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Description
In this selection of Andrei Zhdanov’s works on literature, music and philosophy, he subjects the leadership of each of these aspects of Soviet culture to deep and through-going criticisms. The situation came about that the Central Committee of the CPSU(b), in 1947-48, had to intervene in putting an end to the bourgeois trends in Soviet culture. In literature, he rejects the anti-socialist abstractive and fatalistic writing that demeaned the people of Leningrad and degraded the socialist system, even though it was a system more advanced with a people freer and happier than any capitalist country. In music, the formalistic trend ignored the needs of the people and substituted the national (specifically Russian) music for western cosmopolitanism. “It is impossible to be an internationalist in music or in anything else,” Zhdanov says, “unless one loves and respects one’s own people.” In philosophy, the method of describing the evolution of man’s thinking as a mere sequence of accidents and not bound up with specific historical epochs reared itself, ignoring the materialistic conception of history while paying lip service to it. He also points out the philosophical truth that in socialist society, where there are no antagonistic classes, advancement occurs via criticism and self-criticism, non-antagonism. All in all, in these four speeches Zhdanov adds new theoretical lessons to socialist culture, a key for imbuing the working people with consciousness.