on an imaginary folk cultureand mythic antiquity as channeled through German
classicismand, increasingly, nationalism. As later case studies on socialist mass
culturewill corroborate,these examples of cultural appropriation can onlybe
understood as an integralpart of the socialist cultureindustry and its heavy re-
liance on new mass media, from illustratedjournals to pulp novels, in forging
proletarian imaginations through emotional attachments.
The Proletarian Prometheus and Socialist Allegory 119