Transformation or Iteration?: Socialist Realism in the Works of Chingiz Aitmatov

• In Event: Liberation from Socialist Realism or Its Transformations?: Literature and Other Arts in the Late Soviet Period

Abstract

In my paper, I will engage in the analysis of three early Aitmatov works: “Jamila,” “The First Teacher,” and “Farewell, Gulsary.” Employing Edward Said’s “contrapuntal reading,” this paper aims to elucidate how Socialist Realist tropes function as a mode of resistance against imperial culture from within. While "Jamila" ostensibly presents a familiar narrative about emancipated woman of the East, it underscores the disruptive impact of Soviet modernization on traditional familial structures. "The First Teacher" represents a typical narrative of Soviet educational efforts. Yet, it reveals the mechanisms under which the imperial machine was established and operated in the periphery. “Farewell, Gulsary” glorifies the commitment of an individual to the ideals of the Communist Party. Nonetheless, Aitmatov allegorically exposes the painful process of subjugating peripheral territories to the metropole, symbolized by the image of a horse. Thus, Socialist Realism and its transformations in Aitmatov’s works according to a “national in form, socialist in content” schema, provided space to include criticism of the Soviet system that could not been implemented otherwise. The dominant literary canon, paradoxically, became a source of its own dismantling.

Author

• Alexey Shvyrkov, Columbia U