MAXIM GORKY *

AND THE CONCEPT OF “SOCIALIST REALISM”

D. ANJANEYULU

Before proceeding to a discussion proper of Maxim Gorky’s work as a writer, it would be just as well to remind ourselves of the office of literature and the role and function of the writer as understood in the Russian tradition through the ages. The youthful rebel poet Evtushenko puts it rather vividly, in his characteristic way, in one of his poems, which says:

In Russia the poet is more than a poet.

There only those are born poets

in whom a proud civic spirit dwells

for whom there is no comfort, no peace.

What Evtushenko mentions of the ‘poet’ is indeed equally true of all other writers as well. We could take it that he was using the word ‘poet’ in its larger sense of any writer, worth his salt, who should be something of a ‘seer’ (as we speak of the Kavi in the Indian tradition), not merely a ‘critic of life’ (as Mathew Arnold would have it) but the ‘unacknowledged legislator of the world’ (in Shelley’s famous phrase). This would bring us to the problem of “engagement” and “disengagement” in literature. We could almost hazard the broad generalisation that Russian literature is essentially an “engaged” literature. It would be hard to think of any Russian writer who has made a mark on literature within and outside the country of his birth, who is not “committed”, to something or the other. For that matter, the Russian reader himself is “committed” in a manner, in which the Indian reader of the present day (or British, French or American reader) is not. It is not unusual for seasoned people nearer home, of High Court Judges, practising or retired, to listen to some religious-cum-literary discourse and nod their heads vigorously at the exposition of some anecdote in a myth or legend, with a suspension of critical discernment (and not merely of disbelief) that they would not be guilty of in their more active hours. Which means that they are taking a mental holiday, as it were, which is perfectly understandable, when we remember that literature, in this context, is taken as a legitimate source of harmless entertainment. Without going into the merits of this attitude, one could recognise the fact that the Russian attitude, of the intelligentia, and of the others, is very much different from this. Literature to them is real and earnest, as life itself in all its manifestations. The purely aesthetic attitude had almost never found favour in Russian criticism. The theory of ‘Art for Art’s sake’, so fashionable with writers and other artists in the England of Oscar Wilde and Walter Pater, had never really taken root in the Russian soil, with the possible exception of a few exotic, hothouse plants towards the end of the 19th century. The Russian writer, through the ages, had, by and large, been very much engaged in the social significance of what he was writing and, in the process, identified himself with the establishment, be it the church or the state. Individualism had always been suspect and the lone wolf is not a familiar creature in the Russian literary fauna. If he did not hunt with the pack, he was never really far away from it, to be quite out of touch.

To be able to see the life and work of Gorky and his artistic philosophy in perspective, it would be worthwhile having a brief glance at the history of Russian literature in general. Russian literature is usually divided into three broad periods, for the sake of the student’s convenience:

(1) Ancient or Medieval period: From the beginning (towards the end of the 10th century when St. Vladimir embraced Christianity) of Christianity to the end of the 17th century;

(2) Second or Modern period, which begins with the era of Peter the Great, early in the 18th century, when he opened for Russia a window on the West and “secularised” the literature and thought of the day, in his own way by controlling the church, and ends with the great Revolution of 1917;

(3) Literature of the Post-Revolution period, which can also be called Soviet Russian literature, dominated by the values of ‘Socialist Realism’ under the inspiration of the Rulers of the day, (i.e., Lenin and Stalin); and

(4) It is possible to think of another period, starting with the repudiation of the personality cult of Stalin under Khrushchev and the trend of liberalisation, which can be presumed to continue till the present day, with appropriate tactical and other functional changes, as and when found necessary by the exigencies of the national and world situation. (Signs are not wanting, according to some informed students of contemporary Russian literature, of the emergence of a new golden age in Russian literature.)

The nineteenth century is considered by the critics of world literature as the golden age of Russian literature–with its pushkins, Lermontovs and Gogols and other famous names in verse and prose. While the earlier half is well-known for poetry (as that of the Romantic Revival in England) the latter half is justly known for its prose, especially fiction. It is the great age of the Russian novel, of not only novels of enormous size but of undoubted world significance. Turgenev and Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Chekhov (as a playwright and short story writer mainly) have had an unmistakable impact on European fiction of the day, undreamt of by any British and French novelist of the day, Eliot, Thackeray or Hardy, Proust or Stendbal, not excluding Dickens and Balzac. Some of the other novelists, taught to us at school and college in India, seem merely pretty and provincial under the dominating shadow of the Russian giants–especially the dynamic figures of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.

Maxim Gorky comes in here as not only a great name but a dynamic force to reckon with after Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. He stands as the great bridge that links the pre-Revolution and post-revolution periods of modern Russian literature. For a long time after the Revolution, he served as the unofficial spokesman of the Soviet writers, who treated him as a kind of Ivan Kalita of the modern period, a guiding spirit and integrating force, in the manner of the famous Russian ruler of the 14th century, who unified the separate hereditary principalities into a single Muscovite state.

It is as the high-priest of “Socialist Realism” that Gorky was honoured and cherished by the Soviet State and the Soviet people. The expression was actually coined by Gorky himself at the First Soviet Writers’ Congress in 1934, a couple of years before his death. The term is used to imply the fundamental agreement of the artist with the emergent socialist world, as distinct from the ‘critical realism’ of the 19th century, which portrayed and criticised the surrounding reality, without suggesting, explicitly or implicitly, the way of changing it. According to this definition, writers like Samuel Butler and George Bernard Shaw, Ibsen and Strindberg would come under the category of “critical realism”, as I understand it, though one of them at least was a professed socialist, of the Fabian variety.

Gorky himself had a good word or two for ‘critical realism’ which was close to ‘revolutionary romanticism.’ It had its uses. “Members of this group of European writers”, he said in his address to the Writers’ Congress, “have a double and indisputable value for us, first, as technically model works of literature, and second, as documents that explain the rise and decline of the bourgeoisie, documents created by apostates to this class, who depict its way of life, traditions and acts from a critical angle.” He looks at it as a struggle against feudal conservatism and industrial capitalism waged by the petit bourgoisie, on the basis of liberal and humanitarian ideas. In other words, it is good as far as it goes, but does not go far enough, according to him. To him ‘critical realism’ is negative and impotent as unfettered ‘individualism’ is irrelevant and meaningless. To make his position clearer, he observes: “While in no way denying the tremendous work done by critical realism, and fully appraising its formal achievements in the art of word imagery, we must realise that we need that realism only in order to throw light upon survivals of the past, and wage a struggle for their eradication.”

Turning to the positive side of his beliefs, he commends the new concept of ‘socialist realism’ which is closely allied to revolutionary or ‘proletarian’ humanism. He describes it thus:

“Socialist realism proclaims that life is action, creativity, whose aim is the unfettered development of man’s most valuable individual abilities for his victory over the forces of nature, for his health and longevity, for the great happiness of living on earth, which he, in conformity with the constant growth of his requirements, wishes to cultivate as a magnificent habitation of mankind united in one family.”

Based on the postulates of this definition is built up the conception of the ‘positive hero’ and the philosophy of optimism, driving one along the path of economic progress and social change. When the history of literature is looked at from this angle, as Gorky did it in his essays and speeches, there is more encouragement to seek in the literature of folklore, in which the positive hero is always there for politically-oriented critics to hail and celebrate. Pessimism also goes against the grain of folklore, which has a sturdiness and vigour of its own, along with a naivette not quite to the taste of the modern sophisticated reader.

It was this philosophy of pessimism, certainly an enveloping air of gloom, so characteristic of the great novels of Dostoevsky that makes them fall short of the standard that Gorky has set for himself, though, in fairness to Gorky, it must be admitted that he is unstinted in his admiration of Dostoevsky’s flair for characterisation and skill in dialogue, not to speak of his technical virtuosity. For Tolstoy and his works, he had the highest regard, bordering on adoration and idolatry, if an iconoclast could be guilty of idolatry of some kind.

An apt and telling illustration of the literary method of ‘socialist realism’ could be found in Gorky’s own work–the famous novel entitled Mother. It is not necessarily accepted by world critics as his greatest work, though its influence on the emergent socialist world had been enormous. There can be, and I know there are, two or more opinions on its intrinsic worth and literary value. But there are no two opinions on the fact that it is his most epoch-making work, as far as this country is concerned. (It is translated into the major Indian languages three to four decades ago, and reprinted more than once.) I myself happened to read it in Telugu translation, by K. Linga Raju, or Gadde Lingaiah, I am not quite sure, when it was smuggled into our circle, while I was yet a schoolboy some thirty years ago. I was wanting to read it in its English version and have not been able to complete it for various reasons, including the sad but undeniable fact that it seems now very much the worse for wear. Anything like the first fine rapture was hard to seek on a second acquaintance, for a reader whose primary interest happens to be literature. Reliable critics, not necessarily committed to the Soviet way of thinking, attribute its lasting success to its “harmonious combination of realism and romanticism.” Although the story of the novel closes with the defeat of the revolutionaries, the reader is left inwardly convinced of the ultimate victory of the revolution. The mother in the story, shown in beginning, as meek, passive, frightened and nervous, emerges towards the end as a character of great courage and initiative, poise and dignity, successfully throwing away the yoke of fear, meekness and submission. A positive heroine, who fills the bill of “socialist realism”, without losing her innate gentleness and graciousness and unobtrusive nobility, and without being dehumanised and coarsened in the course of an ordeal that should be too much for anyone, whose faith in the future of man is not unshakable.

Readers and critics outside of Russia, who are not unduly attached to these guide-lines of ‘socialist realism’ continue to be greatly impressed by the admirable mixture of outspoken realism and romantic gusto that characterised most of his works, especially those written before Mother. They are valued for the broad and comprehensive picture of Russian life presented in them, though some of them lay themselves open to the charge of a lack of constructive unity and are apt to be disfigured by interminable conversations on “the meaning of life.” There is a school of reliable critics, the world over, who think better of his mature, autobiographical and other writings, including recollections of Tolstoy and other writers and memories of his own childhood. The penetrating and plastic realism with which he presents a vast gallery of Russians here in these books is seen to be unrivalled. These could be enjoyed with unqualified delight by readers, who owe no allegiance to the oft-repeated tenets of “socialist realism.” Among his earlier works some of the stories are powerful enough to rank among the world’s finest, irrespective of ideological considerations. That beautiful story of suspense, comedy and pathos, entitled Twenty-six men and a Girl is none the worse for wear and makes enjoyable reading, some seventy years after it is written. The Lower Depths (drama) and the later novel The Artamonov Business are but two of the examples of his keen observation of the quirks of human character. In his remorseless technique of photographic realism and withering irony, he bears a family likeness to Galsworthy at his best, for instance, of the Forsyte Saga. His portrayal of the tramps and vagabonds, the waifs and strays and ne’er-do-wells and the dregs of society, who were so, for no fault of theirs had won him a special place not only in Russian literature but in the world’s proletarian literature. He made a hero of the kind of human material that was not considered heroic in traditional literature. It was an act of intellectual redemption and reclamation. “Socialist Realism” apart, the Gorky method might find some support in the recent trends of fiction-writing when the anti-hero is coming into his own, threatening to replace the conventional hero of old, especially in America and France.

Not only as a writer, but as a friend of struggling writers and well-wisher of young writers, is Gorky remembered in Soviet Russia. Unlike some of the other Soviet writers, who were out to deny the past and destroy the tradition in art and culture, Gorky was tolerant and intellectually flexible enough to be aware of the heritage of the past which, however, he tried to interpret according to his own lights in his vision of a brave new world to follow the revolution. Though he was a fighter to the last, he never lost sight of the writer in himself.

A writer of Gorky’s stature, whose significance is not altogether diminished by the years of fulfilment, naturally challenges a comparison with other great Russian writers like Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. The poetic realism of Tolstoy and his three-dimensional characterisation has probably had a wider appeal to world readers uninterested in ideological disputations. Narrower but more intense must be the appeal of Dostoevsky, whose ‘psychological realism’ is unequalled in its depth at its best. Making due allowance for the demands of legitimate didacticism in an emerging society, Gorky bids fair to stand by them, wherever Russian literature is read and remembered, for its own sake. The impact of Gorky on writers, scattered the world over, apart from political workers athirst for a new world order, has been powerful–and one could think of Mulk Raj Anand, and Khwaja Ahmed Abbas, besides Premchand and Krishna Chander in this country, and Hemingway and Steinbeck in America, who owe (consciously or unconsciously) something of their boldness and directness to his technique of narration. But it is time that students of comparative literature made a reassessment of Gorky’s contribution to the world of prose fiction in non-political terms, and not shrink from a judgment that might be substantially different, if need be, from what it was a generation or two ago. If it be a story of sons and fathers, again, let the former not be denied the natural privilege of upsetting the scale of values held dear by the latter!

* The birth centenary of the great Russian novelist was celebrated in March 1968.

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