Материал: Проблемы социальных и гуманитарных наук. Радугин А.А., Перевозчикова Л.С

«Проблемы социальных и гуманитарных наук». Выпуск №3(13), 2017

Evgenii Dobrenko believes that “socialist realism is not only dozens of texts, but it is an endless sea of artistic production, including epics, novels, poems, plays. Socialist realism was important in its extensiveness” [Dobrenko, 1999, 9].

The Soviet intellectuals in the early communist period tried sovietize culture, literature and their successes made possible politicization, ideologization, and mythologization of utopia. The short period of discussions and relative cultural freedoms preceded the decisive and radical Sovietization of intellectual spaces in the Soviet Russia. Literature was among the first victims of Sovietization. Soviet criticism of the early Soviet Russia [Nikolaev, 2010] partly voluntary and partly forcibly took the responsibilities and functions of literature’s Sovietization and its political transformation in the ideological propaganda. The theorists of the new art emphatically denied the freedoms of the writer as a creator, insisted that “the revolution of literary form and cultural revolution” [Chuzhak, 2000, 66] in particular and social revolution in general “abolished the backgrounds that removed writer from fact and pushed him into the fiction” [Chuzhak, 2000, 14].

Some contemporary historians of Soviet culture [Gunter, 2010] presume that the statements about full Sovietization of literature are exaggerated because of Soviet literature, despite the fact that the communist ideology determined the main vectors and trajectories of its development, retained the traditional Russian collective representations. The early Soviet criticism was extremely active in the Sovietization of Russian literature and also assisted to the development and progress of the Soviet communist utopia because, as Evgenii Dobrenko presumes, “the critic lost functions of regulation of the literary process, the critic lost the right to self-evaluation, independent judgment and choice of material for analysis” [Dobrenko, 2011 23]. The writer, as theorists of the new art urged, must be a “builder” of the new state, abandon “literary fiction” and develop “the literature of fact” [Chuzhak, 2000, 11], but even radical critics [Chuzhak, 2000 48] warned writers against excessive idealization of revolution. The Soviet criticism [Emerson, 2011; Gunter, 2011] radically Sovietized writer, turned him into an agent of ideology, almost a government official, and freed him from creator’s functions.

The radical Soviet criticism stimulated utopian identity because its representatives insisted that the Soviet society had needs in books such as “Forest, Grain, Coal, Iron, Linen, Cotton, Paper, Locomotive, and Factory” [Tret'iakov, 2000, 72]. Soviet radicals predicted the death of the prerevolutionary genres and insisted that “it is difficult to acclimatize traditional psychological novel in Soviet conditions because its fable and the formula are useless for descriptions of the new material

... the psychological novel is sick and all diseases can kill it… it can die even from the common cold ... The form does not correspond to the climate” [Shklovskii, 2000, 136]. These sentiments actualized political, ideological and servilist functions of the Soviet literature that evolved as the literature of book and literature of newspaper because radical Soviet authors determined the newspaper as “today's bible” [Tret'iakov, 2000, 33].

These ideas of the early Soviet intellectuals stimulated utopian consciousness and identity of the Soviet literature of the interwar period because criticism proclaimed “truly Soviet literature of reality” and preached “the complete specification of the literature”. Other ideas of early Soviet criticism were more important and they determined relatively positive and even hothouse conditions for the development of utopian consciousness in the early Sovietised Russian literature. The idea of the primacy of “organization of society” [Chuzhak, 2000 21] stimulated sociologization of Russian prose and also assisted to the actualization of its utopian potential. The relationships of early Soviet intellectuals of attempts to radical politicize and indoctrinate the culture was diverse: while some accepted new forms and began to believe in them as a new political religion and faith of the future communist utopia, others might perceive the cultural trends and tendencies which later formed the socialist realism in another way.

Bulgarian literary historian Plamen Doinov [Doinov, 2013, 138] probably is not right when he presumes that it is impossible to perceive the socialist realism as a pure aesthetic platform or cultural fashion. The author of this book believes that some of the early Soviet intellectuals

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«Проблемы социальных и гуманитарных наук». Выпуск №3 (13), 2017

understood politicization and ideologization of art, including literature, as a pure fashion, but these political and cultural hobbies later transformed into political dependence on the ideological preferences of authorities. The political utopia in the Soviet early period of its history developed as an alternative to the old and archaic forms of utopian consciousness. Bolshevism in the political, cultural and aesthetic dimensions sanctioned and legitimized ideologization and political mission of literature, which emerged among the political and ideological tools of the new government and radical cultural elites with its modernist and futurist utopian poetics and aesthetics. The political Bolshevisation automatically attracted, inspired and stimulated the Sovietization of culture.

Contemporary Russian critic and writer Denis Dragunskii believes that the Sovietization had the most negative consequences and results because “our literature was moaned, it lost the best writers, then adapted to Bolshevism, but it was much worse” [Dragunskii, 2014, 6]. Political ideologues and theoreticians of Bolshevism tried to Sovietise and ideologize various forms of culture including literature immediately after the historical moment when they usurped power after the October revolution and killed the young Russian Republic that had not time to propose and develop its new forms of culture and language. Political and cultural languages and messages of the Bolsheviks after 1917 were more attractive and effective than the ideas of their opponents.

Despite attempts of old Russian intellectual elites, they were unsuccessful and doomed because archaic social class values and ideas of pre-revolutionary Russian utopia could not compete with the new radical and superclass Soviet intellectual projects which promoted and proposed nonclass futuristic communist utopia. Sovietization of cultural spaces became possible because the Bolsheviks radically changed the strategies of national policy. The Bolsheviks proclaimed the right of nations to self-determination instead of national discrimination and oppression and this strategy stimulated Sovietization of early oppressed ethnic groups and their national cultures. Therefore, the Soviet utopian project originally developed as an ideological from a political viewpoint and heterogeneous in its national and ethnic contexts.

The Bolshevik model of political and historical utopia was radically different from the earliest forms of utopian consciousness. If the pre-revolutionary forms of utopian consciousness were archaic, class and social, the new communist utopias were structurally different. Structural differences were the result of the attempts of Soviet communist utopia to use the heterogeneous cultures of modernity. The Soviet form of utopian consciousness and identity almost did never know what the cultural freedom and independence were because Bolshevism in a political context sought to control the ideological, literary and cultural activities of intellectuals. Natalia Arsent’eva in the first half of the 1990s suggested that this situation and the sense of “spiritual bondage” [Arsent'eva, 1993 3] defined the main directions of development and transformations of utopian and antiutopian trends in Russian literature.

Political control expressed in the institutionalization of socialist realism and assisted to the inevitable actualization of the services functions of Soviet literature in general and its utopias in particular. Denis Draguskii [Dragunskii, 2014, 103; Dragunskii, 2014, 116] presumes that the Soviet government never accepted and imagined the writer as a hero and, but it forced him to “confer, alter, rewrite” literature and its history according to ideological needs of the party. The political servilism of Soviet literature partially defined the ideological character of the Soviet utopia and facilitated its integration into the universal cultural paradigm of constructivism. Despite the efforts of the official Soviet literary criticism to deny the connections with Western culture and attempts to prove the uniqueness and sufficiency of the Soviet cultural discourse, the Soviet model of development of literature had a lot in common with Western cultural and intellectual practices and processes.

It is logical to suggest that the Soviet socialist realism in this context was a special case of modernism and all other forms, strategies and cultural practices of Soviet literature in the Soviet Union developed as national forms of modern, postmodern, constructivism and structuralism, but some historians prefer to interpret these events differently. For example, Evgenii Dobrenko believes

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«Проблемы социальных и гуманитарных наук». Выпуск №3(13), 2017

that socialist realism and modernism were mutually exclusive cultural trends because they proposed incompatible forms of utopia. The socialist realism, as Evgenii Dobrenko states, tried to “jump out of the history and create a pre-modern aesthetics of socialist realism ... it can be defined as postmodernism minus modernism” [Dobrenko, 1999, 9].

These Soviet culture strategies predetermined its ideologization, denial of modernism, but the Soviet intellectuals formally used postmodernist cultural practices and strategies. Soviet culture genetically and intellectually was very Western despite numerous attempts and desires to hide the genetic links. The modern and postmodern Soviet cultures were safely hidden under several layers of alluvial ideological maxims and political declarations. The modernist and constructivist roots, backgrounds and directions of Soviet literature's classical texts were dissolved in numerous books and articles where their authors declared that socialist realism was the only correct and possible way of development of the Sovietized Russian and national literatures.

Despite the considerable degree of indoctrination, Soviet literature retained some forms of utopian consciousness and identity that emerged in the early Soviet period, when intellectuals attempted to imagine and invent the correct political and ideological forms of utopia. The dimensions, recurrences, echoes and vestiges of utopian identity in the Sovietised Russian and national literatures were relatively diverse and heterogeneous, but the Soviet writers, including Russian (Nikolai Tihonov [Tihonov, 1985], Boris Lavreniov [Lavreniov, 1985], Iurii German [German, 1985 ] Sava Dungulov [Dungulov, 1985], Arkadii Sahnin [Sahnin, 1985], Viktor Stepanov [Stepanov, 1985]) and national (Abdullah Kahhar [Kahhar, 1985], Tengiz Gogoladze [Gogoladze, 1985], Muhtar Auezov [Auezov, 1985]) were captives and hostages of the constructivist nature of socialist realism. The soviet writers were compelled and forced to use constantly multiple metanarratives, which determined the main vectors, trajectories and lines of development of the Soviet utopian identity.

These metanarratives put the Soviet literature on the Procrustean bed between the communist ideology and the principles of political servilism. The Soviet writers permanently cultivated some deeply mythologized narratives including the following: the October Revolution and the victory of the communist utopia was inevitable; Communist utopia is the only correct utopia of creative labour and free creativity, the Soviet utopia is a revolutionary utopia of war and struggle; Soviet society is ideologically and politically correct society and communism is the only possible future. These formal and informal rules determined the main vectors of the mature Soviet political ideological utopia, but early Soviet classics were more diverse and heterogeneous. Actually, the early Soviet classics was one of the few bastions of true utopian consciousness and the first Soviet writers preferred to actualize ideological and political functions of literature in the wider context of cultural Sovietization.

Sovietization of culture stimulated the actualization of utopian dimensions in Russian and other national identities despite the fact that Russian and national intellectuals did not seek to be the authors of new political utopias. They did not recognize and deny the utopian nature of communism because they believed that communism was not a utopia, but it will become the future of mankind. If the representatives of the mature Soviet literature used the idea of a communist utopia to advance in the Soviet literary hierarchy, the early writers, on the contrary, could holy and sincere believe in the idea of a communist utopia. These features of political feelings, the perception of belongs to the historical moment of radical utopia identified differences between aesthetics and poetics of the early and mature politicized Soviet prose. Bolshevik revolution inspired Sovietization of culture, but the process of Sovietization was not an instantaneous process and lasted until the middle of the 1930s. Early Soviet authors [Ivanov, 2013; Slonimskii, 2013; Pozner, 2013; Shklovskii, 2013; Radishchev, 2013; Lunts, 2013; Nikitin, 2013] idealized the new political system and believed in its social and ideological potential, but their characters were not blindly loyal and obedient slaves of the communist and ideological utopia.

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«Проблемы социальных и гуманитарных наук». Выпуск №3 (13), 2017

If the early Soviet authors actualized the forms of utopian consciousness and identity, they made them extremely naive and too idealized. The utopianism of the early Sovietised prose appeared as collective intellectual hopes for the progress of the freedom and creativity, but those dreams were illusions because the logic of the Sovietization and indoctrination imagined and invented literature as the only one among numerous tools in the arsenal of political indoctrination and formation of a new society. Early Soviet intellectuals were weaker than the Soviet political regime and they lost in competition with it: Soviet political elite marginalized writers deprived their freedom and made them mutate from free creators in the ideological slaves of the state. Soviet intellectuals lost in the confrontation with the authorities because they were too intellectual. Soviet political groups monopolized the right to form and to propose new identities, including their utopian forms. The Soviet regime marginalized intellectual forms and versions of utopian identity, replaced them with ideological and ideologized consciousness. Writers were forced to become involuntary and voluntary captives of the regime in their attempts to modernize the archaic post-imperial heritage radically in this situation. Sovietization of identities in the Soviet Union led to the fact that Soviet society revolves and develops as the ideological and political utopia.

The loyal chorus of numerous writers sang its successes and achievements, despite the fact that early formal Soviet literature was far from the extremes of the ideological orthodoxy of the Soviet utopia. Soviet intellectuals between the two world wars actualized various topics in their texts and actualized the forms and dimensions of utopian consciousness. The Soviet authors combined different genres in their texts, but the writings of utopias did not have epidemic calibres in the Sovietized literature. The utopian and anti-utopian motives appeared in the texts of several Soviet writers, including Aleksei Chapygin [Chapygin, 2001], Viacheslav Shishkov [Shishkov, 2001], Lev Gumilevskii [Gumilevskii, 2001], Marietta Shaginian [Shaginian, 2001], Vsevolod Ivanov [Ivanov, 2001], Mihail Kozyrev [Kozyrev, 2001]. The utopian and anti-utopian motifs and images in the Soviet prose between the two world wars were relatively diverse and heterogeneous, but the Soviet utopian mentality cultivated several metanarratives, including the gradual erosion and destruction of the old, traditional, archaic, collectivist forms of the regionalized and localized utopia. Soviet authors tried to nationalize the utopia of communism, but the nationalization had little impact on the basic trajectories of the Soviet communist utopia because the nationalization of utopias was possible in the national republics solely.

Marietta Shaginian [Shaginian, 1946] for example, tried to connect principles of communist idea with values of three Transcaucasian nationalisms in her book "Sovetskoe Zakavkaz’e" which was an attempt to invent and imagine the ideologically correct and loyal Georgian, Armenian and Azerbaijani identities as identities of dynamically changing and developing regions where the Soviet utopia and Soviet modernization were stronger than archaic and traditional relations and institutions. Soviet authors in these cultural and intellectual situations invented the image of the USSR as the country of the new winning and progressive utopia which was radically different to pre-Soviet relations and institutions. Formally Marietta Shaginian’s texts do not belong to the classical utopian tradition, but in fact, they actualised different forms and dimensions of utopian discourse because utopia has system meaning for the Soviet regime. The Soviet state had a stable need for the consolidation and unification of society and the ideologized utopia was extremely useful in this situation. Political collective faith in the ideological communist utopia was the most optimal form of control and enforcement in the Soviet authoritarianism.

The Soviet authors glorified radical political and social changes and transformations, destructions of pre-revolutionary institutions and relations. The Soviet prose in this intellectual situation actualized its new political role in the contexts of indoctrination and the formation of new political traditions. The Soviet writers believed that national cultures and identities faced the new Soviet utopia which sought to force them to upgrade and make parts of the Communist utopia. Some Soviet authors allowed themselves to revise utopia and transform it into an anti-utopia because they were brave enough to understand the nature of the Soviet authoritarian communist

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«Проблемы социальных и гуманитарных наук». Выпуск №3(13), 2017

experiment, which promoted erosion of the human personality. Some of the early Soviet writers, including Vladimir Bill’-Belotserkovskii, actualized the utopian moments in his plays. Vladimir Bill’-Belotserkovskii in “Storm” [Bill'-Belotserkovskii, 1988] actualized archaic collective utopian views of the world in the title of his play, which symbolized a radical break with the old world and the transition to the new world after the storm as a form of the sacred cleansing that symbolically made the world pure. Vladimir Maiakovskii, Lidiia Seifullina and Vsevolod Ivanov were among the most talented and sincere apologists and theoreticians of the early political ideological utopia in its communist version.

Lidiia Seifullina was the founder of anthropological line in the Soviet ideological utopia and other writers, including Nikolai Ostrovskii [Ostrovskii, 1985] and Andrei Platonov [Platonov, 1985] attempted to revive communist utopia and anthropologize it, but their attempts were unsuccessful. Actually Nikolai Ostrovskii’s novel “Kak zakalialas’ stal’” (“How the Steel Was Tempered”) become a cornerstone in the tradition of Soviet political hagiography, which led to the schematization and idealization of the builder and inhabitant of communist utopia which actualized their striking resemblance with religious saints though the Sovietized Russian literature denied religion in general. The political and ideological utopia of Nikolai Ostrovskii was important because the author proposed a new language of the Soviet quasi-religious lives as a system and an integral element of utopian consciousness. Vladimir Mayakovskii’s “Mystery-Bouffe” was absolutely other and this play became one of the first simultaneous attempts to indoctrinate and politicize the cultural discourse in the context of actualization of the utopian motifs and forms in new political identity.

The structure of actors that included “seven pairs of clean”, “seven pairs of unclean”, the intelligentsia, the lady with the cartons, saints, and devils actualized heterogeneous, transcultural and inter-temporal nature of the world Vladimir Maiakovskii described in his play. The transit to the utopia of communism was one of the main cultural messages of the play: “the way is tempered, smooth and clean. Be the first - ahead of the driver! In the wave! On the rails! The joyful house built in the extracted labour is close. Eat space, breathing into the car. Only in the car, we will step in the coming… Step by step” [Maiakovskii, 1987 89 - 90]. Vladimir Maiakovskii’s play “MysteryBouffe” became the anthem of the liberated machine as a collective inhabitant of the future communist utopia: “I'm sorry, worker! Worker, I'm sorry! You gathered, produced... And we took and enslaved. Wave, machine, wave, Mahina. Steel tirelessly, steel without rest - we were told to carry fat on the tires, they were told to work in factories. The shaft on shaft tore you in centuries… Shout, motors, great joy, fats are knocked down, now I'm free! Goody for plants, the wheels are moving, circling in the railway lines” [Maiakovskii, 1987, 98].

The machine in the political and poetic imagination has become a symbol of progress and modernization that actualized modernist technocratic nature of the early Soviet utopia because its representatives radically and decisively tore the old traditional and archaic poetics. Vladimir Maiakovskii was among the first Soviet authors who tried to imagine and invent a radical version of the communist utopia, which in its text had a lot in common with archaic cultural collective representations and ideas of paradise. The early Soviet authors, including Lidiia Seifullina, actualized the sacred form of the communist utopia as a form of political, social and gender liberation and renewal of the world. The novel “Virineia” [Seifullina, 1988] was an attempt to combine the forms of political, social and gender utopia with utopias-liberation. Lidiia Seifullina actualized liberatory character of the Soviet communist utopia because the text “Virineia” was an attempt to actualize Soviet utopian experiment. “Virineia” also become a utopia-revolution, one of the first attempts to actualize role and significance of the revolution as the radical destruction of the old archaic social world and transit to the new futuristic world of communism as a form of utopia which radically and decisively solved social and political problems of the old world. Actually “Virineia” was an attempt to create a universal political utopia, utopia-construct and utopia-comics,

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