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Definition: socialist realism from Philip's Encyclopedia

State policy on the arts promoted by the Soviet Union from the 1930s to the 1980s. It asserted that all the arts should appeal to ordinary workers, and should be inspiring and optimistic in spirit. Art that did not fulfill these precepts was effectively banned, and most serious writers, artists and composers were forced underground or into exile.

socialist realism

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather Guide
Officially approved type of art in the former USSR and other communist countries. The creation of artworks came under the communist doctrine that all material goods, and the means of producing them, were the collective property of the community. Art was to be produced solely for the education and inspiration of the people. Optimistic images of work and the heroic worker celebrated the virtues of communism and patriotism, and glorified the state. In Soviet Russia, as in other totalitarian countries (run by one party), the government controlled all artistic organizations. All forms of artistic experimentation were condemned as a sign of decadent Western influence and, therefore, anticommunist principles. Although the term is used mainly with reference to painting, it can apply to literature and music. Socialist realism became the official doctrine in the USSR in 1932 when Stalin's repressive government issued a decree ‘On the Reconstruction of Literary and Art Organizations’. Painters…
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Full text Article socialist realism

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
Soviet artistic and literary doctrine. The role of literature and art in Soviet society was redefined in 1932 when the newly created Union of Soviet Writers proclaimed socialist realism as compulsory literary practice. As conceived by Stalin, Zhdanov, and Gorky, socialist realism prescribed a…
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Full text Article socialist realism

From Palgrave Macmillan Dictionary of Political Thought
First proclaimed by the writer Maxim Gorky and such politicians as Bukharin , socialist realism summarizes the artist’s duty to the party under communism. He must eschew all formalism , and represent the world of the proletariat in a dignifying, optimistic and generally intelligible manner so as to…
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Full text Article socialist realism

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather Guide
Officially approved type of art in the former USSR and other communist countries. The creation of artworks came under the communist doctrine that all material goods, and the means of producing them, were the collective property of the community. Art was to be produced solely for the education and…
| 312 words
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Full text Article SOCIALIST REALISM

From The Edinburgh Dictionary of Modernism
A method of artistic expression formulated in the 1932 April decree abolishing all independent associations of writers and announcing the creation of the Union of Soviet Writers. The term also appeared on 17 May 1932 in a speech delivered by Ivan Gronsky, the President of the Union of Writers’ …
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Full text Article socialist realism

From The Oxford Companion to Theatre and Performance
A prescriptive term for socialist artistic practice, which emerged from the First Soviet Writers’ Conference in 1934, used in opposition to ‘formalism’. Socialist realism required adherence to four basic principles. The first was narodnost , and implied that whatever an artist wrote, painted, or…
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Full text Article Socialist Realism

From Britannica Concise Encyclopedia
Officially sanctioned theory and method of artistic and literary composition in the Soviet Union from 1932 to the mid-1980s. Following the tradition of 19th-century Russian realism , Socialist Realism purported to serve as an objective mirror of life. Instead of critiquing society, however, it took…
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Full text Article socialist realism

From The New Penguin Dictionary of Music
Official Soviet aesthetic promulgated in 1932, the underlying idea being that artists should portray the real world but bend their portraits towards the socialist future. Quite what this meant for music was never very clear; hence the problems of 1936 and 1948 (see POLITICS ). The term has sometimes…
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Full text Article socialist realism

From Merriam-Webster's Collegiate(R) Dictionary
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Full text Article Socialist realism

From Brewer's Dictionary of Modern Phrase and Fable
| 75 words
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Full text Article Socialist Realism

From The Thames & Hudson Dictionary of Art Terms
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