The School of Socialist Realist Education: The Case of Fedor Gladkov. Issue 1 (2nd January 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Lane, Tora
• Is Part Of: Scando-slavica. Volume 63:Issue 1(2017)
• Page Start: 43
• Page End: 59
• Publication Date: 2017-01-02
• Subjects: Socialist realism -- modern realism -- modernization -- education -- Fedor Gladkov -- Maxim Gor′kij; Slavic philology -- Periodicals; Scandinavian philology -- Periodicals; 491.805
• DOI: 10.1080/00806765.2017.1320108
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0080-6765

Abstract

ABSTRACT: The aim of this paper is to reconsider the doctrine of Socialist Realism against the backdrop of the tradition of modern realism as an aesthetic form of instructing the modern subject through sentimental political education. Socialist Realism is here considered as a school for instructing the reader to an understanding of historical and social reality that is based on an idea of a transference between reality and literature proper to modern realism. I look in particular at Fedor Gladkov's rewritings of Cement to examine how reality and literature fuse in a narrative describing the genesis of an oeuvre. I argue that what is characteristic for Gladkov is that he as a writer was willing to learn how to write in the image of Gor′kij because he considered literature as a school of learning how to write and at the same time how to acquire the correct awareness and knowledge of historical reality. This was also what guided him in the editions. The reason for doing so was that he was set on reality, and not on the technique of writing.