutopians in Georges Sand, or the people blinded by hate and beaten by life in Zola or in Kuprin’s novel Moloch. In paving the way for the literature of the future Gorky showed how new people 158 who knew how to rebuild the world were moulded in the fire of revolutionary struggle.

p In Lenin’s work “Party Organisation and Party Literature" the leading principles of world outlook and .the aesthetics of the new creative method still in the making were prophetically formulated. Its fundamental axiom was an adherence to communist party principles as the highest manifestation of national character in art.

p Adherence to party principles is, undoubtedly, first and foremost a world outlook. Its ideological and aesthetic expression in art is the result of the artist’s class-party approach to perceiving and representing life in his creative searchings. It is namely this quality, having become an inner necessity as a result of the artist’s convictions, that links adherence to communist party principles with the expressing of a definite social ideal and with artistic specifics and makes it not simply a principle of world outlook but also an actual aesthetic principle. In its development this principle inevitably shapes socialist realism as the creative method coinciding most with the objective course and demands of modern society.

p Such type of vision and graphic transformation of life, enriched and given a singleness of purpose by a Marxist-Leninist world outlook, is by no means an alien instruction imposed upon artistic creativity, which our ideological adversaries never tire of reiterating, but rather a basic feature of art as a historically determined form of social consciousness.

p Convincing proof of this is, for example, the fact that the theoretical understanding and practical application of this leading principle of socialist realism came about in our country in the 1920s from a position of, it would seem, the most varied artistic creative platforms. However there were no divergences over the main point among the critics and art figures who staunchly stood for Soviet power. This main point, on the basis of which socialist realism was theoretically interpreted and formed in art, consisted, to begin with, in the understanding of creative method as a relation of art to reality corresponding to a communist world outlook.

p Here are some convincing examples of this. The poet V. Mayakovsky believed that the Society of the Left Front—one of the “extremely revolutionary trends in art"—should be based on the principles laid down in his proposal to the propaganda department of the CC RCP(B). This proposal determined the primary tasks of the magazine LEF (the first issue was published in March, 1923). Three points stood out in it: “a) to promote the finding of a communist path for all genres of art; b) to revise the ideology and practice of so-called leftist art by discarding individualistic 159 affectations and developing its valuable communist features.... c) to fight against decadence, against aesthetic mysticism, against selfsufficing formalism, and against indifferent naturalism for the affirmation of tendentious realism based on the utilisation of the technical devices of all revolutionary schools in art".  [159•1 

p The aims upheld by Alexander Fadeyev in those same 1920’s had much in common with the central theses of Mayakovsky’s programme. In the RAPP (Russian Association of Proletarian Writers) magazine The Literary Guardian Fadeyev, speaking about the new art, stated: “...any artistic method is, first and foremost, the artist’s attitude to reality”. According to the writer’s views at the beginning of the 1930’s, the creative method is realised in an ideological, artistic and stylistic unity. The style in the field of art which will be created by the proletariat, wrote Fadeyev, is a style “corresponding to the new class content, to the new proletarian world outlook. However that style does not develop by itself, it has to arise on the basis of the assimilation and thorough revision of the old cultural heritage".  [159•2 

p It is noteworthy that even Voronsky, the leader of the literary group “Pereval” (Crossing) with whom both the LEF and RAPP representatives passionately polemicised, expressed similar thoughts. In his highly controversial book The Art of Seeing the World the critic all the same saw the “main question, the question of all questions" lying “in the artists’ attitudes to the world”, and called for perception of “living life" adequate to the new reality.  [159•3 

p The RAPP members, in insisting that the proletarian artist become a true materialist-dialectician and consequently learn to show the natural laws of reality through “concrete demonstration and the portrayal of life itself”, at times relegated aesthetic criteria proper to second place and mainly accentuated the role of a class world outlook in their narrow understanding of the creative method as affirmed by them. Greater attention to the artistic specifics of art was paid by the theoreticians of “Pereval” and by the writers whose works were published in Krasnaya Noy magazine: Malishkin, Bagritsky, Katayev and others. While obviously exaggerating the role of unconscious intuitive elements in artistic creativity, the members of “Pereval”, however, could not conceive of a graphic generalisation of “direct impressions" except from the positions of a communist world outlook. They saw 160 the graphic nature of art as a specific form of the vision and cognition of life. In this direction they made a definite contribution to the theoretical elaboration of the aesthetic principles of the new method. One has to admit that like the theory of the depiction of life in progress expounded by the LEF members, the accurate description of facts, having been freed of superfluous rationalism and the extremes of polemic fervour, made a certain contribution to the theory of socialist realism, which was called upon to facilitate the reorganisation of the world on socialist principles by word and deed.

p All this is quite essential in order to understand how socialist realism was formed and theoretically interpreted. However this process, and on no account should this be forgotten, must not be conceived in the form of a mechanical combination of separate conceptions and creative achievements which came from within groups isolated from one another. All this was considerably more complicated and was in lively interaction and motion.

p But nevertheless, behind the complexity and contradictions of this process a general platform that created the real possibility, encouraged by the Communist Party, of uniting the creative intelligentsia of the Soviet Union and which inevitably led to the theoretical comprehension of the new artistic method was visible.

p The representatives of LEF, “Pereval” and other groups named and not named here who were the most talented and the most devoted to the revolution, because they were united in their view of art’s relation to reality, created by various means marvellous works which entered the treasure-house of Soviet art. And by these means, which were the basic subject of bitter discussions, these representatives formulated a qualitatively new class-party approach to the specifics of the graphic understanding and the contradictions of the material of life. The ideological and aesthetic principle of partisanship as time revealed, did not demarcate, but rather promoted already on the basis of a general creative method, the consolidation and further fundamental development of all that actually laid the foundations for a more vivid expression of the stylistic streams of socialist realism.

p In determining the trend of the ideological content of art, this leading aesthetic principle of socialist realism integrated all other creative principles inherent to this new innovatory method. Is it really possible to disengage oneself from an adherence to party principles and then speak about the national character, internationalism, revolutionary humanism and specific historical approach of Leonid Leonov’s Russian Forest, Alexander Tvardovsky’s Vassily Tyorkin, or the poetry of Nikolai Aseyev, 161 Mikhail Svetlov, Leonid Martynov and others? The diversity of artistic forms and styles typical of the individual creative manner of these and other authors turned out to be feasible precisely within that aesthetic community of the graphic creative process that socialist realism represents. For in each given work a concise class-party approach to the reality reproduced and evaluated by the artist, an approach expressed by the most varied means, is revealed first and foremost.

p All this inevitably led to the ideological consolidation of masters so dissimilar in their individualities and created real grounds for the establishment of a unified artistic method.

p The influence of the basic ideological and aesthetic principle of partisanship hi art examined here spread directly to those features which related to the characteristic traits of the artistic trend as a whole. Here belong the choice of subjects and characters and the general interpretation of the interdependence of circumstances which give rise to a definite type of character and behaviour of the human personality, and at the same time^he depicting of characters not simply as products of history but also as individuals who in their turn create specific circumstances and make history. The typological traits noted above naturally unite into a single artistic trend such works heterogeneous in their stylistic and genre features as Serafimovich’s The Iron Flood, Ivanov’s Partisan Tales and Yanovsky’s The Riders, which obviously gravitate towards generalised symbolic, romanticised artistic forms, as well as epic novels purely realistic in their manner of typification and in their introducing of an abundance of details of everyday life: M, Sholokhov’s And Quiet Flows the Don, Alexei Tolstoy’s Ordeal. and others. Examples of the same kind can be quoted by referring to poetry and drama and, what is more, by comparing works by the same author as, for example, The Fall of Dair and Provincial People by Malishkin.

p If we move closer to the present time and touch upon, for example, how the Great Patriotic War is being depicted in the works of prose-writers who have appeared in literature only during the past decades, then here, too, we can clearly distinguish within a unified- aesthetic platform artistic specifics which are always individual.

p The adherence to communist party principles is correlated to the principle of national character, which was always present in the progressive development of mankind’s artistic culture. National character always, if we follow Lenin’s teachings on the two cultures, asserted itself in art not as a focus of national ethnographic origins, but as an expression, based on “sympathy with the workers”, of the 162 essentially internationalist ideal of the free development of the human personality.

p At the same time we must remember something else. Every ruling class of any exploiting formation strives to present itself as spokesman for the national interests. False national character of this sort is, in practice, necessarily linked with a corresponding ideological brain-washing of the masses. In the final analysis false national character, as a rule, turns into nationalist doctrine. In reality the national coincides with national character only when it includes progressive and humanistic ideals and only when valid trends of the progressive course of history can be seen in it.

p When we speak of national character as an aesthetic principle, then we have in mind the spontaneous or conscious expression by the artist of “popular opinion”, about which Pushkin wrote in “Boris Godunov, or “popular thought”, which Lev Tolstoy believed to be the basic principle and source of inspiration in his heroic epic War and Peace.

p The humanistic and the universal in works deserving of the name “popular” always appears in their characteristic national garb.

p In Russian literary classics the orientation around national character as a rule, firstly, consistently broadened the geography of the place of action, widened the circle of social problems, and also augmented and democratised the social structure of the characters involved in the orbit of works of art. All this, naturally, had a direct influence on the vocabulary and entire formation of literary language, brought it closer to folk speech, and created the prerequisites for literary language to become truly national in character.

p Secondly, national character gradually rebuilt the entire structure of a work of art: “popular thought”, now by “overt”, now by “covert” devices used indirectly in the graphic formation of the work itself accentuated and revealed the author’s attitude to the life reproduced by him.

p Thirdly and finally, the aesthetic principle of national character led to the fact that the talented artist now created not for select connoisseurs but wanted his works to be^ccessible “to any folk" and to promote the spiritual growth of the broadest sections of the population.

p The humanism and democracy inherent in truly popular works elevated the. appropriately moulded national content imparted to them by the masters of Russian literature to a universal level.

p It must be noted that the forming and development of national 163 character in art was linked to the forming and replacement of various types of creativity and various methods. The progressive ideas of the liberation movement at the beginning of fee 19th century found their expression in Russian literature, as is known, first and foremost in romantic poetry. Romanticism, and not only Russian romanticism, inscribed the call for the embodiment of national character on its banner and substantially enriched many literatures. National character and the search for folk colouring brought about an active interest in history. However this passion for history, of course, was not equivalent to the artist’s historical method of thinking. For the romantic, who on the whole thought in analogies and all the more so in an era of the yoke of censorship, a historical personality or event was only a means for self-expression and expounding political conceptions.

p However the “spirit of history”, in conjunction with romanticism, brought other fruits as well. On the example of the formation of England as a united national state, Walter Scott, in artistically researching the historical conditionality of national types and characters, and in delving more deeply into the concrete past and into its movement towards the present, not only reached the frontiers of realism but also paved the way for the appearance of the critical realists. It is not without reason that namely the historical method, in the words of Vissarion Belinsky, formed the new trend in art in the 19th century and helped it “divine the secret of modern life".  [163•1 

p The historical method, which became the typological and aesthetic principle of critical realism, created the necessary conditions for the embodiment of the national character in art and for reflecting the most significant social, moral and philosophical problems of the time.

p In this quality the “old realism" was the direct predecessor of the new. The work of Maxim Gorky, Alexander Serafimovich, Martin Andersen-Nexo, Henri Barbusse, Jaroslaw Hasek, Anna Seghers, Marie Pujmanova and many other outstanding writers who laid the foundations for the new art is eloquent proof of this.

p Artists were led to historical method and national character, which formed a purposeful unity in tune with the times on the basis of the ideological and aesthetic adherence to party principles, by other sufficiently complicated routes. Mayakovsky, and not he alone of course, came through the negation of all sorts of traditions to a conscious acceptance of them. Vitezslow Nezval, Louis Aragon 164 and Paul Eluard came from decadent anti-historical surrealism to a realism which comprehended the truth of history. Bertolt Brecht and Johannes Becher greeted the revolution and crossed over to the position of socialist realism after “boiling too long" in the “cauldron” of leftist expressionism. I. Ehrenburg, I. Selvinsky and many other writers reached socialist realism by their own routes after casting off decadent infatuations alien to their talents and interpretation of the world and outgrowing various “isms”.

p From a romanticism partly imitative and partly abstract to a revolutionary romanticism in which the romantic perception of life turned out to be an artistic embodiment of the truth of life itself—such was the road to socialist realism for a number of talented Soviet poets: Bagritsky, Tikhonov, Aseyev. In tune with the rhythm of history, the poetic rhythms and images of the poets of the “Komsomol appeal" Svetlov and Bezimensky also contained historical method and national character inseparably linked with aesthetic principles, in the individual realisation of which was formed the creative method of our literature, viable and constantly renewing and improving itself.

p It is highly significant that not critically realistic but rather chiefly romantic tradition shaped the aesthetic principles of the new creative method of the Polish revolutionary poets Wladyslaw Broniewski and JulianTuwim as well. For according to the valid observation of the Marxist literary critic Dimshitz, not only Gorky’s realism but also his romanticism, if we are to be consistent, “carried many more elements forming the future socialist realism than, say, the critical realism of Veresayev, Chirikov, Bunin, and the young Leonid Andreyev."  [164•1 

p Many paths led to the new art. Persistent literary study, association with Marxism, the logic of one’s own path in life, a stubborn desire to understand and communicate the truth of history created by revolution—all this helped the beginning men of letters to find themselves and their place in art. Life itself and the revolutionary struggle directed by the Party was the best schooling for the young artists.

p The young writers who came into literature along with the October Revolution acquired a feeling for the historical method through their own revolutionary and life experience. During the years of the Civil War writers who were soldiers, commanders, and political workers for the most part had their literary training in army newspapers. They included such dissimilar talents who won a wide popularity as Babel, Vesyoli, Vishnevsky, Gaidar, 165 Ivanov, Katayev, Koltsov, Lavrenyov, Ostrovsky, Fadeyev, Fedin, Sholokhov, and Shchipachyov.

p Not only a direct but also a basic, inner relationship with the people, who sensed in themselves for the first time the creative force of history, led these young literary artists, who in the class struggles had associated themselves with Marxism-Leninism, to the aesthetic, free expression of an adherence to party principles. The Revolution shaped the features of the new type of writer. His characteristic traits were very precisely determined by A. V. Lunacharsky in his response to D. Furmanov’s premature death: “He was exceptionally responsive to any reality, a true, intent realist; he was an ardent romantic, able to respond to the genuine enthusiasm of both personalities and the masses of the people without false passion, but with unusual sincerity, with sympathy and words of inner emotion. But neither did his realism nor his romanticism even for a moment force him to deviate from his inner Marxist regulator."  [165•1 

p Both in the creative work and in the social actions of writers like Furmanov the “inner regulator" was the class-party approach which permitted them, if we again use Lunacharsky’s words: “...to delve more deeply into all aspects of proletarian life and experience, ...to present us with full-blooded, vivid general conclusions about the processes that are now happening around us, about the dialectical struggle that is seething in the life surrounding us, to show what will win out, and in what direction this struggle tends to develop."  [165•2 

p The aesthetic principles of socialist realism strengthened and took shape, and were felt by artists to be something necessary and purely personal, especially in those years of the turning point, when reality set before art, which was responding to life’s pulse, its ripening questions demanding immediate resolution and comprehension; in such critical moments measured off by the accelerated pace of history Soviet art, like no other art before it, passed the impartial test every time, both before its contemporaries and before tomorrow.

And today, just as they need air and bread, the living and future generations need, no matter how stern it may be at times, the truth about the 20th century, a time when “pre-history” has ended but when the “true history of mankind" has not yet begun 166 everywhere on our planet. A responsibility before the people, who are waiting now, without delay, for such spiritual nourishment as will help them see themselves and the truth, directed towards the future, of the life they are creating, and will give them moral confidence in the correctness of their daily pursuits which are growing into exploits—with just such a responsibility is imbued the best of everything that socialist realism creates and will create.