სოცრეალიზმის ერთი თავისებურების შესახებ: სოცრეალისტური ჰეპი ენდი. ON ONE OF THE PECULIARITIES OF SOCIAL REALISM: THE SOCIAL REALIST HAPPY END

Abstract

Readers have diverse life or aesthetic experiences and, as a result, have different expectations of art and literature. Some readers prefer works to have happy ends, while others want them to reflect the truth of life, no matter how painful or tragic it may be. The author is also free to make whatever decisions he wishes. The author determines what happens to the characters, how issues or conflicts are resolved, and how the literary work finishes. While the author’s choices are frequently guided by some reasoning and, even by certain preconditions, this freedom is, nevertheless, maintained. Naturally, the author chooses to depict life with its flaws based on his worldview and aesthetic values. According to his worldview and aesthetic ideals, the author naturally chooses whether to portray life in all its cruelty and contradictions, burden and aggravate the readers, leave them with thoughts and questions, or calm them down. The author may also choose to embellish reality, give the work a happy end, and allow love, kindness, and justice to triumph. Unfortunately, there were occasions- perfectly recalled by literary historians- when an oppressive ideology, a totalitarian state stood between the writer and his artistic-aesthetic perception of the world, between the work and the reader, and prevented both from satisfying their artistic-aesthetic needs. This force unwittingly interfered with literature and art, limiting the writer’s creative freedom and preventing the writer from saying or writing what he thought was required, as determined by his aesthetic preferences, artistic worldview, and reasoning. In the previous 70 years, the Soviet Union, a ruthless state that oppressed its citizens in all spheres of life, including literature and the arts, occupied about one-sixth of the planet. Social realism, which required writers to make choices in line with socialist law and communist doctrine and not deviate from the rigidly prescribed framework, predominated in literature and the arts. One of the most significant demands for socialist work was towards the end of the work, which was to be presented from a happy socialist perspective as an essential part of the picture of the Soviet human world. It was the honourable duty of every Soviet person to build communism, and its artistic description is the most significant purpose of Soviet art, of Soviet literature. The characters of the works of socialist realism and their lives or activities had to be involved in the processes aimed at achieving this goal. The events and characters described, whether solving global issues or more modest tasks, had at least to be organically related to a common goal, the construction of communism, and represent the “revolutionary development” of society. Therefore, it is natural that the socialist law imposed a mandatory happy end for the work of social realism which, due to its specificity, can be called the “Social Realistic Happy End”. The “Socialist Happy End” had one very significant and specific feature not defined and dictated by the laws of aesthetics but by the peculiarities of the state in which socialist realism emerged as an event. In particular, the fate of the hero did not determine the social realist “Happy End,” but the common goal of the construction of communism or the common cause. If the hero sacrificed himself for this goal and the latter’s realization was not questioned, everything would be fine, i.e. it was the “Happy End”. In Soviet reality, unfortunately, no one cared about the fate of the people. Even if millions of people had died, if nothing had threatened their ultimate goal, if they had died for communism, their deaths would have been justified. This is one of the most prominent characteristics of the “Social Realistic Happy End”. The absurdity of the situation was that communism, this new religion that sought to subjugate all aspects of society, and this new ideal of social order, to which the characters in socialist works were so willingly sacrificed, was a utopia and could never be realized.