Editing Socialist realism (section)

== Reception and impact ==
[[File:Warszawa-mauzoleum monument.jpg|thumb|250px|A monumental [[obelisk]] surrounded by sculptures of soldiers at the [[Soviet Military Cemetery, Warsaw]]]]

Stalin's adversary, [[Leon Trotsky]], was highly critical of this rigid approach towards the arts.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Deutscher |first1=Isaac |title=The Prophet: The Life of Leon Trotsky |date=5 January 2015 |publisher=Verso Books |isbn=978-1-78168-721-5 |pages=1283, 1360–1361|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YGznDwAAQBAJ&q=isaac+deutscher+trotsky+the+prophet |language=en}}</ref> He viewed cultural conformity as an expression of [[Stalinism]] in which "the literary schools were strangled one after the other" and the method of command extended across various areas from scientific agriculture to music.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Deutscher |first1=Isaac |title=The Prophet: The Life of Leon Trotsky |date= 2015 |publisher=Verso Books |isbn=978-1-78168-721-5 |pages=1283, 1360–13661|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YGznDwAAQBAJ&q=isaac+deutscher+trotsky+the+prophet |language=en}}</ref> Overall, he regarded socialist realism to be an arbitrary construct of the Stalinist bureaucracy.

{{blockquote|"In that victorious revolution, there is not only the revolution, but also a new privileged stratum...[which] has strangled artistic creation with a [[totalitarian]] hand...Even under absolute monarchy art was based on idealization, but not on [[The Stalin School of Falsification|falsification]], whereas in the Soviet Union official art{{snd}}and none other exists there{{snd}}is sharing in the fate of official justice; its purpose is to [[Joseph Stalin's cult of personality|glorify the "Leader"]] and to manufacture officially a heroic myth...The style of official Soviet painting is being described as "socialist realism"{{snd}}the label could have been invented only by a [[Nomenklatura|bureaucrat]] at the head of an Arts Department."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Deutscher |first1=Isaac |title=The Prophet: The Life of Leon Trotsky |date=2015 |publisher=Verso Books |isbn=978-1-78168-721-5 |pages=1476|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YGznDwAAQBAJ&q=isaac+deutscher+trotsky+the+prophet |language=en}}</ref>}}

The impact of socialist realist art can still be seen decades after it ceased being the only state-supported style. Even before the end of the [[USSR]] in 1991, the government had been reducing its practices of censorship. After [[Stalin]]'s death in 1953, [[Nikita Khrushchev]] began to condemn the previous regime's practice of excessive restrictions. This freedom allowed artists to begin experimenting with new techniques, but the shift was not immediate. It was not until the ultimate fall of Soviet rule that artists were no longer restricted by the deposed Communist Party. Many socialist realist tendencies prevailed until the mid-to-late 1990s and early 2000s.<ref name="Evangeli, Aleksandr 2012, p. 218">Evangeli, Aleksandr. "Echoes of Socialist Realism in Post-Soviet Art", ''Socialist Realisms: Soviet Painting 1920–1970''. Skira Editore S.p.A., 2012, p. 218</ref> 

In the 1990s, many Russian artists used the characteristics of socialist realism in an ironic fashion.<ref name="Evangeli, Aleksandr 2012, p. 218" /> This was completely different from what existed only a couple of decades before. Once artists broke from the socialist realist mould, there was a significant power shift. Artists began including subjects that could not exist according to Soviet ideals. Now that the power over appearances was taken away from the government, artists achieved a level of authority that had not existed since the early 20th century.<ref>Evangeli, Aleksandr. "Echoes of Socialist Realism in Post-Soviet Art", ''Socialist Realisms: Soviet Painting 1920–1970''. Skira Editore S.p.A., 2012, p. 221</ref> In the decade immediately after the fall of the USSR, artists represented socialist realism and the Soviet legacy as a traumatic event. By the next decade, there was a unique sense of detachment.<ref>Evangeli, Aleksandr. "Echoes of Socialist Realism in Post-Soviet Art", ''Socialist Realisms: Soviet Painting 1920–1970''. Skira Editore S.p.A., 2012, p. 223</ref>

Western cultures often do not look at socialist realism positively. Democratic countries view the art produced during this period of repression as a lie.<ref>Juraga, Dubravka and Booker, Keith M. ''Socialist Cultures East and West''. Praeger, 2002, p. 12</ref> Non-Marxist art historians tend to view communism as a form of [[totalitarianism]] that smothers artistic expression and therefore retards the progress of culture.<ref>Schwartz, Lawrence H. ''Marxism and Culture''. Kennikat Press, 1980, p. 4</ref> In recent years there has been a reclamation of the movement in Moscow with the addition of the Institute of Russian Realist Art (IRRA), a three-story museum dedicated to preserving 20th-century Russian realist paintings.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Solomon |first=Tessa |date=2019-11-11 |title=Art Acquired by Fugitive Russian Banker Discovered Outside Moscow |url=https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/alexei-ananyev-artworks-irra-moscow-13548/ |access-date=2022-04-01 |website=ARTnews.com |language=en-US}}</ref>