O socialističeskom realizme (di V. Kirpotin) [1933] - [D135]

Concise description of the directive:

The essay by Valeriy Kirpotin contributes to defining the theoretical foundations of socialist realism, raising the question of the relationship between art and truth.
In Kirpotin’s view, the bourgeoisie has long since lost its relatively progressive role in history. Its domination has become irreconcilable with the development of literature and art. Bourgeois literature, now mercenary and subordinated to political and economic power, has forfeited what once constituted its strength: the ability to depict faithfully, through artistic imagery, the essence of reality. While capitalism was still in the ascending phase of its development, bourgeois literature was able — within certain limits — to tell the truth about the reality it portrayed and was not afraid to do so. Today, however, even a subjectively honest writer can no longer portray the capitalist world truthfully unless he takes an open stand against it, aligning himself with the working class.
Symbolism, despite its formal refinement, marked the decline of Russian bourgeois literature and became an expression of its demise. Art cannot fulfil its political and educational function if it remains incomprehensible to the masses; only through figurative forms capable of offering a truthful representation of the essence of the world can it perform this task. Bourgeois formalism, by contrast, seeks to deprive the proletariat of art as an instrument of class struggle. It thus stands as an enemy of art itself, carrying out an ideologically destructive action against its very nature. This is exemplified in Kirpotin’s critique of Viktor Shklovsky, “guilty” of advocating the “apriorism of artistic form” (p. 35), which inevitably leads to the removal or subordination of content.
Only proletarian literature—created by writers who have consciously taken the side of the working class—possesses the power to embody, in its figurative content, the truth of reality and to serve as a vehicle of socialist consciousness.

Ilaria Aletto, Maria Zavyalova