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The Industry of Truing: Socialist Realism, Reality, Realization

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Petre Petrov
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Abstract

Most existing accounts of socialist realism rely, implicitly or explicitly, on a commonsense notion of truth as correspondence between representation and its object (the state of affairs being represented). In this view, socialist realism is commonly denounced as an epistemological fraud, while quasi-dialectical formulas such as "reality in its revolutionary development" are viewed condescendingly as the fraud's fanciful garnish. Such an approach fails to see in Stalinist culture a radical shift in the understanding of truth—a shift that has less to do with Marxist orthodoxy than it does with the intellectual reflexes of early twentieth-century modernity. In this article, Petre Petrov sets out to describe this shift and, in doing so, to propose a novel theoretical framework for understanding Stalinist socialist realism. The work of Martin Heidegger from the late 1920s through the 1930s serves as an all-important reference point in the discussion insofar as it articulates in philosophical idiom a turn from an epistemological to an ontological conception of truth.

Type
Controversy
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 70 , Issue 4 , Winter 2011 , pp. 873 - 892
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 2011

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References

The epigraph is taken from Pil'niak, Boris, Golyi god, in Sochineniia v trekh tomakh (Moscow, 1994), 1:139.Google Scholar

1. Chegodaeva, Mariia, Sotsrealizm: Mify i real'nost' (Moscow, 2003), 53–54, 58.Google Scholar Capitalization in the original.

2. Rosenthal, Bernice, “Sotsrealizm i nitssheanstvo,” in Günther, Hans and Dobrenko, Evgenii, eds., Sotsrealisticheskii kanon (St. Petersburg, 2000), 57.Google Scholar Emphasis in the original.

3. The Soviet locus classicus for the role of myth in socialist realism is Maksim Gor'kii's report to the First Congress of the Union of Soviet Writers. See Pervyi vsesoiuznyi s"ezd sovetskikh pisatelei: Stenograficheskii otchet (Moscow, 1934), 5-19.

4. Dobrenko, Evgeny, The Political Economy of Socialist Realism (New Haven, 2007), 5, 4.Google Scholar Emphasis in the original.

5. Ibid., 5. Emphasis in the original.

6. Such assertions become even more puzzling when one reads, in another place, that "Socialist Realist reality is not 'more real' than empirical reality." Ibid., 46.

7. See Groys, Boris, The Total Art of Stalinism: Avant-Garde, Aesthetic Dictatorship, and Beyond (Princeton, 1992).Google Scholar For the criticism, see Dobrenko, Political Economy, 44-46.

8. Eva Geulen shows the same dialectic at work in the concept of "authenticity": "Au-thenticity is a belated effect. In the beginning was not the original, but rather the reproduction, which makes the concept of authenticity possible in the first place. Authenticity becomes 'authentic' only against the background of reproducibility. That means, however, that authenticity is compromised from the beginning, inauthentic from the start, for its origin lies not in itself, but rather in its opposite, reproduction." Geulen, Eva, “Under Construction: Walter Benjamin's 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,'” in Richter, Gerhard, ed., Benjamin's Ghosts: Interventions in Contemporary Literary and Cultural Theory (Stanford, 2002), 135.Google Scholar

9. At this point, I am using the word realization in a deliberately ambiguous way. I would like to maintain this ambiguity so as to make palpable the all-important semantic tension between the subjective and objective meanings of the word.

10. Shaginian, Marieta, “Besedy s nachinaiushchim avtorom,” Novyi mir 3 (1934): 201–10.Google Scholar

11. "Before" here means both "in front," in the spatial terms of a spectacle with which one is confronted, and "prior," in terms not so much of temporal as of ontological antecedence.

12. The most influential and extensive argument for a radical change in the trajectory of Heidegger's thinking can be found in William J. Richardson, Heidegger: Through Phenomenology to Thought (The Hague, 1974), esp. 229-54.

13. Richardson, who sees the seminar On the Essence of Truth (delivered in 1930, pub-lished in 1943) as marking the turning point in Heidegger's philosophical trajectory, provides this pithy gloss on the Kehre: "The characteristics of this change can be stated easily enough. The purpose of [Being and Time] was primarily to pose the Being-question, but in the event it proved to be principally an analysis of the Being-comprehension of There-being [Dasein]. The focal point, then, was There-being, and Being itself was seen in this perspective; Being (the World) was considered basically as the project of There-being. In [On the Essence of Truth], however, the focal point of Heidegger's reflection passes subtly from There-being to Being itself." Richardson, Heidegger, 238.

14. For a discussion of Heidegger's linguistic handling of the "Event," the "True," the "Lighting," and the "Open," see Prufer, Thomas, “Glosses on Heidegger's Architectonic Word-Play: 'Lichtung' and 'Ereignis,' 'Bergung' and 'Wahrnis,'” Review of Metaphysics 44, no. 3 (March 1991): 607–12.Google Scholar

15. A clear testimony to this fact is provided in Heidegger's late "Seminar in Zähringen": "This clearing…this freed dimension, is not the creation of man, it is not man. On the contrary, it is that which is assigned to him, since it is addressed to him: it is that which is destined to him." Heidegger, Martin, “Seminar in Zähringen 1973,” in Four Seminars, trans. Mitchell, Andrew and Francois Raffoul, (Bloomington, 2003), 73.Google Scholar In similar spirit are the remarks found in The Principle of Reason: "We are the ones bestowed by and with the clearing and lighting of being in the Geschick of being…But we do not just stand around in this clearing and lighting without being addressed; rather we stand in it as those who are claimed by the being of beings. As the ones standing in the clearing and lighting of being we are the ones bestowed, the ones ushered into the time play-space. This means we are the ones engaged in and for this play-space, engaged in building on and giving shape to the clearing and lighting of being—in the broadest and multiple sense, in preserving it." Heidegger, Martin, The Principle of Reason, trans. Lilly, Reginald (Bloomington, 1996), 86.Google Scholar

16. In early Heidegger the situation is the obverse, as the following passage from Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics (1929) makes evident. Here Dasein is responsible for the cleared space in which the encounter with beings occurs: "All finite beings must have this basic ability, which can be described as a turning toward…[orientation toward…] which lets something become an object. In this primordial act of orientation, the finite being first pro-poses to itself a free space [Spielraum] within which something can 'correspond' to it. To hold oneself in advance in such a free-space and to form it originally is nothing other than transcendence which marks all finite comportment [Verhalten] with regard to the essent." Heidegger, Martin, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, trans. Churchill, James S. (Bloomington, 1962), 75.Google Scholar Emphasis added.

17. As explained by Hans-Georg Gadamer: "Heidegger wants to mediate between the older point of departure from Dasein (in which its being is at stake) and the new movement of thought of the 'there' [Da] in which das Sein or Being forms a clearing. In the word place [Stdtte] this latter emphasis comes to the fore: it is the scene of an event, and not primarily the site of the activity of Dasein." Gadamer, Hans-Georg, “The Way in the Turn (1979),” in Heidegger's Ways, trans. Stanley, John W. (Albany, 1994), 129–30.Google Scholar

18. See Heidegger, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics. For Heidegger's own narrations of how his thought developed after Being and Time, see Martin Heidegger, "Letter on Humanism," in Basic Writings, from Being and Time (1927) to The Task of Thinking (1964) (New York, 1993), 249-50; Martin Heidegger, "Seminar in Le Thor 1969," in Four Seminars, 40-41 ; Martin Heidegger, "Preface," in Richardson, Heidegger, viii-xxiii.

19. This course of lectures was delivered during the summer semester of 1927 at the University of Marburg, only a few months after the appearance of Being and Time.

20. See Heidegger, Martin, Being and Time, trans. Stambaugh, Joan (Albany, 1996), 20–26.Google Scholar The "destruction" was to have been accomplished in the projected part 2 of the treatise, which never materialized.

21. The thesis is expounded first in the early treatise "The Sole Possible Argument for a Demonstration of God's Existence" (1763) and later incorporated in the Critique of Pure Reason. See Kant, Immanuel, “The Sole Possible Argument for a Demonstration of God's Existence,” Theoretical Philosophy, 1755-1770, trans. Walford, David and Meerbote, Ralf (Cambridge, Eng., 1992), 107–201 Google Scholar, and Kant, Immanuel, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Guyer, Paul and Wood, Allen W. (Cambridge, Eng., 1998), 563–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22. This distinction parallels the one between "intension" and "extension."

23. See Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 567.

24. The meaning of "project(-ing)" {Entitmrf, entwerfen) is discussed at length in Heidegger, Beingand Time, 145-51, 221-23, 260-63.

25. Heidegger, Principle of Reason, 86. Emphasis added. A similarly decisive gesture of "putting aside" the subject is performed in this passage from the seminar What Is Called Thinking? (1951-52): "That which directs us to think, gives us directions in such a way that we first become capable of thinking, and thus are as thinkers, only by virtue of its directive.…Man takes a special part in the process, in that he performs the thinking. Yet this fact, that man is naturally the performer of thinking, need not further concern the investigation of thinking. The fact goes without saying. Being irrelevant, it may be left out of our reflection on thinking. Indeed, it must be left out." Heidegger, Martin, What Is Called Thinking, trans. Glenn Gray, J. (New York, 1976), 115.Google Scholar Emphasis in the original.

26. On Heidegger's consciously elusive and polysemic deployment of Wahren (whose basic meaning is "to preserve, protect") and Wahren ("to last, abide"), see Reginald Lilly, "Translator's Introduction," in Heidegger, Principle of Reason, xviii-xix.

27. See Heidegger, Martin, “On the Question of Being” (1955), in Pathmarks, trans. McNeill, William (Cambridge, Eng., 1998), 302 Google Scholar; Heidegger, , “Summary of a Seminar on the Lecture 'Time and Being,'” On Time and Being, trans. Stambaugh, Joan (1972; Chicago, 2002), 27.Google Scholar

28. After the foregoing discussion, it should be obvious why "reality" and "actuality" are treated here as interchangeable notions. Within the overarching movement of making-present, their difference is sublated.

29. The issue of Heiddegger's involvement with National Socialism is treated in numerous publications. The more significant ones include: Farias, Victor, Heidegger et le nazisme (Paris, 1987)Google Scholar; Derrida, Jacques, Of Spirit: Heidegger and the Question, trans. Bennington, Geoffrey and Bowlby, Rachel (Chicago, 1989)Google Scholar; Lacoue-Labarthe, Philippe, Heidegger, Art, and Politics: The Fiction of the Political, trans. Turner, Chris (Oxford, 1990)Google Scholar; Rickey, Christopher, Revolutionary Saints: Heidegger, National Socialism and Antinomian Politics (University Park, 2002)Google Scholar; Ward, James F., Heidegger's Political Thinking (Amherst, 1995)Google Scholar; Reiner Schürmann, Heidegger on Being and Acting: From Principles to Anarchy, trans. Christine-Marie Gros (Bloomington, 1987); Michael E. Zimmerman, Heidegger's Confrontation with Modernity: Technology, Politics, Art (Bloomington, 1990); Bernhard Radloff, Heidegger and the Question of National Socialism: Disclosure and Gestalt (Toronto, 2007).

30. The issue is discussed in the first of two chapters of Negative Dialectics, devoted to a critique of Heidegger and Heidegger-inspired ontological investigations. See Adorno, Theodor, Negative Dialectics, trans. Ashton, E. B. (New York, 1995), 61–96.Google Scholar

31. Moshe Lewin has highlighted most insistently the turbulent and chaotic nature of Russia's history during the early twentieth century and the significance of this fact for the shaping of the Stalinist system. A reference to his influential book will have to substitute for a historical exposition, which is well beyond the scope of the present article. See Lewin, Moshe, The Making of the Soviet System: Essays in the Social History of Interwar Russia (New York, 1985)Google Scholar. With respect to wars, I have in mind the Russo-Japanese War (1905), World War I (1914-1918), the Russian civil war (1918-1921), and the Russo-Polish War (1919-1920).

32. A decisively unsympathetic gloss on Heidegger's conflation of essence and existence can be found in Adorno, Negative Dialectics, 75.

33. The impossibility is expressed in the following statement by Maksim Gor'kii: "It seems to me that some literary authors are shouting due to misunderstanding, shouting not at people but at history, which has deprived them of the possibility of finding some 'plane of alienation' [polosa otchuzhdeniia] from the universal battle." Maksim Gor'kii, "O literature i prochem," in O literature: Literaturno-kriticheskie stat'i (Moscow, 1953), 42.

34. These words first appear in print in Literaturnaia gazeta, 5 November 1932, 3, which quotes a speech by Ivan Gronskii at a plenary session of the Organizational Committee of the Union of Soviet Writers (29 October 1932). In subsequent accounts, they are attributed to Iosif Stalin. See F. I. Panferov, "O novatorstve, sovremennoi teme i chitatele," Oktiabr', no. 10 (1933): 198; "Za literaturu zhiznennoi pravdy," Literaturnaia gazeta, 14 August 1952, 1.

35. Tsapenko, M. P., O realisticheskikh osnovakh sovetskoi arkhitektury (Moscow, 1952), 20.Google Scholar

36. Ibid., 27.

37. Ibid.

38. Ibid., 48.

39. This is how Heidegger expresses the impossibility of standing outside the event of truth: "Each one participates in this decision, even and precisely when he shrinks from this decision and believes he must act superior to today's awakening and play the part of the supposedly 'spiritual' elite." Martin Heidegger, Being and Truth, trans. Gregory Fried and Richard Polt (Bloomington, 2010), 11. The seminar Beingand Truth-was delivered in 1933-1934, when Heidegger was rector of the University of Freiburg. The "awakening" of which he speaks is, of course, the National Socialist revolution in Germany.