In preserving the status quo, the Husák regime required conformity and obedience in all aspects of life. Czech and Slovak culture suffered greatly from the limitations on independent thought, as did the humanities, social sciences, and ultimately even natural sciences. Art had to adhere to a rigid formula of socialist realism. Soviet examples were held up for emulation. During the 1970s and 1980s, many of Czechoslovakia's most creative individuals were silenced, imprisoned, or sent into exile. Some found expression for their art through samizdat. Those artists, poets, and writers who were officially sanctioned were, for the most part, undistinguished. The award of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1984 to Jaroslav Seifert—a poet identified with reformism and not favored by the Husák regime—was a bright spot in an otherwise bleak cultural scene.