What was the impact of Socialist Realism in the arts?

1. Cinema

1.1. Increased production of documentaries supporting First Five Year Plan's objectives

1.2. Films presented 'in a form that can be understood by the millions'

1.3. Makers controlled by scenario system

1.3.1. Scripts precensored, subjects chosen by Stalin, director worked together

1.4. Not the same creativity or originality

1.5. Stalin loved films

1.5.1. Own cinema, previewed new films

1.5.2. Enjoyed musical comedy and him as hero in Civil War

1.6. Stalin liked Charlie Chaplin, masses preferred Hollywood films

1.7. Myth films were powerful was more influential than films themselves

2. Painting

2.1. Soviet paintings swarmed with tractors, threshing machines, combine harvesters

2.2. Peasants sat around table of food

2.3. Height of purges that Mukhina's 'Industrial Worker and Collective Farm Girl' sculpted

2.3.1. Massive image of Soviet people striding into joyful future

3. Music

3.1. Joyous and positive

3.2. Symphonies in major key

3.3. 'Songs in praise of the happy life onward-marching Soviet Man', folk songs & dances acceptable

3.4. Stalin attended Shostakovich's opera 'Lady Macbeth of Mitsensk'

3.4.1. Disliked it - criticised in Pravda and banned

4. Literature

4.1. RAPP had served purpose; criticised

4.1.1. Replaced by Union of Soviet Writers (some non-party) with Gorky as head

4.2. Degree of state control just as strong

4.2.1. Socialist realism claimed to be basic principle of literary creation

4.3. Babel, Pasternak, Akhmalova, etc gave up writing

4.3.1. Practiced 'genre of silence'

4.4. No great literature published in 1930s

4.5. Artistic figures went in fear of their lives