1931-1932 [04-01-1932] - [D104]

Concise description of the directive:

The results of 1931 in literature revealed the failure of the rotten liberals at the head of the various press organs or publishing houses. It is an indisputable fact that some publishing houses (Moskovskoye tovarishchestvo pisateley, Federatsiya, Leningradskoye izdatelstvo pisateley) were to a large extent agents of a politically hostile artistic production, that other publishers worked without a clear line (GIChL) and that some magazines (“Noviy mir”) turned out to be lairs of rotten liberalism. Stalin in his article O nekotorych voprosakh istorii bolshevizma incites the fight for partiinost in literature and the unmasking of all anti-Marxist and anti-Leninist theories and theoretical errors in literature. He urges the unmasking of “Trotskyist smugglers” like Gorbachev and Lelevich and the purging of Leninist theory of all those opportunist heresies. Inadmissibility and fight against kulako-bourgeois agents, fight for partiinost in literature. Poputchiki who align themselves with the left will be welcomed, those who approach bourgeois art will be isolated. The gap between these groups is now narrowing. RAPP shows it can work, but it needs to achieve more in the literary-theoretical field. This is the main line of development of the new Soviet literary criticism and theory.