Sinyavsky what is socialist realism. Sinyavsky "What is socialist realism" (1957)

What is socialist realism? What does this strange, jarring combination mean? Is realism socialist, capitalist, Christian, Mohammedan? And does this irrational concept exist in nature? Maybe he's not there? Maybe this is just a dream dreamed by a frightened intellectual on the dark, magical night of the Stalinist dictatorship? Zhdanov's crude demagoguery or Gorky's senile whim? Fiction, myth, propaganda?

Similar questions, as we have heard, often arise in the West, are hotly discussed in Poland, and circulate among us, arousing zealous minds that fall into the heresy of doubt and criticism.

And at this very time, Soviet literature, painting, theater, cinematography are straining from efforts to prove their existence. And at this very time, the production of socialist realism is calculated in billions of printed sheets, kilometers of canvas and film, and centuries of hours. Thousands of critics, theorists, art historians, and teachers are racking their brains and straining their voices to substantiate, explain and explain its materialistic essence and dialectical existence. And the head of state himself, the First Secretary of the Central Committee, takes himself away from urgent economic affairs in order to express a weighty word on the aesthetic problems of the country.

The most precise definition of socialist realism is given in the charter of the Union of Soviet Writers: “Socialist realism, being the main method of Soviet fiction and literary criticism, requires the artist to provide a truthful, historically specific depiction of reality in its revolutionary development. At the same time, the truthfulness and historical specificity of the artistic depiction of reality must be combined with the task of ideological remodeling and education of working people in the spirit of socialism.”

This innocent formula serves as the foundation on which the entire edifice of socialist realism is erected. It contains both the connection between socialist realism and the realism of the past, and its difference, a new quality. The connection is truthfulness images: the difference is in the ability to capture revolutionary development life and educate readers and viewers in accordance with this development - in the spirit of socialism.

The old, or, as they are often called, critical realists (because they criticized bourgeois society) - Balzac, Leo Tolstoy, Chekhov - truthfully portrayed life as it is. But they did not know the brilliant teachings of Marx, could not foresee the coming victories of socialism, and in any case had no idea about the real and concrete paths to these victories.

The socialist realist is armed with the teachings of Marx, enriched by the experience of struggle and victories, inspired by the unflagging attention of his friend and mentor - the Communist Party. Depicting the present, he hears the course of history and looks into the future. He sees the “visible features of communism” that are inaccessible to the ordinary eye. His work is a step forward compared to the art of the past, the highest peak in the artistic development of mankind, the most realistic realism.

This is, in a few words, the general scheme of our art - surprisingly simple and at the same time elastic enough to accommodate Gorky, Mayakovsky, Fadeev, Aragon, Ehrenburg, and hundreds of other big and small socialist realists. But we will not understand anything about this concept if we skim over the surface of a dry formula and do not think about its deep hidden meaning.

The basis of this formula - “a truthful, historically specific depiction of reality in its revolutionary development” - is the concept of goal, that all-encompassing ideal towards which the truthfully depicted reality is steadily and revolutionary developing. To capture the movement towards a goal and to help bring the goal closer, remaking the reader’s consciousness in accordance with this goal - this is the goal of socialist realism - the most purposeful art of our time.

The goal is communism, known at a young age as socialism. The poet not only writes poetry, but with his poems helps the construction of communism. This is as natural as the fact that next to him a sculptor, musician, agronomist, engineer, laborer, policeman, lawyer and other people, machines, theaters, guns, newspapers are engaged in a similar whole.

Like our entire culture, like our entire society, our art is thoroughly teleological. It is subordinated to a higher purpose and thereby ennobled. Ultimately, we all live only for Communism to come as quickly as possible.

It is human nature to strive for goals. I extend my hand to receive money. I go to the cinema with the goal of spending time in the company of a pretty girl. I am writing a novel with the goal of becoming famous and earning the gratitude of posterity. Every conscious movement of mine is purposeful.

Animals are not characterized by such distant plans. They are rescued by instincts that are ahead of our dreams and calculations. Animals bite because they bite, not for the purpose of biting. They don't think about tomorrow, about wealth, about God. They live without setting themselves any difficult tasks. A person certainly needs something that he does not have.

This property of our nature finds its way out in vigorous work activity. We remake the world in our own image, we create a thing from nature. Aimless rivers became routes of communication. The aimless tree became paper filled with purpose.

Our abstract thinking is no less teleological. A person understands the world, endowing it with his own expediency. He asks: “What is the sun for?” and answers: “In order to shine and warm.” The animism of primitive peoples is the first attempt to provide meaningless chaos with a variety of goals, to interest the indifferent universe in selfish human life.

Science has not freed us from the childish question “why?” Through the causal connections drawn by her, the hidden, distorted purposiveness of phenomena is visible. Science says: “man descended from the monkey,” instead of saying: “the purpose of the monkey is to resemble man.”

But no matter how a person originated, his appearance and destiny are inseparable from God. This is the highest concept of a goal, accessible, if not to our understanding, then at least to our desire for such a goal to exist. It is the ultimate goal of all that is and is not, and the infinite (and probably aimless) goal in itself. For what purposes can the Goal have?

There are periods in history when the presence of the Purpose becomes obvious, when petty passions are absorbed by the desire for God, and He begins to openly call humanity to Himself. Thus arose the culture of Christianity, which grasped the Purpose, perhaps, in its most inaccessible meaning. Then the era of individualism proclaimed the Free Person and began to worship her as the Goal, with the help of the Renaissance, humanism, superman, democracy, Robespierre, service and many other prayers. Now we have entered the era of a new world system - socialist expediency.

A dazzling light pours from its conceivable peak. “An imaginary world, more material and corresponding to human needs than a Christian paradise...” - this is what the Soviet writer Leonid Leonov once called communism.

We don't have enough words to talk about communism. We become overwhelmed with delight and use mostly negative comparisons to convey the splendor that awaits us. There, in communism, there will be no rich and poor, there will be no money, wars, prisons, borders, there will be no disease, and maybe even death. There everyone will eat as much as they want and work as much as they want, and work will bring joy instead of suffering. As Lenin promised, we will make closets from pure gold... But what can I say:

What colors and words are needed,
So that you can see the heights?
-The prostitutes there are virginally shy
And executioners, like mothers, are tender.

The modern mind is powerless to imagine anything more beautiful and sublime than the communist ideal. The most he is capable of is to use old ideals in the form of Christian love or free personality. But he is not yet able to put forward any more recent goals.

A Western liberal individualist or a Russian intellectual skeptic in relation to socialism is in approximately the same position as the Roman patrician, intelligent and cultured, occupied in relation to victorious Christianity. He called the new faith in the crucified God barbaric and naive, laughed at the crazy people who worship the cross - that Roman guillotine, and considered the doctrine of the Trinity, the virgin birth, resurrection, etc., nonsense. But it is impossible to express any serious arguments against ideal Christ as such was beyond his strength. True, he could also argue that the best in the moral code of Christianity was borrowed from Plato (modern Christians also sometimes say that the communists read their noble goal in the gospel). But how could he say that God, understood as Love and Good, is bad, low, ugly. And can we really say that the universal happiness promised in a communist future is bad?

Or maybe I don’t know what’s poking into the darkness,
The darkness would never come to light,
And I am a freak, and the happiness of hundreds of thousands
Isn’t a hundred empty happiness closer to me?
Boris Pasternak

We are powerless to resist the enchanting beauty of communism. We live too early to invent a new goal to jump out of ourselves - into the post-communist distances.

Marx's brilliant discovery was that he was able to prove that the earthly paradise, which many before him had dreamed of, was the goal destined for humanity by fate itself. From the sphere of moral aspirations of individuals (“where are you, golden age?”), communism, with the help of Marx, moved into the field of universal history, which from then on acquired unprecedented expediency and turned into the history of humanity’s advent to communism.

Everything immediately fell into place. Iron necessity and a strict hierarchical order fettered the flow of centuries. The monkey, standing on its hind legs, began its triumphant march towards communism. The primitive communal system is needed in order for the slave system to emerge from it; the slave system is needed for feudalism to appear; We need feudalism for capitalism to begin; capitalism is necessary for communism to arise. All! The wonderful goal has been achieved, the pyramid is crowned, the story is over.

A truly religious person reduces all the diversity of life to his deity. He is unable to understand someone else's faith. That's why he believes in his Goal, so as to neglect others. He shows the same fanaticism, or, if you prefer, adherence to principles, in relation to history. A consistent Christian, if he wants to be consistent, must consider the entire world life before the Nativity of Christ as the prehistory of Jesus Christ. The pagans, from the point of view of a monotheist, existed in order to experience the will of the one God and, in the end, after undergoing a certain preparation, to accept monotheism.

Can one then be surprised that in another religious system, Ancient Rome became a necessary stage on the path to communism, and the Crusades are explained not “out of themselves”, not by the ardent aspirations of Christianity, but by the development of trade and industry, the action of the ubiquitous productive forces that now ensure collapse capitalism and the triumph of the socialist system? True faith is not compatible with religious tolerance. It is also incompatible with historicism, that is, religious tolerance towards the past. And although Marxists call themselves historical materialists, their historicity comes down only to the desire to consider life in the movement towards communism. They are of little interest to other movements. Whether they are right or wrong is a moot point. But what is certain is that they are consistent.

It is worth asking a Westerner why the Great French Revolution was needed, and we will receive a lot of different answers. It seems to me (maybe it just seems?) one will answer that it was needed to save France, another - to plunge the nation into a path of moral trials, the third will say that it established the wonderful principles of freedom, equality and fraternity in the world, the fourth will object that the French Revolution was not needed at all. But ask any Soviet schoolchild, not to mention more educated people, and everyone will give you an accurate and comprehensive answer: The Great French Revolution was needed in order to clear the way and thereby bring communism closer.

A person brought up in a Marxist way knows what the meaning of the past and present is, why certain ideas, events, kings, and generals were needed. People have not had such precise knowledge about the purpose of the world for a long time - perhaps since the Middle Ages. The fact that we have received it again is our great advantage.

The teleological essence of Marxism is most obvious in the articles, speeches and works of its later theorists, who introduced clarity, clarity and directness of military orders and economic regulations into Marx’s teleology. As an example, we can cite Stalin’s reasoning on the purpose of ideas and theories - from the fourth chapter of the Short Course on the History of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks):

“There are different social ideas and theories. There are old ideas and theories that have outlived their time and serve the interests of the moribund forces of society. Their significance lies in the fact that they hinder the development of society and its progress. There are new, advanced ideas and theories that serve the interests of the progressive forces of society. Their significance lies in the fact that they facilitate the development of society, its movement forward...

Here every word is imbued with the spirit of expediency. Even ideas that do not contribute to progress towards the goal have their own purpose - to hinder progress towards the goal (probably Satan once had a similar purpose). “Idea”, “superstructure”, “oasis”, “regularity”, “economy”, “productive forces” - all these abstract, impersonal categories suddenly came to life, acquired flesh and blood, became like gods and heroes, angels and demons. They had goals, and from the pages of philosophical treatises and scientific research the voices of the great religious Mystery began to sound: “The superstructure is created by the base so that it serves it”...

The point here is not only in Stalin’s specific turn of phrase, which the author of the Bible might envy. The teleological specificity of the Marxist way of thinking pushes us to bring all concepts and objects, without exception, to the Goal, correlate it with the Goal, and define it through the Goal. And if the history of all times and peoples is only the history of humanity’s advent to communism, then the world history of human thought, strictly speaking, existed for the emergence of “scientific materialism,” that is, Marxism, that is, the philosophy of communism. The history of philosophy, Zhdanov proclaimed, “is the history of the origin, emergence and development of the scientific materialist worldview and its laws. Since materialism grew and developed in the struggle against idealistic trends, the history of philosophy is also the history of the struggle of materialism with idealism” 1. Isn’t the cry of God himself heard in these proud words: “The whole history of the world is the history of Me, and since I established myself in the struggle with Satan, the history of the world is also the history of My struggle with Satan!”

And so it stood before us - the only Goal of the universe, beautiful, like eternal life, and obligatory, like death. And we rushed towards it, breaking barriers and throwing along the way everything that could slow down our rapid run. We were liberated without regret from belief in the afterlife, from love for one’s neighbor, from personal freedom and other prejudices that had been sufficiently eroded by that time and were even more pitiful in comparison with the ideal that was revealed to us. In the name of the new religion, thousands of great martyrs of the revolution gave their lives, eclipsing the exploits of the first Christians with their suffering, steadfastness, and holiness.

Five pointed stars
burned on our backs
Pan's governors.
Alive,
up to your head in the ground,
gangs buried us
Mamontova.
In locomotive furnaces
The Japanese burned us
the mouth was filled with lead and tin,
renounce! - they roared,

but from
burning sip
just three words:
– Long live communism!
V. Mayakovsky

But we gave not only our life, blood, body to the new god. We sacrificed our snow-white soul to him and splashed it with all the impurities of the world.

It’s good to be kind, drink tea with jam, plant flowers, love, humility, non-resistance to evil through violence and other philanthropy. Who did they save? what has changed in the world? - these virginal old men and women, these egoists from humanism, who, with pennies, have put together a calm conscience and have secured a place in the posthumous almshouse in advance.

But we did not want salvation for ourselves, but for all humanity. And instead of sentimental sighs, personal improvement and amateur performances for the benefit of the starving, we set about correcting the universe according to the best model that was available, according to the model of the shining and approaching goal.

To make prisons disappear forever, we built new prisons. To reduce the borders between states, we surrounded ourselves with a Chinese wall. To make work become relaxation and pleasure in the future, we introduced hard labor. So that not a single drop of blood would be shed, we killed and killed and killed.

In the name of the goal, we had to sacrifice everything that we had in reserve, and resort to the same means that our enemies used - glorifying great-power Rus', writing lies in Pravda, placing the tsar on an empty throne, introducing shoulder straps and torture... sometimes It seemed that for the complete triumph of communism, all that was needed was the final sacrifice - to renounce communism.

Lord, Lord! Forgive us our sins!

Finally, it is created, our world, in the image and likeness of God. Not yet communism, but already very close to communism. And we get up, staggering from fatigue, and look around the ground with bloodshot eyes, and do not find around us what we expected to find.

Why are you laughing, you bastards? Why are you poking your well-groomed nails into the clods of blood and dirt that stick to our jackets and uniforms? Are you saying that this is not communism, that we have moved aside and are further from communism than we were at the beginning? Well, where is your Kingdom of God? Show it! Where is the free personality of the superman you promised?

Achievements are never identical to the goal in its original meaning. The means and efforts spent for the sake of the goal change its real appearance beyond recognition. The fires of the Inquisition helped establish the Gospel, but what remained of the Gospel after them? And yet - the bonfires of the Inquisition, and the Gospel, and St. Night. Bartholomew, and St. himself. Bartholomew is one great Christian culture.

Yes, we live in communism. He is as similar to what we strived for as the Middle Ages are to Christ, modern Western man is to a free superman, and bangs are to God. There are still some similarities, aren’t there?

This similarity lies in the subordination of all our actions, thoughts and inclinations to that single goal, which, perhaps, has long become a meaningless word, but continues to have a hypnotic effect and push us forward and forward - no one knows where. And, of course, art and literature could not help but end up in the clutches of this system and turn, as Lenin predicted, into “a wheel and a cog” of a huge state machine.

“Our magazines, whether they are scientific or artistic, cannot be apolitical... The strength of Soviet literature, the most advanced literature in the world, lies in the fact that it is literature that does not and cannot have other interests other than the interests of the people, the interests states."

When reading this thesis from the resolution of the Central Committee, it is necessary to remember that the interests of the people and the interests of the state (completely coinciding from the point of view of the state) mean nothing more than the same pervasive and all-consuming communism: “Literature and art are an integral part of national struggle for communism... The highest social purpose of literature and art is to rouse the people to fight for new successes in the construction of communism.”

When Western writers reproach us for the lack of freedom of creativity, freedom of speech, etc., they proceed from their own belief in individual freedom, which lies at the basis of their culture, but is organically alien to communist culture. A truly Soviet writer - a true Marxist - will not only not accept these reproaches, but simply will not understand what we are talking about here. What freedom, so to speak, can a religious man demand from his God? Freedom to praise Him even more diligently?

Modern Christians, offended by the spirit of individualism with its free elections, free competition, free press, sometimes abuse the expression “freedom of choice,” which Christ supposedly gave us. This sounds like an illegal borrowing from the parliamentary system with which they are accustomed, but which does not resemble the kingdom of God, if only because neither the prime minister nor the president is elected in heaven.

Even the most liberal God gives only one freedom of choice: to believe or not to believe, to be with him or with Satan, to go to heaven or hell. Communism provides approximately the same right. Anyone who does not want to believe can sit in prison, which is no worse than hell. But for someone who believes, for a Soviet writer who sees in communism the goal of his and everyone’s existence (if he does not see this, then he has no place in our literature and in our society), such a dilemma cannot exist. For a believer in communism, as N.S. Khrushchev rightly noted in one of his last speeches on issues of art, “for an artist who faithfully serves his people, there is no question of whether he is free or not free in his creativity. For such an artist, the question of how to approach the phenomena of reality is clear, he does not need to adapt, force himself, truthful coverage of life from the standpoint of the communist party is the need of his soul, he firmly stands on these positions, defends and defends them in his work" 1 . With the same joyful ease, this artist accepts guidelines from the party and the government, from the Central Committee and the First Secretary of the Central Committee. Who, if not the party and not its leader, knows best what kind of art we need? After all, it is the party that leads us to the Goal according to all the rules of Marxism-Leninism, because it lives and works in constant contact with God. Consequently, in her person and in the person of her leading person, we have the most experienced and wise mentor, competent in all matters of industry, linguistics, music, philosophy, painting, biology, etc. This is our Commander, and Ruler, and High Priest , whose words it is as sinful to doubt as to question the will of the Creator.

These are some of the aesthetic and psychological prerequisites necessary for anyone who wants to comprehend the secret of socialist realism.

Works of socialist realism are very diverse in style and content. But in each of them there is the concept of Goal in direct or indirect meaning, in open or veiled expression. This is either a panegyric to communism and everything connected with it, or satire on his many enemies, or, finally, all kinds of descriptions of life, “in its revolutionary development,” i.e. . again in the movement towards communism.

A Soviet writer, having chosen a phenomenon as an object of creativity, strives to turn it from a certain perspective, to reveal the potential contained in it, indicating a wonderful goal and our approach to the goal. Therefore, most of the plots found in Soviet literature are characterized by an amazing sense of purpose. They develop in one, pre-known direction, which has different variations and shades depending on place, time, life circumstances, etc., but invariably in its main course and in its final purpose - to remind again and again of the triumph of communism.

In this sense, every work of socialist realism, even before its appearance, is provided with a happy ending, along the path towards which the action usually moves. This ending can be sad for the hero, who is exposed to all sorts of dangers in the fight for communism. Nevertheless, he is always joyful from the point of view of a super-personal goal, and the author, on his own behalf or through the lips of a dying hero, does not forget to express firm confidence in our final victory. Lost illusions, broken hopes, unfulfilled dreams, so characteristic of the literature of other times and systems, are contraindicated in socialist realism. Even if it is a tragedy, it is an “Optimistic tragedy”, as Vs called it. Vishnevsky his play with a dying central character and triumphant communism in the finale.

It is worth comparing some titles of Western and Soviet literature to be convinced of the major tone of the latter “Journey to the End of Night” (Celine), “Death in the Afternoon”, “For Whom the Bell Tolls” (Hemingway), “Everyone Dies Alone” (Fallada) , “A Time to Live and a Time to Die” (Remarque), “The Death of a Hero” (Aldington), - “Happiness” (Pavlenko), “First Joys” (Fedin), “Good!” (Mayakovsky), “Fulfillment of desires” (Kaverin), “Light above the earth” (Babaevsky), “Winners” (Bagritsky), “Winner” (Simonov), “Winners” (Chirskov), “Spring in Victory” (Gribachev) etc.

The wonderful goal towards which the action unfolds is sometimes directly brought to the end of the work, as Mayakovsky brilliantly did, all his major works created after the revolution, ending with words about communism or fantastic scenes from the life of the future communist state (“Mystery-Bouffe” , “150,000,000”, “About this”, “Vladimir Ilyich Lenin”, “Good!”, “At the top of my voice”). Gorky, who wrote mainly about pre-revolutionary times in the Soviet years, ended most of his novels and dramas (“The Artamonov Case”, “The Life of Klim Samgin”, “Yegor Bulychev and Others”, “Dostigaev and Others”) with pictures of the victorious revolution, which was great an intermediate goal on the road to communism and the ultimate goal for the old world.

But even in those cases when the works of socialist realism do not have such a magnificent denouement, it is contained in them intimately, allegorically, attracting the development of characters and events. For example, many of our novels and stories are devoted to the work of a factory, the construction of a power plant, agricultural activities, etc. At the same time, the economic task carried out during the course of the plot (they started building something - the beginning, they finished building something - the denouement ), is depicted as a necessary stage on the path to a higher goal. In this purposeful form, even purely technical processes acquire intense drama and can be perceived with great interest. The reader gradually learns how, despite all the breakdowns, the machine was put into operation, or how the Pobeda collective farm, despite the rainy weather, reaped a rich harvest of corn, and, closing the book, he sighs with relief, realizing that we have made more one step to communism.

Since we perceive communism as an inevitable result of historical development, in many novels the basis of plot movement is the rapid passage of time, which works for us, flows towards the goal. Not “Search for Lost Time,” but “Time, Forward!” - this is what the Soviet writer thinks about. He rushes life, arguing that every day lived is not a loss, but an acquisition for a person, bringing him at least one millimeter closer to the desired ideal.

The same expediency of historical processes is associated with the wide appeal of our literature to modern and past history, the events of which (civil war, collectivization, etc.) are milestones on the path we have chosen. As for distant times, there, unfortunately, the movement towards communism is somewhat more difficult to detect. But even in the most distant centuries, a thoughtful writer finds such phenomena that are considered progressive because they ultimately contributed to our today's victories. They replace and anticipate the missing target. At the same time, progressive people of the past (Peter the Great, Ivan the Terrible, Pushkin, Stenka Razin), although they do not know the word “communism”, understand well that in the future something bright awaits us all, and never tire of talking about it from the pages historical works, constantly delight the reader with their amazing foresight.

Finally, the widest scope for the writer’s imagination is provided by the inner world, the psychology of a person who is also moving towards the goal from within, struggling with “remnants of the bourgeois past in his mind,” being re-educated under the influence of the party or under the influence of the surrounding life. Much of Soviet literature is an educational novel, which shows the communist metamorphosis of individuals and entire groups. Many of our books are related to the depiction of precisely these moral and psychological processes aimed at creating the future ideal person. Here is Gorky's "Mother" - about the transformation of a dark, downtrodden woman into a conscious revolutionary (written in 1906, this book is considered the first example of socialist realism), and Makarenko's "Pedagogical Poem" - about criminals who have embarked on the path of honest labor, and the novel by N .Ostrovsky, telling “How the steel was tempered” to our youth in the fire of the civil war and in the cold of the first construction projects.

As soon as the character is sufficiently re-educated to become fully expedient and conscious of his expediency, he has the opportunity to enter that privileged caste, which is surrounded by universal honor and is called "positive hero" This is the holy of holies of socialist realism, its cornerstone and main achievement. A positive hero is not just a good person, he is a hero, illuminated by the light of the most ideal ideal, a model worthy of all imitation, “a man-mountain from the top of which the future can be seen” (as Leonid Leonov called his positive hero). He is devoid of shortcomings, or is endowed with them in small quantities (for example, sometimes he cannot restrain himself and loses his temper), in order to preserve some human semblance, and also have the prospect of getting rid of something in himself and developing, raising his morale higher and higher. -political level. However, these shortcomings cannot be too significant and, most importantly, should not contradict its main advantages. But the virtues of a positive hero are difficult to list: ideology, courage, intelligence, willpower, patriotism, respect for women, readiness for self-sacrifice, etc., etc. The most important of them, perhaps, is the clarity and directness with which he sees the goal and rushes towards it. Hence such amazing certainty in all his actions, tastes, thoughts, feelings and assessments. He firmly knows what is good and what is bad, says only “yes” or “no”, does not mix black and white, for him there are no internal doubts and hesitations, unanswerable questions and unsolved mysteries, and in the most confusing matter he easily finds a way out - along the shortest path to the goal, in a straight line.

When he appeared for the first time in some of Gorky’s works of the 900s and declared publicly: “You must always say firmly, yes and no!” - many were amazed by the self-confidence and straightforwardness of his formulations, his ability to lecture others and pronounce pompous monologues about his own virtue. Chekhov, who had already read The Bourgeois, frowned in shame and advised Gorky to somehow soften the noisy declarations of his hero. Chekhov was more afraid of pretentiousness than fire and considered all these beautiful phrases to be boasting, not typical of a Russian person.

But Gorky at that time did not heed this advice, and was not afraid of the reproaches and ridicule of the shocked intelligentsia, who repeated in various ways about the stupidity and limitations of the new hero. He understood that this hero was the future, that “only people who are mercilessly straight and firm, like swords, are the only ones who will break through” (“Meshchane”, 1901).

Since then, a lot of time has passed, and a lot has changed, and the positive hero appeared in different guises, developing one way or another the positive characteristics inherent in him, until he matured, became stronger and straightened up to his full gigantic height. This was already in the 30s, when all Soviet writers left their groups and literary movements and unanimously accepted the most advanced, the best movement - socialist realism.

Reading books over the past twenty to thirty years, you feel especially well the mighty power of a positive hero. First of all, it spread in breadth, filling literature. You can find works in which all the characters are positive. This is natural: we are approaching the goal, and if a book about modernity is dedicated not to the fight against enemies, but, say, to an advanced collective farm, then all the characters in it can and should be advanced, and in such a situation it would be wrong to bring out some negative types strange to say the least. That is why novels and dramas have appeared in our literature, where everything flows peacefully and smoothly, where if there is a conflict between the heroes, it is only between the advanced and the most advanced, the good and the best. When these works were published, their authors (Babaevsky, Surov, Sofronov, Virta, Gribachev and others) were highly praised and set as an example to others. True, after the 20th Congress, for some reason the attitude towards them changed somewhat, and such books began to be contemptuously called “conflict-free” in our country. And although N.S. Khrushchev’s speech in defense of these authors weakened the reproaches, they are still sometimes heard in the statements of some intellectuals. It's not fair.

Not wanting to lose ourselves before the West, we sometimes stop being consistent and begin to talk about the diversity of individuals in our society, the wealth of interests and, accordingly, the variety of disagreements, conflicts, and contradictions that literature supposedly should reflect. Of course, we differ from each other in age, gender, nationality and even mental characteristics. But it should be clear to anyone who adheres to the party line that all this is diversity within uniformity, disagreement within unanimity, conflict within the absence of conflict. We have one goal - communism, one philosophy - Marxism, one art - socialist realism. As one Soviet writer, not very great in his talent, but impeccable in political terms, wonderfully put it, “Russia has followed its own path - universal unanimity”: “People have suffered from differences of opinion for thousands of years. And we, the Soviet people, for the first time agreed among ourselves, we speak the same language, understandable to all of us, we think the same about the main thing in life. And with this unanimity we are strong, and this is our advantage over all the people of the world, torn and separated by differences of opinion...” (V. Ilyenkov. “The Big Road”, 1949. The novel was awarded the Stalin Prize).

Well said! Yes, we really are superior to other times and peoples in terms of unanimity, we are similar to each other and are not ashamed of this similarity, and we severely punish those who suffer from excessive dissent, removing them from life and literature. In a country where even anti-party elements admit their mistakes and want to correct themselves as quickly as possible, where even incorrigible enemies of the people ask to be shot, there cannot be significant disagreements, especially between honest Soviet people and even more so among positive heroes who only and they think about how to spread their virtues everywhere and re-educate the last dissenters in the spirit of like-mindedness.

Of course, there are still differences between the advanced and the laggards, and there is an acute conflict with the capitalist world that does not allow one to sleep peacefully. But we have no doubt that all these contradictions will be resolved in our favor, that the world will become united, communist, and those lagging behind, competing with each other, will turn into advanced ones. Great harmony is the ultimate goal of the universe! wonderful lack of conflict - this is the future of socialist realism! Is it possible, in this case, to reproach too harmonious writers, who, if they moved away from modern conflicts, it was only for the sake of looking into the future, that is, to fulfill their literary, socialist realist duty as carefully as possible? Babaevsky and Surov are not a deviation from the sacred principles of our art, but their logical and organic development. This is the highest level of socialist realism, the beginnings of the future communist realism.

But the increased strength of the positive hero was reflected not only in the fact that he multiplied incredibly and far outnumbered other literary characters, pushing them aside and in some places completely replacing them. His qualities also developed extraordinarily. As he approaches his goal, he becomes more and more positive, beautiful, and great.

And accordingly, his sense of self-esteem increases, which is most clearly manifested in those cases when he compares himself with a modern Western man and is convinced of his immeasurable superiority. “But the Soviet people have gone far from theirs. He’s practically approaching the very top, and he’s still stomping around at the bottom.” This is what ordinary peasants say in our novels. And the poet no longer has enough words to convey this superiority, this positivity of the positive hero that has surpassed all comparisons:

No one in such greatness
Didn't get up forever.
You are above all glory,
Worthy of all praise!
M. Isakovsky

In the best work of socialist realism over the past five years - in L. Leonov's novel "Russian Forest", which was the first in our literature to receive the Lenin Prize (recently introduced by the government instead of the Stalin Prizes), there is one wonderful scene. The brave girl Polya makes her way behind enemy lines on a dangerous mission - this takes place during the Patriotic War. For camouflage purposes, she is ordered to pose as a supporter of the Germans. In a conversation with a Nazi officer, Polya plays this role for some time, but with great difficulty: it is morally difficult for her to speak in the enemy’s language, huh. not in the Soviet way. Finally, she cannot stand it and reveals her true face, her superiority over the German officer: “I am a girl of my era... even if the most ordinary of them, but I am the tomorrow of the world... and you should have been talking to me, standing, standing, if you had even respected yourself a little! And you are sitting in front of me, because you are nothing, but only a horse trained under the chief executioner... Well, there is no point in sitting now, work... lead, show where you have Soviet girls being shot here?

The fact that with her magnificent tirade Polya is ruining herself and essentially goes against the military mission entrusted to her does not bother the author. He gets out of this situation quite easily: Paul’s noble sincerity re-educates a random headman who collaborated with the Germans and was present at this conversation. His conscience suddenly awakens in him, and he shoots the German and, having killed himself, saves Polya.

The point, however, is not this enlightenment of the headman, who in the blink of an eye turned from backward to advanced. Something else is much more important: the squared immutability, certainty, and straightforwardness of the positive hero. From the point of view of common sense, Paulie's behavior may seem stupid. But it is filled with enormous religious and aesthetic significance. Under no circumstances, even for the good of the cause, should a positive hero dare appear negative. Even before an enemy who needs to be outwitted and deceived, he is obliged to demonstrate his positive properties. They cannot be hidden or disguised: they were written by him on the forehead and sound in every word. And now he defeats the enemy not with dexterity, not with intelligence, not with physical strength, but with his proud appearance alone.

Paulie’s action deciphers much of what seems to non-believers to be obvious exaggeration, stupidity, falsehood, in particular, the tendency of positive heroes to talk about lofty topics. They talk about communism at work and at home, at a party and on a walk, on their deathbed and on the bed of love. There is nothing unnatural about this. They were created for this purpose, so that at every convenient and inconvenient occasion they could show the world an example of expediency.

Working
balance the change
with great
the set goal.
V. Mayakovsky

Only people are mercilessly straight and firm, like swords - only they will pierce...

M. Gorky

There has never been a hero like this before. Although Soviet writers are proud of the great traditions of Russian literature of the 19th century, which they in every possible way want to follow and partly follow, and although they are constantly reproached in the West for this slavish imitation of old literary canons, in this case - in the positive hero of socialist realism - we have a break, and not a continuation of traditions.

There, in the last century, a completely different type of hero dominated, and the entire Russian culture lived and thought differently. Compared to the fanatical religiosity of our time, the 19th century seems atheistic, tolerant, and inappropriate. He is soft and flabby, feminine and melancholic, full of doubt, internal contradictions, remorse of a bad conscience. Perhaps in all the hundred years, only Chernyshevsky and Pobedonostsev truly believed in God. Moreover, an unknown number of men and women believed strongly. But these have not yet created either history or culture. Culture was created by a bunch of sad skeptics who longed for God, but only because they did not have God.

Well, what about Dostoevsky, and Leo Tolstoy, and thousands of other God-seekers - from the populists to Merezhkovsky, who delayed his search almost until the middle of the next century? I suppose to seek is to not have. The one who has, the one who truly believes, does not seek. What should he look for when everything is clear and he only needs to follow God? God is not found, God himself finds us - and finds us on us, and when He has found us, we stop looking, we begin to act - according to His Will.

The 19th century was all about searching, about tossing about, about wandering with and without fire, about the inability or unwillingness to find a permanent place in the sun, about uncertainty, about duality. Dostoevsky, who regretted that Russian people are too broad - they should narrow them down! - he himself was so broad that he combined Orthodoxy with nihilism and could find in his soul all the Karamazovs at once - Alyosha, Mitya, Ivan, Fyodor (some say Smerdyakov), and it is still unknown who was there more. Latitude excludes faith (it’s not for nothing that we narrowed ourselves down to Marxism, fulfilling Dostoevsky’s behest), and Dostoevsky well understood the blasphemy of latitude, always arguing with himself and passionately wanting to end this dispute, which is offensive to the one God.

But the thirst for God, the desire to believe - like a search - arise out of nowhere. This is not faith itself, and if desire precedes faith (blessed are the hungry!), then in much the same way as hunger precedes dinner. A hungry person always eats with gusto, but does a hungry person always have dinner at home? The famine of the 19th century, perhaps, prepared us Russians for the fact that we attacked the food prepared by Marx with such greed, and swallowed it before we had time to understand its taste, smell and consequences. But this hundred-year famine itself was caused by a catastrophic lack of food and was a famine of godlessness. That’s why it was so debilitating and seemed unbearable, forcing us to go among the people, go from radicals to renegades and back, and, upon coming to our senses, remember that we, too, are, after all, Christians... And there was no satisfaction anywhere.

I want to make peace with the sky,
I want to love, I want to pray.
I want to believe in goodness.

Who is it that cries, yearning for faith? Bah! But this is Lermontov’s Demon - the “spirit of doubt” that tormented us for so long and so painfully. He confirms that it is not saints who desire to believe, but atheists and apostates.

This is a very Russian Demon, too fickle in his passion for evil to be a full-fledged Devil, and too fickle in his repentance to be reconciled with God and return to full-fledged Angels. Even its coloring is somehow unprincipled, ambiguous: “Neither day nor night - neither darkness nor light!..” Just halftones, the mysterious sparkle of twilight, later spotted by Blok and Vrubel.

Consistent atheism, extreme and constant denial, resembles religion more than such uncertainty. And here the whole point is that there is no faith and without faith it is bad. Eternal movement up and down, back and forth - between heaven and hell.

Remember what happened to the Demon? He fell in love with Tamara - this divine beauty embodied in a beautiful woman - and intended to believe in God. But as soon as he kissed her, she died, killed by his touch, and was taken from him, and the Demon was again left alone in his melancholy disbelief.

What happened to the Demon was experienced for a century by the entire Russian culture, into which he had penetrated even before Lermontov appeared. With the same fury she rushed in search of an ideal, but as soon as she flew up to the sky, she fell down. The weakest contact with God entailed denial, and His denial caused longing for unfulfilled faith.

The universal Pushkin outlined this collision in “Prisoner of the Caucasus” and other early poems, then expanded it to its fullest extent in “Eugene Onegin.” The scheme of “Eugene Onegin” is simple and anecdotal: while she loves him and is ready to belong to him, he is indifferent to her; when she married someone else, he fell in love with her passionately and hopelessly. But embedded in this banal story are contradictions that Russian literature has been repeating ever since, right up to Chekhov and Blok—the contradictions of a godless spirit, a lost and irretrievable goal.

The central hero of this literature - Onegin, Pechorin, Beltov, Rudin, Lavretsky and many others - is usually called a “superfluous man”, because he - for all the noble impulses contained in him - is not able to find a purpose for himself, showing a deplorable example of useless aimlessness. This is, as a rule, a reflective character, prone to introspection and self-flagellation. His life is full of unfulfilled intentions, and his fate is sad and a little funny. It is usually left to the woman to play the fatal role.

Russian literature knows a great many love stories in which an inferior man and a beautiful woman meet and part without results. In this case, all the blame, of course, falls on the man who does not know how to love his lady as she deserves, that is, actively and purposefully, but yawns out of boredom, like Lermontov’s Pechorin, is frightened of the upcoming difficulties, like Turgenev’s Rudin, or even kills his beloved, like Pushkin's Aleko and Lermontov's Arbenin. If only he were a low person, incapable of sublime feelings! No! This is a worthy man, and the most beautiful woman gives him her heart and her hand. And he, instead of rejoicing and living happily ever after, begins to commit some reckless actions and, contrary to his own wishes, does everything so that he does not get the woman who loves him.

According to literature, in the 19th century all hearts were broken by this strange love and childbearing temporarily ceased. But the fact of the matter is that these writers did not depict the life and customs of the Russian nobility, but the deep metaphysics of a aimlessly restless spirit. In literature, a woman was a touchstone for a man. Through his relationship with her, he discovered his weakness and, compromised by her strength and beauty, climbed off the stage on which he was going to act out something heroic, and went, bent over, into oblivion with the shameful nickname of an unnecessary, worthless, superfluous person.

And the women - all these countless Tatyanas, Lisas, Natalyas, Bela, Ninas - shone like an ideal, immaculate and unattainable, above the Onegins and Pechorins, who loved them so ineptly and always at the wrong time. They served in Russian literature as a synonym for the ideal, a designation of the highest Goal. Their ephemeral nature was very convenient for such an undertaking.

After all, a woman, from a certain point of view, is something vague, pure and beautiful. She does not need to be more specific and definite; it is enough for her (how much is asked of a woman?) to be pure and beautiful in order to be saved. And taking, like any goal, a passive-expectant position, it is capable of depicting something highly ideal with its beauty, its alluring, mysterious and not too specific content, replacing with itself the absent and desired Goal.

And the woman suited the 19th century more than anything else. She impressed him with her uncertainty, mystery and kindness. The dreamy Tatyana Pushkina opened an era, the Beautiful Lady of Blok completed it. Tatiana was needed to be without anyone suffer for Evgeny Onegin. And ending the love affair of a hundred years ago, Blok chose a Beautiful Lady as his bride in order to immediately cheat on Her and lose Her and suffer all his life in the aimlessness of existence.

In Blok’s poem “The Twelve,” created at the intersection of two hostile, mutually exclusive cultures, there is one episode that puts an end to the development of the love theme of the 19th century. The Red Guard Petka, without meaning to, in the heat of the moment, kills his beloved, the prostitute Katka. This accidental murder and the pangs of lost love recreate the old drama, known to us since the time of Lermontov (“Masquerade”, “Demon”) and in many versions presented in the works of Blok himself (didn’t the stupid Petka and the fat-faced Katka with his a new gentleman, the dapper Harlequin-Vanka?).

But if the former heroes - all these Arbenins and Demons, turning their devastated soul inside out, froze in hopeless melancholy, then Petka, who followed in their footsteps, fails to do this. More conscientious comrades pull him back and educate him:

- Look, you bastard, he started a barrel organ,
What are you, Petka, a woman or what?- That’s right, my soul inside out
Did you think of turning it out? Please!
- Maintain your posture!
- Keep control over yourself!

……………………………………

And Petrukha slows down
Hasty steps...He throws his head up
He became cheerful again...

This is how a new, unprecedented hero is born. In the bloody struggle with the enemy - “I’ll drink my blood for the sweetheart, the black eyebrow”, in the affairs and suffering of the new era - “Now is not the time to babysit you!” - he is healed from fruitless reflection and unnecessary remorse. Raising his head proudly and noticeably cheerful, under the sign of a new god, whom Blok, from old memory, called Jesus Christ, he entered Soviet literature.

Forward, forward, Working people!

The superfluous man of the nineteenth century, having passed into the twentieth even more superfluous, was alien and incomprehensible to the positive hero of the new era. Moreover, he seemed to him much more dangerous than a negative hero - an enemy, because an enemy is like a positive hero - clear, straightforward and expedient in his own way, only his purpose is negative - to slow down the movement towards the Goal. And an extra person is some kind of complete misunderstanding, a creature of other psychological dimensions that cannot be taken into account and regulated. He is neither for the Goal nor against the Goal, he is outside the Goal, and this cannot be, it is a fiction, blasphemy. While the whole world, having defined itself in relation to the Goal, was clearly divided into two hostile forces, he pretended not to understand and continued to mix colors into an ambiguously indefinite range, declaring that there are neither reds nor whites, but there are simply people, poor , unhappy, superfluous people.

Everyone is lying next to each other
- Don’t separate the boundary.
Look: soldier!
Where is yours, where is the stranger?
Was white - became red,
The blood stained.
Was red - became white,
Death has whitened.
M. Tsvetaeva

In the struggle of religious parties, he declared himself neutral and expressed condolences to both:

Both here and here between the rows
The same voice sounds:
“Whoever is not for us is against us.
There are no indifferent people – the truth is with us.”

And I stand alone between them
In roaring flames and smoke
And with all our might
I pray for both.
M. Voloshin

These words, as blasphemous as simultaneous prayer to God and the Devil, could not be tolerated. It would be most correct to declare them a prayer to the Devil: “He who is not for us is against us.” This is what the new culture did. She again turned to the type of superfluous person, but only in order to prove that he was not superfluous at all, but a harmful, dangerous, negative character.

Naturally, Gorky began this sacred campaign. In 1901 (in the first year of the 20th century!) he sketched out the first outline of a positive hero and immediately attacked those who were “born without faith in their hearts,” to whom “nothing ever seemed reliable” and who all their lives were confused between “yes.” ” and “no”: “When I say yes or no... I don’t say it out of conviction... but somehow... I just answer, and that’s all. Right! Sometimes you will say no! I immediately think to myself – really? or maybe yes?” ("Philistines")

To these superfluous people, who irritated him already with their uncertainty, Gorky shouted “No!” and called them “philistines.” Subsequently, he expanded the concept of “philistinism” to the limit, lumping in there everyone who did not belong to the new religion: small and large property owners, liberals, conservatives, hooligans, humanists, decadents, Christians, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy... Gorky was a man of principle, the only believer a writer of our time, as G. Chulkov called him in his time. Gorky knew that everything different from God is the Devil.

In Soviet literature, the revaluation of the superfluous person and his rapid transformation into a negative character gained great momentum in the 20s - during the years of formation of the positive hero. When they were placed side by side, it became clear to everyone

that there are no aimless heroes, but there are targeted and anti-targeted persons, that an extra person is just a skillfully disguised enemy, a vile traitor requiring immediate exposure and punishment. Gorky wrote about this in “The Life of Klim Samgin”, Fadeev in “Destruction” and many others. K. Fedin in “Cities and Years” erased from his heart the last drops of pity for this once charming hero. Perhaps only “Quiet Don” sounded dissonant, in which Sholokhov, having shown the disastrous fate of the superfluous man Grigory Melekhov, sent him his farewell sympathy. Since Melekhov belonged to the common people, and not to the intelligentsia, this act of Sholokhov was turned a blind eye. Nowadays the novel is considered an example of socialist realism. This example, of course, has no imitators.

At the same time, other superfluous people who wanted to save their lives renounced their past and urgently re-educated themselves into positive heroes. One of them recently said: “There is nothing more disgusting in the world than interminds... Yes, yes, I am red! Red - damn you! (K. Fedin. “An Extraordinary Summer”, 1949). The last curse applies, of course, not to the Reds, but to the Whites.

This is how the hero of Russian literature of the 19th century died ingloriously.

In its hero, content, and spirit, socialist realism is much closer to the Russian 18th century than to the 19th. Without knowing it, we are jumping over the heads of our fathers and developing the traditions of our grandfathers. “The eighteenth century is akin to us with the idea of ​​state expediency, a sense of personal superiority, a clear consciousness that “God is in our dreams!”

Hear, hear, oh universe!
The victory of mortals is beyond strength;
Listen, Europe is surprised,
What was this Rossov feat,
Languages, know, understand,
Shudder in arrogant thoughts;
Be assured by this that God is with us;
Make sure that by his hand
Ross alone will trample you with war,
If you were able to rise from the abyss of evil!
Know, languages, the land of the colossus:
God is with us, with us; honor Ross everyone!

These lines by G.R. Derzhavin - if we update the language a little - sound extremely modern. Like the socialist system, the eighteenth century imagined itself as the center of the universe and, inspired by the fullness of its merits, “composing itself, shining from itself,” offered itself as the best examples to all times and peoples. His religious conceit was so great that he did not even allow the thought of the possibility of norms and ideals different from his. In “The Image of Felitsa,” praising the ideal reign of Catherine I, Derzhavin expresses a desire,

So that wild people, distant, Covered with wool, scales, Feathered feathers speckled, Dressed with leaves and bark, Converged to her throne And the meek voices heeding the laws, Streamed streams of tears from the eyes down the yellow-swarthy faces. Tears would flow, and the bliss of their days would be understood, They would forget their equality and everyone would be subject to her...

Derzhavin cannot imagine that the “savage people” - the Hun, and Finn, and all the other peoples who surrounded the Russian throne like an international - rejected this flattering offer and did not immediately want to become subservient to Catherine, who represents “heavenly goodness in the flesh.” " For him, as for our writers, anyone who does not want to become like the proposed model, who is not going to forget his wild “equality” and accept the “bliss” bestowed, is either unreasonable, does not realize his own benefit and therefore needs re-education, or not virtuous (in modern terms - reactionary) and subject to destruction. For there was and is nothing more beautiful in the world than this state, this faith, this life, this Queen. This is what Derzhavin thought, and the modern writer thinks in exactly the same way, glorifying the new reign in almost Derzhavin language:

There is no such thing in the world as free Russia,
Our colors are brighter and stronger than the rocks,
Our people are immortal, great and free,
Our Russian, our eternal, our proud people!
He endured the invasion of Batu's hordes,
Broke every link of the shackles,
He created Russia, he raised Russia
To the stars, to the highest, to the crests of centuries!
A. Prokofiev

Literature of the 18th century created a positive hero, in many ways similar to the hero of our literature: “He is a friend of the common good,” “He strives to surpass everyone in his soul,” that is, he tirelessly increases his moral and political level, he has all the virtues, he teaches everyone. This literature did not know any extra people. And she did not know that destructive laughter, which was a chronic disease of the Pushkin-Blok culture and, having colored the entire 19th century in an ironic tone, reached its limit in decadence. “The liveliest, most sensitive children of our century are stricken with a disease unfamiliar to physical and spiritual doctors. This disease is akin to mental illness and can be called “irony.” Its manifestations are bouts of debilitating laughter, which begins with a devilishly mocking, provocative smile, and ends in violence and blasphemy” (A. Blok. “Irony”, 1908).

Irony in this understanding is the laughter of an extra person at himself and at everything that is sacred in the world. “I know people who are ready to choke with laughter when they report that their mother is dying, that they are dying of hunger, that their fiancée has cheated... In the face of damned irony, it’s all the same for them: good and evil, clear skies and a stinking pit, Dante’s Beatrice and Nedotykomka Sologuba. Everything is mixed, like in a tavern and darkness.” (Ibid.).

Irony is a constant companion of unbelief and doubt; it disappears as soon as faith appears, which does not allow blasphemy. There was no irony in Derzhavin, there was none in Gorky - with the exception of some early stories. In Mayakovsky she captured only rare things, mainly from the pre-revolutionary period. Mayakovsky soon learned what not to laugh at. He could not allow himself to laugh at Lenin, whom he praised, just as Derzhavin could not make fun of the Empress. And Pushkin even wrote obscene poems to the immaculately bashful Tatyana. And Pushkin was the first to taste the bitter sweetness of self-denial, although he was cheerful and balanced. Lermontov was poisoned by this poison almost from infancy. In Blok, Andreev, Sologub - the last representatives of the great ironic culture - corrupting laughter became an all-encompassing element...

Returning to the eighteenth century, we became serious and strict. This does not mean that we have forgotten how to laugh, but our laughter has ceased to be vicious, permissive and has acquired a purposeful character: it eradicates shortcomings, corrects morals, and maintains a cheerful spirit in young people. This is laughter with a serious face and a pointing finger: you can’t do that! This is laughter devoid of ironic acid.

Irony was replaced by pathos - the emotional element of a positive hero. We are no longer afraid of high words and loud phrases, we are no longer ashamed to be virtuous. We began to like the solemn eloquence of the ode. We have arrived at classicism.

Old man Derzhavin once added to the title of his ode “To the Great Boyar and Governor Reshemysl”: “Or an image of what a nobleman should be.” The same subtitle should be added to the art of socialist realism: it depicts what the world and man should be like.

Socialist realism proceeds from an ideal model, to which it likens reality. Our requirement is to “depict life truthfully in its revolutionary development" - means nothing more than a call to depict the truth in ideal light, to give an ideal interpretation of the real, to write what should be as if it were real. After all, by “revolutionary development” we mean the inevitable movement towards communism, towards our ideal, in the transformative light of which reality appears before us. We depict life as we want it to be and what it must become, obeying the logic of Marxism. Therefore, socialist realism, perhaps, would make sense to be called socialist classicism.

In theoretical works and articles of Soviet writers and critics, the term “romanticism” or “revolutionary romance” is sometimes found. Gorky wrote a lot about the merging of realism with romanticism in socialist realism, who always yearned for “elevating deception” and defended the artist’s right to embellish life, depicting it better than it is. These calls did not go in vain, although many of Gorky’s formulations are now bashfully hushed up and subject to pharisaical interpretation: we cannot openly admit that we need a beautiful lie. No, no, God forbid, we are against deception, against varnishing, we write only the truth, but at the same time we depict life in revolutionary development... Why embellish life - it is already beautiful, we are not going to embellish it, but want to reveal what is contained in there are the sprouts of the future... Romanticism, of course, has the right to exist, but our romanticism does not at all contradict realism... Revolutionary romance (the same as “sprouts of the future”, “revolutionary development”) is inherent in life itself, which we truthfully portray, being the most notorious romantics... All this talk is ordinary literary politics, but in reality romanticism - and Gorky felt this - suits our tastes well: it gravitates towards the ideal, passes off what is desired as reality, loves beautiful trinkets, and is not afraid of loud phrases. Therefore, he enjoyed a certain success among us. But despite its - corresponding to us - nature and despite the rights granted to it, romanticism occupied less place in our art than could be expected from it. He covered mainly the prehistory and beginning of socialist realism, which in its mature period - the last twenty to thirty years - has a relatively weak romantic overtones.

Romanticism is most strongly associated with the Sturm und Drang of Soviet literature, with the first five years of the revolution, when the element of feelings dominated in life and art, when the fiery impulse for a happy future and global scope were not yet completely regulated by strict state order. Romanticism is our past, our youth, which we yearn for. This is the delight of raised banners, an explosion of passion and anger, this is the flashing of sabers and the neighing of horses, executions without trial or investigation, “Give Warsaw!”, life, sleep and death under the open sky, illuminated by the fires of regiments wandering like ancient hordes.

We were led by youth
On a saber march.
Our youth abandoned us
On the Kronstadt ice.
War horses
They carried us away.
On a wide area
They killed us.

E. Bagritsky

These are not only the sentiments of surviving revolutionaries and overweight cavalrymen. Both for the participants of the revolution and for those who were born after it, the memory of it is as sacred as the image of a deceased mother. It is easier for us to agree that everything that followed was a betrayal of the cause of the revolution than to insult it with words of reproach and suspicion. Unlike the party, the state, the MGB, collectivization, Stalin, the revolution does not need to be justified by the communist paradise that awaits us. It is justified by itself, emotionally justified - like love, like inspiration. And although the revolution was carried out in the name of communism, its own name sounds no less sweet to us. Maybe even more...

We live between the past and the future, between revolution and communism. And if communism, promising mountains of gold and seeming to be the logically inevitable outcome of all human existence, imperiously pulls us forward, not allowing us to leave this path, no matter how terrible it may be, then the past pushes us in the back. After all, we made a revolution, how dare we renounce and blaspheme after that?! We are psychologically caught in this gap. By itself, you may or may not like it. But behind and in front of us there are shrines too magnificent for us to have the BRAVE to encroach on them. And if we imagine that our enemies will defeat us and return us to the pre-revolutionary way of life (or introduce us to Western democracy - it doesn’t matter), then, I am sure, we will start from the same place where we once started. We'll start with a revolution.

While working on this article, I had to catch myself more than once that, using here and there an undignified technique of irony, I was trying to avoid the expression “Soviet power.” I preferred to replace it with synonyms - “our state”, “socialist system” and others. This is probably explained by the fact that since my youth, the words of one song from the Civil War times have sunk into my soul:

We will boldly go into battle
For the power of the Soviets
And we will die as one
In the fight for it.

As soon as I say “Soviet power,” I immediately imagine the revolution - the capture of Zimny, the rattling of machine-gun carts, the harvest of bread, the defense of Red St. Petersburg - and I feel disgusted to talk about it disrespectfully. Reasoning strictly logically, “Soviet power” and “socialist state” are one and the same thing. But emotionally, these are completely different things. If I have something against the socialist state (the most trivial things!), then I have absolutely nothing against the Soviet regime. That's funny? May be. But this is romanticism.

Yes, we are all romantics in relation to our past. However, the further we move away from it and approach communism, the less noticeable is the romantic shine imparted to art by the revolution. This is understandable: although romanticism corresponds to our nature, it is far from completely, and in some cases even contradicts it.

He is too anarchic and emotional, while we are increasingly becoming disciplined rationalists. He is in the grip of stormy feelings and vague moods, forgetting about logic, reason, and the law. “The madness of the brave is the wisdom of life!” - young Gorky assured, and this was appropriate when the revolution was being made: madmen were needed. But can the five-year plan be called “the madness of the brave”? Or the party leadership? Or, finally, communism itself, necessarily prepared by the logical course of history? Here, every point is thought out, reasonably provided and divided into appropriate paragraphs, what kind of madness is this? You haven’t read Marx, Comrade Gorky!

Romanticism is powerless to express our clarity and certainty. Clear gestures and measured, solemn speech are alien to him. He waves his arms and admires and dreams of something far away, while communism is almost built and you just need to see it.

In affirming the ideal, romanticism lacks commitment; it presents the desired as the real. This is not bad, but it smacks of self-will and subjectivism. What is desired is real, because it is due. Our life is beautiful - not only because we want it, but also because it must be beautiful: it has no other options.

All these arguments, unspoken and unconscious, led to the fact that the hot romantic flow little by little dried up. The river of art became covered with the ice of classicism. As a more definite, rational, teleological art, it supplanted romanticism.

We felt his cold breath and heavy weight for a long time, but few people dared to say it directly. “The spirit of the classics is already upon us from all sides. Everyone breathes it, but either they don’t know how to distinguish it, or they don’t know what to call it, or they’re just afraid to do it” (A. Efros. “Messenger at the Doorstep”, 1922).

The most daring was N. Lunin - a subtle connoisseur of art, at one time associated with the Futurists, but now forgotten by everyone. Back in 1918, he noticed “the emerging classicism of Mayakovsky’s poems.” He said that in Mystery Bouffe, the first major Soviet work, Mayakovsky “ceased being a romantic and became a classic.” He predicted that “in the future, no matter how much Mayakovsky wants, he will no longer rebel uncontrollably like before.”

Although these forecasts turned out to be very accurate (and not only in relation to Mayakovsky), in Soviet literature, which was increasingly moving towards the classicist path, the term “classicism” itself did not take hold. It must have been disconcerting in its simplicity and brought to mind unwanted analogies that, for some reason, seemed to us to degrade our dignity. We preferred to modestly call ourselves social. realists, hiding their real name under this pseudonym. But the stamp of classicism, bright or dull, is noticeable on the overwhelming majority of our works, regardless of whether they are good or bad. This stamp is carried by the positive hero, who has already been discussed, and the strictly hierarchical distribution of other roles, and the plot logic, and language.

Starting from the 30s, the predilection for high style finally took over and that pompous simplicity of style, which is characteristic of classicism, came into fashion. Increasingly, our state is called a “power”, a Russian peasant is called a “farmer”, a rifle is called a “sword”. Many words began to be written with a capital letter, allegorical figures, personified abstractions descended into literature, and we spoke with slow gravity and majestic gesticulation.

Yes, you can believe, you must believe,
That there is truth, we stand on that;
And that good is not unarmed:
Evil kneels before him.
A. Tvardovsky

Yes, the time has come!..
In vain with fierce punishment
The fascist ruler threatened Moscow.
- No, it was not Moscow that fell under attack,
- Moscow has fallen, defeated Berlin.
M. Isakovsky

The first heroes of Soviet literature stormed capitalist strongholds in tattered bast shoes and with swear words on their tongues. They were rude and casual: “Vanka! Put Kerenok in your bast shoe! Should a barefoot man blurt something out at a rally?” (Mayakovsky). Now they have acquired decorum, sophistication in manners and costumes. If they are sometimes tasteless, then this reflects the national and social peculiarity of our classicism, born of Russian democracy. But neither the author nor his heroes are aware of this bad taste; they try their best to be beautiful, cultured, and present every little detail “as it should,” “in the best possible way.”

“Under the white ceiling, an elegant chandelier sparkled, like crystals of ice, transparent glass pendants... Tall silver columns supported a dazzling white dome, studded with monistic light bulbs.”

What is this? Royal chambers? - An ordinary club in a provincial town.

“On the stage, near the glossy wing of the piano, Rakitin stood in a gray suit - his tie flowed down his chest in a blue stream.”

Do you think this is a singer, some fashionable tenor? - No, this is a party worker.

And here are the people themselves. He does not swear, does not fight, does not drink, as was typical of the Russian people before, and if he drinks at a wedding table laden with rare dishes, it is only to make a toast:

“Looking around at the guests with kinder eyes, Terenty coughed loudly into his fist and ran a trembling hand over the silver feather grass of his beard:

First of all, let's congratulate the young people and drink to them living happily and painting the earth!

The guests responded in unison, accompanied by the melodic chiming of glasses:

And parents were respected!

And they gave birth to healthier children!

And they didn’t lose the collective farm glory.”

These are excerpts from E. Maltsev’s novel “From the Heart” (1949), similar to dozens and hundreds of other works. This is an example of classic prose of average artistic merit. They have long become a common place in our literature, passing from author to author without significant changes.

Every style has its own stamp. But classicism, apparently, is more prone than others to cliches, to pedantic adherence to certain norms and canons, to conservatism of form. This is one of the most sustainable styles. He tolerates and accepts innovations mainly at the moment of their emergence, and subsequently strives to faithfully follow established patterns, shunning formal searches, experimentation, and originality. That is why he rejected the gifts of many rather unique poets who approached him (V. Khlebnikov, O. Mandelstam, N. Zabolotsky); and even Mayakovsky, called by Stalin “the best talented poet of our Soviet era,” remained an terribly lonely figure in it.

Mayakovsky is too revolutionary to become traditional. Until now, it has been accepted not so much poetically as politically. Despite the praises in honor of Mayakovsky, his rhythms, images, and language seem too bold to most poets. And those who want to follow him only copy individual letters from his books, powerless to grasp the main thing - audacity, ingenuity, passion. They imitate his poetry rather than follow his example.

Is it because Mayakovsky was the first, aspiring classicist and, moreover, had no predecessors and built from scratch, or because he caught the voices of not only Russian, but world modernity and, being a romantic, wrote as an expressionist, and in classicism he came close to constructivism , finally, because he was a genius - his poetry is thoroughly permeated with the spirit of novelty. This spirit left our literature with his death.

It is known that geniuses are not born every day, that the state of art rarely satisfies contemporaries. Nevertheless, following other contemporaries, we have to sadly admit the progressive poverty of our literature over the past two or three decades. As they developed and matured creatively, K. Fedin, A. Fadeev, I. Erenburg, Vs. Ivanov and many more wrote worse and worse. The twenties, about which Mayakovsky said: “Only, unfortunately, there are no poets,” now seem to be years of poetic flourishing. Since the mass introduction of writers to socialist realism (early 30s), literature has declined. Small gaps in the form of the Patriotic War did not save her.

For this contradiction between victorious socialist realism and the low quality of literary production, many blame socialist realism, arguing that great art is impossible within its limits and that it is destructive for all art in general. Mayakovsky is the first refutation of this. For all the originality of his talent, he remained a devout Soviet writer, perhaps the most devout, and this did not stop him from writing good things. He was an exception to the general rules, but mainly because he adhered to them more strictly than others, and put into practice the demands of socialist realism most radically, most consistently. The contradiction between socialist realism and the quality of literature should be blamed on literature, that is, on writers who accepted its rules but did not have sufficient artistic consistency to translate them into immortal images. Mayakovsky had such consistency.

Art is not afraid of dictatorship, severity, repression, or even conservatism and cliché. When this is required, art can be narrowly religious, stupidly statist, non-individual, and yet great. We admire the stamps of Ancient Egypt, Russian icon painting, and folklore. Art is fluid enough to lie down in any Procrustean bed that history offers it. It does not tolerate one thing - eclecticism.

Our trouble is that we are not convinced enough socialist realists and, having submitted to its cruel laws, we are afraid to follow the path we ourselves have paved to the end. Probably, if we were less educated people, it would be easier for us to achieve the integrity necessary for an artist. And we studied at school, read different books and learned too well that famous writers existed before us - Balzac, Maupassant, Leo Tolstoy. And there was another one - what’s his name? Che-che-che-Chekhov. This ruined us. We immediately wanted to become famous, to write like Chekhov. From this unnatural cohabitation freaks were born.

It is impossible, without falling into parody, to create a positive hero (in full socialist realist quality) and at the same time endow him with human psychology. There will be no real psychology, no hero. Mayakovsky knew this and, hating psychological pettiness and fragmentation, he wrote with exaggerated proportions and exaggerated sizes, he wrote large, poster-like, homeric. He moved away from everyday life, from rural nature, he broke with the “great traditions of great Russian literature” and, although he loved both Pushkin and Chekhov, he did not try to follow them.

All this helped Mayakovsky to rise up to par with the era and express its spirit fully and purely - without alien impurities. The work of many other writers is experiencing a crisis precisely because, despite the classicistic nature of our art, they still consider it to be realism, while focusing on the literary examples of the 19th century, which are the most distant from us and the most hostile to us. Instead of following the path of conventional forms, pure fiction, fantasy, which great religious cultures have always followed, they strive for compromise, lie, dodge, trying to connect the incompatible: a positive hero, naturally gravitating towards a scheme, towards an allegory - and the psychological development of character ; high style, recitation - and prose writing; a sublime ideal - and life-like verisimilitude. This leads to the ugliest mess. The characters suffer almost like Dostoevsky, feel sad almost like Chekhov, build family happiness almost like Leo Tolstoy, and at the same time, having come to their senses, they bark in loud voices the truisms they read from Soviet newspapers: “Long live peace in the whole world!”, “Down with the arsonists.” war! This is not classicism or realism. This is semi-classical, semi-art, not very socialist, not realism at all.

Apparently, the very name “socialist realism” contains an insurmountable contradiction. Socialist, that is, purposeful, religious art cannot be created by means of literature of the 19th century, called “realism”. And a completely plausible picture of life (with details of everyday life, psychology, landscape, portrait, etc.) cannot be described in the language of teleological constructs. For socialist realism, if it really wants to rise to the level of great world cultures and create its own “Communiad”, there is only one way out - to do away with “realism”, to abandon the pitiful and still fruitless attempts to create a socialist “Anna Karenina” and a socialist “Cherry” garden". When he loses the verisimilitude that is insignificant to him, he will be able to convey the majestic and implausible meaning of our era.

Unfortunately, this solution is unlikely. The events of recent years are leading our art along the path of half measures and half truths. The death of Stalin caused irreparable damage to our religious and aesthetic system, and the now revived cult of Lenin and RUD can make up for it. Lenin is too human-like, too realistic by his very nature, small in stature, a civilian. Stalin was specially created for the hyperbole that awaited him. Mysterious, all-seeing, all-powerful, he was a living monument of our era, and he lacked only one property to become a god - immortality.

Oh, if only we were smarter and surrounded his death with miracles! They would have reported on the radio that he did not die, but ascended to heaven and was looking at us from there, keeping silent through his mystical mustache. From his incorruptible relics the paralytic and the possessed would be healed. And the children, going to bed, would pray through the window to the shining winter stars of the Heavenly Kremlin...

But we did not heed the voice of conscience and, instead of pious prayer, we began to debunk the “cult of personality” that we had previously created. We ourselves blew up the foundation of that classic masterpiece, which could (we had so little time to wait!) enter, along with the Pyramid of Cheops and the Apollo Belvedere, into the treasury of world art.

Any teleological system is strong because of its constancy, harmony, and order. Once we admit that God accidentally sinned with Eve and, being jealous of her for Adam, sent the unfortunate spouses to corrective earthly labor, the entire concept of the universe will go to dust and it will be impossible to restore faith in its previous form.

After Stalin's death, we entered a period of destruction and revaluation. They are slow, inconsistent, unpromising, and the inertia of the past and future is quite large. Today's children are unlikely to be able to create a new god capable of inspiring humanity for the next historical cycle. Perhaps this will require additional fires of the Inquisition, further “cults of personality,” new earthly works, and only after many centuries will a Goal rise above the world, the name of which no one now knows.

In the meantime, our art is marking time in one place - between insufficient realism and insufficient classicism. After the loss it has suffered, it is powerless to fly towards the ideal and, with the same sincere pompousness, glorify our happy life, passing off what is due as real. In glorifying works, meanness and hypocrisy sound more and more openly, and success is now enjoyed by writers who are able to present our achievements as plausibly as possible and, as gently, delicately, and implausibly as possible, our shortcomings. Anyone who strays towards excessive verisimilitude, “realism,” suffers a fiasco, as happened with Dudintsev’s sensational novel “Not by Bread Alone,” which was publicly anathematized for denigrating our bright socialist reality.

But is the dream of the good old, honest “realism” really the only secret heresy of which Russian literature is capable? Are all the lessons taught to us in vain and we, at best, want only one thing - to return to the natural school and the critical direction? Let us hope that this is not entirely true and that our need for truth will not interfere with the work of thought and imagination.

In this case, I place my hope in phantasmagoric art, with hypotheses instead of goals and grotesquery instead of everyday life. It most fully corresponds to the spirit of modernity. Let the exaggerated images of Hoffmann, Dostoevsky, Goya, Chagall and the socialist realist himself Mayakovsky and many other realists and non-realists teach us how to be truthful with the help of absurd fantasy.

Having lost faith, we have not lost our admiration for the metamorphoses of God taking place before our eyes, for the monstrous peristalsis of his intestines - the cerebral convolutions. We don’t know where to go, but, realizing that there is nothing to do, we begin to think, speculate, and assume. Maybe we'll come up with something amazing. But this will no longer be socialist realism.

First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers, 1934. Transcript. report. M., 1934. P. 716.

History of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks). Short course / Ed. Commission of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. Approved by the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. M., 1938. P. 111.

For a long time, while its great creator was alive, “A Short Course” was a reference book for every Soviet person. The entire literate population of the country was called upon to tirelessly study this book, especially its fourth chapter, which contains the quintessence of Marxist doctrine and was written personally by Stalin. To visualize the universal meaning that was put into it, I will cite one episode from V. Ilyenkov’s novel “The Big Road”: “Father Degtyarev brought a small book and said: “Everything is said here, in the fourth chapter.” Vikenty Ivanovich took the book, thinking: “There are no books on earth that would say everything that a person needs...” Soon Vikenty Ivanovich (a type of skeptical intellectual) is convinced that he is wrong and joins Degtyarev’s opinion, which expresses the view of all progressive people : “This book contains everything a person needs.” Stalin I. Marxism and questions of linguistics.

Zhdanov A.A. Speech at a discussion on the book by G. F. Alexandrov “The History of Western European Philosophy” June 24, 1947

Khrushchev N. For the close connection of literature and art with the life of the people // Communist. 1957. No. 12.

The term “socialist realism” appeared in the 30s. The need for a new definition of the creative method of proletarian literature was felt by many writers and critics. The accepted definition - “socialist realism” - was retrospectively transferred to the characteristics of Gorky’s “Philistines”, “Mother”, “Enemies”. The topic "Gorky - the founder of socialist realism" became the leading one in Soviet literary criticism. The same direction included Serafimovich’s stories from the period of the first Russian revolution, the poetry of D. Bedny, as well as revolutionary literature of the 20s: “Iron Stream” by Serafimovich, “Chapaev” by Furmanov, etc.

Andrei Sinyavsky, in his article “What is Socialist Realism,” cites the definition of socialist realism given in the Charter of the Union of Soviet Writers: “Socialist realism, being the main method of Soviet fiction and literary criticism, requires the artist to provide a truthful, historically specific depiction of reality in its revolutionary development. At the same time, the truthfulness and historical specificity of the artistic depiction of reality must be combined with the task of ideological remodeling and education of working people in the spirit of socialism.”

Art Social Real. was supposed to depict life in the light of the ideals of communism (socialism).

At the same time, Sinyavsky in his article gives his own characteristics of socialist realism: “semi-classical, semi-art, not too socialist, not realism at all.” Having analyzed the ideology and history of the development of socialist realism, as well as the features of its typical works in literature, he made his own conclusion that this style is in fact not related to real realism, but is a Soviet version of classicism with admixtures of romanticism. Also in this work, he argued that due to the erroneous orientation of Soviet artists towards realistic works of the 19th century (especially critical realism), deeply alien to the classicist nature of socialist realism - and therefore due to the unacceptable and curious synthesis of classicism and realism in one work - the creation of outstanding works of art in this style is unthinkable.

The prevailing direction of “socialist expediency” of art in the Soviet era hinders the natural development of literature in the country. However, in addition to the artist’s freedom arising in such a context, there is another problematic field: life as a whole is significantly broader than “socialist expediency,” and therefore literature written in this vein cannot in any way claim to depict a person.

For Sinyavsky, the main measure of the existence of a work and, more broadly, a stylistic direction is the literary process. In its vein, socialist realism turns out to be genetically connected in its hero, content, spirit, with the normative aesthetics of Russian classicism of the 18th century.

Sinyavsky writes that Socialist Realism proceeds from an ideal model, to which he likens reality. Sinyavsky’s demand is to truthfully depict life in its revolutionary development; he calls for depicting the truth in ideal light, giving an ideal interpretation of the real, and writing what should be as if it were real. After all, “revolutionary development” is an inevitable movement towards communism, towards the ideal. “We depict life as we want to see it and what it must become, obeying the logic of Marxism.”

Meanwhile, the author of the article calls the main drawback of socialist realism its eclecticism (chaoticity, lack of system).

But Abram Tertz had the right stylistic attitude: the understanding that grotesque Soviet life cannot be presented literary in the good old realistic manner. This is theoretically realized and justified in his article “What is socialist realism?” - undoubtedly the best work of the underground, pre-emigrant Abram Tertz. A few quotes from this wonderful text:

Socialist realism proceeds from an ideal model, to which it likens reality... We depict life as we want to see it and as it must become, obeying the logic of Marxism. Therefore, socialist realism, perhaps, would make sense to be called socialist classicism.

This is a typological projection. Here is the analysis, assessment and perspective:

Art is not afraid of dictatorship, severity, repression, or even conservatism and cliché. When this is required, art can be narrowly religious, stupidly statist, non-individual and, nevertheless, great. We admire the stamps of Ancient Egypt, Russian icon painting, and folklore. Art is fluid enough to lie down in any Procrustean bed that history offers it. It does not tolerate one thing - eclecticism.

It is impossible, without falling into parody, to create a positive hero (in full socialist realist quality) and at the same time endow him with human psychology. There will be no real psychology, no hero.

Apparently, the very name “socialist realism” contains an insurmountable contradiction. Socialist, that is, purposeful, religious art cannot be created by means of literature of the 19th century, called “realism”. And a completely plausible picture of life (with details of everyday life, psychology, landscape, portrait, etc.) cannot be described in the language of teleological constructs. For socialist realism, if it really wants to rise to the level of great world cultures and create its own “Communiad”, there is only one way out - to do away with “realism”, to abandon the pathetic and still fruitless attempts to create a socialist “Anna Karenina” and a socialist “Cherry” garden". When he loses the verisimilitude that is insignificant to him, he will be able to convey the majestic and implausible meaning of our era.

To be completely honest, writing about all these dissidents is quite boring. The fact is that all this public who went abroad were not anti-Soviet at all. On the contrary, these were all people who were kindly treated by the Soviet government, who had good jobs, were quite wealthy, and were members of various creative unions.
And what kind of punishment is this – deportation from the USSR? Yes, here in the USSR, millions of Soviet citizens dreamed of leaving the Soviet paradise. Let's remember the statistics of airplane hijackings. So, according to official statistics, over the last forty years of the existence of the USSR, as many as a hundred incidents were hijacked or attempted to hijack aircraft in order to leave the borders of the freedom-loving USSR. What the people did not do to escape from the Soviet paradise. Several million people fled from the best socialist country, from the German Democratic Republic. What, are all these Germans masochists? Did they punish themselves like that? Or maybe this same Solzhenitsyn led a deplorable life in America? Yes, he became a millionaire there, built a mansion in the forest, provided for his children for the rest of their lives, and gave them a good education. And this is a punishment?
Punishment is when a person dies in a Soviet concentration camp, when he does not have the opportunity to do what he loves, when a person is injected in a psychiatric hospital with drugs that make him disabled. This is persecution. But deportation abroad is not a punishment. And in general, the Soviet government never let the real enemies of the regime leave the country. To claim otherwise is to be either a hypocrite or a fool. Of course, in the twenties it happened that the authorities accidentally released anti-Soviet activists, but soon no one had such an opportunity.
So how did all these writers like Solzhenitsyn or this same Sinyavsky end up abroad? Yes, the USSR carried out a “cunning” operation to introduce writers into bourgeois literary circles. And cheap performances involving deportation from the country are simply a kind of black PR to seduce readers with the works of “anti-Soviet people.” But no anti-Soviet activists were expelled from the country. And the more I read all these deportees, the more I am convinced of this.
Comrade Sinyavsky is also one of these comrades. And his work “What is Socialist Realism” is nothing more than a praise of the communist regime, although there are some harsh words in it. Yes, he himself openly declares that he has nothing against the Soviet regime. And this is what the nobleman says? Sinyavsky, perhaps, does not know that the Soviet government, throughout all the years of its existence, pursued a policy of political genocide, in particular, killing nobles en masse?
And, although this work was written in 1957, Sinyavsky fully praises Stalin. It just pours.
Sinyavsky in his work argues that socialist realism is simply an act of faith, when writers in their works defend communist beliefs without deviating from the truth of life.
And the fact that the Soviet government simply hushed up the truth of life that was undesirable for Sinyavsky seems to be unknown to him.
I wouldn’t like to quote Sinyavsky, but I’ll still give one quote.
“As soon as I say “Soviet power,” I immediately imagine the revolution - the capture of Zimny, the rattling of machine-gun carts, the harvest of bread, the defense of Red St. Petersburg - and I feel disgusted to talk about it disrespectfully.”
And the fact that the Soviet government literally flooded the country with the blood of its people seems to be good. And the fact that in this St. Petersburg revolutionary sailors killed their officers en masse just because the man was not a sailor, but an officer - this is the romance of the revolution? And the fact that the Red generals gassed their own people, their own peasants, does this seem to be in the order of things?
What does Sinyavsky say about Karl Marx? Let me give you one more quote.
“Marx’s brilliant discovery was that he was able to prove that the earthly paradise, which many before him had dreamed of, was the goal destined for humanity by fate itself.”
In this case, I simply see an illiterate person, despite all his education. After all, you need to understand what Marx and Marxism in general are.
Although at that time Sinyavsky could hardly have known that our notorious October Socialist Revolution was accomplished with the money of other states. In other words, our socialist revolution was desired primarily by other states. After all, this revolution threw Russia back in development. There have never been competitive enterprises in the USSR. Low profitability, low labor productivity, high production costs.
And why are other states afraid of such a weak system?
Yes, with the help of the socialist revolution, other forces removed a competitor from the world stage. That is the whole point of this socialist revolution.
Let's remember the Paris Commune. This is also a socialist revolution. But what was the main drawback of that revolution? Yes, the French revolution did not have its own revolutionary bible, its own theoretician god. Of course, there were a lot of works on socialism, but there was still no generalized theory. That's why they created Marx. Yes, Karl Marx did not appear on his own, he was guided and nurtured, allowing him to create a theory about the hegemon of the proletariat, the guiding force of progress. Although what the hell is he a hegemon? And who is the person who, say, created an ordinary needle that allowed humanity to sew clothes from skins? But the creation of an ordinary needle is a giant leap in the development of mankind. And what is the creation of the wheel, the forerunner of all gears? You never know the discoveries and inventions that instantly move the development of mankind forward.
But all this chatter about the hegemon was needed to prepare the socialist revolution in Russia, which was too big. And smart people managed to do it.
And this is the essence of our revolution we need to understand.
And what does Sinyavsky write?
I will quote it one last time.
“After all, we made a revolution, how dare we renounce and blaspheme after that”?!
Yes to... this revolution. To hell with all this Soviet mess with its stupidity, cruelty, verbal diarrhea of ​​beautiful words.
This is what we need to start from. We must understand that all this socialism is nothing more than sabotage against Russia. And do not sing the praises of the dirty drug addict Karl Marx. We must understand that England has learned to manage a huge empire. What does it mean? This means the ability to create situations and keep the process under control.
By the way, all this dirty work by Sinyavsky seems to claim that the USSR must clean up its literature. Of course, that's what we did. We sent many books to special storage facilities. They hid it from the eyes of the people. There was too much praise for the god Stalin, from whom we made the scapegoat of all Soviet absurdity, the mass cannibalism of the system of our people. And at the same time, they explained to foreigners through articles like this that this is socialist realism, to improve the quality of literature and modestly push back what is already compromising the country of the Soviets.
These comrades from the KGB, having started the large-scale publication of socialist literature abroad under the guise of anti-Sovietism, probably considered themselves simply geniuses, whom stupid capitalists were simply unable to understand.
And the result?
And although Sinyavsky speaks about renouncing communism at the beginning of his article, seemingly with irony, and then later, refuting himself, such things must be said without irony. We need to face the truth and simply renounce all this communist schizophrenic nonsense, admitting that we were idiots who did not understand the situation.

Newly appointed First Secretary of the SPA. Surkov structured his report as if nothing had changed with Stalin’s death: “In the years after the Second World War, when the ongoing Cold War began, cosmopolitanism again crept to the surface of literary life as an invariable companion of “purely artistic art.” Our public in 1949–1950 came out sharply against this harmful “trend,” exposing its alien and hostile essence to society. Unfortunately, some elements in the literature mixed with this struggle the bitterness of group struggle and the settling of personal scores, causing great harm to the cause.”90 Then all the “fine” writers of 1954 got it too.
The report on prose was entrusted to K. Simonov, who, with his appointment as editor of Novy Mir, became a rising star of the post-Stalin joint venture along with Surkov. Congresses of Soviet writers have not been held for a decade (what a decade!), so it would be ridiculous to focus on the conflicts of the past year. Simonov decided to develop Gorky's teaching on socialist realism. Gorky saw in socialist realism a synthesis of old realism and romanticism (and perhaps his god-building ideas), which is ultimately capable of changing reality. “To invent means to extract from the sum of what is actually given its main meaning and translate it into an image - this is how we got realism. But if we add to the meaning of extracts from the actually given - to conjecture, according to the logic of the hypothesis - the desired, the possible, and with this we further complement the image - we get that romanticism that underlies the myth and is highly useful in that it helps to excite a revolutionary attitude towards reality - relationship that practically changes the world91.” Gorky's socialist realism is futurological, focused on the future, it turns literature into an effective part of the socialist strategy.
Simonov starts from such an understanding, which breathes the revolutionary past of Soviet literature and is very far from any kind of protection. Socialist realism must combine idea and reality. “A Soviet writer, creating his works based on the method of socialist realism, notices everything in people, but loves in them what leads them to the future. He does not close his eyes to the base, but considers the high to be natural for a person. He understands their weaknesses, but wants to cultivate strength in them!” And with a slight movement of his hand, Simonov turns this progressive understanding of the tasks of literature into a completely protective one: “When a writer does not see or suddenly ceases to see life in its revolutionary development, when, believing that he notices everything in people, he actually begins to pay attention to the main image at the backside of life, at everything dark and wormy, and squeezes it into his work out of correspondence with the place it occupies in the real life of people, then, of course, the picture of life created by this method inexorably begins to turn into a grimace.”92 Here it is, two-faced Janus, here it is, socialist realism, not remembering kinship. After all, its roots go back to the critical realism of the 19th century, which was precisely what looked for “everything dark and wormy.” But now literature is on the side of power, and criticism must be constructive.
Having defined the criteria for what is correct, we can now talk about deviations. Our Soviet writers, of course, work within the framework of socialist realism, but all the time, from the healthy herd crowding in the center, someone fights back to the very fence and thereby shakes it. So Simonov criticizes Ehrenburg not for a stilted production plot, but for notes of critical realism: “From many of the characters’ statements, one begins to involuntarily feel that they have seen a lot of bad and little good in their lives, that bad was most often the rule, and good - exception"93. And this is in our country!
It's a shame to look in the mirror displayed by Ehrenburg. Mirror reflection is “not our method.” This is objectivism, for which V. Panova also received criticism from Simonov. “Panova considers a person as a given, but we want to look at him in perspective.”94 This is the key difference between socialist realism and “objectivism,” that is, a realism without ideas.
But complete objectivism is hardly possible. After all, everyone, even the most objective writer, selects material in accordance with his preferences. He is not a scientist, obliged to adhere to strict scientific methodology. He is driven by ideas. But ideas are different, even under socialism.
But we can’t say this directly. All that remains is to go through the lessons of the 19th century again. In his speech, Ehrenburg, seemingly speaking about Pomerantsev’s article, compares the situation with the times of the critic Nekrasov and the guard Katkov. Naturally, the sympathies of Soviet writers cannot be on Katkov’s side. And there are more than enough moralizing “Katkovs”: “We know some modern authors who quite sincerely write lies; some - because they do not understand their contemporaries enough, others - because in the diversity of the world they are accustomed to distinguishing only two colors - white and black. Such authors outwardly embellish their heroes, but mentally impoverish them; they spare no gold in depicting a communal apartment; the workshops in their works look like laboratories, collective farm clubs - like boyar mansions; but this leafy, fake world is populated by primitive creatures, waxy good boys who have nothing in common with Soviet people, with their complex, deep inner life95.
A sincere fool and reactionary is worse than a seeker of truth, who for the time being hides it behind Aesopian language and sculpts its image in halftones. But since Ehrenburg has already been exposed as a critic, he confronts his opponents with an uncomfortable choice: “A society that is developing and growing stronger cannot be afraid of a truthful portrayal: the truth is dangerous only to the doomed”96. Now that Ehrenburg has already been exposed as a critic, he puts his opponents in front of an uncomfortable choice: he fights back to the very heart and answer now, why is there such a fear of criticism if we are developing and getting stronger?
Just in case, having dissociated himself from the condemned Pomerantsev, Erenburg demands for writers the same right to say what they think openly (or as openly as possible). V. Kaverin already proposes a whole program of free literature: “I see literature in which strong, independent criticism boldly determines the path of development of the writer, his capabilities and prospects...
I see literature in which editors boldly support works that appear in their magazines, defending their independent view of things and not offending the author who needs protection.”97 And this is already a hint at the persecution of progressives in 1954. More on this: “I see literature in which labeling is considered a shame and is prosecuted, which remembers and loves its past”98. This is, perhaps, a struggle not just for the freedom of the writer, but for his integrity. The writer must become the leader of society: “I see literature that does not lag behind life, but leads it along. Marx wrote about Balzac that his strength lay not only in the fact that he portrayed the people of his time, but predicted characters who were yet to appear."99 What do you want? Socialist realism is the rapprochement of the present (reality) and the future - the socialist (communist) project.
Although at the Second Congress the progressives had already begun to set out their program, they had not yet formed a single camp; their confrontation with the guards was still weaker than the groupism that the “iron old woman” Shaginyan was indignant at. The main target of the attack was K. Simonov, who was brutally attacked by M. Sholokhov100 and V. Ovechkin.
Maybe Simonov got it from the progressive Ovechkin for his moderately protective, official report? No, Ovechkin vindictively reminds the critics of Ehrenburg and Panova that he is not orthodox enough: “Didn’t you personally praise Zorin’s play to the skies, which is very bad, politically harmful, and artistically helpless? And then something muttered through clenched teeth, indistinctly, about the “mistake”?”101 So it’s not for you, Comrade Simonov, to determine what is right and what is wrong. Tvardovsky’s successor gets hit below the belt: “And don’t you think, Comrade Simonov, that you personally are also offended by critics, that is, offended by the excessive, unbridled praise and overpraising of everything you have done in literature in all the genres in which you work?”102 This Ovechkin’s statement was accompanied by applause - many would not like to see the “upstart” Simonov as the leader of Soviet writers. But the response salvo against Simonov’s critics was powerful and vicious..
M. Ibragimov responded to Ovechkin in the same coin: “apparently, some people, including the well-known Pomerantsev, presented Comrade Ovechkin with an overly intense dose of praise and caused some symptoms of conceit in him.” V. Ovechkin, “whom Pomerantsev tried to use as a weapon in his hands, as a trump card in a fake game, to this day has not in any way defined his attitude towards Pomerantsev’s article. Does Comrade Ovechkin agree with Pomerantsev that he, Valentin Ovechkin, is the only sincere, truthful writer in the Soviet Union, or does he consider this statement a lie, slander against our wonderful Soviet literature?”103 Supporters of the former and current editors of Novy Mir remind each other about ideological sins.
The result of the squabble was summed up by K. Fedin: “many have the impression that groupism, which is interfering with the work of the Writers’ Union and the life of writers, has now been turned into a cudgel, which even the outstanding and generally recognized Russian Soviet writer waves in a terrifying manner. After Sholokhov’s speech, we will be afraid to gather more than two writers together in one room. (Laughter, applause). We will be afraid that at the congress they will start talking to us in the same language as Sholokhov spoke to Simonov.”104
Now Simonov won the applause of his supporters by answering the venerable writer: “You can work all your life, striving to rise to the level of Sholokhov the artist, without ever in your life sinking to the level of Sholokhov the critic”105.
The controversy at the congress shows that the “parties” are still just being formed. But this is only the beginning of the story. And yet, the criticized “deviators” remained respected Soviet writers. Ehrenburg and Panova were still elected to the presidium of the board of the joint venture.
In the new edition of the SP Charter adopted at the congress, references to the “historical specificity” and “educational task” of the method of socialist realism were removed, which was a consequence of criticism of objectivism on the one hand and varnishing on the other.
But the writers' craving for realism as forbidden fruit was great. Tvardovsky told employees: “realism does not need an epithet. If there is socialist realism, then maybe there is also capitalist realism?”106 Maybe. But he is critical. The truth cries out against capitalism. And against socialism?
Critical realism is the realism of the era of the system that the author does not like. So he criticizes, focuses attention on the dark sides of life, “denigrates.” “Defamation” – critical realism of the Soviet era.
In 1957, the Soviet critic A. Sinyavsky wrote a theoretical manifesto of the “denigrators” - “What is socialist realism?” Socialist realism inherited from Sinyavsky as a continuation and reflection of communist ideology. All these works end with a happy ending107. The hero can die with confidence in the final victory of our ultimate goal, and this is also a happy ending. Frankly, here Sinyavsky is banging on an open door - Simonov has already explained the role of this final victory in how socialist realism looks at reality108.
But now Sinyavsky moves on to the main thing: most of the works of socialist realism of the first half of the 50s. typologically indistinguishable from the classicism of past centuries. Classicism imposes on the reader a norm of correct behavior. But Soviet writers also tortured the reader with moral teachings. I. Ehrenburg ironically spoke about this at the writers’ congress: “But sometimes, reading a novel in a magazine, where from the first page the author tirelessly lectures the reader, you think: isn’t it time to open a section of literature for adults in the Writers’ Union?”109 along with a section of literature for children .
The material on which A. Sinyavsky relies relates almost entirely to the era of Stalin’s “varnishing”. If we were not talking about socialist realism, but about part of it, it would be quite possible to agree that the USSR has its own classicism, critical realism, and romanticism. But Sinyavsky insists that socialist realism as such, entirely, is classicism. Some deviations towards pluralism, criticism of “conflictlessness” and manifestations of romanticism are atypical110. In this A. Sinyavsky is categorical, like a communist official. Dissident thought began as an imprint from communist dogma.
By 1957, when the article was written, A. Sinyavsky could already discern, in addition to socialist classicism, socialist romanticism rising in the poetry of the young, and noticeable progress towards critical realism in Dudintsev, and, if he had looked closely, socialist realism itself, which does not idealize existing (which is indeed a sign of classicism), but seeking the germs of the future in the present, reconstructing this future in the utopias of science fiction writers. But all this is atypical, and Dudintsev is anathema, so what can we say about him111.
Hiding behind irony, A. Sinyavsky takes the logic of the guards to the point of absurdity. Claiming that socialist realism is not realism, Sinyavsky ironically demands that Soviet literature be cleansed of realism altogether in order to rid it of unnecessary eclecticism when chanting communist ideals, which he immediately calls “pure fiction”112, sticking his knife into the back of the regime.
Sinyavsky solves the problem of the relationship between reality and ideal with extraordinary radicalism. He wants generalizations of Berdyaev's scope. Russian culture, which Sinyavsky compares with Lermontov’s Demon, rushed “in search of an ideal, but as soon as it flew up to the sky, it fell down”113. This is how the whole culture fell at once.
But in the depths of Russian culture, so dramatically rushing between earth and sky, Sinyavsky found that literary and social figure who, by his very existence, challenges classicism, and therefore socialist realism, and, consequently, communist teleology. This is a well-known extra person. In the first half of the 19th century, he could not find use for his abilities due to oppressive social conditions, then he rushed between fighting camps. It seemed that socialist realism had left this shadowy figure in the past. But no, she survived. Sinyavsky gives the extra person a new life, a social mission. Onegin, Pechorin and Samgin (Sinyavsky is not yet familiar with Zhivago) are alive today, and they are easy to recognize: “He is not for the Goal, and not against the Goal, he is outside the Goal...”114
Oh, if only this were so, and Sinyavsky pretended to be a spokesman for the opinions of unnecessary people. Communist ideologists have already discovered them - in the bourgeoisie, hipsters, parasites. Each of these trends at one time received literary exponents in the persons of Zoshchenko, Yevtushenko, Aksenov and Brodsky, who were promptly exposed and criticized. But Sinyavsky here also passes one thing off as another, as a “superfluous person” who does not care about the Goal - its critic and enemy, who throughout the history of the liberation movement has claimed his place in the struggle of old Russia and the communist idea.
Sinyavsky named Voloshin as a past exponent of the philosophy of the superfluous man, who during the Civil War prayed for both (would Voloshin agree that he was superfluous with his prayer?)115. But Sinyavsky himself does not pray for anyone. He uses irony on one side, hinting at the advantages of the other. An extra person may be outside the Goal. But the one who defends the rights of an extra person to be outside may himself have a different Goal. And then irony is not “the laughter of an extra person”116, but a weapon in the struggle of ideologies. The start of this struggle - increasingly open - was given by the 20th Congress.
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The price of metaphor, or Crime and punishment of Sinyavsky and Daniel Sinyavsky Andrey Donatovich

What is socialist realism