Genre in Socialist Realism

Of all the things socialist realismn has been compared with, perhaps the least pejorative is its characterization as a kind of twentieth-century incarnation of neoclassicism. That is to say, socialist realism can be seen as a systenm based on clearly defined and delimuited genres, and these genres exist in a strict hierarchy. Eighteenth-century literature certainly provides a comfortable mnetaphor because it invokes a picture of restraint, stasis, clarity and rigidity, in other words, those modifiers that so often characterize the monologic tendency of socialist realismll. In formual terms, descriptions of this kind mnake sense if we wish to mnark the systemn's inherent conservatism-its preference for repetition and abhorrence of experimnentation-and to secure its imuage as a bloated, catatonic monstrosity. But if we wish to Llnderstand how the systeimi functioned on its own terms, then we imay find that our conventional understanding of genre is insufficient for the muatei-ial at hand. That this may be the case, ironically, can be seen in the nlature of charges generally leveled at socialist realismn. One need not go far in western criticism to find (in differing volume) a condeinliation of the systemn's "pollution," say, of poetry, art or folklore with ideological imnperatives; similarly, it is by now axiomnatic that the category of "history" in this period should be seenas little iiore than a corruption or falsification of what we would call the samne. That socialist realist texts were bound to an ideological donminant is exceedingly familiar. At the samne timie, however, instead of citing differences to attack or reject its representative texts, we can use theml to elucidate how socialist realisin was a literary systemn that operated with distinct evaluative criteria. The terms that we commnonly emuploy to idenitify, define and judge literature (an-d I include here both fiction and non-fiction) may be inappropriate when we transfer the object at hand into a socialist realist context. However self-evident this point rnay be, sometimes it is lost amidst the puish and pull of politics and emotion that can color critical investigations of socialist realislm. Most often, the differences that socialist realism presents as a systemn are enlisted as ammiiunition for excoriating its claims and products. Yet examining the system from the "inside" need neither lead to a nmanltle of absolute relativism nor be seen as an attemnpt to juistify its legacya point Saul Morson and Katerina Clark have effectively argued in alternate examinations of the system's functionial intenitions and the problems they pose for "outside" critics.' Indeed, in the end, the issue at hand is that of subjecting socialist realisml to the saml-e kind of in-