For decades Stalinist literature, film, and art was almost exclusively deemed political propaganda imposed from on high, devoid of any aesthetic significance. In this book, Evgeny Dobrenko suggests an entirely new view: socialism did not produce Socialist Realism to "prettify reality"; rather, Socialist Realism itself produced socialism by elevating socialism to reality status, giving it material form. Without art, socialism could not have materialized.
Bringing together the Soviet historical experience and Stalin-era art-novels, films, poems, songs, painting, photography, architecture, and advertising-Dobrenko examines Stalinism's representational strategies and demonstrates how real socialism was begotten of Socialist Realism. Socialist Realism, he concludes, was Stalinism's most effective sociopolitical institution.
- ISBN10 0300122802
- ISBN13 9780300122800
- Publish Date 16 October 2007
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Yale University Press
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 408
- Language English
- URL http://wiley.com/remtitle.cgi?isbn=9780300122800