Freeing Socialist Literature From Ideological Narrowness

Abstract

The fact that we have written literature today is not self-evident. It is the materialization of an oral tradition and thus a process of production. A Soviet quest straight after the Bolsheviki seized power was the revolution of art and the deconstruction of bourgeois art, leading to Socialist Realism becoming the only acceptable literary paradigm under Stalin, eventually being imported to the DPRK. However, taking away the metaphysical from the physical cannot depict reality in its totality, and thus, Socialist Realist literature is way too often mechanic, even boring. The author of this paper argues that Socialist literature has to free itself by going back to its root, the connection of orality with the written word as only in a liberal society in which everyone can discuss freely, meaningful literature is able to evolve. 

Why should this be discussed on a conference about the Danube region? Given the fact that Ukraine and Moldova were part of the USSR, this topic might also be of interest for fellow researchers who specifically target the Danube region. Nonetheless, I mostly want to integrate this research in a braoder context, as there is no study yet which integrates the Soviet Union and the DPRK in connection to the problem of the written word, especially with the aim, not to dismiss any Socialist discourses but to widen them and embed them in a democratic framework, the research bridges anthropology, philosophy and political sciences and is cross-culturally embedded in a Europe-Asia framework.