And this was the essentially correct assessment of true socialist realism. In order to understand the reasons why the Americans having a huge experience in film industry responded so rapturously to old films of the Soviet era (which also had technical drawbacks in comparison to Hollywood technical masterpieces of the late 20th century), we should turn to another occurrence which has a thematic relationship to that film festival.
In the middle 1990-s an exhibition of art and sculpture of the Stalin’s bolshevism era was held in Europe with triumphant success. The show also visited Russia: it was exhibited in the Russian museum (St. Petersburg) under the title “The Campaign for Happiness”. This aspiration for the bright and happy future for all laborers is the core essence of true socialist realism of the Stalin bolshevism era preserved by the leading artists of all the Soviet republics in the later years.
Having watched the 37 Soviet movies, Americans responded not just to propaganda of strange ideas, they responded to the campaign for the happiness of each and every member of society organized on different moral and ethic principles. While they were scared of the USSR earlier, those principles expressed in the behavior of film characters not only frightened them no more, they became attractive for many of them when its might ceased to pose a threat.[270] Hence the rapturous and essentially correct response: «This is some kind of a different civilization».
Yes, it is a different — new global civilization, which is to come. Its moral and ethics were demonstrated in the best works of socialist realist arts which utilized the means of the techno sphere of the 20th century’s 1st half. And this essence — the campaign for happiness which is really possible, which is to be achieved in life through the labor of people themselves, through their moral and ethics — is what is beyond the comprehension of the morally perverted people who denounce socialist realism of the Soviet era on the whole and of the Stalin bolshevist era in particular.
This campaign for happiness is essentially much more positive and creative than the whole lot of Hollywood fights on Earth and in space, sex and devilry which is poured daily into the minds of Russians and Americans from all the TV channels and which is nothing else than a campaign for disasters and permanent unhappiness led in the crowd-“elitist” society.
US criminalists have for a long time known that this is true b e cause the deliberate imitation of movie rascals and heroes driven into a corner by the circumstances set by the script is manifested in all the spheres of crime statistics.
And there is also the unintentional reproduction of screen horrors (both individual and collective), which enter people’s lives as a result of programming of the individual and social psyche performed by the films.[271] The terror attacks of September 11th, 2001 are among other things the culmination of the influence American movie business has had on the life of American society. It was not therefore caused by chance that right after September 11th the horrified Americans chose not to distribute many films containing violence or having a Satanist, criminal or terrorist theme. Yet their patience will not last long: under the circumstances of bourgeois «liberalism» the profit of a private business is more important than social life security, therefore art criticism and art direction within the course of a certain state policy are out of competence of US top governmental bodies and special services[272], unlike the USSR (particularly the USSR of the Stalin bolshevist period).
In the times of Stalin’s bolshevism the society was influenced by the art of «critical realism» which concentrated on how bad a life of a common man is under crowd-“elitism” [273], as well as by the art of «socialist realism» which was supposed to show the proper way of establishing such relationships between people in everyday life and in work (collective work because there is no other within the historically formed technosphere) that every person working conscientiously could live happily.
This is the theme of the films «Counter-plan» (about working enthusiasm), «The Kuban Cossacks», «The Tale of Siberian Land», «The Big Family» (based on a novel by V. Kochetov «The Zhurbins»), «The Work You Serve», «My Dear Man» (based on the novels by Yu. German), «Volunteers», «Valery Chkalov» and others. There were also movies about how one should love and protect one’s own Soviet government and socialism — the people’s power, achieved by the common people through much suffering and blood in the course of the Great October socialist revolution and the Civil War («Ironclad «Potyomkin», «Chapayev», «An Optimistic Tragedy», «The Quiet Don», «How Steel Was Hardened», «The Dagger») and defended in the Great Patriotic war («The Story of a Real Man», «The Youth Guards», «In the Trenches of Stalingrad», «Two Captains»).[274]
Another question which arises in connection to the essence of socialist realism is the following one: how could such films as «Peter I», «Alexander Nevsky», «Ivan the Terrible» appear in its framework contrary to the Marxist ideas of the so-called «proletarian internationalism» and «world revolution»? One of the popular opinion is that as soon as J.V. Stalin «felt the smell of fire» (as soon as he became aware of the threat from Hitler’s Germany), he forgot immediately about K. Marx, «proletarian internationalism», «world revolution», «classless society» and other kinds of ideological cover used to disguise his personal dictatorship, and decided to produce an artistic representation of imperial patriotism which he personally needed to cynically retain his power for the sake of power.
But the point is that J.V. Stalin acted not according to immediate circumstances but according to a long-term political strategy, and his regime was not power for the sake of personal power as many have thought it to be and still do so now. Those were not the films about the imperial crowd-“elitist” patriotism in the spirit of «for faith, for the tsar and for country» and about the right of the sovereign who is obsessed with lies and flattery of his associates to execute or grant pardon to loyal subjects and traitors alike. These are films about the bolshevist nation-wide civilizational building[275] in the past and about the mistakes committed in the course of that building which resulted in countless victims and ruined lives of many generations.
In other words the essence of genuine artistic work within the style of so-called «socialist realism» is its being objectively aspired to the righteous future. And the era of Stalin’s bolshevism is the era when this artistic movement was lent purposeful support by the state for the first time in history.
This kind of state support was effective to the extent to which the state’s officials who were more or less involved in lending that support acted to their good will and understood the problems and prospects of the society, — on the one hand. And on the other hand, its effectiveness was justified by how sincerely artists themselves were devoted to the ideal and the cause of achieving a social happiness for everyone who refuse to acknowledge the right of others to act parasites either on themselves or on others. It was also determined by how much yielding to circumstances the unscrupulous yet talented time-servers were expressing that ideal and its practicability by their works in such a way that the society and above all the younger generations would respond.
Notwithstanding the mistakes and deliberate perversion of this artistic and political line by statesmen and the artists’ prostitution on the system of their work’s state support, it was the art of socialist realism that in the times of Stalin’s bolshevism gave the society what philosophy and social science could not give — the feeling that happiness on Earth is possible and that the cause of bolshevism is objectively a right one, the feeling of a safe future.