Creative Union: The Professional Organization of Soviet Composers, 1939-1953
Kiril Tomoff
Abstract
Why did the Stalin era, a period characterized by bureaucratic control and the reign of Socialist Realism in the arts, witness such an extraordinary upsurge of musical creativity and the prominence of musicians in the cultural elite? This is one of the questions that this book seeks to answer. The book shows how the Union of Soviet Composers established control over the music profession and negotiated the relationship between composers and the Communist Party leadership. Central to the book's argument is the institutional authority and prestige that the musical profession accrued and deployed ... More
Why did the Stalin era, a period characterized by bureaucratic control and the reign of Socialist Realism in the arts, witness such an extraordinary upsurge of musical creativity and the prominence of musicians in the cultural elite? This is one of the questions that this book seeks to answer. The book shows how the Union of Soviet Composers established control over the music profession and negotiated the relationship between composers and the Communist Party leadership. Central to the book's argument is the institutional authority and prestige that the musical profession accrued and deployed within Soviet society, enabling musicians to withstand the postwar disciplinary campaigns that were so crippling in other artistic and literary spheres. Most accounts of Soviet musical life focus on famous individuals or the campaign against Shostakovich's ‘Lady Macbeth’ and Zhdanov's postwar attack on musical formalism. This book's approach, while not downplaying these notorious events, shows that the Union was able to develop and direct a musical profession that enjoyed enormous social prestige. The Union's leadership was able to use its expertise to determine the criteria of musical value with a degree of independence. The book reveals the complex and mutable interaction of creative intelligentsia and political elite in a period hitherto characterized as one of totalitarian control.
Keywords:
musical creativity,
cultural elite,
Union of Soviet Composers,
Communist Party,
composer,
totalitarian control
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2006 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780801444111 |
| Published to Cornell Scholarship Online: May 2019 |
DOI:10.7591/cornell/9780801444111.001.0001 |
