Socialist Realism In Anton Chekhov And Lev Tolstoy

Although socialist realist literature was a continuation of the traditional realism in that it also depicted the same subjects, it was a cessation of the latter since it significantly different from the latter in terms of its form and functions. While the nineteenth century Russian realism, best represented by the works of Anton Chekhov and Lev Tolstoy, depicts life as it is and criticizes it, socialist realism depicts life as what the Bolsheviks – this point is especially important since they held the political power – wanted it to be and thus, idealizes it. Starting from the Golden Age in the nineteenth century, Russian literature had been subversive: “the classical writers of Imperial Russia had criticized their society and opposed its evils and errors” (Slonim 162). In his play, The Government Inspector, Nikolai Gogol satirizes the extensive political corruption of the Tsarist Empire. Anton Chekhov analogizes the Empire with a prison in his novella, Ward No. 6. Hence the term “critical realism” was characterized by Chekhov and Tolstoy.
Socialist realism, however, was conforming to the Communist state: it “affirm[s] positive aspects of Soviet society, and exalt man …show more content…
Every work had to have a happy ending in which the proletariat cause is justified and glorified.
In this way, socialist realism’s relationship with politics was extremely significant in ways that no other art form’s ever was. Therefore, socialist realism was not just a cessation of the Russian tradition of art and literature, but a “completely new and unique phenomenon” in the world tradition (Dobrenko