Socialist Realism

Abstract

The works of socialist realism were once vigorously "consumed," no matter what people say now. I personally remember the tattered library copies of the industrial and collective-farm novels of V. Azhaev and V. Kochetov, G. Nikolaeva and A. Koptiaeva, P. Pavlenko, and others. Members of the older generation will testify that after the war, in the reading room of the V.I. Lenin Library, college students, instead of preparing for examinations, were voraciously devouring Fur Awuyfrom Moscow [Daleko ot Moskvy], a best seller at the time. At present I am endeavoring to research the biographies of Soviet people based on their personal notes, diaries, and memoirs. One thing that stands out is that people who read-and people who write memoirs, as a rule, also read voraciously4evoured one book after another, everything that was published. V. Kochetov's Youth Is with Us [Molodost' s nami] and The Zhurbins [Zhurbiny] stand side by side with V. Korolenko's A History of My Contemporary [Istoriia moego sovremennika]. The Little Village on the Steppe [Khutorok v stepi] by V. Kataev, A Sentimental Novel [Sentimental'nyi roman] by V. Panova, Far to the Rear glubokom tylu] by B. Polevoi, and Azhaev's Far Awayfiom Moscow stand next to E.M. Remarque, Anton Chekhov, and Ivan Bunin, and The Family and Communism [Sem'ia i kommunizm] stands next to Fedor Dostoevsky. On readers' cognitive charts, the classics and the works of socialist realism occupy the same rows. For me, exploring the range of reading during the 1950s and 1960s has been like going back to the world of my childhood, because our library at home reproduced these lists exactly. I remember very well what these books looked like, Pavlenko in its brown binding and Nikolaeva in its gray binding.