Socialist Cultures East and West: A Post-Cold War Reassessment

Decades of Western Cold War propaganda were designed to depict socialism as inimical to genuine aesthetic achievement. Now, in the wake of the Cold War, it is becoming possible to reassess the past and present cultural productions of artists with socialist inclinations. The contributors to this volume demonstrate that the socialist cultural productions of both the East and capitalist West were rich and varied, and that propagandistic Cold War representations of socialism as a threat to artistic expression were inaccurate and misleading.

The volume focuses on socialist culture in the industrialized world, primarily Eastern Europe and the West. Topics discussed range from Soviet socialist realist fiction and film musicals, to the socialist drama of Bertolt Brecht, to British and American leftist fiction.