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Political Economy of Socialist Realism
Contributor(s): Dobrenko, Evgeny (Author), Savage, Jesse M. (Translator)
ISBN: 0300122802     ISBN-13: 9780300122800
Publisher: Yale University Press
OUR PRICE:   $79.20  
Product Type: Hardcover
Published: October 2007
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Additional Information
BISAC Categories:
- History
- Political Science | Political Ideologies - Communism, Post-communism & Socialism
Dewey: 335.43
LCCN: 2007008044
Physical Information: 1.2" H x 6.33" W x 9.53" (1.62 lbs) 410 pages
 
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For decades Stalinist literature, film, and art was almost exclusively deemed political propaganda imposed from on high, devoid of any aesthetic significance. In this book, Evgeny Dobrenko suggests an entirely new view: socialism did not produce Socialist Realism to "prettify reality"; rather, Socialist Realism itself produced socialism by elevating socialism to reality status, giving it material form. Without art, socialism could not have materialized.

Bringing together the Soviet historical experience and Stalin-era art--novels, films, poems, songs, painting, photography, architecture, and advertising--Dobrenko examines Stalinism's representational strategies and demonstrates how real socialism was begotten of Socialist Realism. Socialist Realism, he concludes, was Stalinism's most effective sociopolitical institution.