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Joseph stalin influence on russia
Strengths and weaknesses of Marxist literary theory
Strengths and weaknesses of Marxist literary theory
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Culture in the Soviet Union possessed many stages as different leaders enforced very different rules in regard to accepted art forms. Under Lenin, many forms and styles of art were accepted as long as they were not overly detrimental to the party mission. Lenin wanted to find a signature style of art that would be unique to the Soviet Union. In order to do this Lenin put very little restriction on the arts. Great experimentation was done in writing and painting and many radical styles were developed during this time. When Lenin died, Joseph Stalin came into power and accepted art that looked drastically different from its previous years. Stalin enforced a much stricter policy on art. Stalin’s policy was named Socialist realism and featured …show more content…
Time, Forward! Is set during the middle of Stalin’s first five year plan. The entire novel spans a 24 hour period and takes place on a construction site that mixes and pours concrete. The novel centers on a shock crew that specializes in mixing concrete and their attempt to break a world record for most concrete poured in a single day. Through out the story these proletarian worker have to over come many obstacles in order to achieve the impossible. In the end the workers achieve this great feat only to find out that another crew had broken their record the very next day. There are multiple examples of socialist realism that can be found in the book. One of the more prominent examples from the book is when Marguiles initially finds out that the concrete pouring record was broken he immediately starts to formulate a plan to set a new record. Like stated earlier one of the main aspects of socialist realism is it promotes to the party policy and is relatable to the working class. During this time period there was a great emphasis put on being as productive as possible. At times manager would go to drastic measures to accomplish quotas set by the government. Sometimes going as far as putting sawdust in dough to substitute for the lack of flour they needed to bake bread. If the novel were to show factory works cutting corners it would have …show more content…
Everything about this novel screams socialist realism. The novel was even written in a way that would make it easy for normal industrial workers to read. The book features a simple plot and characters so it appear to a greater number of people. The book also has very short chapters so that a person could easily read it on the bus ride to and from work. More importantly the book includes the most examples of socialist realism and ties perfectly into promoting Stalin’s five year plan. Stalin wanted to industrialize the nation faster than what many thought would be possible. This book shows that you can achieve the impossible though hard work and coming
Commanding Heights: Social Assignment 1. Response of socialism to Classical liberalism: Classical liberalism is an ideology that embraces the principles of individualism such as rule of law, individual rights and freedoms, private property, economic freedom, self-interest, and competition. Classical liberalism stresses the importance of human rationality. Just as it values political freedom, classical liberalism also holds freedom to be the basic standard in economics, and believes the most beneficial economic system to be the free market. Whereas, the term socialism, when generally used, refers to any ideology that believes that resources should be controlled by the public for the benefit of everyone in society and not by private interests for the benefit of private owners and investors.
...ly a dystopian historical allegory, which represents the history of the Soviet Union. Orwell has achieved this by drawing parallels from the events which occur in the Soviet Union and incorporating those events in his novella through the characters mirroring historical figures. For instance, Napoleon symbolises Stalin, and Snowball, Trotsky.
Marxist Literary Theory Question #1: Does the work reinforce capitalist, imperialist, or other classist values?
Johnson, Priscilla and Leopold Labdez (eds.). Khrushchev and the Arts: the politics of Soviet Culture, 1962-64. MIT Press, 1965.
Sociologist Views on the Means and Ends of Socialism Socialism is a very broad ideology, encompassing many different ideas and viewpoints. Different socialists have disagreed on both the ways in which they believe socialism should be achieved and implemented, and on what exactly it is that they want to achieve. The two main viewpoints I am going to look at in terms of the means of achieving socialism are revolutionary socialism and evolutionary socialism, and in terms of the aims of different socialists I am going to discuss Marxism, including orthodox communism, and also social democracy and the 'third way'. Because socialism tends to have an oppositional character, and be seen as a force for change, the means in which socialism is achieved are quite significant, and tend to determine the form of socialism which results from this change. Early socialists believed that socialism could only be brought about through a revolutionary movement - the overthrow of the existing regime.
With this in mind, some perspective on the society of that time is vital. During this time the industrial revolution is taking place, a massive movement away from small farms, businesses operated out of homes, small shops on the corner, and so on. Instead, machines are mass-producing products in giant factories, with underpaid workers. No longer do people need to have individual skills. Now, it is only necessary that they can keep the machines going, and do small, repetitive work. The lower working class can no longer live a normal life following their own pursuits, but are lowered to working inhumane hours in these factories. This widens the gap between the upper and lower class-called bourgeois and proletariat-until they are essentially two different worlds. The bourgeois, a tiny portion of the population, has the majority of the wealth while the proletariat, t...
... while offering a critique on stalins’s Soviet Russia, and communism in general. Orwell is revolutionary in his work, as in 1945, communism was a “taboo” subject, punishable in post- war America by arrest and even death. Every aspect of context is explored in Animal Farm is an allegory of the situation at the beginning of the 1950’s and employs a third person narrator, who reports events without commenting on them directly. Animal Farm represents both the making and the breaking of communist society. The birth of the communist agenda in animal Farm is brought by the character “old major”. The conclusion is that Animal farm and Marxism have a lot in common.
Equal work, equal wages, equal food, equal opportunities, equal power. On the outside, a society where every one of its citizens was completely equal sounds and appears like a good thing, even a great thing. No one had too much power, everyone seemed to be happy, and most importantly everyone worked to better the community instead of themselves. This is what Socialism was portrayed as: a system in which everyone worked together to benefit the state. Contradicting this fabricated image, life under Socialism did not succeed in equality for men and women, and it caused people to do whatever necessary in order to gain some sense of individualism. While equality for all people in all aspects of life sounds appealing, it was an unachievable goal
As the twilight of Russian Realism was approaching, Russian modernism was on the way to its awakening. Due to the modernism movement, many different styles of art, and not to mention poetry, came to be. So, what exactly is modernism, one might ask. Modernism is described as breaking up with the past and promoting innovation along with creation; coming up with the next new thing. It is looking for new forms or ways to express one’s self. Modern artists and poets agreed that works of art shouldn’t be created for utilitarian purposes, rather for art’s sake; doesn’t necessarily have to have a purpose or meaning behind it. One shouldn’t have to make art solely to depict the common lifestyle, but rather to experiment with colors, shapes, forms, and textures. Thus, making art that is fresh and new. Ultimately, modernism is the exact opposite of realism, which strictly emphasizes the everyday life, the average, and the typical. Thus, the Silver Age has arose and continued for a couple of decades of the 20th century.
For instance, the way the social classes in the novel are being represented is an example of the presence of the Marxist theory in the novel.
"SOCY 151 - Lecture 12 - Marx's Theory of History." Open Yale Courses. N.p., n.d. Web. 31 Mar. 2014.
A man or woman who is obliged to toil long hours in industry, who has not had the benefit of a decent education and consequently lacks the habit of reading, finds great difficulty in absorbing some of the more complex ideas, especially at the outset. Yet it was for workers that Marx and Engels wrote, and not for “clever” students and middle class people. “Every beginning is difficult” no matter what science we are talking about. Marxism is a science and therefore makes heavy demands upon the beginner. But every worker who is active in the trade unions or Labor Party knows that nothing is worthwhile if attained without a degree of struggle and sacrifice. It is the activists in the Labor Movement at whom the present pamphlet is aimed. To the active worker who is prepared to persevere, one promise can be made: once the initial effort is made to come to grips with unfamiliar and new ideas, the theories of Marxism will be found to be basically straight-forward and simple. Moreover--and this should be emphasised--the worker who acquires by patient effort an understanding of Marxism will turn out to be a better theoretician than most students, just because he can grasp the ideas not merely in the abstract, but concretely, as applied to his own life and
Marx hoped to enlighten or raise the consciousness of the proletariat, by paving the way for a revolution that would be able to free it from the system that oppressed it. He thought only then, could the workers begin to bring about a classless communist society operated according to the principle “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” (188) For more than a century from Marx’s death in 1883 until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, communism was the dominant form of socialism. However it was never the only form, and whether these other forms of socialism will flourish like communism did remains to be unknown. However what we do know is that if socialism does have a future, it won’t be in the form of communism (218).
They worked with, for, and alongside the politics of the time. The equality for all that they sought would eventually take from them the freedom of their own artistic individuality. The Russian Revolution energized the artists to expand their social influence to produce statements that could inspire human aspirations. Rodchenko and El Lissitzky approached their avant-garde art practice in visually similar ways, but theoretically they varied considerably. Victor Margolin (1997) explored the two artists’ principal approaches to building their art and their commitment to the political influences of the time within his first essay in The Struggle for Utopia.
...ale Animal Farm proves to be a symbolic and understanding book. In its pages we can see the contrast between a supposedly communistic state where everyone is equal and the same, and how in the end it only leads to a total dictatorial establishment of totalitarianism, where everything is controlled by an elite group. Though Animal Farm was established with the idea of every animal being equal, in the end, the voice of the scheming pigs was the only one heard. Secondly, the book powerfully symbolizes key figures that have appeared in history. It shows how Karl Marx affected the Communism movement in the character Old Major, and also displays the kind of government that lights the fuse for a revolution in the tempered Farmer Jones. Though dark and menacing, Animal Farm paints a very brutal yet truthful view of the dangers when a society moves to the ideas of communism.