Ukrainian Production Novel as a Product of Socialist Realist Popular Culture. Postmodern Perspective

After the Soviet Empire had collapsed, 1990s has begotten in the field of Ukrainian Studies – both foreign as well as in Ukraine – a number of factors which should be conducive to scientific display and simultaneously reassessment of the achievements of socialist realism – the phenomenon, which set the tone of all fields of Soviet Ukrainian culture for more than half a century. Unfortunately, at the end of the first decade of the 21st century, socialist realism still remains the least explored link of Ukrainian culture and generates unsatisfactory scientific interest among Ukrainian Studies scholars. Author believes that the best exemplification material to initiate re-overview of literature of socialist realism is the production novel – the flagship genre of socialist realism, the genre which peak period of popularity emerged during the first half of the 1930s, the time of consolidation of socialist realism as the aesthetics and the system of rules and regulations of cultural policy of the state. As the subject of observations in the novels chosen for examination (including works by such writers as: I. Le, V. Kuz’mych, P. Panch, I. Kachura, O. Kopylenko, S. Sklarenko, O. Dosvitnyi), author intends to make the presented world of the novels with its dominant socialist realist pan-aestheticism, whose essence was socialist realist mythology of kitsch / simulacrum. Subsequently, author desires to give an overview of the hero of socialist realism and the strategies of arranging reception of production novels, particularly the performed input/output techniques, determined by the essential quality of both socialist realism and popular culture, such as persuasion, emphasizing the truth that the discourse of socialist realism is a discourse of power.

ISSN: 1733-165X

Article Title	Type	Size
Matusiak	[pdf]	[617 KB]