2. Critiques of Socialist Realism

As indicated by Lenin’s words, “Literature must belong to the Party”; by Stalin’s words, “Writers are the engineers of the human spirit”; and by Gorky’s words, “Writers are the midwife to socialism, and the gravedigger to capitalism,” artists and writers were required to obey the Party’s directives absolutely, and their individuality and freedom were totally disregarded. As a result, since the beginning of the Revolution, artists and writers lived under surveillance and oppression in the Soviet Union until its collapse. Especially in the late 1930s, when Stalin promoted socialist realism, a great number of artists and writers were arrested and purged as heretics. ²³ Even after Stalin’s death, socialist realism continued to reign as the accepted theory of art, and consequently many artists and writers became dissidents.

Criticizing socialist realism, art critic Herbert Read said, “Socialist realism is nothing but an attempt to stuff intellectual or dogmatic objectives into art.” ²⁴

Ilya G. Ehrenburg (1891-1967), a Soviet journalist and novelist who was awarded the Stalin Prize for two of his novels, but later became critical of Stalin, said, “What is described in a book depicting weaving women in a spinning mill is not a human being but a machine, and not human feelings but merely the process of production.” ²⁵ Thus, he criticized the image of the human being depicted in socialist realism. The Korean art critic Yohan Cho also criticized the image of the human being in socialist realism, as follows:

The farmers and workers whom they [the Soviet writers] described were wonderful heroes and heroines who did not show even the faintest sign of uneasiness. It was all the more so since a theory of no conflict was spread. That is, they do not seem to have any kind of anxiety whatsoever. They were the ones who had no life of their own…. Therefore, that writing could never express a person’s internal world. ²⁶

In April 1986, an accident occurred at the nuclear power plant of Chornobyl in the Ukraine Republic of the U.S.S.R. Concerning the accident, Mikhail Gorbachev confirmed that the Soviet bureaucracy was responsible for the disaster, and said, “This is a tragedy. The nuclear accident was a great disaster, but it is even more regrettable to confirm that bureaucracy is deeply rooted in our society.” Then, at the end of June, 1986, he attended a meeting of the Writers’ Union and appealed to the writers, saying, “At the time of the Revolution, Gorky exposed and condemned the corruption and crimes of public officials. In the same way, Soviet public officials today have lapsed into bureaucratism, and there is a lot of vice. So, you writers should not hesitate to criticize them through your works.” Then, a group of writers allegedly requested the Soviet government to stop its censorship of literary works. They did so because to date Soviet artists and writers have been deprived of freedom, in the name of socialist realism.

In Communist China, Mao Ze-dong granted freedom to intellectuals for a while, with his policy of “letting a hundred schools of thought contend,” prior to the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. When that happened, most intellectuals criticized the socialist policies. Later, they were severely persecuted. When Deng Xiaoping grasped the political power and adopted pragmatic policies, he began to grant freedom to intellectuals bit by bit. As a result, a renowned theorist of Communist China, Wang Ruo, revealed that in socialism there is human alienation just as there is in capitalism.

When we consider these facts, we realize that socialist realism, as art for the proletarian revolution and as art that is subservient to party policy, has proved itself to be totally false art.