In this text, Irina Gutkin brings together work on the subject of Soviet aesthetic ideology to argue that socialist realism encompassed a philosophical world view that marked thinking in the Soviet Union on all levels, political, social, and linguistic. Using a wealth of diverse cultural material, the book traces the emergence of central operative in socialist realist theory and praxis from Symbolism to pre- and post- revolutionary Futurism, through the 1920s and 1930s. Rich in both cultural and philosophical analysis, this book should appeal to Russian scholars and historians, as well as the general reader.