The October Revolution and the Creative Principles of Socialist Literature

The ideas of socialism were reflected in literature long before the Great October Revolution. Their general character, social sources, and forms of influence on artistic creativity were not only diverse, but often heterogeneous. If we talk about the literature of the 19th century, socialist ideas received one or another expression in the works of Heine and G. Weert, of Hugo and Potier, Herzen and Chernyshevsky, Shchedrin and L. Tolstoy. A little later, these ideas attracted the deep attention of R. Rolland, A. France, W. Morris, B. Shaw, and many other writers. At the end of the century, at the beginning of his creative activity (1895), Romain Rolland confidently expressed the thought of the historical purpose of socialism. "If there is still - he wrote in his diary - hope to avoid the destruction that threatens present-day Europe, its society, and its art, then this hope lies in socialism." Rolland's conviction was not an isolated phenomenon - other artists of the word have expressed similar thoughts.