Socialist Realism as Anti-Canonical Art
Socialist Realism as Anti-Canonical Art

Summary/Abstract: Soviet culture is sometimes described as a ‘text-based’ one, oriented towards regulated, or canonical texts and regulated expression (Lepik 2000). The same has been said about Socialist Realism, one of the most (in)famous phenomena of Soviet culture. In this paper, I try to argue for an alternative view, according to which Socialist realism can be described as anti-canonical – as a system that instead of asserting itself as a canon different from others, actively denies and demolishes other canons –, and outline the mechanisms that create and organize it. What is Socialist Realism? Since the adoption of the term ‘Socialist Realism’ in 1932, literary critics, and scholars have been trying to give a positive definition or description of Socialist Realist aesthetics. While an official definition of the term was given in the Statute of the Union of Soviet Writers – which stated that Socialist Realism (for short, SR) was “the basic method of Soviet literature and literary criticism. It demands of the artist the truthful, historically concrete representation of reality in its revolutionary development” – the fact that it required interpretation by a number of scholars, would make one doubt that there was any method after all.

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