Reception of Socialist Realism in Bangla Progressive Literature and Alternatives to It: 1930s to 1990s
Reception of Socialist Realism in Bangla Progressive Literature and Alternatives to It: 1930s to 1990s

Summary/Abstract: The term Socialist Realism arose in the Soviet Union between 1929 and 1934 and was codified at the (in)famous Writers’ Congress. While more intellectual glosses would be put from time to time, by a range of Marxist/Moscow-oriented intellectuals, in origin it was worked out as a party line, with Maxim Gorky and Andrei Zhdanov in charge. Indian writers were not often exposed to Lukacs, Brecht, to say nothing of Bloch, Benjamin etc, in the 1930s and 1940s. In the main, they were influenced by what came out of the Soviet Union. With the Communist International having decided, after the downfall of M.N. Roy, to ask the Communist Party of Great Britain to look after India, they were in addition under the influence of CPGB ideologues, which had mixed results. The influence of Ben Bradley (who even presented the India report at the 7th Congress of the Communist International) and R. Palme Dutt produced a deadening Stalinist rigidity, especially in matters of class collaboration at the political level (Dutta Gupta, 2006). However, culturally, this would also mean the influence of Ralph Fox and Christopher Caudwell, who were less rigid Stalinist figures (Ahmed, 2009).

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