Abstract:
The article contains the conceptual vision of
socialist realism as one of the key characteristics of art,
transformed in the postmodern cultural era. Social realism is
a cultural manifestation of the historical development of
Soviet republics, including the Ukrainian SSR. The essence
of socialist realism is seen as a manifestation of ideology in
the Soviet conditions. Besides, the article considers the
phenomenon in the context of postmodernism, relying on
the findings of various scholars, and describes the
interaction between postmodernism and socialist realism.
Despite the general view that postmodernism (literally
“coming after modernism”) emerged in the United States
and Western Europe in the 1960s-1970s, there could be
another way this movement evolved in fine art and
architecture. The fact that the artists from the post-Soviet
space managed to adapt to the global cultural field of
postmodernism so swiftly proves that the totalitarian system
failed to eliminate the plurality of opinions. A post-Soviet
variant of postmodernism was largely defined by the
influence of socialist realism. The recently proclaimed era of
post-truth that allegedly started after the new millennium
produced fascinating political and artistic experiments in the
post-Soviet space. Hence, it would be logical to assume that
some previously developed mechanisms were activated
there. Post-truth as an instrument of politics in that sense
resonates with the socialist realism used as an instrument of
class struggle. Research methods include description,
synthesis and analysis.
