Rešenija XVII parts''ezda VKP(b) i nekotorye zadači literatury [1934] - [D146]

Concise description of the directive:

The report outlines the directives addressed to literary criticism and literary scholarship following the resolutions of the 17th Party Congress, stressing the need to overcome the theoretical and methodological backwardness that still characterises Soviet literary studies.
The deliberations of the 17th Congress placed before critics and scholars of literature a series of tasks of major significance. It has now become a generally acknowledged truth that while literature still lags behind life, criticism lags even further behind literature. Unfortunately, this observation reflects the actual state of affairs. The principal shortcoming of criticism and literary scholarship lies in their delay in the theoretical analysis and systematisation of new facts, phenomena, trends, and creative directions expressed in literary development. Literary scholarship fails to address the fundamental theoretical problems of Marxist-Leninist literature and aesthetics, or addresses some of them in an extremely insufficient, disorganised and fragmentary manner. The elaboration of issues related to socialist realism still proceeds with difficulty. Moreover, many of our critics lack the courage and passion to pose new questions: there are still few heated debates, discussions, fruitful creative confrontations.

Ilaria Aletto, Maria Zavyalova