სოცრეალიზმის, როგორც საბჭოთა ლიტერატურის თეორიული მეთოდის, კრიტიკული შესწავლა და თანამედროვე შეფასებები უცხოურ ლიტერატურათმცოდნეობაში

Abstract

Theoretical works created regarding the main methods of Soviet literature- Socialist Realism, differ significantly from each other concerning their ideological vector and content. Studies conducted in the former USSR and other countries, both in the Soviet and post-Soviet periods, are distinguished by different approaches. The study of the theoretical issues of Socialist Realism was one of the most important, sharply ideologized tasks of the Soviet literary criticism. There are many works in Georgian literature written in the Soviet era when Social Realism was discussed and evaluated from an officially accepted standpoint (B. Zhgenti, A. Topuria, S. Radiani, G. Jibladze, S. Chilaia, and others). However, some scholars took a different position in that era (a treatise by Abram Terz, “What is Socialist Realism?”). In the last period of the Soviet Empire, Georgia also revealed a critical attitude towards Socialist Realism (Akaki Bakradze’s “Taming of Writing”). This period marks the beginning of a new ideological and theoretical interpretation of the Soviet past. The book by Catherine Clarke, “History as a Ritual”, was of great significance concerning the exploration of both Socialist Realism and Soviet literature. H. Gunter’s “Nationalization of Literature: The Creation and Functioning of the Socialist Law in the Soviet Literature of the 1930s,” (published in Stuttgart in 1984) is considered significant research of the 1980s. A special place in the study of Social Realism is occupied by a thousand-page collection “The Socialist Law”, published in 2000, “The Formation of the Soviet Writer” (1999), by American professor Eugene Dobrenko is a significant fundamental study as well. There are two tendencies in the evaluation of Social Realism in modern literature. One group of researchers tries to critically evaluate Social Realism as a product of the Soviet era. On the other hand, in other researchers’ evaluations, one can feel a certain sympathy and nostalgia (Yuri Borev, “Socialist Realism: The view of a modern person and a modern view”, 2008). At the beginning of the XXI century, the study of Socialist Realism became more popular in the world. The interest in this phenomenon deepened in the Georgian and post-Soviet works dedicated to the issue. The absence of ideological pressure and a certain temporal distance allows the researchers interested in this issue to boldly and objectively analyze the subject of the study.