—

Be te ee ek ae

Br i ee oe fk ed ee eee MM eC an ee he Ub Ui Geni

of hu

Maxim Gorky with Joseph Stalin

“EVOLUTIONS in the past perished because, while giving the
people freedom, they were unable to bring about any serious im-
provement in their material and cultural conditions. Therein lay their

chief weakness.

Our revolution differs from all other revolutions in

that it not only freed the people from tsardom and capitalism, but also
brought about a radical improvement in the welfare and cultural con-
dition of the people. Therein lies its strength and invincibility.”

\

—History of the Communist Party of ihe Soviet Union (B).

WY 1936 the Soviet Union was the only country in the world without

a proletariat. Having seized state power and systematically elim-
inated exploitation, the erstwhile proletariat had become transformed
into an entirely new class, a free working class—something which his-

tory had never known before.

Alongside this new type of working class there developed a new
intelligentsia, serving the working class,

Likewise the peasantry had
thrown off its yoke, had become
united around collective owner-
ship of the means of production;
had become, like the workers and
the intelligentsia, a new type of
elass, unknown in the previous
history of the world.

The Soviet Constitution adopted
in 1936 was not a declaration of
hopes or promises, but a state-
ment of accomplishment, the ach-
jevement of socialism; and it also
recorded the success of the cul-
tural revolution, a component part
of the political and economic revo-
lution. : :

Cultural development cannot
leap ahead of the economic found-
ations on which it rests. Material
conditions change before the
thoughts of men change. Changes
in the economic foundation of
society always precede legal-poli-

tical and religious-philosophical

flevelopment; the material con-
flitions are the content, the ideo-
jogical form:is only its super-
$tructure. s

} This doesn’t mean that content
js possible without form; it simply
ymeans that form always lags be-.
hind content and never fully cor-

‘tesponds to content.
g

®

. Mayakovsky, great poet of the
devolution, wrote in his diary in
October, 1917: “October. . . . To

accept or not to accept. That

question never arose in my mind.
It is my revolution. Went to the

- $molny. Worked. Did whatever

had to be done.” :
Mayakovsky, and other cultural
workers who accepted the revo-
lution, wrote pamphlets, appeals,
skits, jingles, poems, plays; spoke
from platforms, at the front and
in the rear; painted posters, drew
‘eartoons—“did whatever had to be
done” to inspire the people to de-
fend their revolution against its

enemies within and outside the
country. In the? fires of revolu-

tionary war they discarded the _
sterile theory of “art for art’s:

sake” and adopted the socialist
theory of “art for the people.”

After the successful conclusion
of the civil war, after the foreign
interventionist armies had been
driven back beyond the borders,
the cultural revolution was on the
order of the day.

: The starting point for Soviet
literature, said Lenin, was the

mastering of the old cultural heri- ~

tage. Socialist writers must learn
what to accept and what to reject
in the bourgeois culture of the
past; must learn how to critically
assimilate the cultural heritage of
the past, while condemning slav-
ish acceptance of it. They must
begin to develop a new culture, a
new art and literature, on the
new foundation, in the interests
of the workers.

By BERT WHYTE

ArT Te Te Te eR Oe cE Ue Ge OL oe

man souls

at
- "
vdmesnve mcm cman yy memo cem tempo

One of the first great socialist
books written in this early period
was F. Gladkov’s Cement. Said

‘Gorky of Gladkov’s Cement. Said

the first book since the revolution
which deals comprehensively and
vividly with the most important
subject of our times: labor.”

There is another reason for hon-
oring Gladkov’s early novel. One
of the main characters is the wife
of the ‘hero. For the first time
in Soviet literature we have a
portrait of a woman who comes
out of the kitchen and develops
into a public leader of no mean
ability.

Novels like Cement pointed the
way to the coming cultural revo-
lution inthe USSR. But this revo-
lution could not take place until
a tremendous increase in the na-
tional income and growth of pros-
perity among the working people
(due to the rapid development of
the economy of the country) had
laid a firm foundation for the
steady improvement in eultural
standards. A

The base was laid during the
Second Five-Year Plan. By 1936
socialism was triumphant. Some
33,000,000 pupils were attending
elementary and high schools. More
schools had been built in 20 years
than were built during 200 years
of ezarist Russia. Illiteracy had
been virtually abolished. The
Soviet intelligentsia had grown to
nearly 10,000,000 persons. The
gap between niental and manual
labor had been narrowed. Socialist

society had banished for all time

crises, unemployment and destitu-

oni es ees 5
@

These achievements were reflect-
ed in the new type of literature
being created. Stalin described
Soviet writers as “engineers of
human souls” and called upon
them to produce works which har-
monized with the great epoch they
were living in. ‘

A new culture, nationalist in
form and socialist in content, be-

igan to develop in all parts of the

USSR.
Just as Gladkov’s novel Cement

portrayed the beginning of con- .

struction, the rising of the coun-
try from the debris of civil war,
so the novels of the thirties de-
picted the vast new construction,
a. whole country seized with en-
thusiasm for construction.

Man versus Nature is the theme
that stirred the blood of Soviet
writers, who thrilled to their coun-

_try’s vast industrial plans. (This

theme doesn’t stir the blood of
bourgeois writers; they prefer
Boy meets Girl—even if the boy
is 51 and the girl 19, as long as
they go Across the River and Into
the Trees.)

The contention of these western
writers and “critics” that Soviet
authors are. required to become
mechanical robots grinding out
stereotyped novels according to a
state plan, is simply the Big Lie
applied to the cultural field.

The Soviet writer writes not on-
ly about the people, he writes for
them. As Lenin told Clara Zet-
kin: “Art belongs to the people.
It must have its deepest roots in
the midst of the masses. It must

unite the emotions, thoughts and-

will of these masses, uplift them.”

Socialist realism is only possible,

where the writer himself is a part
of reality and delves into the warp
and woof of life itself by working
with the masses. Socialist real-
ism cannot be achieved by looking
at the reflection of life in a mir-
ror. :

The man of toil has become the
hero in Soviet literature. Workers
are the heroes, for labor is, and
always has been, the prime source
of arte

In the Communist Manifesto,
Marx and Engels pointed out:
“The history of all hitherto ex-
isting society is the history of the
class struggle. The ruling
ideas of each age have ever been
the ideas of its ruling class.”

Naturally the theme of labor, of
activity, is alien to the non-labor-

ing classes. Only when the work-

ing class seized power, became its
own master, could the worker be-
come the principle hero of litera-
ture. 4 /

The Kingdom of Labor creates
a new world outlook—an outlook
perfectly expressed by the Soviet
flyer Valerei Chkalov a few years
ago. When Chkalov landed in the
United States after a non-stop
across-the-Pole hop from the
USSR, he was surrounded by
Yankee newspaper reporters who
fired questions at him. Said one:
“Back home, are you rich?” Re-
plied the Soviet air hero: “I cer-
tainly am! A hundred and seven-
ty million citizens of the USSR
are working for me, and I work
for them.”

In the post-war period, hund-
reds of young Soviet authors are
winning popularity alongside such
greats as Gorky, Fadeyev, Sholok-
hov, Ostrovsky: and Ehrenburg.
Their whole adult life has been
lived under socialism and their
psychology is that of a new world.

Typical of the novels being wide-
ly circulated in the USSR today
are: Far from Moscow, by V. Az-
hayev; Springtime in Saken, by
Gulia; Up the Hill, by Anna Sakse;
Light in Koordi, by Leberekht;
Miners, by Igishev, and Steel and
Slag by V. Popov.

These young Soviet authors,
and the people they write about,
are new types of men. Under ©
socialism men, for the first time
in history, can consciously shape
their own destiny. The front of
free consciousness has been push-
ed forward; in changing and im-
proving the world around them.
Soviet citizens themselves also
rise to greater stature.

@.Condensed from a paper pre-
sented at the third annual —

Vancouver Book Fair on Oc-
tober 20, 1950.

WHITE MAN’S ‘BURDEN’

labelled Communists.”

will be weil,” they say.

‘chaos? If not,
its hands.”

The Gold Coast |
_no longer glitters _

WO BRITISH MP’s, David Garmans, Conservative, and Geof-
frey Cooper, Labor, have just returned from a visit to British
- West Africa and, according to the London Daily Telegraph, they
are disturbed because an election is to be held next year in the
Gold Coast—a country where 90 percent of the people have re-'
mained illiterate under British rule.
| Having cited illiteracy, superstition, corruption and back-
wardness as reasons for not holding the election, the two MP’s
reveal the real cause of their anxiety.

“The central factor in the election,” they say, “is the rise of
‘a political party known as the Convention People’s Party (CPP).
It is led by a man Nkrumah who is at present in jail for sedition.
He and some of his close associates have in their time been

They lament the fact that in the Gold Coast today, any one
who has been jailed for “sedition” is treated as a public hero
while “hatred of the white race is openly advocated.” They are

- shocked that when Field Marshal Slim recently visited the Gold
Coast he was ‘publicly referred to as the “ambassador for war.”

Commenting on the coming election they regretfully fore-
cast that Nkrumah will probably be out of jail in time for it.
“Jt seems most certain that his party will seek the polls.” If
after that, the CPP “become reasonable men, willing to cooper-
-ate with the governor in theadministration of the colony, all

\

But, they ask, suppose Nkrumah “seeks the polls and de-
mands as a result that we accept the verdict of ‘the will of the
people, do we pull down the Union Jack as we did in Burma,
abandoning the chiefs and moderates, all British interests to be
seized and the country to sink into a state of stagnation and
itehall might easily have another Malaya on

Terrified of this prospect of the people of the Gold Coast
actually electing a parliamentary majority which demands inde-
pendence, these two MP’s, Tory and Labor, recommend immediate
and drastic measures prior to the election such as the banning of
the press of the CPP which they describe as “seditious press,” —.
“scandal sheet” and “not newspapers in any true sense.”

LONDON

=~

ge (
PACIFIC TRIBUNE — NOV

j

ER 3, 1950 — PAGE 4