Socialist realism was the official cultural doctrine of the Soviet Union that mandated an idealized representation of life under socialism in literature and the visual arts. The doctrine was first proclaimed by the First Congress o… See more

Socialist realism was developed by many thousands of artists, across a diverse society, over several decades. Early examples of realism in Russian art include the work of the Peredvizhnikis and Ilya Yefimovich … See more

Stalin's adversary, Leon Trotsky, was highly critical of this rigid approach towards the arts. He viewed cultural conformity as an expression of Stalinism in which "the literary schools were strangled one after the other" and the me… See more

Hanns Eisler composed many workers' songs, marches, and ballads on current political topics such as Song of Solidarity, Song of the United Front, and Song of the Comintern. He was a founder of a new style of revolutio… See more

In conjunction with the Socialist Classical style of architecture, socialist realism was the officially approved type of art in the Soviet Union for more than fifty years.
In the early years of the Soviet Union, Russian an… See more