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Soviet Union [USSR] Socialist Realism
Similar principles of party control applied to the arts. During
the early years of Bolshevik rule, the party leadership sought to
enforce strict guidelines to ensure that literature conformed to
Bolshevik policies and that dissent was stifled. With the
implementation of the First Five-Year Plan in 1928, political
controls over cultural activity increased. By 1932 the party and
the government had decreed that all writing groups and associations
were under the control of the Union of Writers. In the early 1930s,
socialist realism became the official aesthetic doctrine prescribed
for artists
(see Soviet Union USSR - Mobilization of Society
, ch. 2). According to this
formula, artists, composers, architects, and sculptors had to
define history in a realistic and truthful light based on its
revolutionary evolution. Socialist realism demanded portrayal of
society as if it had already been perfected according to MarxistLeninist ideology. Under Stalin's leadership, writers served as the
"engineers of human souls" and produced novels, short stories,
articles, editorials, critiques, and satires within a restrictive
framework in which they strove to glorify Soviet society and
socialism.
Throughout Stalin's rule, socialist realism confined the arts
to expressing a narrowly controlled party line, but when Nikita S.
Khrushchev came to power in 1955, some guidelines loosened. The
short literary "thaw" in the late 1950s allowed artists more
freedom and creativity. This literary thaw lasted only a few years,
and with Khrushchev's ouster in 1964, artistic freedom suffered
setbacks. Further controls prevented artists from expressing
themselves outside the boundaries of socialist realism. Artists
were imprisoned if they protested the party line.
Brezhnev's death in November 1982, however, initiated a very
slow but gradual change in the Soviet mass media and the arts.
Under the successive leadership of Iurii V. Andropov and Konstantin
U. Chernenko, society experienced further loosening of party
strictures on the media and the arts, albeit mostly during
Andropov's rule. After Gorbachev assumed power in 1985, the system
witnessed significant liberalization. Topics previously proscribed
were discussed and analyzed by all the mass media, and the
government allowed publication of previously banned materials. The
regime, however, still maintained ultimate control over the ways of
evaluating the state, criticizing the past, and transforming the
system. Mass media and cultural events enhanced the image of a "new
face" and "new thinking" in society. The persistence of an
elaborate administrative censorship system, however, demonstrated
that the leadership continued to hold sway over the information
revealed publicly.
Data as of May 1989
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