How did you see man and the world through the prism of the main method of Soviet artistic culture - socialist realism? What is the essence of this method, which today is commonly interpreted mainly as the dictatorship of the party imperative ruling over Soviet art and the artist? If socialist realism is only an artistic method, then why did it turn out to be so in demand by the dominant ideology? And if socialist realism is only an ideological imperative, then why did art emerge on its basis, which constitutes the heritage of world culture? These and many other contradictions are the main subject of the study, in which the author tries to bring the phenomenon of socialist realism from the sphere of ideologies and myths to the field of scientific analysis.