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p The art of socialist realism began to take shape at a turning point in history, at the moment of collapse for the old capitalist order, in the age of imperialism and proletarian revolution. Socialist realism was provided with ample scope to grow and develop only in the conditions of the Soviet social order, thus to become the artistic embodiment of socialist culture.

p Lunacharsky wrote that in the figure of Gorky, who laid the foundations for socialist realism, the working class had found its artistic identity, just as in the work of Marx, Engels and Lenin it had found its political and philosophical identity. In this assessment of Gorky’s work Lunacharsky is really pinpointing the social nature of socialist realism, which he saw as the expression of the 263 artistic self-awareness of the working class and that of the working people that rallied to its banner.

p The historic conditions necessary for the emergence of socialist realism were to be found in far-reaching processes typical of the socio-political life of the second half of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth. The emergence of socialist realism occurred when social contradictions were becoming more acute, when a profound crisis of capitalist society and its culture was already sensed as imminent. The emergence of socialist realism coincided with a new wave of the class struggle of the proletariat and the oppressed peoples of the colonial countries for liberation from economic and social oppression and for national independence, and an advance in the socialist awareness of the working people. The advent of this new creative method was the logical outcome of the development of art itself, which in that historical situation was sorely in need of adequate principles for the artistic reproduction of new reality and new people.

p The origins of proletarian art can be traced further back, to the nineteenth century: the poetry of the Chartists, verses by Herwegh and Weerth, the poetic works of Eugene Pottier, author of the Internationale, Russian revolutionary songs, etc. Motifs drawn from the revolutionary struggle of the working class were echoed in English, French, German and Russian literature of the nineteenth century. Yet however closely such works were bound up with the proletarian movement they did not yet represent a new artistic trend. They only provided a foretaste of what was to come.

p Socialist realism as a new stage in the development of realist art took shape in Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century. This can be accounted for above all by the fact that at that time the centre of the world revolutionary movement had shifted to Russia, and the working class of that country, by then in the forefront of the struggle of the international proletariat, created the most favourable social and ideological conditions for the development of socialist art.

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p The rich revolutionary experience gained by the Russian proletariat, the existence of a progressive MarxistLeninist Party, the political isolation of the Russian bourgeoisie, that was relying on the autocracy and seeking the latter’s protection, all served to give rise to a new artistic ideology, to the formation of a new art, the art of socialist realism.

p An important role in the birth of this new art in Russia was played by the progressive traditions of Russian culture, the revolutionary and democratic ideas inherent in Russian, and indeed world art. All the basic features of nineteenth-century realism—its social impact, humanism, democratic message, unsparing exposure of the social relations pertaining to society based on exploitation —also facilitated the emergence of socialist realism.

p The artistic method of socialist realism began to crystallise in Russian literature in the years immediately leading up to the Russian Revolution of 1905. Gorky’s Sorag of the Falcon and Song of the Stormy Petrel, his play The Petty Bourgeois with the worker Nil, a train-driver with a nascent revolutionary consciousness, his novel Mother, accorded such high praise by Lenin, were the first works of socialist realist art. Not only in the writings of Gorky, the father of socialist realism, but also in those of Mayakovsky, Demyan Bedny, Serafimovich and certain other proletarian writers did the new artistic method start to emerge. In other art forms it only took root after the October Revolution. However the necessary conditions for its subsequent emergence had taken shape before the revolution. Artistic precursors of socialist realism were provided, for example in music by revolutionary songs, in painting by the work of Kasatkin, Arkhipov and A. Ivanov, artists who adhered to the principles of the Peredvizhniky and who had charted new paths which led to socialist realism.

p In the early years after the October Revolution socialist realism developed rapidly and took firm root in Soviet fine arts and literature. In the controversy which raged among representatives of the numerous artistic 265 schools and trends the call for continuing the traditions of realist art made itself ever more clearly heard. New Soviet realism drew inspiration from commitment to the Party and to the people.

p At January 1965 plenary meeting of the Board of the Union of Writers of the USSR Nikolai Tikhonov declared: "Socialist realism was not thought up or prescribed by anyone, it was evolved by all Soviet writers together, and by each one of us individually; it is the living flesh of our philosophical and artistic searchings and achievements over more than half a century.”

p The term "socialist realism" first appeared in the literature of the early thirties. In the creative experience of Soviet art socialist realism took shape long before the theoretical concept "socialist realism" became widespread in art criticism. The outstanding works of Gorky, the father of socialist realism, had been written before 1932, Mayakovsky’s mighty poetic voice had rung out, a new Soviet literature grown up and socialist realism taken root in the fine arts. Before that date the Moscow Art Theatre had staged Armoured Train 14-69 by Vsevolod Ivanov, the Maly Theatre Lyubov Yarovaya by Konstantin Trenyov, the Vakhtangov Theatre The Rupture by Boris Lavrenyov; by 1932 the MGSPS (now Mossovet) Theatre had put on The Storm by Bill-Byelotserkovsky, the Meyerhold theatre had staged Vishnevsky’s Last Decisive Battle: all these plays marked a vivid and memorable turning point on the path towards the creation of socialist-realist theatre. Eisenstein’s and Pudovkin’s screen masterpieces had also been made before 1932.

p Here it is relevant to remind readers that in the twenties Soviet art critics and historians had been searching for a term that would serve to define the characteristic features of the new socialist art. This was a most serious undertaking; for young Soviet art, which was just taking shape at the time, had not yet been classified as belonging to any of the previously existing trends. Not only art critics were preoccupied with this question, but leading 266 artists as well. Alexei Tolstoy suggested the term " monumental realism" to designate the new art. However, the formula "monumental realism" or "heroic realism" won little support and was rejected because it implied restrictions with regard to genre and would have led to art’s impoverishment. Some art critics recommended that Soviet art should be defined as "proletarian realism", a term which had emerged by analogy with the terms widely used in the twenties, "proletarian culture", " proletarian art", etc. Yet by the beginning of the thirties terms such as "proletarian culture", or "proletarian ideology" were gradually giving way in Soviet social thought to the terms "socialist culture", or "socialist ideology", terms which reflected the nature of those changes taking place in the intellectual life of Soviet society after the victory of revolutionary social relations. Logically enough in Soviet aesthetics it was not the term "proletarian realism" that had been used in critical writings of the twenties, but the broader and more comprehensive term "socialist realism"—a theoretical generalisation providing scientific expression of the essential features of Soviet art. This was the solution which Soviet aestheticians arrived at after long observation of the course of the artistic process and the development of aesthetic theory as such.

p The development of the concept "socialist realism" cannot be analysed without investigating the whole range of theoretical questions that faced Soviet aestheticians and art historians in the twenties and thirties. Study of the main stages in the formation of Soviet aesthetics makes plain the utter inconsistency of bourgeois Sovietologists and revisionists who attempt to draw artificial contrasts between various of these stages.

p In the twenties Soviet aesthetics was taking shape in the context of a campaign against the anti-historicism of bourgeois cultural conceptions, formalism and the vulgar sociologists theory of automatic determinism in the world of art. Very soon after the Revolution the vulgarsociological trend with its schematic and narrow approach met with active resistance both in the cultural policy of 267 the Soviet state and from theoreticians. At the end of the twenties “academic” sociology of art was in the doldrums. The conceptions it had put forward were by then clearly at odds with the objective processes of ideological and creative consolidation that were at work in Soviet art.

p However in the twenties the philosophical and methodological roots of vulgar-sociological conceptions in art were not examined in sufficient detail. This gap was only filled in the thirties, when Soviet aesthetics became more firmly based on the principles of Lenin’s theory of reflection and provided a more detailed explanation of the essence and significance of the Leninist stage in the development of Marxist aesthetics. This was made possible not only by more detailed and well-reasoned criticism of vulgar sociologism in the thirties but also by the sound elucidation of major problems of aesthetics and the theory of art.

p In the thirties large-scale work was undertaken to collect together and systematise passages devoted to aesthetic questions in the Marxist classics: the judgements and statements concerning art were thus assembled to constitute a well-ordered and integrated system of aesthetic principles. This work aimed at mastering the aesthetic legacy of the founders of Marxism-Leninism proceeded in conjunction with formulation of socio-aesthetic criteria for such important questions as the significance of the Russian culture of the past for socialist culture, the essence of realism, folk traditions in art, etc. The aesthetic ideas in the works of the founders of Marxism played a vital role in the formation of the artistic processes in those days and their theoretical study.

p Naturally, at that time as well theoretical conclusions were drawn which enriched men’s understanding of the innovations inherent in the creative method of Soviet art. The very problem in Soviet aesthetics was a new departure, resulting from a new awareness of the issue "world outlook and creativity" with regard to the interpretation of the essence and social role of art. It was at 268 that particular stage that attention was focussed on questions which had been misunderstood by the aestheticians of the twenties such as objective criteria for the artistic, the reasons behind the unfading greatness of classical art, the universal significance of the classics, etc. New aspects of theory stemmed from the new interpretation of creativity as an integrated whole, as knowledge achieved through images.

p In the thirties particular importance was attached to the coincidence of aesthetic and historical criteria in the evaluation and analysis of works of art. With reference to the principle of Marxist historicism, Soviet aesthetics rejected positivist empiricism and substantiated the compatibility of truthfulness and commitment in artistic creativity. This promoted a dialectical interpretation of the interaction of social circumstances and the active role of the individual, an awareness of historical specificity as one of the most important requirements of socialist-realist aesthetics. Closely bound up with the consolidation of the historical approach was the solution of the problem with regard to the dialectic of the relative and the absolute in art. Soviet aestheticians of the thirties not only came out with detailed criticism of vulgar sociologists’ relativism but also revealed the historical contradictions to be found in cultural progress, and for the first time elaborated such highly topical issues as the question of mass and elitist culture.

p An important achievement of the aestheticians of the thirties was their substantiation of the vital unity between the principles of the historicism, commitment to the people and realism. This provided a basis for their approach to the question of the aesthetic ideal.

p In the thirties the Marxist historical method provided the basis for investigation of the questions of revolutionary humanism and of the essence and significance of progressive humanist traditions in the modern world. This led on to analysis of such questions as the place of the individual in our artistic understanding of the universe, the relationship between the individual and the masses, 269 between the fate of the individual and that of his peopie.

p It is thus quite clear that long and detailed research by Soviet aestheticians, literary and art critics, paved the way for the theoretical substantiation of the essence of socialist realism.

p The artistic innovation of socialist realism extended the scope of artistic creativity. It started for the first time to treat subjects born of the new socialist era. It created a new type of hero in art with features of a new hero drawn from real life—the builder of socialism. It brought forward new philosophical and creative issues.

p Yet innovation cannot be divorced from tradition. To use the phrase of the well-known Soviet poet, Samuil Marshak, innovation without tradition is like the minute hand without the little one. In the art of socialist realism the inseparability of tradition and innovation is reflected in its very name: realism, still a vital tradition, links the method of socialist art with the most precious achievements made possible through mankind’s artistic experience, while the adjective socialist implies enrichment of realist method through socialist ideology and new features born of the life of the new society.

p Traditions are not dead dogmas. Leonardo da Vinci wrote that when a painter has no other inspiration than paintings already created art will go into decline. This is a profound idea, for in true art faithfulness to tradition always goes hand in hand with innovation. If there emerges a gulf between traditions and innovation art gives way to imitation, plagiarism, mere hack-work. It is then that we encounter works in which there are few echoes of the mood of contemporary life, although the methods and techniques of classical art are carefully and painstakingly followed. Lenin wrote that man’s attitude to his cultural heritage must not resemble that of an archivist to old documents. This applies in all respects to art as well. Tradition should not be canonised, it should be developed and enriched by new artistic experience. Yet if it is inadmissible to divorce traditions from 270 innovation, then neither innovation, should be held up as something quite separate from tradition, its very opposite.

p Rejection of realist traditions reduces innovation to no more than formal experimentation. Pseudo-innovation is no less alien to artistic advancement than is dead adherence to tradition.

p It was precisely a misunderstanding of innovation and the latter’s separation from tradition that accounted for the short-lived popularity of the so-called theory of a common contemporary style. According to that theory all art of the twentieth century was characterised by one and the same stylistic features regardless of the philosophical implications of that art, its social objectives, regardless of the world outlook and nature of the creative method used by the artist. Most commonly listed among the features of this contemporary style were expression, brevity and the use of artistic conventions. There is of course nothing reprehensible about these stylistic features as such; however, the advocates of the theory of contemporary style regard these expressive means as the most contemporary and universal features of any art, regardless of its content. This approach transforms style into a purely formal category, whereas in reality it is closely bound up with content: it represents not just a collection of steady and unchanging descriptive means, but is born of the requirements of the content it expresses. The stylistic features named above and regarded as the most typical for contemporary style usually stem not from new social tasks facing the artist, nor from the content of a work of art born of real social conditions peculiar to various countries or social orders, but rather from a false premise to the effect that conquest of space, cybernetics, atomic energy—in short technological progress exerts a decisive influence on artistic thought. Theories such as this rob art of its social essence, its political and ideological content. Technological progress does of course exert a tremendous influence on modern man’s whole way of life: yet at the same time we should not lose sight of the fact 271 that technology when viewed from the ideological angle is something essentially neutral. True artistic innovation is not rooted in technological progress but in the social character of an age, in social ideology. The theory of a common contemporary style would necessitate a sharp dividing line being drawn between the art of the twentieth century and critical realism of the nineteenth, to a virtual rejection of realist traditions in art.

p The art of socialist realism is an art now practised and developed by a large number of peoples in socialist countries. It succeeds in combining the ideological unity of all culture in socialist society and the specific individuality intrinsic to the art of each individual people. The well-known definition of Soviet culture as socialist in content and national in form brings out the essential features of Soviet art. The socialist content of Soviet culture is determined by the fact that all peoples in the USSR enjoy the same economic, political and ideological conditions of life. The principles of socialist realism reflect the ideological and creative aspects characteristic of all Soviet culture and art. Yet Soviet art, just as Soviet culture as a whole, while constant in its ideological implications nevertheless assumes concrete national forms that correspond to the language, way of life, temperament and artistic traditions of each socialist people. These facts which reflect the character of the new culture apply with equal force to all socialist countries.

p The artistic and cultural achievements of the various peoples together constitute the common international art of socialist society. The internationalist character of socialist art is directed not only against cosmopolitan disregard of national traditions, but also against nationalist idealisation of obsolete traditions and anachronisms. The art of a specific people acquires universal significance when it extends beyond the confines of a narrowly local relevance and has something to say to the world.

p The question of national culture is among the focal issues of the present-day ideological struggle. Reactionary conceptions of national art are closely bound up with the 272 nationalistic ideology of imperialist circles of the modern bourgeoisie, with its conception of culture as a whole. At the same time it should be borne in mind that modern conceptions are qualitatively different from bourgeois conceptions of earlier periods that were an integral part of the assertion of national identity. These conceptions at the present time manage to combine an extreme version of nationalism with cosmopolitan disregard for the individual essence of each people’s art.

p Two tendencies are to be found in anti-Marxist conceptions of art. The first of these finds expression in the assertion of the unique nature of the artistic culture peculiar to each of the advanced peoples in the capitalist countries, in the idealisation of various national principles, which sometimes even borders on chauvinism, and in the racialist approach to analysis of certain other national cultures, which goes hand in hand with a belittling of the traditions found in unfamiliar national cultures. The second tendency finds expression in propagation of artistic culture that turns its back on the national aspect of art or is “above” it, in a rejection of an artist’s own national tradition, and the unlikely theory of the “erosion” of the national roots of artistic development. This second tendency is to a certain extent linked with a false view of social development in the age of the technological revolution, which will, we are assured, do away with national barriers. There is a certain contradiction between these tendencies but it is not absolute. In the final analysis one and the same nationalist ideology underlies them both.

p A characteristic feature of the conceptions of art widely accepted in the West is their preoccupation with Europe and America. This is not only because these conceptions do not embrace the artistic experience of other countries and continents. The new interest shown in Asian, African and Latin-American art proved an important factor shaping the development of art criticism today. Yet the viewpoint paramount in bourgeois criticism today stresses that the artistic experience of the 273 peopies inhabiting those continents, with rare exceptions (Japan, India and China), is not national in character, since these peoples have supposedly not yet acquired a sense of national identity, but rather it is experience rooted in a tribal way of life. While on the one hand making use of the artistic traditions of these peoples, bourgeois art historians and aestheticians also maintain that the art of the developing countries has yet to raise itself up to the level of contemporary Western art in the course of its subsequent development.

p The links are very close between the nihilistic attitude to national traditions in the sphere of art and the practice of artists adhering to the various trends in modernist art. After setting art free from any national roots, the theoreticians of modernist art put forward the idea of a new artistic civilisation that constitutes yet another version of their rejection of popular roots. National features they interpret as traditionalist while all that is nonnational is extolled as contemporary; in this respect modernist art in the eyes of its adherents counters realism and all that is traditional with something truly modern. Here we come to a most important aspect of the battle between realism and modernism—their diametrically opposed views of traditional-versus-contemporary, and national-versus-international.

The fundamental methodological flaw of these conceptions lies in their lack of a historical approach to the question of national culture. As a result national elements in art are regarded as self-sufficient, outside any link between art and the class structure of society and historically reliable elucidation of the nature of modern liberation movements. On the other hand the fundamental rejection of historical method is seen in conceptions that smack of crude propaganda and thrust upon us their authors’ class allegiance in blatant, undisguised form.

p The triumph of Leninism in the ideological life of the socialist countries provides wide scope for artistic 274 creation, paving the way to ever higher achievements in socialist art, an essential ingredient of the evolving culture of advanced socialist and communistsociety.

p While surmounting and eradicating weaknesses that appeared in socialist art in the past, and rejecting an irresponsible approach and dogmatism in the theory of art, at the same time it is essential for us to wage a determined struggle against revisionist criticism of socialist realism. Revisionists try to make capital out of certain negative features that were formerly to be found in socialist art, yet they criticise dogmatism not so as to affirm positive developments in art, but so as to undermine the fundamental principles of Marxist-Leninist aesthetics and to discredit socialist realism.

p Revisionism in aesthetics today constitutes a wellestablished set of anti-Marxist views with regard to art and literature, the nature of artistic creativity and the place of art in the life of society. The analysis and criticism of aesthetic conceptions which the revisionists use presuppose constant fulfilment of at least two conditions. In the first place it is important to bear in mind that revisionism in aesthetics cannot be separated from revisionism in philosophy and politics, and moreover it is a direct offshoot of revisionist philosophy and politics: yet at the same time it should be regarded as an indispensable component of social apostasy as a whole. Secondly, it is no less important to bear in mind, that just like the emperor in Hans Christian Andersen’s story the revisionists of today, despite all their pretentious phrase-mongering, "have no clothes", when it comes down to it, and their conceptions mean nothing other than capitulation in face of bourgeois ideology and bourgeois aesthetics, which in actual fact they really emulate. The correlation between revisionist conceptions in aesthetics and revisionism of the philosophical and political variety is complex and far from straightforward: in some cases these conceptions appear to be the result of political and philosophical apostasy, in others they lead to that. However, as a rule 275 they follow on from each other: philosophical and political deviation from Marxism colours revisionism in the sphere of aesthetics, just as the latter becomes an essential ingredient of philosophical and political revisionism in the broad sense.

p The emergence of such a specific phenomenon as revisionism in aesthetics can be explained by exacerbation of the ideological struggle, that now permeates all spheres of the intellectual and cultural life of society without exception, and also by the growing role of literature and art in this process. More so than various other forms of social consciousness, literature and art are directly bound up with the question of the individual which is a central issue in the philosophical controversies of our age. For this reason aesthetics has indeed come to represent a kind of plumb-line for not only the artistic but also the philosophical and political principles adopted by individual writers and artists, or by whole artistic trends. Revisionism in aesthetics takes the form of a rejection of the fundamental ideas on art found in Marxist-Leninist theory, of the aesthetic principles of socialist realism. Present-day revisionism renounces realism for all intents and purposes, extolling anti-realism and decadent art, and supporting the fabrications of the Sovietologists directed against Marxist-Leninist aesthetics and the art of socialist realism.

p Revisionism in aesthetics is an international phenomenon. Of course, it is important to bear in mind that in some socialist countries where revisionism was a fairly widespread phenomenon in the late fifties and early sixties, the situation has changed in recent years. The creative intelligentsia now exhibits more ideological and political maturity and many people, who earlier fell prey to revisionist influence, have now shaken themselves free from those delusions. The ideological work of the Communist and Workers’ parties has yielded results. Yet in capitalist society revisionism in aesthetics has still not been eradicated. It has been dealt powerful blows and its anti-Marxist essence has been exposed for what it is 276 Worth, but revisionism is still very much alive and presents a serious danger.

p During the last decade revisionist conceptions of art have found their most detailed and subtle expression in the works of Ernst Fischer and Roger Garaudy, former Marxists and Communists, who later were to emerge as the leaders of anti-Marxist and anti-Soviet trends in aesthetics. Admittedly both of these writers continue to call themselves Marxists, and what is more, still claim that it is.precisely in their work that Marxism is creatively developed. In actual fact however they are playing, the tune called by bourgeois aestheticians.

p Revisionist “criticism” of the philosophical foundations and creative method of socialist art is characterised by deep-rooted scholasticism and incredible dogmatism. These turncoats wallow in rhetorical .questions, like true demagogues: where and in which works did Marx, Engels and Lenin write that the creative method for socialist literature should be socialist realism? They profess to search for the words "socialist .realism" in the writings of our great teachers, but overlook, or choose not to notice, the fact that from the theoretical point of view socialistrealist method is vindicated by the whole philosophical structure of Marxist-Leninist theory. They choose to ignore the universally accepted fact that the most important principles of socialist realism—artistic thought based en: historical method, socialist humanism_v commitment to the:Party and the people, the combination of high philo;- sophical principles and artistic mastery, truthful portrayal : of life in its revolutionary development, etc.—are all substantiated most fully in the works of the founders of Marxism.

p Revisionists and dogmatists insist that the principles of socialist realism have held back the development of" art. None of them seems to be taken aback by the fact tbiat .Gorky and Mayakovsky, Sholokhov: and Fadeyev, Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko, Eisenstein, Pudovkin and Dovzhenko, Becher and Brecht used the socialist-realist method as a basis for their creative art, a 277 fact which did not prevent their work from adding to the richness of world culture.

p It would be as well to stress once again that the eartipaign against socialist realism had led to a rejection of realism’in the widest sense. Realism has come to be regarded as a stage in art that belongs to the past, and it is contrasted with anti-realist trends which are extolled in all possible ways. Realism is declared out of date and irrelevant to the needs of the present day. At best it is regarded as something which now gives way to a new, special "integral realism", "unlimited realism", that signifies a weird, unthinkable combination of realism and anti-realist art and which in practice is mere capitula^ tion to modernism.

p Garaudy and Fischer support the conception of " limitless realism" maintaining that changing reality demands changing art. It goes without saying that the radical transformations implemented in society give rise to new a"r* tistic traditions, to the emergence of new artistic" issues and new expressive means in art. Realism is an extraordinarily wide concept, but it is not “limitless” and its scope is not determined by the characteristics of artistic language, but by the character and content of man’s philosophical and aesthetic interpretation of reality. .. _

p It is most revealing to note that the standard-bearers of "limitless realism", who do not acknowledge any restrictions when it comes to the modernist art of the present day, at the same time refuse to acknowledge socialist society’s right to create art that corresponds to its nature, namely the art of socialist realism. The activities of Garaudy and Fischer in the sphere of aesthetics consist mainly in rejecting out of hand socialist realism, deriding the art and literature created in socialist society and foisting the creative principles of modernism upon the artists of the socialist countries and progressive artists in capitalist society.

p Gramsci wrote in his day that truth is always revolutionary. Realism does not necessarily lead the artist to socialism, but opposition to socialism and its ideology of 278 necessity does lead the artist to reject realism. This is indeed what has been the upshot of revisionist criticism of socialist realism.

p The anti-popular essence of revisionism comes to the fore most strikingly of all in the campaign against the principle of commitment in art. In socialist society commitment is regarded as life’s supreme truth, as service to the people. At the present time profound investigation of life and man’s grasp of its very essence cannot but lead logically to communist commitment. Louis Aragon, the well-known French writer and Communist, put this idea most effectively into words: "To those who ask—’When all is said and done what comes first—the Communist or the writer?’—I always reply: ’First of all I am a writer, and that is why I am a Communist.’ For me that is the logical sequence of things.”

p Such is the reasoning of the artist with a social conscience. The artist and citizen in his work are merged the one with the other and cannot be separated. Meanwhile the revisionists never tire of declaring that a clearly defined world outlook and ideological unity are in no way indispensable for the artists of socialist society, when the whole history of socialist art has made it quite clear that deliberate allegiance to communist ideals and social progress is an essential condition for the fruitful development of art in socialist society.

p Are these assertions of the revisionists original at least? Of course not. All their arguments are taken from the arsenal of reactionary trends in contemporary aesthetics. The West German Sovietologist Jurgen Ruble for instance describes Lenin’s work "Party Organisation and Party Literature" as a manifesto for the enslavement of literature through politics, and goes on to describe commitment in art as shackles forcibly thrust upon artists. Fabrications in connection with the so-called "Party dictate" in socialist art pepper the pages of the books and articles that pour forth from the pens of the reactionary “ Marxologists”, who attempt to distort the true meaning of that idea and the fruitful role of party guidance in matters 279 of literature and art in the socialist countries. The complete coincidence of the stand adopted by the “ Marxologists” and that of revisionism in the campaign against socialist art is clear for all to see.

p Not long ago Fischer and Garaudy were constructing and elaborating their aesthetic edifices with reference to the classic texts of Marxism-Leninism, the principles of which they would have us believe are distorted in the practice of cultural construction in the socialist countries. Now Garaudy himself and Fischer’s followers come out not only against the cultural policies of the Communist parties but also subject all the basic tenets formulated in the writings of Marx, Engels and Lenin to reappraisal, no less. What is more they go out of their way to belittle the significance of the founders of Marxism-Leninism and to distort their role. In their book What Lenin Really Said Fischer and Marek reject the philosophical legacy of Leninism, contrast Lenin and Marx, and bring up once again the old fiction to the effect that Marx was first and foremost a theoretician and Lenin the man of action. Fischer detracts from Lenin’s significance as a philosopher; Garaudy criticises Lenin for failing to capture the true meaning of the artistic searchings of the twentieth century, etc. By now they had come full circle: they started out with “defence” of Marxism-Leninism against dogmatic distortions, and finish up with shameful attacks against Marxism, against Marx’s theory and practical activities, against his aesthetics and political action.

p As far back as 1967 the German Marxist philosopher, Robert Steigerwald, in a parody of Garaudy’s wellknown book summed up the underlying idea of Fischer’s book Art and Coexistence as an attempt at a limitless extension of the scope of Marxism. He gave the title Limitless Marxism (Marxismus ohne Ufer) to his review of Fischer’s book. He had every ground for so doing, after all. Just as Garaudy had “extended” the scope of realism to such an extent that it could be replaced by modernism, Fischer gave such a free interpretation to Marxism that the latter assumed the form of bourgeois ideology in his 280 works. The gradual deviation from the fundamental tenets of Marxist-Leninist aesthetics on the part of Fischer and Garaudy, and then their complete break with Marxism-Leninism are highly instructive. These former members of the communist movement did not begin their ideological apostasy with a direct rejection of the political line adhered to by their parties. On the contrary, in the sixties both writers started out by criticising so-called dogmatic aberrations in the policy of their parties, particularly with reference to literature and art, contrasting their own stand to the Communist Party line, for the most part in the sphere of cultural policy. However the logic of the present-day ideological struggle led them step by step to political betrayal.  [280•* 

p While waging a constant and tireless struggle against revisionism, it is also important not to lose sight of another danger, namely dogmatism. At the present time the struggle against dogmatism, that finds its most complete expression in the conceptions of the ultra-left, is no less important for the world communist movement than the struggle against revisionism. This applies just as much to aesthetics and the theory of art, as it does to other aspects of ideological life. The dogmatists even use the struggle against revisionism to foist their own false and outdated concepts on others. The dogmatists deal a particularly serious blow to aesthetics and creativity through their misinterpretation of Lenin’s principle of commitment in art. Without penetrating to the heart of the aesthetic essence of artistic creativity, they artificially divide a work of art into the ideological and political content on the one hand, and artistic form on the other. They regard the artistic quality of a work not as the life of the idea itself in art, but reduce it to a merely illustrative factor. They thus split the common philosophical and aesthetic criterion for evaluating works of art: for them 281 political evaluation comes first, and then, as a derivative dependent on the former, comes aesthetic, artistic evaluation. Art as a specific and complex sphere of man’s spiritual world becomes, in the eyes of the dogmatists, just another facet of political ideology, which in practice swallows it up.

p In documents drawn up by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and other Communist parties on questions of art commitment is presented in the light of the communist principle in art; however, at the same time due attention is given to the organic unity of idea-content and artistic mastery, art’s aesthetic individuality, special paths for the expression through art of progressive ideas and the affirmation of the ideal. The dogmatists ignore the essential nature of art, they belittle the importance of art in the ideological struggle through their primitive understanding of art’s political orientation, and impede the working people’s aesthetic advance, thereby playing into the hands of the opponents of Marxist-Leninist aes-* thetics.

p Dogmatism, just as revisionism, criticises the socialistrealist method, and also its basic requirement, namely, faithful adherence to life’s truth. Dogmatists pronounce the concept socialist realism “inconsistent”, precisely because this creative method demands artistic investigation of reality as such. In their opinion the task of the artist is to speak, not of what he finds in real life, but of what there will be to find in it, and this, they would have us believe, frees him from the obligation to portray existing reality in its true colours. Realism, we are told, belongs ’to the past, while contemporary art must be lent, instead, more of a “romantic” character, for its main task is to give expression to men’s dreams of life in the future. This is why they propose that a new concept should be introduced in the place of socialist realism, namely "a combination of revolutionary realism and revolutionary romanticism", in other words that art should be restricted to a single activity, that of glorifying dogmatic ideas.

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In connection with this contrived conception it is as well to underline three points. First: the socialist-realist method demands faithful reproduction of life in its revolutionary development, which means that it leads the artist not merely to depict the real world as it actually is, but also that it helps him to see reality in its historical perspective. Faithful adherence to real life and expression of the ideal in the art of socialist realism cannot be separated from each other. Second: the appeal of the dogmatists to "combine realism and romanticism" may at first glance appear to resemble the idea put forward by Gorky when he advocated the incorporation of the romantic in realism. Yet, when Gorky spoke of the romantic he had in mind its ability to incorporate dreams of the future into artistic portrayal of reality. He always made a point of the fact that the artist’s main task was to be truthful. Truthfulness and vision each call naturally for the complement of the other in Gorky’s work, while, as presented by the dogmatists, they directly contradict each other. It is also worth pointing out that in his last years Gorky refrained from using the formula " combination of realism and romanticism" for by then he had come to the conclusion that the concept "socialist realism" was comprehensive in that it incorporated an element of revolutionary romanticism and did not require further amplification. The dogmatists do not only match up their ideas with those of Gorky, but go a step further back and then break with his principles altogether. Finally the dogmatic interpretation of the ideal signifies a break with materialism. Marxist aesthetics, in full conformity with the materialist interpretation of history, regards the social and aesthetic ideal as the expression of unity of the ideal and the real. An ideal divorced from revolutionary reality makes it particularly obvious that dogmatism in aesthetics, as in politics, in practice proves to be none other than revisionism in reverse.