Sotsrealizm: Zhizn’ i smert’ v razvitom sotsializme

This article examines the process of reform and decline of Socialist Realism in the late Soviet period, when Socialist Realist theory was gradually liberalized as a consequence of its doctrinal dysfunction in the post-Stalinist period. With the weakening of institutions in line with the general relaxation of pressure and control during the era of Khrushchev-Brezhnev normalization, and with the continuous expansion of the thematic, conceptual, and instrumental range of the literary process after Stalin’s death, the softening of the doctrinal rigidity of the aesthetic regime of Stalinism was the result of cautious actions aimed at somehow synchronizing institutions, practice, and doctrine. The result of these actions was the deactivation of Socialist Realism as an operational category of repressive aesthetics, its historicization, and its complete alienation from the current literary process. Since what is primary in Socialist Realism are institutions and not theory, which serves only to camouflage them, with their collapse came the collapse of Socialist Realism itself.