The Subordination of Literature to Politics: Socialist Realism in a Historical and Comparative Perspective

PAUL HOLLANDER is Professor of Sociology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and a research fellow at the Russian Research Center of Harvard University. In his doctoral dissertation (Princeton) he analysed the positive and the negative hero in Soviet and Hungarian literature under Stalin as models of behavior and personifications of good and evil. His publications include American and Soviet Policy: A Reader in Comparative Sociology and Perceution (1969) and Soviet and American Society: A Comparison (1973). as well & articles in Problems of Communism, Survey, Slavic Review, American Sociological Review, American Sociologist, and Ost-Europa. Professor Hollander is currently working on a study of alienation and utopia-seeking among Western intellectuals as reflected in their written accounts of visits to various Communist societies.