социалистическата

In the 1890s, at the dawn of the workers' struggles in our country, two of the first socialist magazines appeared: "Den" (1891-1896, editor Ya. Sakazov) and "Delo" (1894-1896, editor V. Blagoeva). Serving the main task of the movement at that time - the dissemination of socialist ideas among the people, the magazines published translated and our materials on economic, socio-political and cultural issues, while conducting a polemic with bourgeois ideology and populism. "Den" and "Delo" also devoted a significant amount of space to literature. Particularly valuable are the articles and notes by D. Blagoev in the columns "Social Chronicle" and "Literary Notes". The literary works are mostly translated. With few exceptions, they are subordinated to the political and literary line of the magazines. In addition to excerpts from the Greek classics, the reader was able to get acquainted with Byron's poem "Manfred", with the play "An Enemy of the People" by Ibsen, with individual works by Lermontov, Schiller, Maupassant, etc. In the spirit of a sharp critical attitude towards bourgeois society, the translated stories by N. Shchedrin, V. G. Korolenko, Paul Ezi, G. Machete, Otto Jeanne Sigo, Eliza Ozheshko, V. Garshin, etc. are very widely represented.

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.