Abstract: The author considers history of distribution of surrealistic views in art, literature and the humanities at first in Europe, and then in America where there were the special conditions complicating assimilation of the European theories. The surrealism, though was the cleaning movement opposing the European intellectual tradition, actually from it was inseparable. Exposing Cartesian cliches and isolation of the French culture, poets from André Breton's environment as a matter of fact built a pantheon to intellectuals of all nations.In America the situation was another. Till thirtieth years there was no alloy of art and social theories. Special questions of art and policy which solution surrealists have bravely addressed couldn't be put successfully in America till an era of the Great depression. When in the mid-thirties surrealists have faced prompt decline of Europe and distribution of fascism, they, a handful of excentric individuals, still battled against society. Americans, on the contrary, just assimilated with society and tried to change it from within. Persistent search of viable tradition was the main constant subject of publications of that time. Though surrealists in words rejected the past, they constantly looked for in it rudiments of new ideas, the basis necessary for any theory.

Keywords: surreailsm, crisis of consciousness, artistic tradition, pragmatism, documentation, irrationailty, mythmaking, psychoanalysis, Marxism, internationalism