Sostojanie i zadači sovetskoj kritiki (di I. Bespalov) [06-03-1935] - [D015]

Concise description of the directive:

The relationship between literary criticism and literature in our country can be described as a “socialist collaboration”. Both critic and writer have the reader as a primary point of reference. We have refuted historical and cultural theory, the formalist method, and Pereverzev’s method. According to Pereverzev, politics cannot influence literature. Lelevich’s group denied the idea of literary heritage by vulgarly renouncing the literature of the past. This theory was discredited, as was Litfront’s programme that considered non-fiction as the ideal genre. Averbach’s theory that pitted proletarian culture against socialist culture was also refuted. Such was the struggle for the socialist development of the RAPP, which played a positive role in a certain historical phase, but failed to succeed in other tasks after most of the writers had switched to the side of socialism. One of the most important tasks of criticism today is to analyse types on the basis of our reality and literary material. We have to analyse literature according to its different genres. We should pay more attention to Western literature. Criticism cannot be reduced to the evaluation of a work or a description of its contents. For Bolshevik criticism, social analysis is not enough because it does not consider the work in its entirety; political notes are not enough either. Criticism acts as a channel for the party’s literary policy and poses important problems that are then transformed into literature. We must study the history of socialist realism. We cannot be satisfied with a realism that merely photographs life, because it does not take part in the struggle for the new reality. Even less satisfying is a romanticism that goes beyond the boundaries of our reality and detaches itself from real life. Literature must include revolutionary romanticism based on descriptions of real life. We have to romanticise and idealise the new trends and people in our reality. In this way, socialist realism is different from the realism of the past.