Slovenska Literatura (Mar 2016)
The Shibboleth of Socialist Realism (Applying the Technical Term in Reflection of Literature Written in the First Half of the 1970s)
Abstract
The paper The Shibboleth of Socialist Realism deals with applying Socialist Realism as a technical term in the domestic reflection of literature written in the first half of the 1970s, i.e. at the outset of cultural normalization as part of social normalization. As opposed to the previous decade, the field of literature underwent fundamental changes; literature and its reflection were subjected to power. The requirements of the regime were conveyed through ideology. At that time the technical term Socialist Realism was brought back into use as part of both conception and literary criticism. It was restored by the regime as part of ideological control of literary field. Socialist Realism as a dominant direction paradigm was inaugurated and established as the only obligatory norm in literary practice at the turn of the 1950s. Reestablishing the concept after two decades posed a paradox as there was disproportion between the frequent use of the term in the contemporary thinking and the results of the creative practice at that time. Little of what has been preserved to date (from the reader´s or literary historian´s point of view) can be labelled as Socialist Realism. As opposed to the 1950s, the functional content of the term changed. A variety of methods became acceptable within its framework, therefore Socialist Realism could no longer represent the only method (like it did in the first half of the 1950s), as a result of which it stopped functioning as the binding guideline in terms of technique or subject – and lost a clear meaning. It was quite a frequent expression used in critical practice, however, none of those who used it tried to define it by means of the language immanent in literary reflection. The term thus lost its value as a criterion and therefore also its practicality, but it maintained its symbolic (ritualistic) value with regard to the contemporary regime. It became a shibboleth in both meanings of the word: „as an outdated idea, principle or phrase, which are no longer accepted by most people as important or adequate for present“ as well as a „rule, convention, word, which sets one group of people apart from another“, i.e. the writers and critics in the period of normalization who were at least on the outside willing to declare their loyalty to the regime, and those who did not do so.
