Socialist Realism and Sermons of Church Leaders (Christmas Epistles of Ilia II the Catholicos-Patriarch of All Georgia, 1977-1985)

Abstract

The history of literature is familiar with trends that are born and established as a result of time, worldview, political, economic, social factors. If art is a reflection of life, the social realist creator was tasked with reflecting life against the backdrop of socialist ideals. In a self-contradictory process (in the purposeful "marriage" of literature and ideology), the norms and criteria that creators had to obey were created by the dictates of the Communist Party. This already contradictory essence was made even more intense by the given fact – in many countries, including Georgia, socialism and Communist Party had to dictate norms for Christian culture, and this naturally meant either self-liquidation on the part of the church, or offering alternative models of thought. Sermons and aspirations expressed in them had to be compatible with the objective course of history; But it faced natural opposition and a kind of impasse, therefore, it is interesting, what was the main pathos of the preaching of the church leaders? Here we will say that between com-promise and struggle, the preaching and the preacher in a difficult era were able to and trace the path to those values without which the church loses its meaning.