Kolkhoz Poetry Essay

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USSR PROJECT KOLKHOZ POETRY- The literary genre glorifying Stalin’s Collective Farming drive post World War I The strategic state control over art and literature (and in turn, using them to further advance the personal propaganda) became a policy of the certain distinguished leaders of CPSU. Foremost among them was Joseph Stalin, one of the most distinguished Soviet leaders, also known to be an epitome of authority and ruthlessness in the history of USSR. He took a host of measures for allowing communism to penetrate deep into the administrative structure and as well as the psychology of the Russian society. One of the most significant (and perhaps the harshest, in terms of consequences that followed) was the introduction of collective farming- the kolkhozy system. The Stalinist era in the countryside was marked by the consolidation of numerous smaller landholdings into large collective farms. According to western historians like R. Hutchings, this was to lay the foundation of the soviet industrial development. Starting from the mid 1920s, this system of collective farming, according to some scholars, was intended as a prerequisite to the developments enlisted in the First Five Year Plan. At the same time emerged a new genre in soviet literature - the kolkhoz poetry. For over two decades, this genre of propaganda literature remained hugely popular among the Soviet countrymen. Essentially intended to propagate the Soviet (rather Stalinist) ideology in the countryside, these poem were usually inspired from the lubok style, which literally means ‘mass culture’. It represented a form of acting and folk theatre. According to present day scholars, this style actually reflected ‘social realism’. Kolkhoz poems were essentially composed by the
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