Socialist Realism vs.

Fairy Tales
January 9, 2023
 Soviet dream
Soviet citizens want to “struggle and live, struggle in all
spheres of industry, agriculture, and culture; they did
not want to die, but to live; to live and strike down the
enemies; to live in order to prevail.”
- Stalin, 1939
What is Socialist Realism?
Mass culture
Dates:
Origins in literature of late 1920s
Officially endorsed in 1932
Made obligatory in 1934
Apocryphal definition
The artist ought to show life truthfully. And if he shows
our life truthfully, he cannot fail to show it moving to
socialism. That is and will be socialist realism.
-Stalin to Gorky et al, 1932
 Official definition
Socialist realism is 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. Moreover, the
truthfulness and historical concreteness of the artistic
representation of reality must be linked with the task of
ideological transformation and education of workers in
the spirit of socialism.
Writers’ Union, 1934
Key dichotomy
Hero: Good/revolutionary/new
Villain: Evil/counter-revolutionary/old
Checklist
Characters
The Party leader
The simple person
The enemy
Plot line
Hero awakens to Bolshevism under guidance of Party
leader
Villain attempts to blow things up (usually)
Hero triumphs
Key dichotomies
Optimism // self-pity
Exuberance // introspection
Comradely devotion // sex
Reason // emotion
Young // old
City // country
Order // chaos
Key themes
Individual and national accomplishment
Industrialization / production heroism
Triumphant battle against nature

Compare with American myth of success

Chapaev (1934)
Chapaev film
Jolly Fellows (1934)
Dir. Grigorii Aleksandrov
https://youtu.be/chDRXQ77IgA?t=149
Color version (no subtitles)
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bty-vvZ_Vyw
Socialist, aka Selective, Realism
Socialist – in a sense
Realist – in a sense
Selective – profoundly
How to understand this gap?
Core of truth, not objective truth
How to understand this gap?
Core of truth, not objective truth
Counterfeit world to answer political needs
World of the Russian fairy tale
Fairy tales in the 1930s
Repository of old values
Push to collect tales
Style of the tales
Typical plot
Journey to complete task
Meet helper
Overcome enemy
Successfully complete task
Marry
Core values
Kindness
Beauty
Spontaneity
Instinct over reason
Overcoming evil: Justice
Sometimes about class
Sometimes about cleverness
Fluid boundary between the human and the non-
human
Gender
Russian stove
Baba Yaga
Notes on Vasilisa the Beautiful
Feminine tasks
Everyday and impossible
Woods

Three riders
Koschei the Deathless
Folk tales as oral tradition
Oral storytelling as a genre