The Albanian Community of Kosovo under the Influence of Ideological Literature - The Case of Literature of Socialist Realism in Kosovo

Abstract

Socialist realism is a style of idealized realistic art of the XX century. Having had a widely-spread influence in the countries where communism was a predominant system of government such as Kosovo, it took upon the role of a teacher who sets out the norms on how writers should go on and about their writing, norms which were known to be rigid and had previously obtained the approval of the communist party. Subsequently, socialist realism in Kosovo was of service to the communist ideology. It encompasses a didactic mission which paves the way for the Albanian community onto the norms of the new communist way of living by using literature as a propaganda tool to shape the readers’ convictions towards having a positive outlook of communism as a whole. On the other hand, this way of doing literature targets and lashes out at anything and everything that does not reflect the communist ideology, especially the Albanian customs and traditions’ system which had the good fortune of being on opposite sides of the latter. The effects of such a war on the Albanian traditions which last-ed for half a century, are still very much present in the Albanian way of living even today, because when communism was eradicated for good, as a governing ideological system, it did not take all of its misfortunes with it. The main purpose of this paper is to complete the previous studies’ findings on socialist realism in Kosovo with new findings that have solely to do with the relationship between socialist realism and the Albanian customs and traditions.