People under communism; Literature to order, part three

Stalin looked thoughtful wondering what he could send her in return. Then calling someone he asked cakes to be put in a nice little basket. As soon as the basket was brought what a pie of I asked leave to go. You done well to act as you did Stalin said at parting. Don't take any notice of anyone who comes down on you for it. We have too many officials as it is. You done well very well. And as he looked into what a pious eyes his face suddenly lit up as though a gleam of sunshine passed over it it was near sunset when vote upon have returned home. I'll lie down for a while he said. I don't want to see anyone. Her own. Stalin and Soviet literature today has taken on the stature of a

legendary folk figure still haunting the earth a kind of fairy godfather who changes everything by his mere presence. He is already a supernatural being. People are struck dumb not merely by his presence but even by the reported telephone call or the mere mention of his interest in them. He is more than a Soviet God. But his miracles are not only performed in his lifetime but people believe in them in his lifetime. Stalin has touched socialist realism with his party wand and has transformed it into socialist unrealism. In truth one may well wonder what has actually happened to socialist realism. The much vaunted credo of Soviet literature or since the 1946 resolution of the Central Committee on literary matters that is under the burden of such uncompromising controls one naturally asks the question can post war

literature or have any relevance at all to the reality of life in the Soviet Union. A recent Soviet interpretation of socialist realize I'm in keeping with the new party policy in literature or conveys the notion of. Utter irrelevance. The critic writes in describing whatever contradictions the Soviet writer notices in life. In depicting the struggle between the new socialist principles and the vestiges of the past in the minds of the people. He knows that to show all this correctly he must have a clear understanding of the fact that under conditions of Soviet reality the new is bound to win. The writer who in depicting the vestiges of the past in the minds of people merely records events without interfering in their course without taking sides as a champion of the new. Such a writer is not a socialist realist. His position is that of an adherent of trans hostile to rail ism and

I should add that this critique goes on to condemn certain characters in recent Soviet literature as non-typical and as gross violations of truth because the cowardice of one an army officer leads to the destruction of a whole division. And because a soldier in another work displays human weaknesses these characters Bickley is the critic. Land is against reality. In short it appears that in this new world of Soviet reality values can never triumph over virtue evil over good. The Qods are eternally stacked against the bad man. He's not even real. At least if he succeeds it is acceptable to write about bad people in Soviet literature only as foils for the good. But they must never win out. They are read the reformed in the end jailed or killed off. This amounts almost to a new kind of the ology

Christian theology allows for unreconstructed bad men on earth the guilty pay and how communist the ology insists that badness can never succeed. At least only in the UN socialistic real ism in the West and America. Thus a socialist realism in Soviet literature today seems to have been transformed into the unreality of a kind of Soviet fairy tale in which the wicked stepmother steeped in booze watched survivals always gets just desserts in the end and the persecuted comes a moka heroine always marries the brave communist hero and lives happily ever afterwards in the socialist paradise of the USSR. We must conclude then that by virtue of the official controlled Soviet literature today is obliged to reflect a negative sense of reality the

idealisation of life in the Soviet Union which the party voiced upon the public both is a reflection of communist aspirations for the future and as an opiate to minister to its present discontents now in. The era. Of the available in Aurora Illinois. Or am I. You have just heard literature to order one in a transcribed series. Grahams people under communism based on documented evidence and expert knowledge about the power and intentions of the Soviet Union. Materials for this broadcast were supplied by Dr. A.J. Simmons chairman of the department of Slavic languages at Columbia University. This series as a whole was prepared in consultation with scholars from the Russian Research Center at Harvard University the Hoover

Institute and library at Stanford University. And the Russian Institute of Columbia University. Your narrator was Dr Ernest J Simmons. This program was produced and directed by Frank pap. These programs are prepared and distributed by the National Association of educational broadcasters and are made possible under a grant from the fund for adult education an independent organization established by the Ford Foundation. This is the NABJ network.