MONOCULTURE | A Recent History

Anatoly Lunacharsky was a prominent revolutionary, critic and essayist appointed as the first head of the Bolshevik People's Commissariat for Education (Narkompros). In his speech titled 'Socialist Realism', given on the Second Plenary Session of the Organising Committee of the Union of Soviet Writers on 12 February 1933, and published in Soviet Theatre magazine, Lunacharsky considers art as a significant force for socialist struggle and socialist construction. Lunacharsky emphases the social role of art and provides a definition of the Socialist Realist method, while contrasting it against other forms of realistic art, such as 'bourgeois', orstatic realism, naturalism and romantic realism. He concludes that one of the main differences between Socialist Realism and other artistic styles is the definition of 'truth' in art. A Socialist Realist perceives truth not as given fact, but as changing and evolving matter. Thus a reliable depiction of truth in arts requires an “analysis of reality in its revolutionary development”. The term Socialist Realism emerged in the spring of 1932 in connection with the creation of the Union of Soviet Writers.This volume of Soviet Theatre magazine was the last published issue before the closure of the magazine after the 1932 decree named On the Restructuring of Literary and Artistic Organisations came into force, which caused the dissolution of the existing literature and art groups, restrictions in journalistic activity and the formation of state controlled creative unions. Membership in the unions was compulsory for anyone willing to continue their artistic activity.