Review of 'Political Economy of Socialist Realism' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
Brilliant, though rather repetitive book on the nature of the Soviet regime. Dobrenko claims that the Soviet pretensions to built their regime based on the materialist principles were a falsification. In his view the regime used culture (literature, film, art, human sciences, educational principles and practices, conceptualization of Soviet geography, of a Soviet person, and of the notion of production as an utmost human achievement)in order to create from ideas a new reality in which Soviet citizens lived. In that reality money and property had no meaning and people lived in equality and solidarity. They owned their country and expressed their natural creativity through their work and thus made everybody's life better and better. This reality clearly contradicted the situation on the ground - poverty, abuse, violence etc. Still, according to Dobrenko, the undertaking was a success. While Soviet people lived in the world of poverty and violence they also …
Brilliant, though rather repetitive book on the nature of the Soviet regime. Dobrenko claims that the Soviet pretensions to built their regime based on the materialist principles were a falsification. In his view the regime used culture (literature, film, art, human sciences, educational principles and practices, conceptualization of Soviet geography, of a Soviet person, and of the notion of production as an utmost human achievement)in order to create from ideas a new reality in which Soviet citizens lived. In that reality money and property had no meaning and people lived in equality and solidarity. They owned their country and expressed their natural creativity through their work and thus made everybody's life better and better. This reality clearly contradicted the situation on the ground - poverty, abuse, violence etc. Still, according to Dobrenko, the undertaking was a success. While Soviet people lived in the world of poverty and violence they also perceived their existence through the lenses of socialist realism. Thus Dobrenko claims that socialist realism as an idea created a cultural reality which became no less, and perhaps even more, real than the facts on the ground.