in the Soviet Union that lasted from 1924 to 1927. In response to Leon Trotsky, who, on the basis of his theory of “permanent revolution,” believed that “the genuine rise of socialist economy in Russia will become possible only after the victory of the proletariat in the most important countries of Europe,” Josef Stalin first propounded his doctrine of “socialism in one country” in a newspaper article of December 1922. The difference between the two theories was based on a distinction between the processes of making a socialist revolution and a socialist economy. Every Bolshevik believed that the revolution that had proved victorious in October 1917 was a socialist revolution, but according to party doctrine it was impossible to build a socialist economy in a lone backward country, even though it was now clear that the foundations of a socialist economy were being laid. Stalin did not deny the importance of the international revolution or its likelihood in the near future because of the crisis in capitalism. But seizing on a few scattered passages of Lenin, including, from the last speech Lenin ever made, the quote, “NEP [New Economic Policy] Russia will become socialist Russia,” Stalin argued that because the “dictatorship of the proletariat” had been established in Russia through the peculiar conditions of the 1917 revolution-the alliance of the proletariat and the peasantry-the complete organization of a socialist economy in the USSR was possible, as part of the process of building socialENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY ism. He qualified this by saying that “for the final victory of socialism, for the organization of Socialist production, the efforts of one country, particularly of a peasant country like Russia, are insufficient” (Problems of Leninism, 1926), and, moreover, that the victory of socialism could not be considered secure while the USSR was encircled by hostile capitalist powers.
Stalin developed the theory over the next two years, particularly in Problems of Leninism (1926). It was a very effective formula. Politically it was used as a stick with which to beat Trotsky, the Left, Leningrad, and United Oppositions: Stalin condemned his critics for lack of faith in the possibility of building socialism in the Soviet Union. Economically it was used as a basis for the industrialization of the USSR through the Five-Year Plans and the collectivization of agriculture, and it came to mean the opposite of NEP. It provided a slogan expressive of Bolshevik self-confidence after victory in the civil war and the establishment of the new regime, and in contrast to “permanent revolution” held out the prospect of stability. Its appeal lay partly in its reawakening of national pride in the self- sufficiency of the Russian revolution of 1917 and in the potential and destiny of the Russian people to become the progenitor of a new civilization. Through “socialism in one country” Stalin established himself as an ideologue, and the theory became the supreme test of loyalty in the Stalinist party and state. See also: NEW ECONOMIC POLICY; STALIN, JOSEF VISSAR-IONOVICH; TROTSKY, LEON DAVIDOVICH
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Carr, Edward Hallett. (1970). A History of Soviet Russia: Socialism in One Country, 1924-1926, Vol. 2. Har- mondsworth, UK: Pelican. Deutscher, Isaac. (1966). Stalin: A Political Biography. Harmondsworth, UK: Pelican. Stalin, Josef Vissarionovich. (1959). Works, Vol. 8: 1926, January-November. Moscow: Foreign Language Publishing House.
On April 23, 1932, the Party Central Committee of the USSR adopted socialist realism (SR) as the official artistic mandate for Soviet literature (de facto
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for art, music, film, and architecture as well), a practice that, theoretically, governed the production of any work of art until the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991. While most frequently associated with literature (especially since the adoption of SR occurred practically simultaneously with the dissolution of all literary groups and their subjugation into one Union of Writers), socialist realism provided the guidelines according to which any artist should craft his work.
Yet the very concept of socialist realism prob-lematizes the process of definition. Over the course of its implementation socialist realism’s practitioners and critics have referred to it as a method, doctrine, framework, or style. Precisely the inability to definitively label it points to its inherent contradictions. Indeed, the best label for socialist realism could well be critic Yevgeny Dobrenko’s term-an aesthetic system. This moniker implies that socialist realism dictated far more than the form of an artistic work; in addition, socialist realism strove to control how an artist worked and how an audience received and perceived any work of art. Just as events in the Soviet Union unfolded, so, too, did socialist realism adjust to the new demands of changing times. Consequently, socialist realism was realized as a totalizing system that would inculcate Soviet citizens into the new ideological system, the result of the Bolshevik revolution, and the emergence of Stalinism.
Andrei Zhdanov, then Leningrad Party boss and frequent spokesman for Party policy, delineated the program of SR at the First Congress of Soviet Writers in 1934. Increasingly critics identify the Soviet writer Maxim Gorky as the true instigator behind the movement given his active role in establishing journals (such as Nashi Dostizheniya [Our Achievements]) and literary series (such as The History of Factories and Plants), as well as his editorship of volumes such as The History of the Construction of the Stalin White Sea-Baltic Canal. Indeed many of Gorky’s polemical and didactic articles of the time delineate how writers were called to document, applaud, and encourage the building of the new Soviet state, especially vis-?-vis the first two Five-Year Plans, even though Gorky himself produced no original works of literature during this final period of his career. In addition, as had been proposed most vociferously by RAPP (the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers) in the 1920s, common workers should emerge as the chief arbiters of artistic production. It was believed that if properly trained, any worker could become a So1416 viet writer or artist, especially because, ideologically speaking, only workers had the appropriate class pedigree.
Not surprisingly, although attempts were made to reforge (a common metaphor of the early 1930s) workers into masterful artists, much of this activity was in vain. As readers in the early 1930s were quick to point out, badly written or executed SR art was neither appealing nor inspiring. Indeed, recently some critics have noted that the reading and viewing public of the early 1930s played a much larger role in determining what kind of art would be produced, thanks to their active response to any artistic production that did not meet with their aesthetic sensibilities or did not conform to their conception of a typical work of Soviet art. This did not imply, however, that subsequent works of socialist realist art had uniformly high quality and were superior works of art; most were not.
Hence, mounting pressure was applied to members of the various artistic establishments to embrace the new aesthetic model of socialist realism. In the literary arena some writers, most notably Mikhail Bulgakov, Osip Mandelshtam, Yevgeny Zamyatin, and Anna Akhmatova to name but a few, consistently resisted the pressure to produce Party-mandated art; consequently they found it essentially impossible to have their work published. Others such as Mikhail Zoshchenko, Viktor Shklovsky, and Valentin Katayev attempted to find a compromise position that enabled them to continue to be published while maintaining a modicum of personal artistic style and integrity. Yet others, among them Alexander Fadeyev, Alexei Tolstoy and Vera Inber, subscribed completely to the Party mandate by producing literary works that strove to comply as closely as possible with socialist realism. Here, too, the issue of artistic quality emerged as a concern.
Yet the outline above should not suggest that the divisions among artists were black and white categories that did not allow for subversions of the socialist realist canon or deviations from the “Party line” within an artist’s oeuvre. Consequently, it is not uncommon to find musical comedies in the 1930s, which, while celebrating the heightened class consciousness and loyalty of Soviet citizens, also featured musical production numbers, slapstick comedy, and lighthearted romance (e.g., Volga, Volga, The Jolly Fellows, Circus). In addition, in literature the early “canonical” works of socialist realism, which were posited as models for future works, predated the adoption of the socialist
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
realist aesthetic. These include Gorky’s novel Mat (Mother, 1906), Fyodor Gladkov’s post-Civil war story Tsement (Cement,1925), Dmitry Furmanov’s Civil War epic Chapayev (1923), and Alexander Fadeyev’s Bolshevik drama Razgrom (The Rout, 1927) all of which presented the struggle for socialism from authors who understood how to present Soviet reality in its revolutionary development. As these examples illustrate, in literature the socialist realist genre of choice was the novel. Similarly, in music the symphony reigned supreme, while in tactile
