Koncepcie proletárskej literatúry a socialistického realizmu v medzivojnovom období

The goal of the paper is to trace the way socialist realism was developing and establishingin Slovak literature in the period of the first Czechoslovak republic (1918 – 1938)and to verify whether it is really a immovable monolith as the tradition goes in literaryhistoriography. The methodological assumption is formed by the knowledge ofcontemporary historiography in line with departure from the established totalitarianterminology and inclination towards the problematic image of the First Republic andselected stimuli from the sociology of literature (Pierre Bourdie, Stefan Żółkiewski).At first socialist realism was developing in democratic conditions, its representativeswere heard from marginal, anti-systemic positions and its reflection was wider, morecritical and more resistant to political changes. It was only later, in the period of totalitarianism,that socialist realism transformed to an uncritically received dogmaticmonolith. The paper presents two ways of understanding socialist realism: 1. as anopen system capable of adopting various forms of art provided the condition of thesocialist ideological basis or an author´s political affiliation was fulfilled; 2. as a systemof prescribed rules and norms, subject matters and philosophical areas, dictated by theconsensus of people holding leading political positions. By applying them, the papershows a different, more varied form of the movement.