Nice turnabout there, but "socialist" is a misnomer. It's totalitarian realism, rooted in the reality-fearing, complexity-denying kitsch worldview of dictators and their followers, whether of the right or left. Nazis and Francoists had the same taste as Stalinists and Maoists.

That is what the art style is called. It isn't my choice.

Quite true, which demonstrates the power of words to influence our thinking. Someone back in the day could've called it fascist realism instead, but didn't. Gillo Dorfles's book "Kitsch: the World of Bad Taste" has a good chapter about politics and kitsch.

It was a overwhelmingly a product of the Soviet Union and is a Russian phrase: соцреализм, sotsrealizm .

Ah. Russian art mimicking