On that day the Literaturnaya Gazeta paper published the speech of the critic Ivan Gronsky. Tons of verbal husk piled by a writer who was then a close ally of Stalin, contained one great gem. Here is it for you to enjoy: “The masses demand from the artist sincerity, the truthfulness of revolutionary socialist realism.” Thus, for the first time, the Soviet people became aware of the method proletarian writers and other artists will be using to deceive them for the next 50 years. What does that social realism exactly mean? According to academics of the Marxist-Leninist philosophy, is an aesthetic expression of the socialist conscious worldview, an image of life in the light of socialist ideals. Does that sound muddy and dull? Well, let’s put that in a different way. It is the praise of one’s superiors in the form comprehensible by the latter. Got it?