Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
What role did music play in Soviet society during the eras of Lenin and
Stalin?
This book examines the different strategies adopted by composers and
musicians in their attempts to carve out careers in a rapidly evolving society,
discusses the role of music in Soviet society and people's lives, and shows
how political ideology proved an inspiration as well as an inhibition. Soviet
Music and Society under Lenin and Stalin explores how music and politics
interacted in the lives of two of the twentieth century's greatest composers –
Shostakovich and Prokofiev – and also in the lives of less well-known Soviet
composers. In addition, it considers the activities of the specialist composers
of early Soviet musical propaganda, amateur music making, and musical life
in the non-Russian republics.
The book will appeal to specialists in Soviet music history, those with an
interest in twentieth-century music in general, and also to students of the
history, culture and politics of the Soviet Union.
Neil Edmunds is Senior Lecturer in Modern European History at the
University of West of England, Bristol. He is the author of The Soviet
Proletarian Music Movement (2000), and his articles on early Soviet musical
life have appeared in numerous journals, including Slavonic and East
European Review, Tempo, and Muziek en Wetenschap.
BASEES/RoutledgeCurzon Series on Russian and East
European Studies
Editorial committee:
Hilary Pilkington, Centre for Russian and East European Studies, University
of Birmingham
Reader's Guide
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Contents
List of illustrations
Notes on contributors
Acknowledgements
A note on transliteration
Introduction
NEIL EDMUNDS
1 Music in the socialist state
ANNA FERENC
2 The ways of Russian popular music to 1953
RICHARD STITES
3 Declared dead, but only provisionally: Shostakovich, Soviet music-hall
and Uslovno ubityi
GERARD MCBURNEY
4 From the factory to the fat: thirty years of the Song of the Counterplan
JOHN RILEY
5 Prokofiev's Le Pas d'Acier : how the steel was tempered
LESLEY-ANNE SAYERS AND SIMON MORRISON
6 'Lenin is always with us': Soviet musical propaganda and its composers
during the 1920s
NEIL EDMUNDS
7 Amateurs and enthusiasts: folk music and the Soviet state on stage in
the 1930s
ROBIN LAPASHA
8 National identity, cultural policy and the Soviet Folk Ensemble in
Armenia
ANDY NERCESSIAN
9 Going beyond the border: national cultural policy and the development
of musical life in Soviet Karelia, 1920–1940
PEKKA SUUTARI
10 A nation on stage: music and the 1936 Festival of Kazak Arts
MICHAEL ROULAND
11 Uzeyir Hajibeyov and his role in the development of musical life in
Azerbaidzhan
MATTHEW O'BRIEN
Index
Illustrations
Plates
The idea for this volume of essays on Soviet music and society under Lenin
and Stalin came about as a result of a conversation the editor had with
Caroline Brooke at the annual conference of the British Association of
Slavonic and Eastern European Studies (BASEES) in April 2000. The editor
would like to thank Oxford University Press for granting permission to
reprint (with minor transliterative and stylistic changes) Anna Ferenc's essay
'Music in the socialist state'. It was originally published in C. Kelly and D.
Shepherd (eds.), Russian Cultural Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1998), pp. 109–119. I am also grateful to Peter Lang AG for allowing me to
reproduce the musical examples in my essay ' "Lenin is always with us":
Soviet Musical Propaganda and its Composers during the 1920s'. They were
frst published in my book The Soviet Proletarian Music Movement (Oxford:
Peter Lang, 2000). I would also like to thank Peter Sowden of
RoutledgeCurzon for his enthusiastic support for this project from the outset,
all the contributors for promptly replying to my queries, and the School of
History at the University of the West of England, Bristol, for funding the
compilation of the index.
A note on transliteration
Neil Edmunds
1 S.D. Krebs, Soviet Composers and the Development of Soviet Music (London: Allen and Unwin,
1970), p. 13.
2 See, for example, N. Edmunds, The Soviet Proletarian Music Movement (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2000);
D. Haas, Leningrad's Modernists 1917–1932. Studies in Composition and Musical Thought, 1917–1932
(New York: Peter Lang, 1998); and A. Nelson, Music for the Revolution: Russian Musicians and Soviet
Power, 1917–1932 (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2004). See also C. Brooke, 'The
Development of Soviet Music Policy, 1932–1941'. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Cambridge, 1998.
3 A debt on this account must be paid to the work of Richard Taruskin. See in particular R. Taruskin,
Defining Russia Musically (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997).
4 C. Norris, 'Socialist realism', in S. Sadie (ed.), New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd
Edition, vol. 23 (London/New York: Macmillan, 2001), p. 600.
5 M.H. Brown (ed.), Russian and Soviet Music. Essays for Boris Schwarz (Ann Arbor: UMI Imprints,
1984); and L. Hakobian, Music in the Soviet Union, 1917–1987 (Stockholm: Melos Music Literature,
1998).
6 T.K. Egorova, 'Muzyka kino', in M.E. Tarakanov (ed.), Istoriia sovremennoi otechestvennoi muzyki,
vol. 2 (Moscow, 1999), p. 457.
7 A feat only emulated by Pope John Paul II!
8 Korenizatsiia can literally be translated as 'indigenisation'. The policy of Korenizatsiia is succinctly
defined in Michael Rouland's essay in this volume as 'the policy of "rooting" indigenous languages and
native party cadres in Soviet national governments'.
9 Although it should also be noted that they were the social group who suffered most during the purges.
As Pekka Suutari points out: 'In the space of two years (1937 and 1938), fourteen of the orchestra's
Finnish-American players were executed, while three others were sent to prison camps as part as of the
campaign to liquidate Finnish nationalism in Karelia.
10 Although Teplitskii was in Karelia not because he had been sent by the Union of Composers or any
other official body, but because he was interned in a prison camp there in 1930.
1
Music in the socialist state
Anna Ferenc
Modernism and Proletkult, 1921–1932
1 V. Lenin, New Economic Policy (New York: 1937), p. 274, quoted in B. Schwarz , Music and
Musical Life in Soviet Russia, 1917–1981, enlarged edn (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983),
p. 42.
2 B. Schwarz, p. 43.
3 L. Sabaneev, 'Die Musik und die musikalischen Kreise Russlands in der Nachkriegszeit', in
Muzikblätter des Anbruch, 7, 1925, p. 106.
4 L. Mally, Culture of the Future: The Proletkult Movement in Revolutionary Russia (Berkeley and Los
Angeles: University of California Press, 1990), p. 122.
5 See A. Nelson, 'Music and the Politics of Culture in Revolutionary Russia, 1921–30', Ph.D.
Dissertation, University of Michigan, 1993, p. 32.
6 See Ibid., p. 31.
7 See, for example, N. Miaskovskii, 'Nikolai Roslavets. I. Tri sochineniia dlia peniia i fortepiano. II.
Grustnye peizazhi dlia peniia i fortepiano', in Muzyka, 197, 1914, pp. 542–544, and D. Gojowy,
'Nikolai Andreevic Roslavets, ein früher Zwölftonkomponist', in Die Musikforschung, 22, 1969, pp.
22–38.
8 A. Nelson, p. 59.
9 On socialist realism, see P. Kenez and D. Shepherd, ' "Revolutionary" models for High Literature:
Resisting Poetics', in C. Kelly and D. Shepherd (eds), Russian Cultural Studies (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1998), pp. 21–55.
10 B. Schwarz, p. 114.
11 Ibid., p. 119.
12 Ibid., p. 219.
13 Ibid., p. 227.
2
The ways of Russian popular music to 1953
Richard Stites
Twilight zone
Urban songs – including composed 'folk' songs – date back to the eighteenth
century and became widespread long before 1900. Written by people of
various social classes and often published anonymously in penny song-books,
they differed from the art song and the folk song in content, melody,
performance style, and social appeal. They were broad, sometimes 'vulgar,'
accessible, and sensual, while the words, melodies, and rhythms possessed a
sharpness rare in other song genres. The style of delivery, a combination of
facial expressions, gestures, and postures, differed strikingly from the body
language of salon and village street and suited well the timeliness and
banality of the words and music. They also frequently suggested
individualism or a mild posture of lawlessness and contempt for
respectability, which of course explains the appeal to 'the better sort' who
were out on the town. The dominant subset of this genre was the 'gypsy' song.
All over Eastern and Central Europe, ethnic gypsies were an emblem of
freedom, sensuality, and hot temper. In Russia, that freedom signifed the
open steppe, rolling wagons, savage dignity, and wanton abandon. Gypsy
music evoked a favourite Russian mood of longing for something lost or far
away. Offcers, nobles, and rich merchants in particular found a temporary
release from 'civilisation' in the great gypsy choirs of taverns and restaurants.
The gypsy idiom offered violent and rhythmically exotic fourishes of
uncontrolled passion by means of sudden changes in tempo and accelerando–
crescendo phrasing. This was brilliantly displayed in staples of the genre,
such as Dorogoi dlinnoiu [Endless Road], Ochi chernye [Dark Eyes], and
Dve guitary [Two Guitars]. Such songs offered socially unifying
entertainment that was perfectly suited to the mixed milieu of the urban
restaurant and tavern.
Turn-of-the-century 'gypsy' singing stars, rarely real gypsies, sang songs
made up of elements borrowed from ethnic gypsy music. The new singers
shaped wild sensibilities into a manageable performance art suitable for stage
and the intimate restaurant cabinet. The repertoire of Anastasia Vialtseva
(1871–1913), for example, combined the sweep and rebelliousness of the
older gypsy song with the bitter-sweet nostalgia of urban life. She elicited
unabashed tears and sighs of upper- and middle-class patrons who were,
through her art, able to make contact with the 'primitive' without ever being
engulfed by it. Vialtseva, who made annual tours all over the empire and
became a national fgure, lived out her songs in a private life of extravagant
love affairs, conspicuous consumption, lavish spending, and heavy drinking.
Nadezhda Plevitskaia (1884–1941), another gypsy star, toured Europe, and
was even able to melt the starched audiences of London. Varia Panina (1872–
1911), a true gypsy by birth, dominated the famous Iar Restaurant in Moscow
with her ensemble until lured into the concert circuit. Although Panina
acquired huge wealth, she died penniless. People who adored gypsy music
included the writers Leo Tolstoy and Alexander Blok. Those appalled by it
voiced their hostility in racist references to 'hot blood' or tropical passion in
almost the same way Americans of the time did about urban 'Negro' music.1
The so-called 'cruel song' or 'urban romance' was more elegiac and more
Russian than gypsy in its makeup, but added a coarsening element in the
music and a verbal formula of blatant self-pity. Alexander Vertinskii (1889–
1957), the genius of the form, drew a clientele of artists, intelligentsia,
students, and a wide assortment of society people who liked their sadness and
longing adorned with a touch of cosmopolitan chic. Vertinskii, a tall, slender
man and a master of expressive, nuanced gestures, performed in the costume
of Pierrot with powdered face and closed eyes his own bittersweet songs of
broken love, elegant variants of gypsy and cruel song. His rendition of
Dorogoi dlinnoiu (known in English as Those were the Days ) is one of the
classics of the repertoire. Vertinskii bathed his verses in images of palm trees,
tropical birds, foreign ports, plush lobbies, ceiling fans, and 'pink-tinted seas'
(see note 2), treating his patrons to such songs as Jamais, Little Creole Girl,
Lilovyi negr [Lily White Negro], and Vashi paltsy pakhet ladanom [Your
Fingers Smell of Incense]. The blending of refned irony, decadent wit, and
elegiac sorrow made Vertinskii a star of the intimate stage from 1913 to
1914. His fame was broadcast throughout the country through concert tours,
movies, sheet music, and phonograph records that were played in Russia long
after he emigrated.2
The Russian dance revolution of the early twentieth century was European
and American in both form and social function. The tango, the cakewalk, the
one-step, and the foxtrot were brought into Russia by foreign visitors and
Russian travellers abroad and by choreographic spies sent out to record the
new steps. The new dances, originally an upper-class affair, became part of
its revolt – as in New York café society of the same period – against the
stiffness and formality of traditional balls and suppers. In America, the
popular dance filtered up from Blacks, immigrants, and workers, while it
came in at the top and then filtered down to a larger public in Europe and
Russia. The charm of ragtime and jazzy dancing lay in its exotic tone and its
suggestion of rebelliousness, sensuality, and bodily freedom.3
The world of radical music, wholly remote in spirit and purpose from
mainstream popular culture, emerged from the revolutionary subculture. It
flourished in a tiny segment of the radical intelligentsia and a small but
growing layer of industrial workers, among whom singing was almost the
only form of performance possible in an underground milieu. Many songs
were European in origin, such as the Rabochia marseieza [Workers'
Marseillaise], Internationale, and Varshavianka. The latter opened with an
ominous verse about 'the hostile winds raging about us' and the oppressive
forces of darkness and evil. The melody, dressed in a driving staccato march
beat, was incorporated by Dmitrii Shostakovich into his Eleventh Symphony
(1957), a celebration of the 1905 revolution. Russian radical songwriters –
like those elsewhere – discovered that almost any kind of music could be
radicalised by adding the right words. For example, the melody of the rousing
Smelo v boi poidem za vlast' sovetov [Boldly to Battle for Soviet Power] was
a café song of the period called Belaia Akatsiia [White Acacia].
Revolutionary lyrics were funereal, visionary, accusatory, or menacing, and
the tunes were overwhelmingly mournful. As illegal sounds of protest, they
had small audiences under the tsars. After 1917, as hymns of a Bolshevik
ideology, they nearly drowned out all other forms of public celebratory
music.4
An important, but little observed, historical point is that popular music in
tsarist times for the most part dwelt in a world separate from that of classical
music. The last great wave of nineteenth-century composers were academic
figures, highly professional, and writing in the European idiom perfected in
the conservatories of St Petersburg and Moscow that were founded by the
Rubinstein brothers in the 1860s. Both the Mighty Five and their alleged
opposites made use of the diatonic scale and Western orchestration to great
brilliance. Almost all of them, and particularly the last great survivor, Nikolai
Rimskii-Korsakov (died 1907), employed supposed folk material in operas in
both story lines and musical themes. Beyond this homage to the folk, there
was little or no interaction with popular genres and certainly not with the
dominant genre of urban song. This would change after the revolution,
however.
The sound of Revolution
After the October Revolution of 1917, music became one of the clearest
examples of the dichotomy between the values of the new Bolshevik or
Communist regime and popular taste. Classical music had to stand in line as
an equal in the ferce debates over what kind of music was suitable for a
socialist society. The main positions in this running debate were: nineteenth-
century (i.e. up to 1917) classical music; modernist serious music, mostly
European (Hindemith, Ravel, Honegger, Bartók, and others), with some
daring Russian practitioners such as Nikolai Roslavets; proletarian choral
music exalting revolution; and machine music.5 The offcial position was one
of reverence for the high art of the past heard in classical music – Beethoven
for his revolutionary spirit, and Tchaikovsky for his Russian soul – and a
pious celebration of the revolution heard in proletarian songs. A potent
marriage therefore of the mind and the heart, but the canon did not go
unchallenged. Throughout the 1920s, members of the avant-garde exalted
modernism and the twelve-tone scale; others experimented with machine
music, factory whistle concerts, and electronic sonorities. These experiments,
however, found little favour either with the regime or with the people. The
revolutionary songs that were heard in the early Soviet years filled hundreds
of thousands with euphoria and were cherished by them to the end of their
days. Thousands of choruses flourished in workers' clubs throughout the land
where they sang the old radical songs.6
Although audiences never seemed to tire of singing or hearing these works,
there was a thirst for new ones as well. Pre-war popular tunes and folk songs
were set to political words: even the notorious Two Guitars was reworked for
Party meetings. Martial and folk styles were enlisted to create stirring war
songs. The songwriters of the Proletarian Culture movement and in the
Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians (RAPM) tried to write 'pure'
political or factory songs cleansed of all folk elements and with lyrics about
foreign enemies and lazy workers. These were so pretentious and abstract that
they won few fans. The fetish over 'proletarian music' led to one of the many
cultural wars of the 1920s and early 1930s against all forms that were
considered alien to working-class sensibilities by those – mostly intellectuals
– who waged it. Classical music was condemned for its association with the
past, jazz for its links with the West, gypsy and related genres for its roots in
the bourgeoisie, and folk music for its peasant 'backwardness'.7
One of the more unpleasant discoveries of the Communist cultural leaders
was that the people, including the glorifed working class, when given a
choice actually loved the music they were supposed to despise: light
melodies, popular songs, dance tunes, and words that were fun to sing. Even
in offcial parades, the masses sometimes broke into such favourites as Gypsy
Girl or O Why Did You Kiss Me? Private sheet music frms had been
nationalised during the revolution. The allowance of a limited market called
the NEP (New Economic Policy, 1921–1928) saw the return of private
restaurants and cafés with their familiar strains of prewar dances, sentimental
gypsy ballads, and foreign hits. Urban popular music began pouring off the
presses, reaching a peak in the last years of the NEP. Censors decided which
gypsy songs were suitable for proletarian ears, and which ones promoted
anti-social behaviour. The foreign-inspired dance tunes included foxtrot,
Boston waltz, tango, and telephone step; works by 'Viennese' operetta
composers – Johann Strauss, Emmerich Kalman, and Franz Lehár – and the
Americans, Irving Berlin and Vincent Youmans; and exotica such as
Rickshaw from Nagasaki, Kreolita [Creolita], and Bagdadskii vor [The Thief
of Baghdad] (the film was showing in Moscow at the time). Songwriters who
tried to have it both ways produced songs about the new socialist life with
catchy melodies, but very non-socialist lyrics. Proletarian composers
consequently dismissed such songs as 'music hall chansonettes'.8
A fresh wave of Western jazz re-entered Russia after the Civil War under the
more liberal atmosphere of the NEP. Visiting German bands and African-
American 'Negro revues' laid down a new foundation, and Soviet bands were
on hand by the late 1920s. The new jazz found a place for a time in elitist
circles. Some serious composers were fascinated by it and some early jazz
performances shared the stage with poetry reading. Soviet jazz, highly
derivative, had by 1928 conquered large segments of the urban middle
classes, NEP businessmen, some workers, and a few powerful government
officials who considered it suitable to play at congresses. Both the foreign
and the domestic bands ranged from hot and swingy to smoother salon styles,
à la the American Paul Whiteman. The original Soviet jazzmen, such as A.K.
Lvov-Veliaminov, Sigizmund Kort, Georgii Landsberg, and the better known
Utesov and Tsfasman, came mostly from educated ethnic minorities, just as
the pioneers of rock music decades later were usually the sons of the
intelligentsia. This followed a pattern in many societies where marginals,
intellectuals, and elites spearheaded the innovation (and often importation) of
popular culture.
When the dance craze inevitably followed the jazz incursion, trouble began.
It was one thing to watch a clever group of jazzmen on stage in a sedate
setting, but quite another when it was performed in its original habitat: a
dance milieu. In the higher-toned dining rooms, the salon dance reigned, and
celebrity dance couples sometimes performed imported and erotically
suggestive acrobatic steps such as Tango of Death there. The new and
revived dance styles won over young and old. However, when jazz dance
modes spread to workers' clubs and the restaurants haunted by the new rich of
the NEP, some prudish Communist moralisers saw fokstrotizm and tangoizm
as harmful; for them a pretty song was like a malady. Though many a party
member 'trotted' through the 1920s, some thought dancing was counter-
revolutionary or morally indecent, and were repelled by the swaying of
female bottoms. Various remedies were suggested. One leader promoted
evenings of revolutionary marching for young people. Another suggested
creating a Soviet mass dance – the frst of many unsuccessful attempts to head
off the spontaneous and near universal Russian passion for shaking the body
to the sound of music. Opposition to jazz and the dances it spawned sprang,
as elsewhere, from a fear of the body and of mass corruption. These dance-
and-music battles lasted through the 1920s.9
Unlike in tsarist times, Russian classical composers did not always remain
aloof to music of the street and the café. Dmitrii Shostakovich, who had cut
his teeth as a taper (cinema pianist), took to jazz idioms for their own sake
(as in his pert arrangement of Youman's Tea for Two) and for use as a
satirical weapon against decadent capitalism (as in the ballet Age of Gold).
Much later, in the 1950s, he also wrote one of the most popular Soviet
musical comedies ever produced, Cheremushki, which was recently mounted
on the London stage.
Dancing in the dark: the Stalinist 1930s
The Proletarian Musicians became militant during the frst fve-year plan and
the accompanying Cultural Revolution. They called Western popular music
'the song and dance of the period of the catastrophe of capitalism', the foxtrot
a 'dance of slaves', and the tango 'the music of impotents'.10 'Among
[Proletarian composers'] typical beliefs were', recalled a contemporary, 'the
pre-eminence of vocal over instrumental music, simplicity of form, clarity of
harmony, hatred of Western modernism and the importance of folklore.'11
They excoriated all forms of music, whether it be gypsy, jazz, traditional folk,
operetta, and classical, except for that propagating industrial construction and
collectivisation. To them 'alien' music was a form of sabotage, a dangerous
charge in an era when 'wreckers' in industry were tried and sometimes shot;
and an American heard a proletarian musical fgure exalt the rhythm of
industrial machinery over the music of Bach and Chopin.12
Private sheet music publishing ended in 1929, and gypsy music was banned
on radio. Proletarian composers formed shock brigades to churn out songs for
workers and collectivised farmers. The campaign against jazz turned nasty in
1928 when the writer Maxim Gorky identifed jazz with homosexuality,
drugs, and bourgeois eroticism – charges that were later recycled to ft the
rock culture of the late twentieth century. Young Communists patrolled
public dance places, and anti-jazz teachers marched into classrooms. Yet the
proletarian musicians still failed to produce popular substitutes. They were
generally poor composers who could create only simple songs with primitive
harmonies, march-like rhythms, and some folk elements. Their iron musical
dictatorship was broken in the early 1930s. The success enjoyed by songs
from the frst sound film hits revealed that the masses wanted more than
proletarian hymns to sing. In 1932, the Russian Association of Proletarian
Musicians was abolished, and the Soviet leaders now promoted a lightening
up of feelings. As a result, popular music of every kind re-emerged.13
The Soviet cultural system that was established in the early 1930s, and lasted
with some modifcations until the late 1980s, has often puzzled scholars who
look for some kind of standardised and unifed 'totalitarian' culture. If the
1920s featured a relatively lightly controlled pluralism, the Stalinist era
produced a carefully controlled pluralism. The pluralism of the 1920s,
however, emerged from below and from outside, and was created by forces
outside the state. That of the 1930s, on the other hand, was manufactured, and
its pluralist character did not indicate freedom of form and style, but only
their variety. The coexistence of neo-gothic skyscrapers, Stanislavsky doing
Chekhov, Swan Lake at the Bolshoi Theatre, kitschy musical comedy films,
and jazzy music in Moscow hotel dining rooms refected the eclectic
viewpoint of political leaders and their cultural managers. Accessible
pleasure for the masses, familiar and comfortable High Culture for the elite,
monumentalism to match the gigantism of the great construction projects, and
themes of happiness and heroism to underpin the Stalinist ideology were all
allowed. The Nazis took a similar approach with their Bavarian tent festivals,
Prussian-style parades that were captured by Leni Riefenstahl on film,
slightly Germanised jazz ensembles, and Wagner, Wagner everywhere. Both
Stalin and Hitler thrived on a combination of deep national forms tethered to
super-modern factories and weapons systems.
The revival of folk music that was viciously assaulted during the Cultural
Revolution therefore became a natural part of the 1930s normalisation in
culture. Its peasant content, though stylised, reinforced love of the land and
thus of the nation or narod. It also sought to project the message of a
peasantry now adjusted to collectivisation. In many ways, it resembled the
'happy peasant' image offered all across Eastern Europe between the wars, a
device used to defect away thoughts of real poverty and to co-opt themes of
the various oppositional agrarian parties. Folklorism – i.e. politicised folk
adaptation – became a major industry in the Stalin era. Folk song and dance
came back into favour on the wave of the Stalin's 'Great Retreat', a campaign
to preserve or revive certain elements Russian history and culture. In 1936,
Igor Moiseev established a Theatre of Folk Art in Moscow and his own folk
dance ensemble that brilliantly combined the rigour of classical ballet with
folkloric steps and village scenes. The State Russian Folk Orchestra and the
famed Red Army Band that performed marches and folk music, taken
together, represented a familiar blend of military virtue with the simplicity
and loyalty of sturdy farm people. Paralleling this Russian effort, composers
from all the republics, often assisted by Russian professionals from the
capital, folklorised certain Stalinist themes and Sovietised elements of their
own native traditions in the creation of a body of new and synthetic ethnic
music for each republic. The adaptation and sweetening devices employed
resemble those used by American Big Bands in the 1930s and 1940s who
'Yankifed' and smoothed out some of the great tunes from Cuba, Brazil, and
elsewhere in Latin America.14
Like folk music, jazz benefted from the closing down of the dogmatic
proletarian Cultural Revolution in 1931–32, but the beneft was short-lived.
Frederick Starr has given a moving and amusing account of the zig-zags of
Soviet jazz policies in the 1930s. During the 'red jazz age' of 1932 to 1936,
European and Soviet bands were heard in dozens of cities. Odessaborn
Leonid Utesov was the most popular Soviet jazzman of the era. But, even in
the United States, the word jazz had such a wide diapason that it could
include the 'society' bands of Lester Lanin and Guy Lombardo, as well as
Benny Goodman and Duke Ellington. Utesov more resembled the American
Kay Kaiser and his so-called 'college of musical knowledge', a group whose
cornball humour counted for more than its musicality. Utesov's spectacular
success derived from the comedy film Veselie rebiata [The Happy Go-Lucky
Guys] (1934), as well as his wit and versatility. Audiences were enchanted by
the bouncy and slightly syncopated sounds of saxophones, muted trumpets,
and drum traps. The melodies were mostly Slavic, gypsy, and Jewish; the
rhythms often tangoesque, rather than swinging. Utesov offered familiar pop
music dressed up in a jazz idiom. Alexander Tsfasman, son of a Jewish
barber in the Ukraine, rose to become one of the richest men in the Soviet
Union, and led half a dozen bands. A star of radio, concert hall, and film,
Tsfasman also cultivated an American style by calling himself 'Bob',
marrying an American, and saturating the Soviet musical scene in the 1930s
and 1940s with songs like The Man I Love, Shanty Town, and the Glenn
Miller classic, Chattanooga Choo-choo from the movie Sun Valley Serenade.
Tsfasman thus came closer to the American model, but the model itself was
rather conservative. Some critics go so far as to claim that the Big Band
sound of Tommy Dorsey and Glenn Miller was not really jazz at all.
The jazz age corresponded with the breathing spell that gave way in 1936 to a
new wave of violence unleashed in the form of bloody purges. At the
moment of its peak, jazz fell victim to a new assault by envious musicians
from other genres, and nationalists and conservatives resentful of imported
culture. Division and ambivalence reigned for a while, even among the
leaders, but the purge hit hard when it came. One bandleader was arrested on
the podium, while others were sent to camps to perish in certain cases.
Tsfasman, Utesov and a few others remained untouched only at the price of
converting their jazz into a Soviet product, cleansed of decadence. Unwilling
wholly to repudiate jazz, the government formed the State Jazz Orchestra in
the late 1930s, a large well-dressed ensemble that played an assortment of
ballroom music, classics, and smoothed-out 'jazz' in carefully written
arrangements with an emphasis on orchestral colour and texture, rather than
on swinging spontaneity. This orchestra, far from being a victory for jazz, in
fact represented its temporary death. Yet, local versions of it, approved by the
regime, were able to modulate into genuine jazz ensembles that would
fourish in the war years.15
Stalinist 'mass' song filled the gap left by the purge of jazzy dance music in
the 1930 and for decades afterwards. Unlike the mass songs of the 1920s,
which were hardly more than pious revolutionary hymns of protest or
funerary lament, the new version of the genre tended to affirm the happiness
and enthusiasm of the new era of socialist construction in optimistic,
humanitarian, and positive lyrics and accessible tunes. They were given a
tremendous boost by their association with Soviet musical films, which in
turn were made popular by the songs performed in them. Mass song swelled
to a crescendo in the years 1936–41 when jazz was being Sovietised. Most of
the songwriters were Jews who had received classical training and then had
turned to light music. This was also true of the main figures of the operetta
and jazz worlds. Jewish origin was no more an obstacle to this than it was for
the Russian-born American Irving Berlin who wrote the hymn-like God Bless
America as well as Alexander's Ragtime Band. Isaak Dunaevskii, the
acknowledged master of the genre, produced hundreds of marches and songs,
twenty film scores, two ballets, music for thirty dramas, and a dozen
operettas. He was born near Kharkov of a Jewish family, studied classical
music, flirted with avant-garde trends, and then moved into jazz and variety
in the 1920s. In the 1930s he was decorated, highly paid, and honoured
throughout the country. Facility and a melodic gift brought him success. His
compositions, especially the film tunes, were and are undeniably enchanting,
and they became enormous national hits precisely because he fused different
styles: revolutionary hymn, light romance, operetta, and jazz.16
What we might call the musical status-striving of Dunaevskii and company
was mostly a one-way street. In the 1930s, the 'serious' composers, such as
Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Kabalevskii, and others, remained serious when
writing symphonic scores and did not attempt to incorporate popular themes.
Shostakovich, however, composed a Jazz Suite and the gloriously melodic
score for the film Vstrechnyi [Counterplan], whose main theme formed the
melody for an allied wartime anthem entitled the Hymn of the United
Nations.17 On the other hand, Soviet serious composers resembled the
popular ones in one important way: they were commissioned by the Stalinist
state to exalt through music the achievements and aspirations of the Soviet
working class and the Communist Party. In this sense, the meanings (or
alleged meanings) of many of their works, like the mass songs, smacked of
propaganda and programme.
Notes from the front: the Great Patriotic War
A virtual song frenzy was released by the Axis invasion of 1941, indicating a
deeply held belief in the magic power of word and melody. Soldiers, sailors,
nurses, and officers wrote their feelings into songs, set to old Russian pieces,
such as Ei ukhnem [Song of The Volga Boatmen]. Amateur and professional
songwriters churned out thousands of new ones, some devoted to particular
battles such as the defence of Moscow and, later, the battle of Stalingrad. The
Soviet Union was probably the only belligerent that produced songs about
female aviators, including fghter pilots who perished in the air, a refection of
the massive wartime participation of every element of the population.18
Predictably, no reference to the barbarism of the Nazi occupation policies
made it into popular songs; this was consigned to other modes of expression
– film and journalism. The anti-Nazi song in Russia – as elsewhere among
the Allies – dealt in ridicule: a semi-scatological anti-German satirical
number ironically set to the Yiddish song Bei mir bist du shein popular in
Russia and in the West in the 1930s and 1940s; and Baron von der Pshik
[Baron Zilch], written in the spirit of the American Spike Jones's once
famous hit, Right in der Fuhrer's Face. Novelty tunes such as these had no
deep impact. Most popular songs dealt with loved ones and hometowns. Pre-
war songs that evoked associations from school and teenage years, the golden
days of youth, courtship and romance, hometown and loved ones also
remained popular or enjoyed a revival. The broad Russian land, with its
rivers and forests, possessed the same power of geographical association as
did the White Cliffs of Dover in Britain or the trysting place under the apple
tree in the United States. Nostalgia for the familiar ruled the day.
The 1938 hit Katiusha illustrated perfectly how a simple idyll could be
adapted for wartime emotions:
The apple and pear trees were in bloom.
Mists had foated out over the river.
Katiusha came out to the river bank,
To the high steep bank.
Though a modern composed song, Katiusha drew readily from folk styles –
contraction, repetition, a natural setting, and a young maiden. The peasant
lass Katiusha (Cathy or Kitty) was transmogrifed by songsmiths into a
soldier, a nurse, a partisan, or in the most famous version the Katiusha rocket
which 'embraced Fritz' and 'kissed [the fascists] on the forehead'. Katiusha
achieved international fame, but on the home front, two sentimental love-and-
war songs that outshone all others were Zhdi menia [Wait for Me], with lyrics
by the journalist and novelist Konstantin Simonov and melodic versions by
dozens of composers, and Temnaia noch' [Dark is the Night] (music by N.
Bogoslovsky, words by V. Agatov). Dark is the Night sings of bullets
whistling across the steppe in ferce battle while far away the soldier's wife
wipes away a tear beside the cradle of their child. It appeared in the famous
film Dva boitsa [Two Warriors]. The film makers used an unfailing device to
engage the emotions of the viewers: in a troop dugout between battles, the
young and handsome Mark Bernes sings all the verses in a deadpan manner
and fat voice with unembellished guitar accompaniment; in the victorious
fnale, the tune swells up fortissimo in a lush orchestral arrangement, played
maestoso. Both these songs, almost six decades later, are on the lips of
virtually every Russian over thirty whom I have ever met.
American style jazz re-emerged in the looser cultural milieu of the war,
especially after the United States entered it as Russia's ally in December
1941. Utesov successfully blended sweet jazz elements into the wartime
mood: his Bombardirovshchiki [Bombardiers] was a straight adaptation of
the American hit Comin' in on a Wing and a Prayer and sounds like a
Russian theme being played by the Glenn Miller band. Railwaymen, aviators,
cooks, and the Secret Police had their own jazz bands, and jazz ensembles
were warmly received at the front. There was never enough jazz music for the
troops. The wartime jazz star was 'Eddie' (Adolph, although called Adi or
Edi) Rosner, born in Berlin, the son of a Polish-Jewish shoemaker. Rosner
fed into Soviet territory at the beginning of the war. Along the way from
Berlin to Russia, he made the transition from violin to trumpet and from
conservatory music to big band. As head of the Belorussian jazz ensemble
before the invasion of 1941, he was an affuent Soviet prince under the
protection of the local satrap, an avid jazz fan. In 1941 he moved to Moscow,
and then toured the front. An admirer of the American trumpeter and
bandleader Harry James, Rosner banished the balalaika and concertina from
his orchestra and played straight American jazz. A few years after the fghting
ceased he and other jazzmen were put under arrest.19
Bye-bye Blues: the Cold War purge
The end of the Great Patriotic War ushered in the Cold War and its
accompanying Russian chauvinism and anti-cosmopolitanism, a retightening
of ideological orthodoxy and control, an austerity programme that was
covered over with a glistening cultural smile, and the escalation of the Stalin
cult to unprecedented heights. The Cold War with America now as the
principal adversary brought back the talk of Western decadence that had
dwelt inside the Russian mentality for generations. A great cultural pogrom,
the zhdanovshchina, was launched in the years 1946–48. What Andrei
Zhdanov and his associates, the guardians of Soviet culture, disliked most of
all was foreign inspiration which produced both frivolity (as in jazz) and
'formalism' – a code word for excessive difficulty in classical music. Novelty
was the enemy of familiarity and familiarity seemed to guarantee both
political and psychological security through comfort and tranquillity.
Nostalgia, represented most vividly by 'folk' music, became the handmaiden
of stability or even stasis. This is why folksong writing and performance
grew so luxuriantly from this time onward. Conservatives feared the far away
and the new that were both embodied in the young, and the authorities easily
took up the old moralistic critique of popular culture as the ally of vice, sex,
and alienation from the system.
The deadly purge of American jazz was a by-product of the cultural pogrom.
Jazz bandleaders were arrested, jazz groups dissolved or toned down and
renamed, and, in 1949, saxophones confscated. What Max Lerner once called
'the American instrument' was to Soviet high priests the evil emblem of an
alien civilisation. A stunning irony of late Stalinism was that American jazz,
though virtually outlawed, flourished in the vast prison camp system known
as the GULag, where arrestees such as Eddie Rosner performed it. Since jazz
was labelled an alien form, it was persecuted for that and also in a sense for
being too popular and accessible to the Soviet people. The opposite, as is well
known, occurred in the realm of symphonic music. When Andrei Zhdanov,
the cultural enforcer of the early days of the Cold War, cracked down on
Shostakovich and Prokofiev in 1948, it was partly because their music had
allegedly strayed from its natural purpose: to refect Soviet patriotism,
highlight deeply Russian themes, sing with soaring melodies, and be
accessible to the masses.
With renewed vigour, folk ensembles were again promoted by the state and
balalaikas mass-produced. Communist snoop squads raided performances,
and guards were posted on the dance foor. Dances were even renamed: the
foxtrot became the 'quickstep', the tango the 'slow dance', and the waltz the
'ballroom dance'. To fill the ears of loyal Soviets, the mass song composers
turned out cheerful operettas, musicals, and songs of sugary patriotism. The
1930s film musical was revived, sunny and optimistic. Dunaevskii showed no
signs of diminishing enthusiasm for painting a smile across the Soviet land.
His musical film Kubanskie kazaki [Kuban Cossacks] (1949), released at a
time of severe shortages and the ravages of recovery, was said to be one of
Stalin's favourites. It was a horse operetta with a couple of love plots about
Cossack collective farmers competing in a country fair, very reminiscent of
Rodgers and Hammerstein's State Fair (1945). The similarity was not
coincidental: both involved a double romance amid pastoral and communal
celebration and an aura of prosperity. Both also seemed to refect a turn away
from urban themes to a more 'authentic' Russia and America of rural values.
When Stalin died in 1953, those musicians who wanted to dance to a
different piper and march to a different drummer, with ears aching and hearts
weary of offcial Stalinist musical culture, wondered what would happen
next.20
Notes
1 See I.I. Rom-Lebedev, Ot tsyganskogo khora – k teatru 'Romen': Zapiski moskovskogo tsygana
(Moscow, 1990) for the gypsy tavern milieu; G. Soboleva, Russkii sovetskii romans (Moscow, 1985);
Ia.I. Gudoshnikov, 'Gorodskoi romans kak sotsialnoe i khudozhestvennoe iavlenie', in Folklor narodov
RSFSR (Ufa, 1979), pp. 98–104; R. Rothstein, 'Death of the Folk Song?', in S. Frank and M. Steinberg
(eds), Culture in Flux: Lower-Class Values, Practices, and Resistance in Late Imperial Russia
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), pp. 108–20. For song stars, see I.V. Nest'ev, Zvezdy
russkoi estrady , 2nd edn (Moscow, 1974); Rampa i zhizn', 3, 1910, p. 46 and ibid. 23, 1911, pp. 10–11;
A. Kugel, Teatralnye portrety (1923; Leningrad, 1967), pp. 284–93; recordings of Panina, Vialtseva,
and Plevitskaia in the collection of Hubertus Jahn of Cambridge University. I thank him for its use. For
American reactions to early jazz, see L. Erenberg, Steppin' Out: New York Nightlife and the
Transformation of American Culture, 1890–1930 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981).
2 E. Kuznetsov, Iz proshlogo russkoi estrady (Moscow, 1958), pp. 350–52; L. Gendlin, Iz pesen A.
Vertinskogo (Stockholm, 1980); A. Vertinskii, Zapiski russkogo Pero and Pesni i stikhi 1916–1937
(New York, 1982); Konstantin Rudnitskii, record jacket notes to Aleksandr Vertinskii (D026773–
026774), made shortly before his death, containing Endless Road [Dorogoi Dlinnoiu ] and Nad
rozovym morem [On a Pink-Tinted Sea], amongst others. A more complete and recent collection is
Pechalnyia pesenki A.N. Vertinskago: k stoletiia so dnia rozhdeniia, 1889–1989 (M60–48689–001 and
48691–001).
3 S.F. Starr, Red and Hot: the Fate of Jazz in the Soviet Union (New York: Oxford University Press,
1983), pp. 20–36; compare with L. Erenberg, pp. 1–109.
4 Numerous recordings of the more famous revolutionary songs are available on cassette and CD.
Analysis in S.D. Dreiden, Muzyka-revoliutsii , 2nd edn (Moscow, 1970); P.G. Shiriaeva, 'Poetic
Features and Genre Characteristics of the Songs of Russian Workers (Pre-Revolutionary Period)', in
Soviet Anthropology and Archaeology, Summer–Fall, 1975, pp. 71–95, which shows the rich variety of
workers' songs; S. Ament, 'Russian Revolutionary Songs of 1905 and 1917: Symbols and Messengers
of Protest and Change', M.A. Thesis, Georgetown University, 1984; and V. Frumkin, 'Tekhnologiia
ubezhdeniia', Obozrenie , 5, July 1983, pp. 17–20.
5 Machine music came in two forms: that of Alexander Mosolov, whose symphonic fantasy Zavod
(1928) was performed with standard orchestra and various pieces of metal in the coda, and that created
by the Engineerists who gave performances by orchestrating machinery on the factory foor.
6 B. Schwarz, Music and Musical Life in Soviet Russia, 1917–1970 (London: Barrie and Jenkins,
1972); G.I. Ilina, Kulturnoe stroitelstvo v Petrograde (Leningrad, 1982), pp. 124–140; for machine
music, see R. Stites, Revolutionary Dreams (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. 159–160.
7 E. Uvarova (ed.), Russkaia sovetskaia estrada, 3 vols (Moscow: 1976–81), vol. 1, pp. 204–39; V.
Frumkin, 'Tekhnologiia ubezhdeniia', pp. 17–20.
8 In addition to works cited above, see R. Rothstein, 'Popular Song in the NEP Era', in S. Fitzpatrick et
al. (eds), Russia in the Era of NEP (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), pp. 268–94 and R.
Stites, Russian Popular Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), chapter 2.
9 The best treatment by far is in S.F. Starr, pp. 37–78. See also A. Gorsuch, Youth in Revolutionary
Russia: Enthusiasts, Bohemians, Delinquents (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000).
10 L. Lebedenskii, Dovesti do kontsa borbu s nepmanskoi muzykoi (Moscow, 1931), p. 19.
11 J. Jelagin, Taming of the Arts, tr. N. Wreden (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1951), p. 187.
12 E. Winter, Red Virtue (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1933), p. 284.
13 For proletarian composers, see N. Edmunds, The Soviet Proletarian Music Movement (Oxford: Peter
Lang, 2000); and A. Nelson, Music for the Revolution: Russian Musicians and Soviet Power, 1917–
1932 (University Park, PA: forthcoming).
14 See F. Miller, Folklore for Stalin (Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, 1990) for the general background. For a
nationality-by-nationality musical history from the Soviet point of view, see Iu. Keldysh (ed.), Istoriia
muzykoi narodov SSSR , 2 vols (Moscow, 1970). Current scholarship is in the process of revisiting this
entire enterprise. See the essays by Michael Rouland, Andy Nercessian, Matthew O'Brien, and Pekka
Suutari in this volume, for example.
15 S.F. Starr, pp. 107–80. To get a visual sense of the smoothed-out 'jazz' of the late Stalin and early
Khrushchev eras, see the film Carnival Night (1955). The band includes violinists and accordions along
with a reed section; the players wear reindeer sweaters fashionable in the United States about five years
earlier, and their piece (which I have not identifed) is hardly more than a variant on Lady in Spain.
16 See R. Stites, 'Isaak Dunaevsky', in Encyclopedia of Russian History (New York/London:
Macmillan, forthcoming).
17 That was regularly sung in class in the United States during the Second World War. For more
information on The Counterplan, see John Riley's essay in this volume.
18 The fghter pilot Lieutenant Valeriia Khomiakova shot down a German Stuka. R. Pennington,
'Wings, Women, and War', Ph.D. Dissertation, University of South Carolina, 1993.
19 For the wartime years, aside from S.F. Starr, pp. 81–203 and R. Stites, Russian Popular Culture ,
pp. 103–10, see R. Rothstein, 'Homeland, Home Town, and Battlefeld: the Popular Song', in R. Stites
(ed.), Culture and Entertainment in Wartime Russia (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), pp.
77–94.
20 For a fine summary of the post-war scene, see E. Zubkova, Russia after the War: Hopes, Illusions,
and Disappointments, 1945–1957 (Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, 1998). For the popular musical and its
context, see S.F. Starr, pp. 204–34; and R. Stites, Russian Popular Culture, pp. 116–22.
3
Declared dead, but only provisionally
Plate 3.4 Advertisement for Uslovno ubityi. (Source: Rabochii i teatr, 24, 1931 (inside front cover).)
page was the acronym for the State Union of Music, Estrada and Circus,
which was founded earlier in 1931 to draw together the different performing
organisations. After mistakenly announcing the frst performance as scheduled
for the end of September (v kontse sentiabria), and also advertising this as the
opening of the season, the page continues by describing the show as a 'light-
entertainment circus presentation in 3 acts'.58 It then lists the participants,
beginning with the authors V. Voevodin and Evg. Ryss. Vsevolod Petrovich
Voevodin (1907–73) was a young poet before he moved into the theatre in
the late 1920s with a stream of plays that included in 1929 P'esa, kotoroi net
[The Play which isn't There], Sukiny deti [Sons of a Bitch] the following year,
and with Evgenii Ryss, Nebylitsy [Cock-and-Bull Stories]. These were
evidently busy times for Voevodin, since the off-cial Biographical List of
Leningrad Writers records that 'In 1930–31 he actively participated in the
collectivisation of villages.'59 This indicates the nature of Voevodin's
distinctive political position, and fts into the music-hall director's plans for
greater political commitment. His collaborator Evgenii Samoylovich Ryss
(1908–c.1970) was mainly a children's writer. However, in the 1930s after
Uslovno ubityi he joined Voevodin and wrote popular adventure stories as
well as flm scripts.60
Next named on the poster are the director, N.V. Petrov, and the composer,
D.D. Shostakovich. Nikolai Vasilevich Petrov (1890–1964) was by this time
an extremely distinguished fgure in Russian and Soviet theatre. From 1909 he
worked at the Moscow Arts Theatre and was a student of Meyerhold's, before
moving to St Petersburg where he built a reputation as a director and cabaret
artist, using the pseudonym Kolia Peter.61 Petrov was also one of the
founders and principal organisers of the 'Stray Dog' performances, and
continued in cabaret into the early revolutionary period when – at the
opposite end of the scale – he was among those who put together so-called
'mass spectacles' like Vziatie zimnego dvortsa [The Storming of the Winter
Palace] (1920). He maintained at different times shifting links with such
organisations as RAPP and TRAM,62 and was clearly regarded as one of the
main 'Left' directors in the Leningrad theatre. As well as putting on shows in
the Leningrad and Moscow Music-Halls, Petrov staged important productions
in the straight theatre, including Molière's Tartuffe at the Leningrad
Academic Theatre of Drama (LATD) in 1929, for which his fellow director
and designer was Nikolai Akimov. In 1931, just before Uslovno ubityi, he
was also responsible at the LATD for a much-discussed production of
Alexander Afnogenev's Strakh [Fear].63
With regard to Dmitrii Dmitrievich Shostakovich (1906–75), it should be
stated at this point that in the previous two to three years he had gained
extensive experience in the Moscow and Leningrad theatre and cinema. As
noted, he wrote the music for Meyerhold's Moscow production of
Maiakovskii's The Bedbug in 1929, and also three scores for the Leningrad
TRAM: for Alexander Bezymenskii's Vystrel [The Shot] (1929), Arkadii
Gorbenko and Nikolai Lvov's Tselina [Virgin Soil] (1930), and Adrian
Petrovskii's Prav' Britaniia! [Rule Britannia!] (1931). Of his two ballets so
far, The Golden Age (1930) was staged at the Leningrad Academic Theatre of
Opera and Ballet (GATOB), with apparently undistinguished choreography.
However, the designs were by Valentina Khodasevich, an important theatre
artist remembered for her collaboration with Sergei Radlov and for her work
at the Leningrad Music-Hall.64 Shostakovich's second ballet, Bolt [The Bolt]
(1931), which received a disastrous premiere at GATOB on 8 April 1931,
was choreographed by Fedor Lopukhov, who immediately afterwards joined
the Uslovno ubityi team. Earlier, in January 1930, Shostakovich's frst opera,
The Nose (1929), was staged at the Malyi Opera Theatre, on which occasion
the designer was Vladimir Dmitriev, who was to be one of the designers on
Uslovno ubityi.
The advertisement for Uslovno ubityi states that there were no less than three
designers: N.P. Akimov, V.V. Dmitriev and E.I. Okurokov. The first two of
these names are highly significant. As noted, Nikolai Pavlovich Akimov
(1901–68) was by this stage an experienced designer and director who had
worked in the avant-garde theatre in Leningrad and at the Music-Hall.
Immediately after Uslovno ubityi, he embarked on a notoriously irreverent
production of Hamlet for the Vakhtangov Theatre in Moscow in May 1932
for which Shostakovich wrote the score. According to E.I. Strutinskaia,
Akimov's work during this period, especially in the popular theatre, 'stressed
laconic and dynamic qualities, avoided picturesque backdrops, showed a
preference for elemental structure as the basis of the design, and made play
with the effect of sudden changes and transformations'.65 In other words, he
was fond of all the modernist tricks of the day. In 1933, Akimov took overall
charge of design at the Leningrad Music-Hall, but resigned the following
year when his production of Evgenii Shvarts's The Princess and the
Swineherd66 was banned. In the post-war period, he was also a major figure
in the conventional theatre.67
Akimov's colleague, Vladimir Vladimirovich Dmitriev (1900–48), was also
an important and infuential figure in the history of Soviet theatre design and
very significant in the Shostakovich story. Like Petrov, he had been a pupil of
Meyerhold's, after which he moved towards opera, designing productions for
both Leningrad opera theatres including Schreker's Der ferne Klang [Dal'nyi
zvon, The Distant Sound] at the Malyi in 1925, Prokofiev's Liubov' k trem
apel'sinam [Love for Three Oranges] at GATOB in 1926, Krenek's Der
Sprung über den Schatten [Pryzhok cherez ten', The Leap over the Shadow]
at the Malyi in 1927, Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov at GATOB in 1928, and
Tchaikovsky's Evgenii Onegin at GATOB in 1929. His design for the first
production of The Nose at the Malyi in 1930 included 'moveable sets which
gleamed through a fine metal screen'.68 Later, in 1934–35, he was responsible
for designing the first three Soviet productions of Lady Macbeth of the
Mtsensk District at the Malyi in Leningrad and the Nemirovich-Danchenko
and Bolshoi theatres in Moscow. At the same time, he shifted from a
modernist style to a more realistic one, especially when he was working in
the Moscow Arts Theatre.69
Next in the advertisement are listed the choreographers, F.V. Lopukhov and
N.A. Glan. The long career of Fedor Vasilievich Lopukhov (1886–1973) is
well documented and does not need much attention here. Suffice to say,
however, that during the 1920s his reputation was largely based on two
different kinds of work: perpetuating the nineteenth-century classical
tradition, including restoring the great dance-spectacles of Marius Petipa; and
experimenting with new and modernist idioms and themes of various kinds.70
The climax of this period, according to Elizabeth Souritz, was Lopukhov's
1927 ballet Ledianaia deva [The Ice Maiden], using music of Grieg.70 From
1922 to 1930, Lopukhov was director of the ballet troupe in GATOB, where
he later mounted the catastrophic premiere of Shostakovich's The Bolt in
1931. From 1931 to 1936 he directed the ballet at the Malyi Opera Theatre,
and it was there that he also staged Shostakovich's Svetlyi ruchey [The Limpid
Stream] in 1935.
By contrast, Natalia Alexanderovna Glan (real name Rzhepishevskaia)
(1904–66) began in the early 1920s as a striking performer in a style mixing
the latest in modern dance with clowning (plasticheskii tanets i ektsentrika
).72 She made a more serious name for herself in 1926 when she provided
acclaimed choreography for Alexander Tairov's production of Lecocq's
operetta Day and Night.73 In 1929, she also worked alongside Shostakovich
as the choreographer for Meyerhold's production of The Bedbug.
Following this starry line-up, the next name on the advertisement is E.P.
Gershuni, one of the leading directors at the Leningrad circus in the 1930s,
and in charge of the circus effects for the show.74 Then come enormous
letters to leave us in no doubt about who is the biggest draw of the evening:
LEONID UTESOV
Below this headline the following are listed: the dog, Alpha (Al'fa ) and her
trainer; Utesov's Tea-dzhaz ensemble (playing The 12 Apostles); a high-wire
act called 'the 4 Giovannis'; a dressage performer (K.S. Dmitriev); the Orlik
Troupe; and the promise of 'a series of other Russian and foreign acts'.
Beneath the next headline –'The Ballet Ensemble of the Music-Hall'75 – are
more promises of attractions: 'Comoufage [sic]. Military dances. Efficient
Waitresses. Rejoicing Seraphim'.76 Finally, there is a list of actors, and
mention of the orchestra and their conductor, Dunaevskii. Curiously enough,
two of the performers most often mentioned in subsequent accounts as having
taken part in the show are not named on this poster: Klavdiia Shulzhenko and
the already familiar kupletist (singer of comic songs or declaimer of comic
verses), Vladimir Koralli.77
Dunaveskii's role as the most important Soviet composer of light music has
already been noted. Nowadays, he is remembered by Russians for his
innumerable popular songs and also for his film-scores including Veselye
rebiata and Deti kapitana Granta [The Children of Captain Grant] (1936).
However, during his early career in Moscow, before he was invited to take
over the musical directorship of the Leningrad Music-Hall, he worked mostly
as a composer of operettas. He wrote fve of them between 1927 and 1929,
and continued to write operettas for Moscow even while he was living in
Leningrad and working at the Music-Hall.
By any standards the list of collaborators on this project was impressive. It is
also highly revealing. Even by the standards of the Leningrad Music-Hall, it
is clear that the best available talent has been enlisted, and that was for
several reasons. The frst was the need to make a show politically committed
enough to withstand the sniping of the proletarian critics.78 At the same time,
it can also be deduced from this line-up of not always politically correct
participants that the management had the intention of making sure the public
and the critics knew it was putting on a show which would be as theatrically
and musically famboyant and ambitious as possible. This was perhaps in part
to compensate for the fact that Osoaviakhím and the PVO were hardly
themes that leapt to the eye as starting points for a good relaxing evening out
at the Music-Hall.
There is also another reason why this 'list of collaborators' is interesting. It
vividly demonstrates the close-knit condition of the worlds of music and
theatre in Leningrad at this period, and especially the often complex
interrelations of practitioners of different kinds of highbrow and lowbrow art
and entertainment. In particular, with regard to Shostakovich, it locates him at
this time in his life in the centre of a spider's web of connections. These
connections help us place the historical achievements of his music at this
period (including his operas, ballets and early symphonies) not only where
they are usually seen, in the particular context of Soviet art-music or
international art-music, but in the somewhat different context of the broader
stream of Soviet and particularly Leningrad culture.
The plot of Uslovno ubityi
Given the varied plots and themes of the other more or less contemporary
productions at the Leningrad Music-Hall noted above, and also the particular
political pressures on the theatre management in the autumn of 1931, it is
worth examining the evidence that survives to see what can be deduced of the
shape, themes and character of Uslovno ubityi. Using various sources,
including press reports and memoirs as well as the evidence of
Shostakovich's sketches, Laurel Fay summarises matters as follows:
The plot … centered on the adventures of the character played by Utesov, Stopka Kurochkin,79 a fast-
talking show-off with a cowardly streak, and his girlfriend Mashenka Funtikova (played by
Shulzhenko), characterised as a dippy young maid80 with a primitive appreciation of love and
happiness. In the first scene, strolling arm-in-arm along the streets of Leningrad unaware that a
scheduled air-raid drill is in progress, the two are apprehended and 'declared dead', over their
vociferous protests. Stopka cried out: 'Citizens! What is this? A working bloke wants to relax with a
working gal, to gab with her on non-Party themes, and you grab him like a lunatic!'.81 Stopka's escape
from the stretcher bearers and the subsequent pursuit set up the basic premise for a series of fantastic
escapades….
Judging from the surviving sources, among a wide variety of songs, dances, and comic turns, the
attractions of the show also included: the antics of a famous trained sheepdog Alpha (or Alma
according to some sources), acrobats, film sequences, a puppet presentation 'On the River Bottom',
juggling cooks, clown waiters and dancing waitresses, tricks of aerial acrobatics performed over the
auditorium, a lengthy melodeclamation by a character called Beiburzhuev ('Mr. Beat-the-Bourgeois',
played by a renowned satirist Vladimir Koralli) which was declaimed over a cemetery of locomotives,
the demonstration of 'an advanced school of horseback riding', and a dream sequence in Paradise
featuring God, the devil (Utesov), the 12 Apostles (Utesov's 'tea-jazz') and the Music-hall's ballet
ensemble as the rejoicing seraphim.82
Using this account as a guide, it is revealing to turn to Shostakovich's
surviving musical sketches for the show. There we fnd the following
structure (the titles are in Shostakovich's handwriting):83
1
Uvertura (Overture)
2
Razrushenie goroda (The destruction of the city)
3
1-aia pes'nia Mashen'ki [sic] (Mashen'ka's 1st song)
4
2-aia pes'nia Mashen'ki (Mashen'ka's 2nd song)
5
[no surviving movement with this number]
6
Perekhod na lazaret (Transition to the field hospital)
7
[no title, but the music is half-'galop', half-cancan]
8
Perekhod na pole (Transition to the field)
9
Pole (peyzazh) (The field (landscape) )
10
[no surviving movement with this number]
11
Pol'ka (Polka)
12
Marsh. Kamufiazh (March. Camouflage)
13
[no surviving movement with this number]
14
[no surviving movement with this number]
15
Dno reki (The bottom of the river)
16
Final 1-go akta. Tanets vremennykh pobediteley (Finale of 1st Act. Dance of the temporary victors)
16a
Vstuplenie ko 2-mu aktu. Petrushka (Introduction to 2nd Act. Petrushka)
17
Petrushka (garmoshka) (Petrushka (concertina) )
17a
[illegible title, perhaps Kuplety]
17b
Buria (Storm)
18
Priezd gruzovika (Arrival of the lorry)
18a
Tanets (Dance)
19
[no surviving movement with this number]
20
[no surviving movement with this number]
21
Zhonglery i podaval'shchitsy (Perekhod na kukhniu) (Jugglers and waitresses (Transition to the
kitchen) )
21a
Podaval'shchitsy (Waitresses)
22
[no surviving movement with this number]
23
[no surviving movement with this number]
24
Monolog Beiburzhueva (Beiburzhuev's monologue)
25
[no surviving number]
26
Ray. Polet kheruvimov (Paradise. Flight of the cherubims)
27
Polet angelov (Flight of the angels)
28
Adazhio (Adagio)
29
Vakkhanaliia Ioanna Kronshtadskogo i Paraskevy Piatnitsy (Bacchanalia of John of Kronstadt and
Paraskeva Piatnitsa)
29a
Val's (Waltz)
30
[no title, but a heavenly chorus]
31
[no title, but a heavenly chorus]
32
[no title, but a heavenly chorus]
33
[no title, but a heavenly chorus]
33a
12 apostolov (12 apostles)
34
Nomer Arkhangela Gavriila (The Archangel Gabriel's number)
In addition to these numbered items, there survive two unnumbered items in
partial sketch-form. First, there is a send-up, kapustnik-style, which turns the
tsarist national anthem Bozhe tsaria khrani [God Save the Tsar] into a
foxtrot. Second, there is the climax of a substantial orchestral interlude that,
as it ends by dying away, is probably not the end of the show but what
remains of some kind of interlude or transition.
The first thing we notice about these sketches, as suggested by my spacing, is
the division into three acts.84 At the same time, it is perhaps advisable to treat
Shostakovich's numeration with caution. It is possible that the order of these
pieces of music does not refect their order in the show. For example, did the
two 'Mashenka' songs for Shulzhenko really happen in quick succession near
the beginning? They certainly might have done, given that the first song is
slow and sentimental and the second one quick and funny.
At all events, it seems from these titles that Act 1 started in the city and then
shifted to the countryside where the practice-manoeuvres were perhaps taking
place. To listen to the music is to get a slightly more precise idea at least of
the character of the entertainments on stage. For example, it is scarcely
possible to imagine that the decidedly Offenbach-like no. 7 (the 'galop'-
cancan) was not a major dance-item,85 although it might also have been a
chase. Laurel Fay notes that there was a chase in the show involving 'Utesov
… running down the aisle with Alpha … in hot pursuit, scrambling up a rope
ladder and then (ingeniously replaced by a look-alike stuntman) performing
aerial acrobatics above the audience'. Similarly, no. 12 (a military march) can
only have been for an entry or parade of soldiers. 86 It has also been noted
that no. 15 ('The bottom of the river') accompanied a puppet performance.87
If so, then to judge by the character of this languorous waltz, what the
puppets were doing at the bottom of the river must have been a dance of
rusalki (water-nymphs).88 The act ends with what can only have been a
spectacular dance-number, a 'hopak' or 'gopak', which gets faster and sillier as
it goes along.
Act 2 takes the opposite journey, beginning outside the city and then moving
in for what was evidently a substantial scene in a restaurant. The act ends
with the single largest number from the show, an extended comic monologue
or melodeclamation for Koralli while he sits on a pile of abandoned steam
locomotives. This scene, one assumes, could not have taken place in the
restaurant.
All the surviving music from Act 3 has titles suggesting a 'dream sequence in
Paradise'.89 We can assume therefore that the action of the whole act took
place there. Here one notes the participation of a chorus of 'rejoicing
seraphim', although it should be added that the choral numbers listed here are
among the most perfunctory pieces in the sketched score. They are so
perfunctory in fact that after reading them, one wonders how they could
possibly have been given any dramatic or musical weight at all. Also
noticeable is the absence from these sketches of an ending to the show. With
regard to sketch no. 33a, '12 apostles', the poster would suggest that it was
written for performance by the Tea-dzhaz ensemble themselves. It begins as a
send-up of Mephistopheles's famous 'Song of the Golden Calf' from
Gounod's Faust and segues into a relentless stream of dances based on
popular tunes, including a version of the most famous Russian tune of all,
Chizhik, pyzhik [Birdie, birdie]. Presumably, if Utesov was playing the role
of the Devil in this act, as Fay suggests, then he would have sung the Gounod
fragment at the beginning. Sketch no. 34, 'The Archangel Gabriel's number',
is even less likely to have been the ending of the show. It is an amusing
reworking of an 'urban' song that Shostakovich frst used in his fnale added to
the Malyi's production of Erwin Dressel's opera Armer Columbus [Bednyi
Kolumb or Poor Columbus in English] in 1929.90 He then reused it in The
Golden Age in 1930, and again in his First Piano Concerto in 1933. However,
it is no ending to an evening, so the true ending must be missing.
This last act's now odd-sounding 'dream sequence in Paradise' was at the time
not a completely isolated or unusual device, and there are occurrences of
similar anti-religious satire in other shows of the period. Whether or not
anything quite like this had been presented in the Leningrad Music-Hall's
previous seasons, a few months after the premiere of Uslovno ubityi, in May
1932, the Moscow Music-Hall put on a spectacle called Kak 14-ia diviziia b
ray shla [How the 14th Division went to Heaven] with a script by Demian
Bednyi, the well-known Bolshevik satirist. To judge by E.D. Udarova's
account of it, the theatrical manner of this atheist comedy must have had a
certain amount in common with the last act of Uslovno ubityi.91 In the case of
How the 14th Division went to Heaven , moreover, Udarova suspects the
infuence of Meyerhold's once notorious but long forgotten 1921 production
of Maiakovskii's 1918 play Misteriia-Buff [Mystery-Bouffe].92 All three of
these shows certainly contained scenes in paradise with a chorus of singing
and dancing devils.
The lack of an ending to Uslovno ubityi raises various questions about the
status of the surviving music. When Fay was writing 'Mitya in the Music-
hall', she only had access to piano sketches nos. 3–34. From that evidence she
suggested that it might have been possible that Shostakovich had left the
business of orchestration to Dunaevskii.93 Since then, autograph full-
orchestral scores of the opening two numbers have been discovered,94 and
they reveal that Shostakovich certainly did this part of the orchestration
himself and very probably orchestrated most, if not all, of the rest of the
score. Moreover, it turns out that he pillaged these opening two numbers
(along with no. 9, The field (landscape) ) from his unsuccessful ballet The
Bolt.95 This cunning move cannot be seen as merely lightening the
composer's workload, for it required him to reorchestrate the borrowed
music; a significant labour, if certainly not as great as writing entirely new
pieces. With the failure of the ballet only months earlier, it must have been
tempting to use the occasion of Uslovno ubityi to recycle attractive and lively
music that was otherwise going to waste.
There is also the problem of the missing numbers. All the evidence, including
the final Bolshoi Theatre scene of the film Veselye rebiata, shows that there
were two kinds of music involved in any music-hall show with the Tea-dzhaz
ensemble. First, orchestral music played by the house-band that was sitting in
the pit and conducted by Dunaevskii. Second, the Teadzhaz 's own repertoire,
which was performed on stage and led by Utesov. It might seem likely that
even in Uslovno ubityi, the group would have performed popular numbers
from their own repertoire that were perhaps written by Dunaevskii. However,
the advertisement from Rabochii i teatr specifically promises that the Tea-
dzhaz will perform as the '12 apostles', and as noted, music by Shostakovich
with this title exists. This music was presumably written for the ensemble,
rather than the orchestra, although it was possibly for both.
The texts of Uslovno ubityi
The author would like to thank three much-valued friends and colleagues for their indispensable help
and advice, although all mistakes and opinions are completely my own. Laurel Fay, Shostakovich's
biographer, was generous enough to lend me the text of her unpublished lecture 'Mitya in the Music
Hall', which I shall extensively draw on throughout this essay, and respond with advice and criticism to
what I had written. 'Mitya in the Music Hall' was presented by her at Cornell University, 23 January
1995; at New York University, 23 February 1995; and at Hunter College, 27 September 1996 as part of
'Speaking of Shostakovich: A Symposium'. A version of this lecture was published in Muzykal'naia
akademiia, 4, 1997, pp. 59–62, as 'Mitia v miuzik-kholle: eshche odin vsgliad na "Uslovno ubitogo" '
['Mitya in the music-hall: one more look at "Declared Dead" ']. Olga Komok, a wise musician and
sceptical scholar in St Petersburg, pursued on my behalf a maze of references and connections that I
was unable or too ill-informed to track down myself, while Liudmila Kovnatskaia, the doyenne of St
Petersburg musicologists, read the manuscript and offered several criticisms.
1 For this date, sometimes given as 20 October, see L. Fay, Shostakovich: A Life (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2000), p. 63.
2 No one version is entirely satisfactory. 'Declared Dead' is the neat invention of Laurel Fay and used in
her biography of Shostakovich (ibid.), and has the distinct advantages of alliteration and a witty take on
the original sense, which should make it standard. It does, however, miss the special senses of uslovno,
which Robin Aizlewood has suggested in conversation with the author was something of a jargon word
of the 1920s. The sensational and commercially useful (but misleading) 'Hypothetically Murdered' was
provided at my request by Grigorii Gerenstein for the frst concert performance of my reconstruction of
some of Shostakovich's music from the show in Birmingham in 1991. There are also some pretty
peculiar translations in other languages, such as French and German.
3'Estrada' is typically translated as 'variety'. In my experience, the term 'light entertainment' as used in
the Britain comes closer to the meaning, since 'variety' carries the constricting connotation of too
specifc a kind of performance. See the opening remarks in the introduction to E. Udarova, Estradnyi
teatr: Miniatiury, obozreniia, miuzik-kholly (1917–1945) (Moscow, 1983), n.p.
4 The music from the show figures in Shostakovich's worklist as op. 31.
5 For example, S. Khentova, Shostakovich: zhizn' i tvorchestvo, vol. 1 (Leningrad, 1985), pp. 256–57.
6 C.T. Onions (ed. and rev.), Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1973), p. 1375.
7 E.D. Udarova (ed.), Estrada Rossii. 20 vek. Leksikon (Moscow, 2000), p. 377.
8 Marinetti's first manifesto was printed in a St Petersburg newspaper in 1909. Following this, early
reactions to his ideas can be found in the works of Khlebnikov, Maiakovskii and Kruchenykh.
Marinetti visited Russia himself at the beginning of 1914, in which year also 'The Manifestos of Italian
Futurism' appeared in a Russian translation by Vadim Shershenevich. V. Terras, A History of Russian
Literature (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), p. 410.
9 I am not suggesting that Eisenstein and others did not understand that there was a difference between
music-hall (with its typically quickfre sequence of comic songs, patter routines, dances and conjuring
tricks) and circus (with its clowns, large animals, and spectacular acrobatics); simply, that they tended
in a refex fashion to bracket the two together (frequently along with references to detective movies,
boxing matches and other popular entertainments) for the approved vulgarity they suggested.
10 From the translation by Richard Taylor and William Powell in R. Taylor (ed.), The Eisenstein
Reader (London: BFI Publishing, 1998), p. 31.
11 'The Russian word ekstsentrik means initially "clown", but was adopted by the Petrograd-based
Factory of the Eccentric Actor (FEKS), led by Grigorii M. Kozintsev (1905–73), Leonid Z. Trauberg
(1901–90) and Sergei I. Iutkevich (1904–85), whose self-proclaimed models in both theatre and cinema
included circus and music-hall techniques and American cinema'. Ibid., p. 193, 16n.
12 E. Braun, 'Futurism in the Russian Theatre, 1913–1923', in G. Berghaus (ed.), International
Futurism in Arts and Literature (Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2000), p. 91.
13 Taken (including some odd typography which I have not been able to check against the original)
from M. Pytel (trans.), Eccentric Manifesto (London: The Eccentric Press, 1992), p. 4. Pytel gives an
original publication date for the manifesto of 9 July 1922, though the introduction to the manifesto is
dated 5 December 1921.
14 K. Rudnitsky, Russian and Soviet Theatre: Tradition and the Avant-Garde (London: Thames &
Hudson, 1988), pp. 97–99.
15 Ibid.
16 Shostakovich wrote music for three of Iutkevich's films: Zlatye gory [Golden Mountains] (1931),
Vstrechnyi [Counterplan] (1932), and Chelovek s ruzhem [The Man with a Gun] (1938).
17 Edward Braun notes that Foregger's pioneering work was anticipated by a 1919 production in the
Armorial Hall of the Winter Palace of Lev Tolstoy's play The First Distiller. This, comments Braun,
'gave new focus to the current debate on the hybridisation of the dramatic stage – its "circusization" and
"music-hallization", to use the terms then current. It also marked the advent of a new genre that would
shortly be called "Eccentrism".' E. Braun, p. 85.
18 All quotations and references to the plot and libretto of The Golden Age are taken from the English
translation of the 'synopsis' in D. Shostakovich, The Golden Age Op. 22, A Ballet in Three Acts and Six
Scenes Story for the Ballet by Alexander Ivanovsky (Edited and Introductory Article by M. Iakubov).
Piano Score (Moscow: 1995), pp. 8–9.
19 Knock-about parodies of familiar literary classics seem to have been a fairly familiar format for such
songs, and there was a parodying of a poem by Lermontov's Borodino in Uslovno ubityi.
20 Notorious, that is to say, among conductors and orchestral players for the practical problems of
performance that it creates.
21 I am grateful to David Fanning for a stimulating conversation on this aspect of the Fourth
Symphony. It is worth adding that although Shostakovich's overwhelming fascination for low-life
entertainment music declined thereafter, especially following the official and public attacks on his
music early in 1936, traces of music-hall (among other sources of banal imagery) remained an
important part of his musical language right up to his last works in the 1970s.
22 G. Roberts, The Last Soviet Avant-garde: OBERIU– Fact, Fiction, Metafiction (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 6n.
23 Real name Daniil Ivanovich Iuvachev (1905–42).
24 The title chosen by Neil Cornwell for his translation: D. Kharms, Incidences (London: Serpent's
Tail, 1993).
25 It should be added that though the examples given here are somewhat capriciously chosen, it would
not be difficult to fnd many other such examples of the self-consciously avant-garde appropriation of
popular and especially music-hall forms and styles all over the high culture of the period.
26 E.D. Udarova (2000), p. 377. Despite these changes of name, the theatre most often appears in the
literature simply as the Leningrad Music-Hall, which is how it will be referred to in this essay.
Elsewhere Udarova notes that 'already in the 1920s the question of the creation of Soviet music-halls
was widely debated in the press' and she adds in a note that such debates were especially common in
the magazine Zrelishcha [The Spectacle] between 1922 and 1924. E.D. Udarova, Russkaia sovetskaia
estrada 1930–1945; ocherki istorii (Moscow, 1977), p. 15.
27 The close personal involvement of Anatolii Lunacharskii (1875–1933) in the setting up of the new
Soviet music-halls has often been noted. See, for example, E. Udarova (1983), p. 195ff.
28 Throughout this period, the Music-Hall found itself 'swinging between operetta theatre and satirical
theatre'. Ibid., p. 203.
29 S.F. Starr, Red and Hot: The Fate of Jazz in the Soviet Union (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1983), p. 95, referring to E. Stepanov, Kulturnaia zhizn ' Leningrada 20-kh-nachala 30-kh godov,
(Leningrad, 1976), p. 259.
30 A.M. Saraeva-Bondar', Dunaevskii v Leningrade (Leningrad, 1985), p. 13ff.
31 Nikolai Aseev (1889–1963) was later the librettist of Shostakovich's aborted operetta The Big
Lightning (1932). The poetry of Mikhail Svetlov (1903–64) was later set by Shostakovich in Victorious
Spring (1945), a patriotic show for the NKVD Song and Dance Ensemble. In the summer of 1929,
Demian Bednyi (1883–1945) was supposed (but failed) to provide the lyrics for the fnale of
Shostakovich's Third Symphony (subtitled 'The First of May').
32 The year 1934 is the end-date given in L. Fay (2000), p. 367. However, one Soviet source claims it
was 1941. G.B. Bernandt and I.M. Iampol 'skii (eds.), Sovetskie kompozitori i muzikovedi, vol. 1
(Moscow, 1978), p. 224. Other Soviet sources also seem unclear on this point, as they are on the exact
date of the closure of the Leningrad Music-Hall. E.D. Udarova in a comment on the declining years of
Soviet music-hall in the mid-1930s observes: 'the music-halls were closing by 1937'. See E. Udarova
(1983), p. 238. In Dunaevskii's worklist, compiled by D.M. Person, it would seem that he composed his
last music for the Music-Hall in 1937. D.M. Person, I.O.Dunaevskii. Notobibliografcheskii spravochnik
(Moscow, 1971). Presumably, he was still music-director at that stage.
33 Quoted in A.M. Saraeva-Bondar', p. 14. Nikolai Robertovich Erdman (1902–70) was most famous
for his two early satires Mandat [The Mandate] (1924), which was staged to scandalous effect by
Meyerhold in 1925, and Samoubiitsa [The Suicide] (1928), which was not staged, but led to
considerable political diffculties including his imprisonment and exile. Vladimir Zakharovich Mass
(1896–1979) was a playwright and poet who like Erdman suffered imprisonment and exile. He frst
came to prominence in Foregger's Mastfor workshop with his dramatisation of Maiakovskii's poem
Good Treatment for Horses (1922) for a production by Eisenstein and Sergei Iutkevich. The previous
year, he was also a signatory of the Eccentric Manifesto, and was the director of the film The Golden
Mountains (1931), the score of which Shostakovich wrote immediately before Uslovno ubityi. After the
Second World War, Mass reappeared as a popular humorist and was one of the two librettists of
Shostakovich's operetta Moskva, Cheryomushki (1958).
34 The singer Nina Tamara was a star of the early music-hall who later moved into operetta. She took
part in the original launch of the Eccentric Manifesto (see nn. 11 and 12 above, and E. Braun, p. 91).
35 Cherkasov began as an acrobat, but graduated to being one of the Soviet Union's leading movie-
actors and a deputy of the Supreme Soviet. He was the star of Eisenstein's Alexander Nevskii (1938)
and Ivan Groznyi [Ivan the Terrible], pts. 1 and 2 (1944, 1945), and the author of memoirs that include
an account of the Leningrad Music-Hall. A.M. Saraeva-Bondar', p. 19.
36 Ilia Ilf (real name, Ilia Arnoldovich Fainzilberg, 1897–1937), Evgenii Petrov (real name, Evgenii
Petrovich Kataev, 1903–42), Mikhail Mikhailovich Zoshchenko (1895–1958). Ibid., p. 20.
37 Some of the first accounts of this group can be found in S. Dreiden, 'Tea-dzhaz', in Zhizn' iskusstva,
1929 (no issue number given). Reprinted in G. Skorokhodov, Neizvestnii Utesov (Moscow, 1995), pp.
58–62.
38 Many of these items can be heard in original 78 rpm recordings and 33 rpm reissues. A complete list
can be found in G. Skorokhodov, pp. 178–202, including several versions of one of the band's early
hits, Dunaevskii's Schastlivyi put' [The Happy Way] (1932) to words by Mass and Erdman.
39 L. Fay, 'Mitya in the Music Hall', p. 1.
40 A.M. Saraeva-Bondar', pp. 20–21.
41 Starr translates this title as 'Jazz at the Crossroads'. S.F. Starr, p. 150.
42 There seems to be some confusion about the date of Dzhaz na povorote. I am following Saraeva-
Bondar', but G. Skorokhodov in the sleeve notes to the LP Pamiati Leonida Utesova (1), Melodiya,
M60 44997 001, gives 1930, while S. Frederick Starr implies that the show was after Uslovno ubityi at
the end of 1931. Indeed, he makes a case that Dzhaz na povorote was written as a reaction to the failure
of Uslovno ubityi. However, this seems unlikely as by then the company was almost certainly already at
work on the next show, Muzykal'nyi Magazin. S.F. Starr, p. 150.
43 E.D. Udarova (1983), p. 212.
44 L. Fay, 'Mitya in the Music Hall', pp. 5–6.
45 It was presumably Mass and Erdman who subtitled the piece 'A Jazz Clownade' [Dzhaz klounada], a
coinage that looks back to the bouffonades [buffonadi] of the old Mastfor days.
46 A.M. Saraeva-Bondar', p. 26.
47 The Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov numbers were recorded and are available on Melodiya
M60 44997 001.
48 S.F. Starr, p. 153. Saraeva-Bondar' makes the same point at greater length. A.M. Saraeva-Bondar',
pp. 40ff.
49 Among passing details worth mentioning here are: the starring debut of the actress Liubov' Orlova,
who then became Alexanderov's wife; the unhappy aspects of the involvement of Mass and Erdman,
both of whom were under a political cloud; and (most famously) Stalin's fondness for this movie, which
he watched many times.
50 David Fanning has pointed out in conversation that there is also a curiously serendipitous if entirely
spurious connection with Shostakovich in this film. The comic misunderstandings of the opening
scenes of Veselye rebiata, set in a Black Sea seaside resort, depend on the fact that everyone knows that
there is a famous composer staying in the resort. The Utesov character, Kostia Potekhin, the simple
shepherd, is mistaken for this composer with preposterous consequences. It happened that at the time of
the premiere of Uslovno ubityi in October 1931, Shostakovich had preferred to skip those performances
and travel south to the Black Sea to work on Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District. He was hardly the
only one, though, as everyone who could took their holidays on the Black Sea.
51 E.D. Udarova, Russkaia sovetskaia estrada 1930–1945: Ocherki istorii (Moscow, 1977), p. 51.
52 Ibid., pp. 52–53. According to Udarova's note, Akimov's article appeared in Rabochii i teatr, 1934,
no. 17, p. 6.
53 E.D. Udarova (1977), p. 53.
54 Reproduced in E.D. Udarova (1983), p. 220.
55 See N. van Norman Baer, Theatre in Revolution: Russian Avant-garde Stage Design 1913–1935
(London: Thames and Hudson, 1991) for more details of these artists' work in the theatre.
56 Both the Rodchenko drawing, and a photograph of its realisation, can be found in K. Rudnitsky, p.
259. It is also worth noting that Sergei Eisenstein's fnal theatrical production, before he moved
permanently into the cinema, was his 1924 staging of Sergei Tretiakov's agitprop drama The Gas
Masks. Ibid., p. 96.
57 Rabochii i teatr, 24, 1931.
58 The same description as that of Attraktsiony v deistvii.
59 V. Bakhtin and A. Lur'e (authors and comp.), Pisately Leningrada. Bibliografcheskii spravochnik
(Leningrad, 1982), page number not given.
60 Kratkaia Literaturnaia Entsiklopedia, vol. 6, page number not given.
61 E.D. Udarova (2000), p. 449.
62 The Russian Association of Proletarian Writers and Theatre of Working-class Youth respectively.
63 See K. Rudnitsky, pp. 265–66.
64 A.M. Saraeva-Bondar', p. 20.
65 E.D. Udarova (2000), p. 22.
66 Ibid. This is the Shvarts title given by E.I. Strutinskaia, the author of this entry on Akimov. But it
appears that no such work is listed in Shvarts's output. It is therefore not clear what play or fairy-tale is
meant here.
67 Akimov was also a gifted painter and his well-known portrait of Shostakovich can be viewed on the
Chandos Multimedia DVD-ROM, DSCH Shostakovich, Chandos 55001 2001. It is merely dated 'Early
1930s'.
68 E.M. Kostina, Dmitriev (Moscow, 1957), pp. 6–7; F.Ia. Syrkina and E.M. Kostina, Russkoe
teatral'no-dekoratsionnoe iskusstvo (Moscow, 1978), p. 154.
69 Ibid.
70 E. Souritz, Soviet Choreographers in the 1920s (London: Dance Books, 1990), pp. 255ff.
71 Ibid., pp. 301–15.
72 E.D. Udarova (2000), p. 134.
73 K. Rudnitsky, p. 238.
74 Evgeni Pavlovich Gershuni (1899–1970) played a major role in the development of Soviet estrada,
and is still remembered at the St Petersburg Circus for his work in the 1930s. He also wrote a volume of
memoirs: E. Gershuni, Rasskazyvaiu ob estrade (Moscow, 1968).
75 A photograph of this ensemble can be found in S.F. Starr, following p. 192.
76 This translation follows L. Fay, 'Mitya in the Music Hall', p. 7.
77 Vladimir Filippovich Koralli (real name Kemper, 1906–95), renowned as a performer of
monologues. E.D. Udarova (2000), p. 266.
78 Many of whom were writing in the frequently ferocious pages of Rabochii i teatr.
79 There was evidently a genre of names for Utesov's characters: compare Mass and Erdman's Kostia
Potekhin to Riss and Voevodin's Stopka Kurochkin, for example.
80 E.D. Udarova notes that 'In 1931 [Shul'zhenko] performed two songs in Uslovno ubityi as Masha
Funtikova, an ice-cream seller'. E.D. Udarova (2000), p. 672.
81 L. Fay, 'Mitya in the Music-Hall', p. 7, footnotes this scrap of dialogue to G. Skorokhodov, p. 30.
82 L. Fay, 'Mitya in the Music Hall' pp. 6–7. The Osoaviakhím and PVO practice manoeuvres, which
underpin the plot of Uslovno ubityi, also reappear much later in Russian culture in Nikita Mikhalkov's
Oscar-winning movie Utomplennye solntsem [Burnt by the Sun] (1994), complete with images of gas-
masks and stretcher-bearers. Mikhalkov's clear point is to parody these goings-on as absurdly typical
and evocative of the terrifying political atmosphere of the early Stalinist period.
83 For numbers 3 onwards, I am working from photographs given to me in 1988 by Gennady
Rozhdestvensky and taken from the original piano sketches then held in the TsGALI (now RGALI), f.
2048, opis'.1, ed. khr. 45. The full orchestral score of the frst two numbers turned up more recently in
St Petersburg, where it was found by Andrei Nikolaievich Kriukov. It is now held in the Shostakovich
Family Archive in Moscow, and photocopies were kindly supplied to me by Irina Antonovna
Shostakovich.
84 My suggestion that the missing no. 25 was the beginning of Act 3 is of course hypothetical. It could
just as well have been the end of Act 2.
85 Possibly using the immense line-up of female dancers seen in the illustrations included in S.F. Starr,
following p. 192.
86 A few months after Uslovno ubityi, Shostakovich reused this same march for the entry of Fortinbras
and his soldiers in Akimov's Moscow production of Hamlet . Could it have been this music too that the
harsh reviewer of Uslovno ubityi in Rabochii i teatr noticed as having already been used by
Shostakovich in his (currently missing) score for the 1930 TRAM production Tselina [Virgin Soil]?
The reviewer noted his irritation that music used in Virgin Soil to accompany the outing of the kulaks
was unfatteringly recycled in Uslovno ubityi as a Red Army dance. While this comment clearly refects
the politics of Rabochii i teatr, it also tells us that the music in question was sufficiently distinctive that
the critic was able to recognise the recycling. L. Fay, 'Mitya in the Music Hall', p. 8.
87 Ibid., p. 7.
88 Underwater ballets were a feature of early music-hall entertainments in Britain and survive there in
Christmas pantomimes, which have inherited much from music-hall.
89 L. Fay, 'Mitya in the Music Hall' p. 8.
90 In Shostakovich's worklist as the Overture and Finale to Bednyi Kolumb, op. 23. Laurel Fay notes
that in this score the tune is cued to coincide with 'the appearance of the Yankees' and a film showing
an expanding dollar sign. Ibid., p. 14.
91 E.D. Udarova (1983), p. 217–22.
92 Ibid., p. 219. There is an account of Meyerhold's production of the Maiakovskii play in K.
Rudnitsky, pp. 62–64.
93 L. Fay, 'Mitya in the Music Hall', p. 13.
94 Derek Hulme, in his revised catalogue of Shostakovich's works, suggests that the whole of the
original full score of Uslovno ubityi has turned up. He gives no reference to support this case and I can
fnd no evidence for it. Certainly DSCH, the Shostakovich family archive and publishers, had no
knowledge of such a fnd when asked in February 2003. See D.C. Hulme, Dmitri Shostakovich: A
Catalogue, Bibliography, and Discography 3rd ed., (London: Scarecrow Press, 2002), p. 97.
95 These three numbers are derived from The Bolt as follows: the Overture to Uslovno ubityi is a
truncated version of no. 1 in The Bolt (Overture); The Destruction of the City in Uslovno ubityi is no. 5
in The Bolt (Pantomime of the Installation of Machines); The Field (landscape) in Uslovno ubityi is an
altered version of no. 18 in The Bolt (the Introduction to Act II).
96 L. Fay, 'Mitya in the Music Hall', p. 12.
97 The author acknowledges the help of Grigorii Gerenstein who deciphered the texts of Mashenka's
songs, and of Helen de Bray, who deciphered and translated the whole of the rest of the surviving text
in the sketches.
98 The tunes of the four or fve songs used in this monologue are not identifed. They are either actual
mass or campaigning songs of the period, or Shostakovich's imitation of the genre.
99 Quoted in L. Fay, 'Mitya in the Music Hall', p. 12.
4
From the factory to the fat
The evolution of Sergei Prokofiev's Le Pas d'Acier [The Steel Step] from idea
to finished product spanned the mid to late 1920s. It is the only known ballet
to have combined a Soviet revolutionary theme with a Soviet Constructivist
staging. Yet, ironically, it was staged not in Moscow, but in Paris and
London. Anatolii Lunacharskii, the Soviet Union's frst Commissar of
Education, praised the ballet following its Paris premiere and Prokofiev had
every reason to be hopeful of a staging in Moscow or Leningrad.1 But the
artistic climate in Russia was changing and the work fell victim to the
increasingly authoritarian artistic policies of the early Stalinist era, suffering
official condemnation in 1929. The politicised contexts of its staging
influenced its critical reception on both sides of the future iron curtain,
resulting in long-term misunderstanding and neglect. Historians have tended
to look at the ballet in terms of its production by Serge Diaghilev's 'Ballets
Russes' in 1927, or at Prokofiev's score in isolation. Yet the driving force
behind the work and the principal infuence on Prokofiev, was the ballet's
designer, Georgii Iakulov, a prominent figure within the Soviet avant-garde.
Surviving materials relating to the ballet's early development in 1925 enable
crucial insight into the work's radical conception and the incendiary mixture
of Soviet politics and Western context that affected its realisation. This essay
attempts to explore the ballet as a collaborative creation, and to reconnect the
work to its source: the revolutionary avant-garde of the early Soviet period.
Most of the music for Le Pas d'Acier was composed in the summer of 1925
in tandem with the development of the designs and a scenario drafted jointly
by Iakulov and Prokofiev. At that time the ballet was called Ursignol, a
confation of two abbreviations: 'URSS' – the French for USSR – and 'gnol'
from the end of 'Rossignol' (Stravinskii's opera Le Rossignol [The
Nightingale] was produced by Diaghilev in 1914, while his ballet Le Chant
du Rossignol [The Song of the Nightingale] was produced in 1920), which
begins with 'Ros', as in 'Rossiia'. Hence, there is a play on words: 'URS' has
replaced 'ROS', and Soviet Russia has replaced 'Russia'.2 Ursignol evolved
into Le Pas d'Acier during the transition in Soviet culture from the liberal
artistic policies of the late Lenin years to the hard-line censorship of the arts
under Stalin. In the mid-1920s Soviet artists were able to travel relatively
freely to the West and were a powerful attraction for the French avant-garde.
Prokofiev was living in Paris and had yet to make his first return visit to
Soviet Russia. He had left his homeland in 1918 and did not return until early
1927, a visit that served as a prelude to his permanent return in 1936. In his
autobiography, which was written in the Soviet Union and published there in
1960, he recalls his delight at being approached by Diaghilev, the impresario
of Les Ballets Russes, to compose a new ballet in his own style with a Soviet
theme. He wrote: 'I could not believe my ears. It was as if a fresh breeze had
blown through my window, that fresh breeze of which Lunacharskii had
spoken.'3 The year was 1925 and it emerges vividly in Ilia Ehrenburg's
writings4 as a time of complex cultural and political interaction between
Russia and the West. As the Soviet Union emerged from the chaos and
bloodshed of civil war, American culture, especially the world of jazz,
rejuvenated post-war Europe. From the early 1920s many Russian artists
involved in forging the new Soviet artistic identity at home sought also to
renew their connections with the European avant-garde. In Europe,
everything 'Russian' was once again exotic and fashionable. Consequently,
'Snobs', according to Ehrenburg, praised all things Soviet and were dubbed
bolchévisants. Ehrenburg mocks this stereotype by quoting a tennis
champion: 'I hear money's been abolished in your country. That's splendid! I
hate having to reckon my expenses.' By the time the ballet was staged in
1927, however, England had witnessed the General Strike and fear of
Bolshevism was an increasingly significant factor for the staging of a ballet
that purported to celebrate Soviet ideals. Yet Diaghilev's ambition to stage Le
Pas d'Acier should not be seen as a vacuous pursuit of fashionable chic or
sensationalism. Notoriety was expected from a company whose 'exoticism'
and 'modernity' had become equated with a capacity to 'shock', but the logic
and seriousness of Diaghilev's intention when he commissioned the ballet in
1925 is clear.
Diaghilev's interest in Constructivism produced two ballets for Les Ballets
Russes, both staged in 1927. La Chatte [The Cat], the first to be produced,
was designed by the Briansk-born brothers Naum Gabo and Antoine Pevzner,
who had exhibited as 'Russian Constructivists' in Paris in 1924. Unlike the
Soviet-based Iakulov, Gabo and Pevzner were Russian émigrés resident in
Paris, and were working in a style that became known as 'inter national
constructivism'. Their design related to general constructivist ideals of
abstraction and mechanisation but in new high-tech materials unavailable in
Russia and without any direct connection to Soviet revolutionary ideals. The
harmonious interaction of a sleekly modern transparent set and angu lar
choreography by George Balanchine was striking and successful, but the
music by Henri Sauget, as Christina Lodder remarks, 'left a lot to be desired'.5
The music bore little relationship to the Constructivist setting and the setting
bore little relationship to the rather trivial scenario based on an Aesop fable (a
man in love with a cat asks Aphrodite to change it into a woman, but the cat-
woman retains her feline instincts and becomes preoccupied with a mouse).
With Le Pas d'Acier, Diaghilev looked to Russia not only for innovation in
design, but for subject matter, as he had done in 1911 with one of the
company's earliest and greatest successes: Petrushka . With Petrushka,
Diaghilev exported 'old Russia' to Paris and challenged balletic tradition with
a radical new approach on the way. With Le Pas d'Acier, he attempts to bring
the 'new Russia' to Paris, along with the lat est innovations in staging. Le Pas
d'Acier was Diaghilev's most radical inter action with Constructivism; it was
also an attempt to reformulate Petrushka for the new age and reconnect the
company with Russian sources of inno vation and inspiration.
The theatre of 1920s Russia, to which Iakulov greatly contributed, was
dominated by experimental artists/directors such as Alexander Tairov,
Vsevolod Meyerhold, Kassian Goleizovskii and Nikolai Foregger. Although
based in the West, Diaghilev's Ballets Russes stems from the same roots as
these Soviet artists: i.e. from the revolutionary political uprisings of early
twentieth-century Russia, and from the search for radical new form. The
company's connection with Meyerhold is of particular significance and goes
back to its founding years, to the influence of symbolism and the search for
new approaches to staging. Meyerhold began his career working with theatre
director Konstantin Stanislavskii at the Moscow Art Theatre. By 1907 his
abstract approach to the stage, his view of the actor as but one part of the
director's creative materials, and his interest in the commedia dell'arte as part
of a stylised, anti-naturalist aesthetic, were already in evidence. His infuence
played a part in the development of choreographer Michel Fokine's radical
reforms in the frst phase of Les Ballets Russes. Fokine cast Meyerhold as the
hero Pierrot in his ballet Carneval of 1910, and as Lynn Garafola has pointed
out, Carneval owes much to Meyerhold's production of The Fairground
Booth in 1906.6 Meyerhold, moreover, looked to the dance as a form of
theatre (physical, stylised and musical) that was not dominated by text, as a
model for his search for a new aesthetics of dramatic performance. The
possibility of renewed interaction between the Russian and European
avantgardes during the 1920s provided the opportunity for Les Ballets Russes
to reconnect with its early foundations, and Le Pas d'Acier was the focus of
that reconnection.
The logic of Diaghilev's motivation in envisaging Le Pas d'Acier is further
supported by the sheer impact of Russian Constructivism in the West during
the frst half of the 1920s. For example, describing the excitement of the
International Exhibition in Paris in 1925, Ehrenburg claims in accordance
with other accounts from the time that the Russians were the highlight, with
exhibits by 'left' artists including scale models of theatre productions by
Tairov and Meyerhold, constructions by Rodchenko, textiles by Popova, and
posters by Lissitzky.7 During this period Western audiences were also seeing
innovative productions by Tairov and Evgenii Vakhtangov, as well as the
first films of Sergei Eisenstein.8
The seriousness of Diaghilev's ambition is refected in his attempts to connect
Prokofiev with an entirely Soviet creative team, and by arranging for
Prokofiev to collaborate closely with Iakulov on co-writing the scenario prior
to composing the music. Diaghilev was well aware that Soviet innovation in
theatre involved the central importance of a director who would 'orchestrate'
and 'synthesize' the production. He thus approached Tairov and, more
energetically, Meyerhold to direct Le Pas d'Acier, but both declined.
Meyerhold, who had by this time begun serving as Prokofiev's operatic
mentor, opted out with the terse declaration that 'for a whole series of reasons
I can't accept Diaghilev's (Paris) proposal to direct his production'.9
Unwilling to take no for an answer, Diaghilev asked Iakulov to petition the
director to change his mind. This proved futile, however, and Iakulov
regretfully informed Diaghilev that 'it has become perfectly clear to me that
Meyerhold isn't going to do the ballet … In private conversation with me, he
said that these months he is busy with the cinema.'10 Meyerhold's inability, or
reluctance, to stage the ballet must have been exasperating, especially since
Le Pas d'Acier bears the infuence of cinematic montage and close-ups, and
thus accords with Meyerhold's own theatrical experiments, which confate
disparate artistic media. His operatic collaborations with Prokofiev, for
example, utilise both commedia dell'arte devices and mise-en-scènes. Though
there is no concrete evidence to support the claim, Meyerhold's rejection of
Le Pas d'Acier may have had a political dimension. Conscious of Diaghilev's
penchant for controversy, and all too aware of the militant artistic climate in
Russia, Meyerhold may have been unwilling to risk his reputation by
producing a Western ballet about Soviet life. Perhaps heeding Meyerhold's
advice, Iakulov wrote to Diaghilev about his 'imperative' personal need to
'develop the desired ideas for the ballet here in Russia'.11 Iakulov, however,
was suffering financial hardship and hopeful of a major exhibition of his
paintings in Paris. Unlike many Constructivists, he had never abandoned
easel painting, and was well connected with the Parisian avant-garde. It is not
difficult to appreciate the attraction of Diaghilev's offer, even in the face of
difficulties over the appointment of a Soviet director. Yet although Iakulov
feared the consequences of a production by Les Ballets Russes,12 it is clear
that Diaghilev allowed both him and Prokofiev complete freedom in which to
devise the original materials. In the absence of a director, Iakulov and
Prokofiev completed the music, designs and scenario in close collaboration in
Paris during 1925 before Iakulov's extended visa expired at the end of the
year forcing his return to Russia.
According to Prokofiev, it was to be a ballet of 'Construction',13 and he
attributes its inspiration to Iakulov who was living and working within the
real-life as well as artistic context of Soviet 'construction'. Born in Tiflis in
1884, Iakulov was of Armenian descent and actively involved in the
reconstruction of Armenia in the mid-1920s by taking part in the jury for a
competition to create a National Hall, and by designing the new State and
Studio theatres in 1926. His work on Le Pas d'Acier needs to be appreciated
not just in terms of theatrical constructivism in Moscow, but in the context of
'construction' within the whole Soviet enterprise. Paintings and posters
celebrating muscular workers, spirited labour and bright new industry evince
the enormity of the social imperatives facing the Soviet Union, the scale of
the human investment in 'construction', and the ideals and hopes represented
by industrialisation. The development of Le Pas d'Acier directly relates in
both form and subject matter to this contemporary context.
The music, the designs and the 1925 scenario all relate to the transformation
of the Soviet Union into an industrialised nation and the attempt to create a
new society. The dramatis personae of Act 1 comprise of stock revolutionary
characters, such as Commissars, a Worker Girl, an Orator, black marketeers,
swindlers and hungry citizens.14 The hero is the Sailor that was typical of
Russian revolutionary art and posters of the period, ranging from Vladimir
Tatlin's Moryak. Avtoportret [The Sailor. A Self-Portrait] of 1912 to
Eisenstein's Bronenosets Potemkin [Battleship Potemkin] of 1925. Costume
designs for Iakulov's Sailor are asymmetrical with one leg in trousers and the
other in a high boot to emphasise his transitional state, and there was to be a
short scene in which he changes his clothes on stage into those of a worker.
The setting, just sufficiently representational to suggest a railway station in
Act 1, also embodies the theme of change/transformation. In Act 1 the set is
dominated by the Arrival of the Train, a frequent image for progress and
modernity in Soviet art and posters of the period. For example, the painting
by Iurii Pimenov Za industrializatsiiu [For Industrialisation] of 1927 features
a train at the heart of a factory setting, with workers in the foreground.
Pimenov's poster of 1930 Achieving the 5 Year Plan in 4 Years also features a
train charging through the old ways of life (drunkenness, licentiousness and
religious devotion) that were represented by motley 'characters' lining the
tracks. Similarly in Le Pas d'Acier, swindlers, speculators, and other
representatives of self-interest and personal power occupy the frst part of the
ballet with the presence of the train onstage signalling change and progress.
Act 2 is set in a factory where the dramatis personae have become workers.
The evidence suggests that Iakulov wanted a symbolic use of the stage space
with the action on three levels.15 The types from the old society were to
perform on the ground level with the workers of the factory elevated to a
higher platform and the train and other symbols of industry appearing on the
highest elevation. The action of Act 2 depicts the struggle of the hero and
heroine (The Sailor and the Worker Girl) to reach each other, a personal
plight that is at odds with the collective enterprise of the workers in the
factory. The scenario describes the lovers as separated by light and gauze,
within the spatial constructs of the design, as work builds up in the factory
around them. The background scoring includes explicit references to the love
theme from their Act 1 pas de deux, although they become increasingly
'mechanised' and 'metallicised' as events unfold. Their struggle is resolved at
the start of the finale when they descend once more to the ground level to
start the climactic scene by working on 'constructions', described as 'machine
tools with pedals'.16 This was intended to set the factory into motion with a
'pyrotechnical' display of multi-coloured wheels spinning, coloured lights
fashing, and the music 'building up' to an 'ear-splitting', multi-sensory
climax.17 The lovers have been reunited in work, and a celebration of their
new identity as workers in harmony with the machine age is the implied
intention of the designs and the 1925 scenario.
Iakulov began his theatrical career with Tairov's Kamernii Theatre in 1918, a
year after his three-dimensional designs for the Café Pittoresque in Moscow
had instigated a new style of festive non-utilitarian constructions that were
used to create a total environment.18 His works were extremely popular in the
early 1920s, resulting in a frequent use of the term the 'Iakulovisation of the
Theatres',19 and he was an active force in the transformation of Russian
theatre after 1917. His aesthetic approach embraced the idea of theatre as a
force for change and popular forms, such as music-hall and circus, in an
attempt to forge a theatre for the masses rather than for an educated elite. In
an article of 1921 Iakulov declared:
Artists now want to assume responsibility for constructing the whole theatrical concept.… The artist is
no longer prepared to be a mere illustrator of what is happening on the stage.… The artist, who has
hitherto been used as a decorator, must become a creator in the modern theatre.20
In the early 1920s Meyerhold and Iakulov attempted several collaborations,21
suggesting a close relationship in terms of their ambitions for the new theatre.
In Le Pas d'Acier we find an attempt to realise their shared ideals as well as
defining the characteristics of Russian theatrical constructivism. The stage is
stripped of all 'decorative' features, becoming a three-dimensional apparatus
for performance, challenging the performer rather than providing a decorative
background. It consists of large platforms, ladders, wheels and 'constructions'
evoking industry and the machine age, yet the rope ladder and 'circus rings',
the ladder in the shape of a giant chair, and the multi-opening doors of one of
the large constructions also invite an association with circus and burlesque.
Unlike many Constructivists designing for the stage in the 1920s, Iakulov
was first and foremost a theatre designer. In Le Pas d'Acier, the designs insist
on 'theatre' as well as 'factory'. His use of the platform and structure is
somewhat simpler than many of the designs of the era, such as Alexandra
Exter's conception for an unrealised work called Sataninskii balet [Satanic
Ballet] in 1922 that features a massive, multi-levelled construction,
Alexander Vesnin's design for a stage adaptation of G.K. Chesterton's novel
The Man who was Thursday (1923) which consists of complex walkways and
eleva- tions, or El Lissitzky's design for Sergei Tretiakov's Khochu rebenka [I
Want a Child] (1928) in which the performance space is integrated with the
auditorium. In Le Pas d'Acier, Iakulov's depth effects arise not from
architectural structure as such, but from the use of light and gauze, suggesting
a greater infuence from cinematic mise-en-scène. The aesthetic appears
stretched between early makeshift constructivism and dramatic realism, and
between utilitarian ideals and overt, insistent theatricality. This creates a
compelling tension where the theatrical elements balance, and informs the
utilitarian principles of industrialisation and vice versa. Both aspects are
profoundly thematic, and are interrelated within the set design.
The central mass of the stage is linear and geometrical but is surrounded by
circles of varying sizes and colour that create a sense of revolving mobility
enlivening the set even when static. When moving some of these
constructions merge towards transparency as the speed of rotation increases
creating a halo-like effect resembling electric light.22 In terms of the design
they are part of the theatrical, dynamic element, integrating the idea of dance
into the set, and the set into the dance. On one of his early sketches, Iakulov
wrote:
The general principle of the construction of the set is a system of moving crankshafts. The movements
of the dancers are accompanied by the movements of the parts of the set, to give an impression not of
abstract ballet movements but of useful 'work'.23
As the dancers 'toil', the constructions 'dance' (one of them even displays an
outstretched 'leg' and 'skirt'). The aim is more than one of interaction; the
design aspires to a 'synthesis' between décor and dance and between dance
and the 'machine'.
In this respect the ballet can be related to the theories of American scientist
and engineer Frederick W. Taylor and his time and motion studies in actual
factories. Taylor's prescriptions for streamlining workforces through
movement training became popular with policy makers in early
postrevolutionary Russia, not least with Lenin himself.24 As industrialisation
demanded a new style of worker who was disciplined, physically adroit, and
created by 'scientifc' methods of training, Meyerhold sought a new kind of
actor for a theatre adapted to urban industrial ideals. In 1922 he introduced
his system of training called 'biomechanics' and compared it to Aleksei
Gastev's experiments in training the labour force.25 Gastev, a Soviet engineer,
was head of the Central Institute of Labour (TsIT) from 1920, where he
promoted Taylor's ideas, and trained workers to model their practice on
machines. Gastev's vision of a 'human robot' drew on the same social context
as Meyerhold's search for a physical theatre, 26 but Meyerhold's
biomechanics was not an attempt to turn actors into automatons. Meyerhold's
'system' was primarily a radical alternative to Stanislavskii's acting methods
with their emphasis on psychology and subjective experience. A
preoccupation with the inner self was associated with discredited 'bourgeois'
theatre, and Meyerhold's attention to training the actor's outer self, the
physical body and movement, has to be understood in this mix of artistic and
social contexts. In the new theatre expression was to come through rhythmic,
muscular control and gestural patterning, with theatrical design providing an
environment that would challenge and inspire the physicality and architecture
of performance. Iakulov's set for Le Pas d'Acier is clearly in the
biomechanical mould; it is a construction and an apparatus where the
physical interaction of dancer and environment is central to the concept.
However, the evidence suggests that in the 1927 production the emphasis
shifted away from the physicality of the performer utilising the set, as in
Iakulov's sketches, towards an imitation of the set. As noted below, the
aesthetic appeared to have shifted towards a Westernised (i.e. Expressionist)
interpretation, with the dancer-workers as disciplined robots in an oppressive
factory setting.
Certainly the celebration of the machine, so prevalent in Soviet arts and
society during the 1920s, is central to Le Pas d'Acier and it continued the
fascination with technology manifest in Futurist productions of the previous
decade. The evolution of the ideal of the machine from Futurism to
Constructivism is important not only to interpreting the ballet's source
materials, but also to understanding how the 1927 production may have
drawn on similar but signifcantly different aspects of this development in
finding a choreographic approach. Joachim Noller suggests that one of El
Lissitzky's images, a 1921 sketch of an electric mechanism for the Futurist
opera Pobeda nad soltsem [Victory over the Sun], served as the aesthetic
prototype for Le Pas d'Acier. The sketch anticipated the invention of 'a
mechanical ballet', one that would supplant the singers of the 1913 opera with
tin and wire robots, whose physical gestures would be powered by high- and
low-voltage currents.27 More certain inspiration for Le Pas d'Acier came
from the Muscovite choreographer Nikolai Foregger's Tanets mashin [Dance
of the Machines] (1922), which instructed its performers 'to imitate the
movements of a fywheel gyrating around an immovable axis'.28 Elizabeth
Souritz observes that a subsequent variation called on dancers 'to imitate a
train – by swaying, stamping their feet against the foor, and banging sheets of
metal together, even by swinging burning cigarettes in the air so that sparks
few all over as if from a locomotive's smokestack'. Yet another called for
imitation of the engaging of 'a transmission' and spinning of 'a conveyer belt'.
The dancers similarly 'created an image of hammers of various sizes – the
smallest, by using their fists, and the largest, by lifting and lowering a dancer
held upside down'.29
Acoustically, the pleasures of proletarian construction found ear-splitting
expression in Arsenii Avraamov's Simfonii gudkov [Symphonies of Sirens],
which were performed using actual factory hardware 'in Nizhny-Novgorod,
Baku and Moscow on the second, fifth and sixth anniversaries of the October
Revolution respectively'.30 These happy noises, and Foregger's deckled metal
sheets, also appeared in the young Muscovite composer Alexander Mosolov's
1926 ballet Stal' [Steel]. Though the manuscript disappeared in 1929, the year
in which Mosolov – like Prokofiev – came under attack from Soviet cultural
ideologues for excessive stylistic and syntactic experimentation, an orchestral
version of the concluding episode survived and gained widespread
international attention. Entitled Zavod [The Foundry], the episode comprises
a riotous cascade of string and brass ostinato patterns, which are introduced
one at a time, but eventually compete for attention in an ever-hastening, ever-
climaxing pile-up of sound. The last measure of The Foundry bears some
resemblance to the last measure of Le Pas d'Acier (the former comprises a
thirty-second note run to a unison C, the latter a sixteenth-note run to a
unison A), but the preceding measures do not. Mosolov's factory breaks
down, unable to meet its production quota despite repeated rhythmic
retooling, and the fnal sforzando caps a meltdown of the orchestral metal
works. Prokofiev's factory, in contrast, promises to operate forever,
irrespective of human and material wear and tear or overtime costs. The
unison A marks the descent of the theatre curtain, not the closure of the plant.
The context and recognition of the symbolic importance of the machine in
Soviet arts and society of the period is crucial to interpreting the materials for
Le Pas d'Acier. It is also important in terms of understanding what happened
to the work when Les Ballets Russes produced it in Paris and London in the
absence of a Soviet director in 1927. The evidence suggests that Diaghilev,
having failed to find the ideal creative team, had 'shelved' the ballet
indefnitely. However, when Prokofiev was in Russia in early 1927, Diaghilev
was informed of a plan to stage the work at the Mariinskii Theatre.31 This
forced his hand and he acted swiftly, scheduling the work for immediate
production and appointing émigré Russian Leonid Massine as choreographer
and director. The resulting production departed significantly from the original
designs and scenario. Massine reinterpreted the music, devising a radically
different scenario for Act 1. As a result, the intended interplay between
sound, design and dance appears to have been unrealised. In Act 2, Massine
stuck more closely to the original materials, but conceived the sound, design
and dance interaction in a way that while choreographically successful,
betrayed the ballet's original message and meaning. Massine appears to have
modelled his approach more on Expressionist interpretations of the factory,
comparable to images in Fritz Lang's 1926 film Metropolis. Iakulov's décor
remained full of colour, light and kinetic celebration, but the choreography
dehumanised the dancers by turning them into machine parts. On the surface
this provided an apt and powerful 'synthesis' of the parts, but the mutability of
the music in conjunction with a different visual emphasis led to an
ambiguous socio-political message.
The thematic stress in the 1925 designs and scenario is on transformation, in
particular the transformational power of the machine. In terms of the set, this
theme manifests itself most obviously in the nature of the construction in that
the set does not radically change for Act 2; its basic formal elements are
simply reconfigured. For example, the idea of the train that is crucial to the
construction of Act 1 is the basis of the design for the factory setting. The
platforms remain the same in both acts, and a large central overhead wheel
with a wedge, evoking the industrial weighting of wheels on locomotives,
descends over the action. The mechanism of Act 2 was described by critics as
consisting of pistons, gears and levers,32 but if, as seems likely, the train was
not present on stage for Act 1, the reformulation of its parts into the factory
would have been less apparent. The 1927 production also abandoned two
other scenes from the earlier materials that were key to an original theme: the
Sailor's transformation into a worker, and the remarkable 'interval' scene in
which the set was to be reconstructed into the factory in full view of the
audience. The evidence suggests that the idea of empowerment through the
transformational power of the machine was compromised in production,
allowing the factory to be interpreted as a symbol of oppression.
It is difficult to ascertain the degree to which Prokofiev and Iakulov were
involved in these adaptations. Iakulov certainly missed the vast majority of
the rehearsal period, joining the company in Paris approximately two weeks
before opening night. It emerges from company accounts that the utilitarian
aesthetic and Soviet politics of the work were extremely unpopular with
members of Les Ballets Russes. Active and close collaboration between
Iakulov and Massine during the production thus seems highly unlikely.
Massine barely mentions Iakulov in his autobiographical account of the
ballet's development,33 but he claims to have worked closely with Prokofiev.
Prokofiev, however, although present for the entire rehearsal period, declared
that much of the production went against his wishes.34 There is little hard
evidence on which to base a clear interpretation of events, but a short, rather
portentous telegram sent from Prokofiev to Iakulov during rehearsals has
survived in which Prokofiev pleads: 'come soon or it will be too late'.35
Letters from after the production reveal that Iakulov and Prokofiev were on
good terms with each other, but in dispute with Massine.36 The disagreement
is telling, for it concerns Massine's campaign for greater percentage rights to
the ballet with a corresponding reduction in Iakulov's share. Massine
prevailed in this issue, and became credited as co-author as well as
choreographer.
As noted, an assertive directorial presence of the type associated with
Meyerhold's productions was deemed crucial to the ballet's realisation. A
surviving letter from Iakulov to Prokofiev written during the creative process
makes it clear how critical and full of potential dangers he felt the production
process to be.37 This is understandable given that so much rested on the
successful orchestration of the parts and on a sympathetic rendering of the
ballet's subject matter. The ideal of 'construction' relates not only to the set,
but also to the collaborative ideal and the 'smelting' together of the parts in
theatrical production. Understanding this collaborative model is key to
interpreting the ballet's intentions and innovation.
The emerging ideas for the ballet and Iakulov's formal-analytic approach can
be discerned from the surviving sketches, which evince a dual process of
visual improvisation and technical problem-solving. It is likely that Iakulov
was not simply creating a design in the early sketching process but imagining
a true Constructivist synthesis of the arts, one in which design interacts with
dance and audio-visual effects. A reading of the design materials is therefore
more complex than if they were straightforward descriptors of the artist's
intention for the fnished design. For example, in one of the drawings a dancer
can be seen pushing a large wheel, but there is a slight suggestion of dancers
inside the wheel, and the idea of dancers representing the wheel rather than
interacting with an actual wheel may be embryonic in the drawing.
Describing a moment from the 1927 production one critic also wrote:
in one of the first scenes of the second act … an amazing sortie: the dancers get together in pairs, each
one grasping the feet of their partner in their hands, and, forming a living and fexible hoop, they roll off
into the wings on their backs.38
It is probable that Iakulov sought an abstract depiction of industry and labour
that would define the choreographic space. Yet in an important sense, the
design is within the choreographic space, and interaction between object and
movement is central to the approach and ideal. It is likely that Iakulov was
concerned not only with designing the stage environment in terms of
action/theme, but with the nature of the ballet's audio-visual interactivity. In
one of the earliest sketches the train is shown being brought onto the stage
from the right by dancers. In his later three-dimensional model, however, the
train has been placed on the back of the highest platform behind theatrical
gauze from where it was probably intended to emerge somewhat
cinematically with smoke effects as Prokofiev's music evoked its breaking
motion. In the 1927 production 'The Arrival of the Train' became a bartering
scene, though descriptions suggest that elements of the original setting
remained. Although the train itself was almost certainly absent, its motion
remained in the ostinato patterns in the music, the station was still evoked by
the bisected disks and signals of the set, and Iakulov's spatial organisation in
which the choreography is forced down linear 'corridors' not unlike 'tracks'
was also retained. What was undoubtedly lost, however, was the clarity of the
original interaction of music and design. We do not know why the original
scenario was abandoned in production, but when the emergence of the train is
reconstructed along with the appropriate score passage, a dramatically
powerful convergence of musical representation and visual image is clear.
This suggests the infuence of film, something that is discernable in other
aspects of the ballet. For example, Iakulov's use of lighting and gauze is
adapted to the creation of spaces within spaces, scenes within scenes,
replacing the traditional use of theatre spotlight with techniques that have
more in common with montage and close-up. The use of a large screen
dividing the stage between the platforms also enabled the emergence of tiers
of workers in Act 2, something that was powerfully realised in Massine's
production, and Iakulov in the original scenario envisaged projected
advertisements fashing over the set during the finale.
Further testament to the radicalism of the conception comes from a letter
from Iakulov to Diaghilev dated August 1925. Midway through the letter,
Iakulov provides the following description of the dance–music dialogue:
The old-fashioned conception of visual form, that is to say, the coordination of the music with balletic
movement, has been reconceived. It now exhibits what I consider to be the unifying devices of new
rather than classical ballet […] – namely a parallelism of musical and balletic ideas rather than their
succession . I am referring to the avoidance of mono-temporality [odnovremennosti] in favor of unifed
temporality [edinovremennosti] in the thematic structure, and the accompaniment of music for rhythm,
and not just tempo. Such is the true nature of dance. With one and the same musical theme ( Along the
Paved Street [Po ulitse mostovoy] or Dance of the Lezghin Woman [Lezghinka]) we perceive entirely
different uses for dance and gesture. Though the music (like the décor) should immediately provide the
theme in its entirety, the dance and various figures of motion should provide the development and
variations. For the method of moving in accord with each measure of music characterizes Duncanism,
which devoid of bare feet and dilettantism yields only old-fashioned classicism. I submit that this latter
(Duncanist) form further presumes Scriabinism […]39
First and foremost, these remarks suggest that Prokofiev's score would serve
as a template for choreographic improvisation. Though the characters would
be assigned individual themes, these would not mutate and evolve in the
manner of Wagnerian leitmotifs. The transformation process would instead
occur in the choreography. Physical gestures would relate to melodic gestures
like downbeats to upbeats, and visual lines of movement would relate to aural
lines of movement like consequent phrases to antecedents. As with the
monochrome greyness of the Act 1 décor, evolving attitudes and arabesques
would relieve the melodic and harmonic sameness of the Act 1 music, and
the climactic episode in the ballet – the metamorphosis of down-at-the-heels
peasants into vibrant factory workers – would not be heralded by a
metamorphosis of the melodic and harmonic syntax. In Iakulov's plan, the
factory scenes would instead substitute 'mono-temporality' for 'unified
temporality'. Like Diaghilev's most provocative ballet, Le Sacre du
Printemps, the dance–music relationship in Le Pas d'Acier would also be
contrapuntal with the metric discord resolving into concord on a hypermetric
level.
The somewhat cryptic references in the letter to 'Duncanism' and
'Scriabinism' seem intended to persuade Diaghilev that the communal
apotheosis of Le Pas d'Acier – the acceleration of physical and musical
motion as wheels begin to whirl and lights begin to fash – would bear no
resemblance to the Hellenistic and Dionysian theatrical projects of fin-
desiècle Russian artists. Smitten by 'mystic' Symbolism, Alexander Scriabin
(1872–1915) attempted unsuccessfully to reconstitute the ancient era of
sacred rituals, to create a multimedia spectacle that would facilitate spiritual
bonding and (ideally) the dissolution of individual consciousness into a
single, collective consciousness. His attempt to unleash the spiritual powers
of music found a loose parallel in the choreography of Isadora Duncan
(1877–1927), whose 'self-taught and free-form' style – typified by
asymmetrical foor patterns, bare feet, and loose-ftting costumes – served as 'a
perfect dionysian antithesis to the rigors of the nineteenth-century ballet's
apollonian danse d'école'.40 For although the Ballets Russes flirted with
Scriabin's mysticism and Duncan's classicism (Le Sacre du Printemps bears
traits of the former, Daphnis et Chloë the latter), Diaghilev soon denounced
them as passé, out of step with the dance of chic. In accord with Soviet
(Marxist-Leninist) dialectics, Iakulov envisioned a 'new metaphysics' that
was 'bound to the physical world, to an inner structure [the factory] and its
surrounding space [the railway station platform]'.41 His anti-Dionysian, anti-
Symbolist ballet would thus illustrate the 'mechanical-technical penetration of
human life and the omnipresence of automata and machines',42 and the fnal
scene of Le Pas d'Acier would enact the dissolution of human activity into
industrial activity far removed from a Hellenistic round dance.
Despite Iakulov's statement to the contrary, one element of 'Scriabinism'
proved relevant to his ballet as it was envisioned in 1925 and performed in
1927. The element in question is synaesthesia: i.e. the stimulation of one
sense (seeing) by means of another (hearing). In his 1910 composition
Prometheus: The Poem of Fire, Scriabin proposed to portray, if not to enact,
this neurological phenomenon using a projector called 'the keyboard of light'
(tastiera per luce), which splayed different coloured beams, each calibrated
to a specifc pitch and specifc tonality. Iakulov's draft scenario and drawings
for Le Pas d'Acier, with their allusions to exchanges of light, pitch, and
gesture, imply a comparable preoccupation with synaesthesia, albeit one
devoid of the trappings – and frankly unrealisable aims – of Scriabin's
aesthetics. Prokofiev, for his part, seemingly intended his listeners to 'see'
through their ears. While factory hammers only emit sound when they strike
factory anvils, Stephen Press remarks that Prokofiev furnished both a melodic
and rhythmic etching of the raising, lowering, and swishing of hammers
through the air in the antepenultimate scene of his score.43 Reviews of the
ballet disagree as to the number of hammers and the number of factory
workers wielding them, so perhaps certain reviewers were more susceptible
to aural-visual synaesthesia than others.
In other scenes, the music summons images wholly beyond the visual frame
of reference. For example, Scene 1, 'The Arrival of the Train', offers aural
close-ups of steel wheels and pistons as the locomotive hurls itself through
Russian forest and steppe. The hackneyed sameness of the repeated dactyls is
alleviated through intervallic variations: lower neighbour notes cede to
passing semitones to upper neighbour notes. Prokofiev cross-cuts the triple-
meter clatter of the locomotive with the duple-meter hubbub at the platform.
Hearing the whistle, deprived villagers congregate to barter sweets,
cigarettes, furniture and livestock. Emphasis soon shifts to individual figures,
with twenty measures allotted respectively to the three Commissars and the
Orator. The locomotive eventually appears ('from the right' of the stage in the
1925 scenario, but on a platform at the back of the stage in a 1925 model of
the set), the braking motion denoted by a shift in tempo from andante
energico to pesante and a reduction of the orchestral texture. Taking into
account the highly representational content of this portion of the music, the
structural repetition clearly calls for choreographic repetition. The aggressive
physical careening of a locomotive could not be represented on the cramped
stage, except perhaps as an apparition in the collective imagination of the
gathered villagers. The composer (and designer) likely concluded that the
locomotive should begin to come into hazy view behind the gauze at [30],
and fully emerge from the gauze at the piston-driven cadence [39]. Eagerly
anticipated, the locomotive would finally be incarnated, and chromaticism
dissipates in the concluding measures of the scene much like smoke from a
coal furnace smokestack.44
From Iakulov's letter and Prokofiev's score, it emerges that the melodic
language of the ballet was intended less to narrate the stage action than to
circumscribe a range of choreographic movement, a kinaesthetic disposition.
Two pages of figural notation provide tantalising insight into the relationship
between sound and sight in the Prologue (the 'March of the Silhouettes').
Near the top of the frst page, Iakulov drew seven drunken 'sailors', the middle
three grouped in a position similar to that in an actual studio photograph from
the ballet.45 Beneath this image, Iakulov redrew the sailors, this time showing
three together on the left, one in the middle, and three together on the right.
This second image sits atop a double humped line inscribed 'wave of a leap',
and a segmented line inscribed
Plate 5.1 The motion of the train.
'sample range of motion'. There then follows pencil images of sweet vendors
and cigarette servers rocking from side to side, the orator fam- boyantly
waving his hands, damsels with excessive bodily curves, the three
commissars strutting to and fro, sack bearers falling fat on their faces and
backs under the weight of their goods, and bandits dashing around and
leaping over obstacles.46 Slashes and squiggles denote disruptions and pauses
in their routines. For Prokofiev, who closely collaborated with Iakulov on the
scenario, these shapes provided inspiration for melodies, harmonies, and
(especially) rhythms. Insofar as visual gestures can be translated into musical
ones, the contours and dynamics of the drawings find analogies in the score.
Parades of repeated quarter notes herald the grand arrival of the three
Commissars in Scene 3, for example, while 'ragtime'47 gestures punctuate the
suave (mimed) speech of the Orator in Scene 5.
It stands to reason that the musical and choreographic language of the ballet
would show an evolution from classical routines to modernist ones, just like
the dramatis personae evolve from landholders and peasants to foremen and
ironworkers. Musically, however, only the music associated with the hero
and heroine (a Sailor and a Worker Girl), undergoes stylistic change, most of
which is confined to Act 2. In Act 1, their music is locked into repeating
eight-measure phrases. Stasis is the condition of the moribund pre-
revolutionary world, as opposed to the innovative post-revolutionary one. In
Act 2, which ostensibly represents the post-revolutionary world, the music
becomes elastic, even organic. Repetition does occur, but it resides in the
rhythm rather than the melody and harmony. It denotes not the humdrum
lives of people, but the humdrum lives of machines.
The Sailor and Worker Girl first appear in Scene 6 where they dance a brief
pas de deux with an obbligato bassoon accompanying the danseur, and a solo
clarinet and violin accompanying the ballerina. Prokofiev formatted the
routine along the lines of the pas de deux for Blackamoor and Columbine in
Stravinskii's Petrushka in a faintly comic allusion to an earlier Ballets Russes
production. The fnal measures, comprising an imitative exchange between
the upper strings and lower woodwinds, leave sufficient room for an
entrechat, while a symmetrical C major melody outlines an adagio. This love
theme recurs in increasingly estranged guises in the three factory scenes.
Initially harmonised by ascending major and minor triads in frst inversion, it
recurs in rhythmic augmentation and diminution in Scene 9 ('The Factory')
against a coarsely dissonant backdrop of running sixteenths. Here, for the
first time in the ballet, the music collapses into standard form: a seven-phase
rondo, the most rigid, 'mechanical' form in Prokofiev's arsenal. The love
theme signals both the hero's joyful recognition of the heroine on a
silhouetted platform in the factory and his despondency at failing to reach
her. In contrast, the framing, 'anem pathetic' ostinati imply that their love for
one another is clichéd and the product, perhaps, of a defunct period in human
evolution.48
Support for this supposition comes from the transition between Scene 11
('Hammers') and the 'Finale' when the theme, signalling the reunion of the
hero and heroine, undergoes a process of industrialisation. Beginning at
[152], its accompanying line metamorphoses into the arpeggiated motif
representing the swishing hammers, while a second onomatopoeic motif
presses down from above, fattening the theme like ore through iron works. At
[156], a metallic version of the theme appears in the upper brass, its contours
excised of rhythmic impurities and enriched with chromatic alloys. The
accompanying line jaggedly ascends from the tonic pitch A for two octaves,
preparing for a robust cadential passage in which the tonic chord smelts
together with the supertonic and Neapolitan.49 The sound is discordant, but at
this point in the score the discords – admittedly mild for this period in music
history – have lost their ability to rankle. Having established themselves
through sheer insistence, some of them even sound like concords. It is as
though we are hearing the whole-tonal and semi-tonal clinking and clanging
through the factory's rather than the worker's ears.
The climatic cadence marks the reunion between the hero and heroine on
centre stage. There follows an industrial bacchanalia, which reprocesses
music from the ballet's Prologue, the aforementioned 'March of the
Silhouettes'. Here, evidently, Iakulov's décor and Massine's choreography
were intended to complement or perhaps even to complete Prokofiev's score.
Much as the tonal, 'white key' love theme would fade to chromatic black in
the ostinato-driven din, the outline of the toiling corps de ballet
would blend into the outlines of pulleys, wheels and pedal apparatus in an
eruption of light, sound and gesture. In this brave new ballet, communal bliss
would become individual bliss, and the former Sailor and Worker Girl would
experience industrial rather than Dionysian ecstasy. To invert a Soviet
slogan, the factory rather than the artist, would become an 'engineer of human
souls'.
Le Pas d'Acier relates therefore not only to the utopian ideal of the machine,
but to the desire to conceptualise and realise on stage a perfect interaction of
the arts, and to create a new order out of different media working together not
for individual ends but for the synthetic whole. Although the differences
between Wagner's mythic, quasi-religious, pretechnological aims and
Meyerhold's 'industrialised' theatre of the left are signifcant, the search for a
'total' theatre orchestrated by the supreme figure of the director derives from
Wagner's innovations, and appears in the ideas of avant-garde theatre artists
at both ends of the political spectrum in the 1920s. Iakulov's letters support
the conclusion that relationship of the parts was all-important to the
conception, albeit within an analytical framework. Indeed it could be argued
that the set both visualises the conceptual approach to the work and provides
a thematically descriptive environment for the action. Could it be that the
three vertical levels of the set, the three interconnecting overhead wheels, and
the three horizontal channels for entry and exit, that structure the production,
visually refer to the three way collaborative process itself? If so, then a model
of space–time interaction between designer, composer and choreographer
may actually be part of the structure. That such a work should falter largely
because of problems with the collaborative process is perhaps the greatest of
this ballet's many ironies.
Iakulov's concern over the director, the mutability of the material, and the
fragile nature of the conception in production were well founded. In a
Western context, the machine easily became a symbol of oppression, and the
ballet's climactic fusion emblematised Western fears of the loss of
individuality in relation to both mechanisation and Bolshevism. Humphrey
Carter was one of very few Western critics at the time to understand and
articulate the Soviet idea of construction and the machine to a Western
readership. He writes:
building – utility – the Machine – the new conception of the Machine – as a moral and constructive
factor – the worker as a master of the machine, reproducing its sounds and movements which to him
are a second nature – There is another side to the Machine. It is a moral side, by which the Machine, if
properly understood, transfers its power and qualities to those that use it, even magnifes their
importance and exalts them.50
Iakulov's factory directly relates to this conception of the machine. His
materials and approach differ significantly from the menacing automatons of
earlier Futurist productions, and his factory is not the oppressive,
dehumanised environment of German expressionism. The huge central wheel
which hangs down over the action, measuring out time and giving off light, is
not a symbol of capitalist or socialist oppression of the workers (as it so
easily became in a Western viewing context), but of a new sun and the
transformation and rebirth of humanity through collective enterprise. Giant
hammers forge the new age of steel as well as New Soviet Man. Massine's
realisation of the fnale however, with forty-fve dancers on stage imitating
machine parts, appearing to become the 'machine' itself, was highly effective
but it delivered a signifcantly different message. With Massine's realisation,
the musical evocation of the factory could be interpreted as anti-capitalist, but
the possibility of suggesting the Soviet ideal of an empowered willing
workforce was lost. Although we cannot judge this by looking at the
choreography itself, as no record of it is known to have survived, it must be
emphasised that contemporary critics often within the same review read the
ballet as both 'Bolshevik' and 'anti-Bolshevik'. A typical example of this
occurs in London's Daily News with a review entitled 'A Bolshevik Ballet',
which concludes with the suggestion that it was a tractate against
Bolshevism.51 What is very clear from the reviews is that critics found the
ballet incomprehensible, drab, utilitarian and ugly in Act 1, and visually
thrilling but ambiguous in Act 2. Without a visual record of the performance,
it is diffcult to judge just how much of this was due to Massine's
reinterpretation of the materials, and how much due to the mindsets of critics
for whom the Soviet approach was both unfamiliar and deeply problematic in
socio-political terms.
It is reasonable to conclude that Massine's interpretation and manipulation of
the source materials lost much of the ballet's initial, radical content. Yet there
is also a sense in which that fnal dissolution and loss of humanity at the end
of Le Pas d'Acier comprised a perfect choreographic interpretation of the
conceptual approach established by Iakulov in the earlier materials. The fnale
was perceived by one of the few specialist dance critics of the period, C.W.
Beaumont, as a unique fusion of set and action and of dance and machine.52
It approached, in short, the old Gesamtkunstwerk ideal with acoustic and
physical gesture exchanging spatial properties. Massine, however, turned the
dancers into puppets of the new machine age, which betrayed the original
conception. Although on the surface it might appear to relate to Meyerhold's
interest in marionettes as inspiration for biomechanics, Meyerhold's aim was
the liberation of the actor, and he saw the machine as a method of
empowerment. In moving away from the set as apparatus, towards the set as
inspiration, in order to find a choreographic solution, Massine appears to
have succeeded only in replacing the tyrannical master of the puppet
Petrushka with a new, but equally ominous, driving force.53
The ballet was therefore intended to be pro-industry and thus pro-Soviet. For
a Ukrainian-born composer considering a permanent move to Soviet Russia
and an Armenian artist who had participated in the design competition for the
Lenin Mausoleum, political caprice was beyond contemplation. As Elizabeth
Souritz has pointed out, far from representing the 'dismantling' and
'deformation' of the old tsarist world and the 'enthusiasm of revolutionaries'
for the creation of a new one (to quote Iakulov54), Act 1 essentially became a
parade of figures from Russian folklore faintly reminiscent in costuming and
performance to secondary characters from Zhar-ptitsa [The Firebird],
Petrushka, and other early Ballets Russes productions. The new sequence of
episodes – Bataille de Baba-Yaga avec le Crocodile [Baba Iaga and
Crocodile], Le Camelot et les Comtesses [Street Bazaar and Countesses], Le
Matelot et les trois Diables [Sailor and Three Devils], Le Chat, la Chatte et
les Souris [Tomcat and Feline , La Légende des Buveurs [Legend of a
Drunkard], and L'Ouvrière et le Matelot [Sailor and Worker Girl] –
completely baffled reviewers.55 Although the choreography of Act 1 included
pantomime, French and English audiences failed to grasp its gestural points
of reference. Instead of alluding to Stravinsky as Prokofiev and Iakulov had
done in the original scenario for Ursignol, Massine alluded to Stravinsky's
choreographic collaborator Michel Fokine. The choreography for Act 2 fared
much better with the public, but here too Diaghilev and Massine departed
from Prokofiev and Iakulov's 1925 plan. The dancers interacted with the set
in loose accord with the original scenario, but the overall effect was less one
of organic, utopian labour than of the subordination and even enslavement of
man to machine. In the words of one reviewer:
Men and women in all stages of hurry and perturbation toiled and moiled, shifted heavy weights about,
rained steam-hammer blows on huge bars of imaginary steel, tried to look like pistons, connecting rods,
cams and differentials, grew hot, and never, never smiled. It was all done in a way that only the mind of
a Massine could imagine; and it came off hugely, grimly.56
Le Pas d'Acier thus became a caricature of the very things it was supposed to
venerate: collective artistic creation, and collective factory labour.57
Massine's choreography depicted the Soviet workplace as a labour camp and
Soviet utopianism as fraudulent. Such at least was the perception among
Communist aesthetes, who taking note of the Russian émigré press criticised
the work for musical as well as political infelicities. Following a Moscow
concert of six scenes from the ballet in May 1928, Prokofiev was chastised
for lack of imagination and self-repetition. He was told that there was
'nothing new' in the score, that 'it had all been done before', that it was 'too
noisy', that it contained 'too much of the "white keys" [C major]', and that it
was altogether 'too contrived'.58 There then followed a harangue from the
Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians (RAPM), the group that prior
to it being disbanded in 1932 endeavoured to be the Soviet government's
'mouthpiece for musical policy', yet also endeavoured 'to define that policy'.59
In an article in Proletarskii muzykant [Proletarian Musician], the
Association's journal, the musicologist Iury Keldysh contested the 'decadent'
modernism of the ballet's music.60 Keldysh alleged that even without the
choreography, the score imposed bourgeois thought onto proletarian subject
matter.
Prokofiev did, however, have supporters in Moscow, such as Meyerhold and
Boris Guzman, who both advocated staging Le Pas d'Acier with a different
cast and choreography at the Bolshoi theatre. Guzman, the assistant director
of the Theatre, proposed enlivening the scene at the bazaar with 'giddily,
enthusiastically rushing "red sleighs" ', replacing the three 'commissars' with
'bandits'– although he was cautioned that this change would contradict the
music – and include 'cadres of Five Year Plan workers' in the factory
scenes.61 Greatly desiring the Moscow staging, Prokofiev engaged in repartee
with his detractors. For example, in reply to the question 'Why is the entire
last part of the ballet shot through with machine-like, mechanical rhythms?',
he dryly answered: 'Because a machine is more beautiful than a man.' When
asked whether he believed that the factory scenes depict 'a capitalist factory,
where the worker is slave, or a Soviet factory, where the worker is master', he
quipped: 'This [question] concerns politics, not music, and so I won't
respond.'62 His defence of the ballet (and even Diaghilev and Massine's
alterations) fell largely on deaf ears, though. The political die had been cast
and plans for a Sovietised production of Le Pas d'Acier consequently fell
through.
The conception of Ursignol and the materials that belong to the initial
conception of the ballet belong very much to the period of revolutionary
romanticism that motivated Construction and Constructivism. The ballet
embodies in microcosm the entire enterprise of redefning and reconstructing
art, the artist, and the theatre in accord with Soviet aspirations. Yet, in a
sense, the ballet's utopian conception and its dystopian realisation merge to
form another, even more politically poignant entity. The 1927 production's
betrayal of the ballet's 1925 aims, the resulting ideological ambiguities, the
disputes between the three creators, the questions posed to Prokofiev by his
Soviet adversaries, and the indignant answers he provided foreshadow the
fate of the Soviet avant-garde itself. As such, Le Pas d'Acier forms a
fascinating 'prism' of the contemporary political context and the socio-
cultural interactions of the time.
Notes
Lesley-Anne Sayers gratefully acknowledges funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Board
for this research. The Arts and Humanities Research Board (AHRB) funds postgraduate and advanced
research within the UK's higher education institutions. All AHRB awards are made on the basis of
academic excellence. The AHRB is not responsible for the views or research outcomes expressed by its
award holders.
1 A. Lunacharskii, 'Politika i publika', in Krasnaia panorama, 12 August 1928, no. 33, pp. 9–10.
2 This interpretation is provided by Russian dance historian Elizabeth Souritz, in an unpublished
document sent to Lesley-Anne Sayers in 1996.
3 S. Prokofiev, Autobiography, Articles, Reminiscences (Moscow, 1962), pp. 65–66.
4 I. Ehrenburg, Men, Years, Life: First Years of Revolution, 1918–21, trans. Anna Bostock (London:
MacGibborn & Kee, 1962), pp. 91–95.
5 C. Lodder, 'A Constructivist Pas de Deux: Naum Gabo and Sergei Diaghilev', Experiment: A Journal
of Russian Culture, 2, 1996, p. 31.
6 L. Garafola, Diaghilev's Ballets Russes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 30.
7 I. Ehrenburg, p. 91.
8 Eisenstein's film Battleship Potemkin was shown in Paris in 1925, and in the same year his first film,
Strike, received a French cinema prize.
9 Unpublished handwritten letter in Russian dated 6 February 1926, Paris Bibliothèque-Musée de
l'Opéra, Fonds Kochno, Pièce 60. Meyerhold mentored Prokofiev on three operas, The Gambler (1917;
revised 1928), The Love for Three Oranges (1919), and Semyon Kotko (1939).
10 Unpublished handwritten letter in Russian dated February 1926, Paris, Bibliothèque-Musée de
l'Opéra, Fonds Kochno, Pièce 42.
11 Ibid.
12 Unpublished handwritten letter in Russian from Iakulov to Prokofiev dated 12 October 1925.
Prokofiev Archive, London.
13 S. Prokofiev, p. 65.
14 Meyerhold's D.E. (1924) an adaption of various propagandistic novels including Ilia Ehrenburg's
The Trust D.E., featured similar stereotypes, including Sailors and Commissars.
15 Iakulov had made a similar use of the stage in his designs for Oedipus (1921) in which the
protagonist first appears on the highest level of the set, and then descends, literally and figuratively, as
the play unfolds. S. Aladzhalov, Georgii Iakulov (Yerevan, 1971), p. 77.
16 Described on an annotated drawing in Russian describing four parts of the set. Fonds Kochno,
Bibliothèque-Musée de l'Opéra de Paris.
17 The 1925 scenario establishes that the whole factory is set in motion for the fnale, and eyewitness
descriptions support the interpretation of two of Iakulov's sketches as indicating spectacular and
dynamic effects. For the eyewitness descriptions, see H.T. Parker, in The Boston Evening Standard,
July 23 1927, and W. Propert, The Russian Ballet 1921–1929 (London: John Lane/The Bodley Head
Ltd., 1931), pp. 56–59. The sketches are part of the Lobanov-Rostovskii Collection and reproduced in
Russian Stage Design, Mississippi Museum of Art Exhibition Catalogue, 1982, p. 321.
18 C. Lodder, Russian Constructivism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), p. 59.
19 S. Aladzhalov, chapter 3 'The Iakulovisation of the Theatres'. Aladzhalov cites his source for this
term as an article in Zrelishche, 23, 1932, pp. 14–15.
20 G. Iakulov, 'The Role of the Artist in Contemporary Theatre', Vestnik Teatra, 80–81, 1921, p. 17.
21 Iakulov and Meyerhold collaborated on at least three productions: Hamlet (n.d), Misteriia Bouffe
(1920), and Wagner's Rienzi (1920). On all three occasions, however, the productions were halted due
to theatre closures and other problems. S. Aladzhalov, p. 68.
22 From the 1910s into the 1920s circular colour wheels of interacting circular and semi-circular forms
were a common visual motif amongst the Parisian and Russian avant-garde. See, for example, Sonia
Delaunay's painting Electric Prisms (1914) inspired by the colour and light effects of the new electric
street lamps that were replacing gas lights in Paris at the time. These disks became a visual metaphor
for modernity and appear in Fernand Leger's painting The City (1921).
23 Untitled and undated drawing in pencil showing dancers on various moving parts of the set. Fonds
Kochno, Bibliothèque-Musée de l'Opéra de Paris. Image 135.
24 See O. Figes, Natasha's Dance: A Cultural History of Russia (London: Allen Lane, 2002), p. 463.
25 Edward Braun draws attention to the disparity between Meyerhold's claims of kinship with Gastev
and his actual creative practices. E. Braun, Meyerhold on Theatre (London: Eyre Methuen, 1978), p.
183.
26 See O. Figes, pp. 462–63.
27 J. Noller, 'Maschine und Metaphysik: Zur Symbolik der modernen Kunstfgur', in Tanzdrama
magazin, 43, 4, 1998, p. 17.
28 N. Edmunds, The Soviet Proletarian Music Movement (Oxford/Bern/New York, etc.: Peter Lang,
2000), p. 74.
29 All quotations from E. Souritz, 'Constructivism and Dance', in N. Van Norman Baer, Theatre in
Revolution: Russian Avant-garde Stage Design 1913–1935 (London: Thames and Hudson, 1991), p.
137.
30 N. Edmunds, p. 72.
31 S. Prokofiev, Soviet Diary 1927 and Other Writings, trans. and ed. Oleg Prokofiev (London: Faber
and Faber, 1991), p. 92.
32 See, for example, R. Dezarnauz, 'La Musique', in La Liberté , 9 Juin 1927, and S. Grigoriev, The
Diaghilev Ballet (London: Penguin, 1960), p. 240.
33 L. Massine, My Life in Ballet (London, Macmillan, 1968), pp. 171–72.
34 In an unpublished letter to Vladimir Derzhanovskii, 12 May 1928, Prokofiev writes: 'in Diaghilev's
production there was a lot which did not comply with my wishes.' Prokofiev Archive, London.
35 Telegram dated 29 April 1927. Prokofiev Archive, London. The ballet had its Paris premiere on 7
June 1927.
36 Unpublished letters from Prokofiev to Massine dated 2 July 1927 and November 1 1927; Bulletin de
Déclaration, 27 December 1927, Prokofiev Archive, London.
37 Unpublished handwritten letter in Russian from Iakulov to Prokofiev dated 12 October 1925.
Prokofiev Archive, London.
38 Anon., 'Balet Diagileva', in Vozrozhdenie (Paris: June 10 1927), p. 274.
39 Unpublished handwritten letter in Russian. Paris, Bibliothèque-Musée de l'Opéra, Fonds Kochno,
Pièce 42.
40 T. Scholl, From Petipa to Balanchine: Classical Revival and the Modernization of Ballet (London:
Routledge, 1994), p. 52.
41 See J. Noller, p. 21.
42 Ibid.
43 S.D. Press, 'Prokofiev's Ballets for Diaghilev', unpublished Ph.D. Thesis, University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1998, p. 274.
44 This interpretation has been reconstructed on an animated 3D model of the set design by Lesley-
Anne Sayers funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Board, UK, 2002. This model also explores
the interaction of kinetic set parts and the music in the factory during the finale.
45 Paris, Bibliothèque-Musée de l'Opéra, Fonds Kochno, Image 10.
46 Unpublished letter in Russian from Iakulov to Diaghilev dated 9 August 1925, pp. 4–5. Paris,
Bibliothèque-Musée de l'Opéra, Fonds Kochno, Pièce 42. Pp. 1–3 include the scenario of the ballet.
47 S.D. Press, p. 257. See pp. 254–63 for a discussion of additional 'jazz–like' elements in the score.
48 This term 'anempathetic' comes from the cinema scholar Michael Chion, who coined it to describe
background music that expresses 'an ostensible indifference' to visual action 'by following its own
dauntless and mechanical course'. Quotes from C. Gorbman, Unheard Melodies: Narrative Film Music
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), p. 159.
49 Though Prokofiev declared in his memoirs that Le Pas d'Acier marked a shift in his musical style
towards increased diatonic lyricism, the score relies (albeit superfcially) on what Richard Bass calls
'chromatic displacement'. R. Bass, 'Prokofiev's Technique of Chromatic Displacement', in Music
Analysis, 7, 2, 1988, pp. 197–214. In Scene 2, for example, bass lines rise and fall in parallel sevenths
rather than octaves, imitation occurs at the tritone rather than the f fth, and ostensibly functional
harmonies combine pitches from triads related by semitone.
50 H. Carter, The New Theatre and Cinema of Soviet Russia (London: Chapman & Dodd Ltd., 1924),
p. 69.
51 The Daily News , 5 July 1927, p. 7.
52 C.W. Beaumont, The Diaghilev Ballet in London (London: Putnam, 1940), pp. 278–80.
53 The puppet-like movements observed in Le Pas d'Acier suggests a thematic link to Petrushka as
well as to contemporary debate found in the writings of Edward Gordon Craig and Meyerhold,
concerning the ideal of the marionette in performance technique.
54 G. Iakulov, ' "Stal' noi skok", Sergeia Prokof ' eva' in Rabis, 25, 19 June 1928, p. 5.
55 E. Surits [E. Souritz], ' "Stal' noi skok", 1927', in Sovetskii balet, 2, March–April 1983, p. 27.
56 W. M., 'Factory Life Ballet: Music and Machinery', in The Daily Mail, 6 July 1927, p. 9.
57 Jean Cocteau accused Massine of turning 'something as great as the Russian Revolution into a
cotillion-like spectacle' and adds that he did not blame the composer or the designer. Letter to Boris
Kochno, 7/8 June 1927, published in B. Kochno, Diaghilev and Les Ballets Russes (London: Allen
Lane, 1971), p. 265.
58 Letter from Nikolay Miaskovskii to Prokofiev dated 30 May 1928, in D.B. Kabalevskii (ed.), S. S.
Prokof ' ev i N. Ia. Miaskovskii: Perepiska (Moscow, 1977), pp. 279–80.
59 A. Nelson, 'The Struggle for Proletarian Music: RAPM and the Cultural Revolution', in Slavic
Review, 59.1, Spring 2000, p. 129.
60 Iu. Keldysh, 'Balet "Stal'noi skok" i ego avtor –Prokof'ev', in Proletarskii muzykant, 6, 1929, pp. 12–
19.
61 D. Gachev, 'O "Stal 'nom skoke" i direktorskom naskoke', in M.E. Tarakanov (ed.), Sergey Prokof '
iev 1891–1953: Dnevnik pis ' ma, besedy, vospominaniia (Moscow, 1991), p. 200. These questions
were posed to the composer by representatives of the Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians
following a run-through of the ballet on 14 November 1929.
62 Ibid., p. 201.
6
'Lenin is always with us'
Musical propaganda has a long and glorious – although some would say
inglorious – history. It can at least be dated back in the Western musical
tradition to the collection of twenty-five madrigals edited by Thomas Morley
entitled The Triumphes of Oriana (1601) that glorified Elizabeth I and her
reign, which itself was modelled on an Italian collection of madrigals
published nine years earlier called Il trionfo di Dori. Musical propaganda was
also of particular importance to the Bolsheviks in their quest to undertake a
radical transformation of society after they came to power in October 1917.
In order to achieve this radical transformation, they were required to educate
a largely illiterate populace of over 140,000,000 about their ideas, and
musical and visual propaganda proved particularly convenient vehicles for
undertaking this task. This essay will provide an introduction to the various
forms of Soviet musical propaganda composed during the 1920s, and suggest
reasons why composers who specialised in the feld chose to do so.
A review of the State Press's Music Sector in 1927 listed fifty-one composers
who composed what was rather grandly described as 'agitational-educational
literature'.1 They can be divided into two broad categories: those who
specialised in the field of musical propaganda; and those who composed it on
a part-time basis, but saw themselves mainly as composers of apolitical
music. The composers who belonged to the first category approached their
work with a missionary zeal fred by the utopian spirit of the times. They
preferred to describe themselves as 'musical activists', rather than merely
composers, and were members of one or more of the following organisations:
the Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians (RAPM), the Association
of Revolutionary Composers and Musical Activists (ORKiMD), and the
Production Collective of Moscow Conservatory Students (Prokoll). Both
RAPM and ORKiMD evolved from the Agitational Department of the State
Press's Music Section (Agitotdel). Agitotdel was established by the
government in 1922 to co-ordinate the composition, publication and
distribution of musical propaganda, and was headed by the composer Lev
Shulgin (1890–1968). Although there had been several examples of pro-
Soviet musical propaganda written before 1922,2 the creation of Agitotdel
provided an impetus for its composition through ensuring payment and a
guarantee of publication and distribution. The frst collection of music
published by Agitotdel appeared in April 1923, and it soon acquired the
description of 'agitmuzyka', an abbreviation of agitatsionnaia muzyka
[agitational music]. It constituted 6.7 per cent of the total output of the State
Press's Music Section in 1923; a figure that was to rise to by 15.5 per cent in
1924.3
In order to unify and co-ordinate more systematically what Shulgin described
in the typical terminology of the day as 'musico-revolutionary forces', the
Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians (RAPM) was created in June
1923 by Shulgin with Aleksei Sergeev and David Chernomordikov (two
employees of Agitotdel), and the composer Dmitrii Vasilev-Buglai (1888–
1956).4 RAPM united composers, performers, music teachers and instructors
working in the amateur music field, and the majority of its members
associated with trades' unions or the military, or were members of the
Communist Party or Komsomol (the Communist Youth League). This
process of unifcation resulted in an increased demand for agitmuzyka, and a
broadening in the activities of Agitotdel. It began to publish methodological
pamphlets as well as music to improve the political and musical knowledge
of instructors working with amateur musicians, and a journal called Muzykal'
naia nov' [Musical Virgin Soil] that became a mouthpiece for RAPM.5
RAPM encompassed such a broad church, however, that tensions caused by
differences of opinion within the group soon appeared. These tensions came
to a head in December 1924 when the musicologist Lev Lebedinskii, a
member of RAPM and of the Moscow Conservatory's Komsomol cell,
criticised Agitotdel for publishing music that was either too difficult (and
thus inaccessible for proletarian audiences), or too simplistic and therefore
insulting to the class that had theoretically inherited power.6 Lebedinskii also
attacked Agitotdel's leadership for not encouraging collective composition or
discussion of music before publication, not seeking to attract more composers
from proletarian backgrounds, and ignoring the musical needs of the
peasantry.7
Partly as a result of this criticism, Shulgin and Sergeev left RAPM at the end
of 1924 to form the Association of Revolutionary Composers and Musical
Activists (ORKiMD). Virtually all the composers who worked for Agitotdel
also joined ORKiMD, so it was no surprise when it was noted in 1928 that
'almost every … revolutionary musical composition on the market two to
three years ago was written by members the Association of Revolutionary
Composers'.8 In addition, ORKiMD acquired a mouthpiece in Muzyka i
revoliutsiia [Music and Revolution], the journal of the State Press's Music
Section. Muzyka i revoliutsiia was initially edited by Shulgin, and compared
to Muzykal' naia nov' , it had a greater emphasis on providing practical
guidance to those working in the amateur music feld, report ing amateur
musical activities and reviewing the latest pieces of musical propaganda.
The third main group to which specialist composers of musical propaganda
belonged was the Production Collective of Moscow Conservatory Students
(Prokoll). It was founded in January 1925 from entrants of a competition
amongst students from the Moscow Conservatory to compose a work that
would commemorate the first anniversary of Lenin's death. Prokoll initially
sought to distance itself from both RAPM and ORKiMD. As the collective's
nominal leader and the inspirational fgure behind much of its activities,
Alexander Davidenko (1899–1934), explained: 'We do not intend deliberately
to compose unsophisticated music, since this is [already] done by the
Association of Proletarian Musicians and the Association of Revolutionary
Composers'.9 The members of Prokoll were thus anxious that their music was
not described as agitmuzyka, because of its associa- tion with RAPM and
ORKiMD, and believed it important not to completely reject the traditions of
the past in the composition of musical propaganda. Such a rejection was
perceived as an insult and patronising to the music's proletarian performers
and audience; the most heinous of musical crimes in what supposedly was a
'Dictatorship of the Proletariat'.10
Upon graduating in 1929, several of Prokoll's composers, including
Davidenko, Boris Shekhter (1900–61), Viktor Belyi (1904–83), and Marian
Koval (1907–71), joined RAPM. Dmitrii Vasilev-Buglai, arguably
ORKiMD's leading composer, joined them later that year, and several of his
colleagues soon followed. ORKiMD could not survive the losses, and
Shulgin disbanded the group in October 1929. Muzyka i revoliutsiia also
ceased publication in the autumn of 1929, and the following year saw the
demise of Agitotdel when the State Press's Music Section was abolished and
replaced by a new institution called the State Music Press. RAPM,
meanwhile, acquired a creative edge that resulted in it being best placed of all
the country's musical groups to take advantage of the cultural ramifcations of
the frst Five-Year Plan replacing the New Economic Policy. RAPM
consequently exerted more influence than before from 1929, particularly in
the conservatories and radio stations, before suffering the same fate as
Prokoll and other artistic associations when it was abolished on 23 April
1932 by the Party decree 'On the Reconstruction of Literary and Artistic
Organisations'.11
With regard to the music itself, most of it was composed on a small scale in
terms of performing forces and length. It could then easily be performed in
venues such as workers' clubs, village halls, schools, and army barracks, as
well as retain the interest of an audience. Consequently, individual composers
wrote a large number of compositions in a comparatively short space of time.
For example, Mikhail Krasev (1898–1957), Vasilev-Buglai and Klimentii
Korchmarev (1899–1958) published 160, 80 and 30 compositions
respectively between 1923 and 1927, while Koval wrote 50 compositions
between 1926 and 1929.12 Of these compositions, the vast majority were
vocal, since a text that contained an appropriate message could best fulfil the
basic aim of musical propaganda: to shape the thoughts and actions of
audience and performers. Vocal music was also very accessible, since the
performer need not have acquired the specialist skills of an instrumentalist.
Moreover, by continually rehearsing and performing a piece of vocal music,
the message contained in the text could be assimilated much quicker and
more thoroughly than just by listening.13 The subject matter of the texts,
which were often written in the instantly recognisable form of the two- or
four-line rhyming ditty called the chastushka, was very varied. It initially was
governed by replies to questionnaires that Shulgin sent to organisations
involved in amateur music-making soon after the establishment of Agitotdel
in order to seek out their needs. The themes then decided upon included the
exploits of the Red Army during the Civil War and life at the front, the
attraction of atheism, key moments from the life of Lenin, the activities of
Komsomol, and satires of stereotypical counter-revolutionaries, such as
priests and landowners.14 As the decade progressed, the subject matter of
musical propaganda evolved to refect political developments. By 1930, the
exploits of storm brigades and collective farm workers were celebrated, the
defnition of 'enemies' of the proletariat had broadened to include
representatives of foreign powers, kulaks and Trotskyites, and the theme of
socialist construction was particularly popular. Stalin himself, however, never
became a subject of musical propaganda until the mid-1930s.
The type of vocal music favoured by composers of musical propaganda was
the choral variety. It was deemed particularly suitable for musical
propaganda, because it was thought that Russians had a special affinity for
the genre, and since the choir was in essence a collective, it was believed that
the performance of choral music could instil a collective spirit in the
performers.15 The emphasis on choral music was clearly illustrated by the
output of Agitotdel during the early years of its existence. The first collection
of musical propaganda published by Agitotdel in April 1923 consisted purely
of short choral compositions by Shulgin, Vasilev-Buglai, and Aleksei
Turenkov (1886–1958). This was followed by the publication of a further
twelve collections of choral music – four specifically for children, two for the
Red Army, four for workers' clubs, and two for general use – and 104
individual choral pieces.16
The suitability of choral music for the purposes of musical propaganda was
thus beyond doubt, but musical propaganda was by no means restricted to
choral music. Agitotdel also published by August 1924 twelve compositions
for choir and soloists, thirty for voice and piano, three for solo piano, eleven
for wind band, and fve declamations in addition to music for choir.17 The
latter are of particular interest, because they became almost exclusively
associated with musical propaganda. The appeal of declamation to composers
of musical propaganda was obvious. It could clearly convey the political
message of a text to an audience, and could be performed by a proletarian or
peasant who had no musical skills. Declamations were composed for either
choir or solo voice, but it was the former that proved most popular with more
than seventy published in 1927 alone.18 These collective declamations, as
they were called, were considered of such practical use that the Commissar
for Culture and Education, Anatolii Lunacharskii, wanted to establish a
special institute devoted to their study. They were considered not only as the
ideal instruments of propaganda, but also as methods of instilling a collective
spirit and sense of rhythm into proletarians that would in turn have a
benefcial effect on the economy by raising production rates.
There were two main types of declamations: those that attempted to imitate
either vocally or by their instrumental accompaniments images portrayed in
the texts, and those which completely forsook such sound effects so that the
listener comprehended the propaganda message of the text without any
distraction. Examples of the former included Mikhail Lazarev's Bey molotom!
[The Hammer Beat!] (1924) (Plate 6.1), in which accented piano chords
imitated a beating hammer accompanied onomatopoeic shouts of 'bey!' and
'molotom!', and Sigizmund Kats's Gudki [The Factory Whistles] (1924) (Plate
6.2), in which the factory whistles were imitated by right-hand tremolos in
the piano accompaniment. A typical example of the declamation that forsook
sound effects, on the other hand, was Alexander Titov's 25-oe Oktiabria [25
October] (1924).
A genre exclusively employed for the purposes of musical propaganda that
partly evolved from the declamation was the vocal placard. The composer
most associated with the vocal placard was Alexander Davidenko. His first
placard was called Pro Lenina [About Lenin], and it won him the competition
to compose a work about Lenin that resulted in the founding of Prokoll in
1925. The vocal placard can be best (if clumsily) described as a declamatory
recitative for unaccompanied soloist. The text was not recited as in a
declamation, but neither did it contain the lyrical quality that is associated
with recitative. The nearest musical equivalent was the Sprechstimme
employed by Schoenberg in works like Pierrot Lunaire (1912). The sole aim
of the vocal placard was to convey a propaganda message in as clear and
understandable a way as possible. Hence, there was no need for the
distracting superfuous sounds of accompanying instruments, and Davidenko
emphasised this by underlining the words 'bez soprovozdeniia' ['without
accompaniment'] in the score of Pro Lenina. He also reiterated the need for
communication between performer and listeners by instructing that 'the singer
must walk around the edge [of the stage] as if talking to the audience'.19
Davidenko was also at the forefront of the development of the mass song;
another genre exclusively employed for the purposes of musical propaganda,
and which was to become an integral part of Soviet musical life. One writer
has even gone as far as to argue that 'Davidenko began the quest for the …
mass song, and was the creator of a new genre'.20
Plate 6.1 Bey molotom! [The Hammer Beat! ] by Mikhail Lazarev.
Actually, no one could claim to have invented the label 'mass song'. It frst
appeared in journals in 1924 when certain old revolutionary songs (i.e. those
composed before 1917), popular folk songs, and songs by composers
working for Agitotdel were all described as 'mass'. Davidenko was the frst
composer to describe one of his own compositions, Konnitsa Budennogo
[Budenny's Cavalry] (1925), as a 'mass song' in the score, though. The two-
part structure of Konnitsa Budennogo (Plate 6.3), with its introduction for
soloists followed by a refrain where the whole choir performs in unison to
create an impression of intensity, power and collec tive solidarity, also
became a model for future composers of the genre.21 It was the two-part
structure of the mass song that differentiated the genre from older
revolutionary songs, such as The Internationale, or Soviet compositions often
mistakenly described as mass songs like Dmitrii Pokrass's Marsh Budennogo
[Budenny's March] (1920), in which the choir performs in unison throughout.
Not all early Soviet musical propaganda was small-scale or vocal, and
Agitotdel published a small amount of instrumental music as the figures cited
above illustrate. Shulgin actively encouraged the composition of instrumental
musical propaganda,22 but to convey a political message in an art form as
abstract as instrumental music was a difficult task. After much theorising
about how to achieve this aim, composers usually employed two methods.
The first and most common was a form of musical symbolism with melodies
or motifs from revolutionary songs incorporated into original compositions.
Korchmarev's solo piano piece Revoliutsionyi karnival [Revolutionary
Carnival] (1924), for example, was a set of variations on the melody of the
French revolutionary song La Carmagnole. This method of politicising
instrumental music was also not confned to those who primarily composed
musical propaganda. Reinhold Glière in his ballet Krasnyi mak [The Red
Poppy] (1927), for instance, used motifs from The Internationale and
Iablochko [Apple] (a song popular with Red Army soldiers during the Civil
War) to represent Soviet sailors who were liberating oppressed Chinese
proletarians. Nikolai Miaskovskii also 'politicised' his Sixth Symphony
(1923) by incorporating motifs from La Carmagnole and Ça ira, another
French revolutionary song, into its finale.
The second way in which composers mobilised instrumental genres for
propaganda purposes was to try and evoke concrete images by combining
Plate 6.3 Konnitsa Budennogo by Alexander Davidenko.
techniques throughout the work, and the fnal episode (a monumental fugue
composed in sonata form) was entitled Sonata-final [The Sonata Finale] to
emphasise this. The charge of 'unsophisticated', as Davidenko had described
some of ORKiMD's compositions (see above), could therefore not be levelled
against Put' Oktiabria. However, Put' Oktiabria also included several
contemporary features in order to refute the claim that it was merely a relic of
the bourgeois past in all but subject matter. The most notable of these was the
use of montage to carry the action instead of a logical narrative, and the
inclusion of declamations – both solo and collective – complete with the
verbal and musical sound effects that were popular at the time.27 The
experimental nature of Put' Oktiabria led certain of Prokoll's contemporaries
to argue that it would confuse rather than educate a proletarian audience, but
more recent critics have been generally complimentary about the oratorio.28
Put' Oktiabria was not, however, amongst the earliest examples of Soviet
musical propaganda composed on a large scale. That distinction went to
works premiered two years earlier in 1925, such as Arsenii Gladkovskii and
Evgenii Prussak's opera Za krasnyi Petrograd [For Red Petrograd], and
Alexander Kastalskii's Derevenskaia simfoniia [A Rural Symphony] and
cantata 1905 god [The Year 1905]. Of these compositions, the Derevenskaia
simfoniia was particularly signifcant, since it could justifably claim to be the
frst overtly propagandistic Soviet symphony, extolling as it did the virtues of
socialist labour in the countryside. It was divided into four movements that
represented various aspects of rural life under the new regime, and scored for
a large symphony orchestra, a quartet of domra (stringed folk instruments),
choir and two soloists. The latter played the parts of a young girl and old man
and provided the symphony with a theatrical element by their dialogue in the
second and fourth movements, and led one reviewer to describe the work as a
mixture of symphony, cantata, and pantomime.29 The synthesis of music and
theatre was an important educational aspect of the Derevenskaia simfoniia,
for if members of the audience were captivated by an interesting visual
spectacle, they would in theory be more receptive to the work's propaganda
message. The Derevenskaia simfoniia also illustrated Kastalskii's fervently
held belief that performers and audiences from the working classes would be
particularly responsive to folk music.30 The orchestral parts of the score were
based on Russian and Ukrainian folk songs and dances, and the folk melodies
were performed in their original versions by the quartet of domra and choir
after each orchestral section to ensure that the audience and performers made
the connection between the two.31
The emphasis that Kastalskii placed on the accessibility of his music was
naturally very important, since there was little point in composing music with
a political message that would not be appealing and never as a result be
performed. This of course would completely defeat the object of the exercise.
The subject of how to ensure the popularity of musical propaganda resulted
in much tortuous theorising. The method favoured by Kastalskii of quoting
folk melodies in an original composition had its supporters,32 but some of the
younger members of RAPM found it politically unacceptable. Marian Koval,
for example, claimed that it 'idealised the centrality of peasant culture….
something that Leninism has struggled against'.33 This belief resulted in a
campaign led by RAPM against the public performance of folk music, and
the mock trial on radio of the famed Piatnitskii Folk Ensemble.34 It was
acceptable and very common, though, to compose a song that sounded
'folkish' in order to try and ensure popularity.
Practical measures were also taken to try to ensure the suitability of musical
propaganda for proletarian performers and audiences. As noted, Shulgin sent
questionnaires to organisations involved in amateur music-making soon after
the establishment of Agitotdel in order to seek out their needs. He also
persuaded the Red Army's Propaganda section (PUR) to pass an order that
made all divisions send the names of the songs they performed most
frequently to Moscow. The material acquired as a result of this order was
then used by Agitotdel's composers to help infuence their own music for a
forthcoming collection called Pesni krasnoi armii fnd out what were the
favourite songs of Young Communists, and with [Songs of the Red Army].35
Shulgin also struck a deal with Komsomol to the Society of Former Political
Prisoners and Istpart to help decide which pre-Revolutionary songs should be
taken into account when composing contemporary works.36 Moreover,
composers of musical propaganda adapted their working practices to try and
ensure the popularity of their work. Vasilev-Buglai, for example, asked
members of the workers' choirs he directed to sing to him their favourite
melodies. He then incorporated these melodies into several of his own
compositions.37 Davidenko, on the other hand, believed that his music could
only have popular appeal if he acquired inspiration by composing it amongst
his intended audience on trams, trains and buses, rather than in isolation in
his study.38
Despite these efforts to make musical propaganda popular, both Soviet and
Western commentators have noted that with a few exceptions true popularity
(i.e. being well-liked) was not in practice achieved.39 To change a
population's musical tastes in a comparatively short space of time was a
diffcult if not impossible task. This was illustrated by a survey carried out by
the State Music Press in 1930 into what demonstrators chose to sing during
the celebrations of the October Revolution in Moscow. Sixty-three per cent
of the songs performed were described as either meshchanskie [petit-
bourgeois] or pseudo-revolutionary (i.e. propaganda texts set to pre-
Revolutionary melodies). Only 18 per cent were contemporary revolutionary
songs composed by specialist composers of musical propaganda, while the
other 19 per cent of songs performed fell into the category of old
revolutionary songs.40 However, when a similar survey was carried out just
two years later, the percentage of contemporary revolutionary songs had
increased to 61, while only 36 per cent of the songs performed were
described as meshchanskie or pseudo-revolutionary, and 3 per cent were old
revolutionary songs.41 The crucial difference was that RAPM had been in a
position to exert more infuence between 1930 and 1932 than it was in the
period leading up to 1930.
On the evidence of the reviews of musical activities in factories and workers'
clubs that regularly appeared in numerous editions of the journals noted
above, it would also be a mistake to dismiss Shulgin's remark made in 1925
that musical propaganda had 'modestly and imperceptibly . . . filtered its way
through every pore of our society' as an overstatement.42 Such reviews
illustrated that the musical propaganda by composers who belonged to
ORKiMD and Prokoll was undoubtedly well known, and frequently
performed by those for whom it was composed. This was particularly so in
the main urban centres and surrounding districts, the areas upon which these
reviews concentrated, but also to a lesser extent in some of the remoter
regions of the country.43 Whether or not audiences from these regions would
recognise that motifs from La Carmagnole and Ça ira had been quoted in
pieces of instrumental musical propaganda is of course another matter.
With regard to the specialist composers of musical propaganda, they came
from diverse backgrounds and age groups. The oldest of the composers to
whom reference has been made was Alexander Kastalskii (1856–1926),
whilst the youngest was Marian Koval. Both Kastalskii and Koval came from
middle-class backgrounds; the former was the son of a protoierei [archpriest],
the latter the son of a chorister in St Petersburg's famous Arkhangelskii
Choir. There were, though, composers of musical propaganda from the lower
classes, most notably Dmitrii Vasilev-Buglai and Alexander Davidenko, and
this afforded them a particularly high status amongst their peers.44
As to the reason why a composer specialised in musical propaganda, it seems
that it was purely a spontaneous decision on the part of the individual
concerned, since the state did not put pressure on composers to do so. There
were in fact many composers who did not work in the feld at all during the
1920s, and suffered no adverse treatment from the authorities as a result. It
could be argued that the primary reason for composing musical propaganda
was financial in light of the appalling economic situation and that composers
were paid a fat rate calculated on the amount of music published, rather than
a royalty that depended on how often a particular work was performed.
However, one of Lebedinskii's criticisms of the State Press's Music Section
was that Agitotdel's composers were paid less for their musical propaganda
than composers of other genres.45 If financial considerations were of
paramount importance to an individual, it would thus pay to avoid composing
musical propaganda. It would also have been more lucrative to compose
large-scale works instead of musical propaganda that with the few exceptions
discussed above was usually composed on a small scale out of necessity.
It was therefore very likely that the composers who composed musical
propaganda on a full-time basis did so because they were genuinely
sympathetic to the regime, happy to help it, and glad to share their
enthusiasm for Bolshevik rule with the masses through their music. Why they
should be sympathetic to the regime differed from composer to composer.
Marian Koval's political beliefs could be attributed to his parents. His father
joined the Communist Party in 1920, while his mother – a member of the
Polish intelligentsia – owned a number of political pamphlets and books
(including a copy of Das Kapital) with which the young Koval became
acquainted.46 Viktor Belyi's elder brother Boris had joined both the
Communist Party and the Red Army immediately after the October
Revolution, and passed on his political beliefs to his younger brother. In the
case of Alexander Davidenko and Boris Shekhter, local Bolsheviks from their
hometown of Odessa helped instil their political beliefs.47
With regard to the older composers of musical propaganda, it was no
coincidence that they worked with members of the lower classes before the
October Revolution. Alexander Kastalskii developed an interest in
supervising amateur choirs and orchestras, and moved to Kozlov in 1881
where he directed and organised a choir and orchestra of railway workers. On
his return to Moscow he continued to work amongst the poor at the Synodal
Music School, where he trained boys from underprivileged backgrounds to
sing in church choirs, and was one of the founder members of the People's
Conservatory in 1906.48 Mikhail Krasev, meanwhile, taught music to grape
pickers in the Crimea, while Dmitrii Vasilev-Buglai directed several amateur
choirs in the Tambov region of southern Russia and organised the musical
activities of soldiers serving on the Georgian front during the First World
War.49
Working with members of the lower classes had been on the periphery of
musical life during the pre-Revolutionary period, but assumed great
importance after the Bolsheviks came to power. Without the organisation of
mass programmes of artistic education and the development of artistic
(including musical) activities amongst workers and peasants, it was not
possible to create the 'higher biological type' to which Trotskii desired, or
fulfil Lenin's dictum that 'Art belongs to the people…. It must arouse and
develop the artist in them'.50 It was only natural that those who had an
interest in working with the underprivileged would support a government
which encouraged and held this work in such high esteem. Having worked
with and witnessed the plight of workers and peasants at frst hand, it would
also not be too fanciful to suggest that these composers would feel
sympathetic to a government which promised to improve the lot of the lower
classes and shared the benevolence that prompted them to undertake such
work in the frst place.
Consequently, musical activists did more than merely compose musical
propaganda. Many of them became high-profle public figures, and they took
full advantage of the opportunities afforded to them by the new regime by
carrying out what was described as 'mass musical work' (i.e. working
amongst the lower classes). Kastalskii, for example, devised the curricula and
taught at the music studios of Moscow Proletkult (Proletarian Cultural
Organisations), continued to teach at the Synodal Music School (which had
been renamed the People's Choral Academy), and organised concerts and
gave lectures at the Red Army's clubs in Moscow and workers' clubs in
Ivanovo-Voznesensk.51 Vasilev-Buglai joined the Music Department of
Tambov Proletkult in 1918, and organised Agitotdel's own workers' choir, as
well as the choirs of the Hammer and Sickle Works in Moscow and the
Railway Carriage Repair Factory in Mytishchi.52 Krasev supervised all the
choral circles organised by the Moscow branch of the Medical and Sanitary
Workers' Union ( Medsantrud), and was music director of the Moscow-
Kazan Railway Workers' Club.53
Of Prokoll's composers, Belyi became director of music at the Central Army
Club in Kharkov when only seventeen, while Koval organised the musical
activities of trainee soldiers in military schools for holiday celebrations in
Petrograd at the same age.54 Both also undertook mass musical work with
other members of RAPM at Koktebel in the Crimea in 1931.55 Davidenko
taught music in an orphanage in Moscow called the Young Commune and in
the Moscow Conservatory's Rabfak [Workers' Faculty], and organised
musical activities at clubs organised by the Union of Textile Workers and
Shoemakers' Union and at the Elektrozavod and Kauchuk [Rubber]
factories.56 In addition to his mass musical work in Moscow, he also
supervised the musical activities of the Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol from
August 1932, and the musical activities of collective farms in Grivetsvo,
Ivanovo, Tutaev and Medvedka.57 It could in fact be argued that the
enthusiasm with which Davidenko carried out mass musical work contributed
to his early death, because he never recovered from the heat-stroke he
suffered while supervising musical activities at the Maiden's Field in Moscow
on May Day 1934.58 A poignant if fitting end to one of the leading
composers of musical propaganda of his day, and an end that illustrated the
idealism and sheer enthusiasm instilled by Bolshevism in specialist
composers of musical propaganda; an idealism that today can easily be
forgotten and overlooked.
Notes
1 A. Iurovskii, 'Deiatel' nost' muzykal' nogo sektora gosizdat', in Muzyka i revoliutsiia, 11, 1927, p. 32.
2 Such as Nikolai Kochetov's Gimn-marsh 1-oe maia [A May Day Anthem March] (1919) and Dmitrii
Pokrass's Marsh Budennogo [Budenny's March] (1920).
3 L. Shulgin, 'Dostizheniia revoliutsionnoi muzyki', in Sovetskoe iskusstvo, 1, 1925, p. 90.
4 N. Edmunds, 'Music and Politics: The Case of the Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians', in
Slavonic and East European Review, vol. 78, no. 1, January 2000, p. 67; and A. Nelson, 'The Struggle
for Proletarian Music. RAPM and the Cultural Revolution', in Slavic Review, vol. 59, no. 1, Spring
2000, p. 105.
5 Muzykal'naia nov' largely dealt with ideological and theoretical questions, such as what music was
most suitable for proletarian audiences and performers, or in what style musical propaganda should be
composed.
6 L. Lebedinskii, 'Reorganizatsiia Muzsektora Giz'a', in Muzykal'naia nov', 12, 1924, pp. 3–4.
7 Ibid.
8 S.I. Korev, 'Serdi muzykal'no-obshchestvennikh ob'edinenii', in Sovetskoe iskusstvo, 6, 1928, p. 40.
When Korev writes of a 'revolutionary musical composition', he is referring to its subject matter rather
than its musical idiom.
9 Quoted in L.V. Danilevich, Kniga o sovetskoi muzyke (Moscow, 1962), p. 21.
10 For the aims of Prokoll, see N. Edmunds, The Soviet Proletarian Music Movement (Oxford: Peter
Lang, 2000), p. 211; and A. Nelson, p. 107.
11 For a translation of this decree, see B. Taylor, Art and Literature under the Bolsheviks, vol. 2
(London: Pluto Press, 1992), pp. 181–182.
12 Figures from E.M. [Shulgina], 'Ob'edinenie revoliutsionnykh kompozitorov', in Muzyka i
revoliutsiia, 5–6, 1927, p. 21; and M. Koval, 'O sebe i svoei muzyke', in Sovremennaia muzyka, 32,
1929, p. 12.
13 N. Edmunds, The Soviet Proletarian Music Movement, p. 33.
14 L. Shul'gin, 'Agitotdel Muzsektora Giz'a', in Muzykal'naia nov', 10, 1924, p. 6.
15 D.S. Vasilev-Buglai, 'Khorovaia rabota v massakh', in Muzykal'naia nov', 10, 1924, p. 30; and N.
Edmunds, The Soviet Proletarian Music Movement, p. 33.
16 N. Edmunds, The Soviet Proletarian Music Movement; and A.L., 'Muzsektor Giz'a. Agitationno-
prosvetitel'nyi otdel', in Muzykal' naia nov', 1, 1923, p. 35.
17 L. Shul'gin, 'Agitotdel Muzsektora Giz'a', p. 6.
18 V.M. Lenzon, Muzyka sovetskikh massovykh revoliutsionnykh prazdnikov (Moscow, 1987), p. 36.
Note that a declamation was considered an art form in its own right, rather than a performance method.
19 See the illustration of the score of Pro Lenina in L. Lebedinskii, 'Kompozitor mass', in Muzykal'naia
samodeiatel'nost', 7, 1934, p. 2.
20 L. Sokolenko, 'Davidenko – kompozitor proletarskoi revoliutsii', in P.N. Berberov (ed.), Trudy
Gosudarstvennogo-muzykal' no Pedagogicheskogo Instituta imeni Gnesinikh, vol. 10 (Moscow, 1971),
p. 80.
21 See for further details, N. Edmunds, The Soviet Proletarian Music Movement, pp. 233–37; and A.
Nelson, pp. 125–26.
22 L.Shul'gin, 'Agitotdel Muzsektora Giz' a', pp. 7–8.
23 Ts.S. Ratskaia, Mikhail Krasev (Moscow, 1957), pp. 27–29.
24 See, for example, A., 'Notigrafia i bibliografia', in Muzyka i revoliutsiia, 6, 1926, p. 38.
25 Ibid.
26 For further information about Put' Oktiabria , see Anon., 'Put' Oktiabria', in G.A. Pribegina (ed.),
Sovetskoi rodine posviashchaetsia (Moscow, 1985), pp. 40–43; G. Soboleva, 'Oratoriia Put' Oktyabria',
in Vecherniaia Moskva , no. 248, 25 October 1984, p. 3; and A.M. Veprik, 'Put' Oktiabria', in
Muzykal'noe obrazovanie, 1, 1929, pp. 35–37.
27 There was a link therefore between Prokoll and Sergei Eisenstein who employed the technique of
montage in his early films. Several writers also commented on the cinematographic nature of Put'
Oktiabria , and Davidenko was a fervent admirer of Eisenstein's work. I.Ia. Ispolnev, 'Zhizn' –
tvorchestvo', in N.A. Martynov (ed.), Aleksandr Davidenko. Stat'i. Vospominaniia. Materialy
(Leningrad, 1968), p. 112; and Iu. Keldysh, 'Put' Oktiabria', in Proletarskii muzykant, 1, 1929, p. 41.
Davidenko and Boris Shekhter, a fellow Prokoll member, continued to experiment with montage and
sound effects in their opera 1905 god [The Year 1905] (1934–35). N. Edmunds, 'A Soviet Proletarian
Opera. The Year 1905 by Aleksandr Davidenko and Boris Shekhter', in Muziek en Wetenschap, vol. IV,
no. 4, 1994, pp. 192 and 195–200.
28 Iu. Keldysh, p. 41 (for mild criticism); T. Sergeeva, 'Slushat' muzyku revoliutsii', in Moskovskaia
Pravda , no. 278, 6 December 1983, p. 3; and I. Zemtsovskii, 'Pretecha opery novogo tipa', in
Sovetskaia muzyka , 5, 1984, pp. 27–28 (for praise).
29 A. Preobrazhenskii, 'A.D. Kastal'skii (materialy k biografi)', in D.V. Zhitomirskii, (ed.), A.D.
Kastal'skii. Stat ' i. Vospominaniia. Materialy (Moscow, 1960), pp. 45–46. The Derevenskaia simfoniia
is described as the Sel' skokhoziaistvennaia simfoniia [An Agricultural Symphony ] by some writers,
although Derevenskaia simfoniia was used at its premiere. A. Drozdov, 'Simfonicheskii kontsert v
teatre Revoliutsii 13 Dekabria', in Muzyka i revoliutsiia, 1, 1926, p. 45.
30 Hence, the composer's comment that 'in the name of the democratisation of art, we must frstly turn
to folk music'. A.D. Kastalskii, 'Prostoe iskusstvo i ego neprostiia zadachi', in Melos', 2, 1917, p. 125.
31 The orchestral sections of the Derevenskaia simfoniia were claimed to be composed in a similar
style to the music of the Mighty Handful. S. Bugoslavskii, 'A.D. Kastalskii', in Muzyka i oktiabr' , 3,
1926, p. 6.
32 Such as Vasilev-Buglai, who considered that it was 'essential for every composer of mass songs to
diligently study folk song'. D.S. Vasilev-Buglai, 'Kak ia pishu massovuiu pesniu', in Za proletarskuiu
muzyku , 12, 1931, p. 9.
33 M. Koval, 'Lenin v muzyke', in Proletarskii muzykant, 1, 1930, p. 11.
34 R. Stites, Russian Popular Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 73.
Ironically, Koval became director of the Piatnitskii Folk Ensemble in the early 1960s.
35 L. Shulgin, 'Agitotdel Muzsektora Giz'a', p. 7.
36 Ibid. Istpart was the acronym of the Commission for the Collection and Study of Materials on the
History of the October Revolution and Communist Party.
37 D.L. Lokshin, D.S. Vasil'ev-Buglai (Moscow, 1958), p. 15.
38 I. Ispolnev, p. 111.
39 See, for example, R.A. Rothstein, 'Popular Song in the NEP Era', in S. Fitzpatrick, A. Rabinowitch,
and R. Stites (eds), Russia in the Era of NEP (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), p. 269;
A.N. Sokhor, Russkaia sovetskaia pesnia (Leningrad, 1959), pp. 110–111; and S.F. Starr, Red and Hot.
The Fate of Jazz in the Soviet Union 1917–1980 (New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), p.
49.
40 R.A. Rothstein, 'The Quiet Rehabilitation of the Brick Factory: Early Soviet Popular Music and its
Critics', in Slavic Review, vol. 39, no. 3, 1980, p. 374.
41 N. Edmunds, 'Music and Politics: The Case of the Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians', p.
87.
42 L. Shulgin, 'Dostizheniia revoliutsionnoi muzyki', p. 90. For three of many examples of these
reviews, see Anon., 'Praktika muzykal' noi raboty', in Muzyka i revoliutsiia, 1, 1926, pp. 35–39; Anon.,
'Praktika muzykal ' noi raboty', in ibid., 9, 1926, pp. 30–32; and Anon., 'Praktika muzykal ' noi raboty',
in ibid., 2, 1927, pp. 26–28.
43 Hence, Shulgin's remark in October 1924 that 'agitational music has began to penetrate … almost all
the territory of the USSR'. L. Shulgin, 'Agitotdel Muzsektora Giz' a', p. 7. This claim can be
substantiated by the numerous reports of musical activities from the provinces published in
contemporary journals. See, for instance, the reports from Tambov and Kostroma in G. Pozdniakov,
'Provintsiia', in Muzyka i revoliutsiia, 12, 1926, p. 48.
44 Note the comments, for example, in N. Chemberdzhi, 'Entuziast massovikh zhanrov', in N.A.
Martynov (ed.), Aleksandr Davidenko. Stat' i. Vospominaniia. Materialy, p. 92; and V. Fere,
'Chudesnyi tovarishsch i drug', in ibid., p. 52.
45 L. Lebedinskii, 'Reorganizatsiia Muzsektora Giz'a', pp. 3–4.
46 M. Bruk, Marian Koval (Leningrad/Moscow, 1959), p. 5.
47 K. Belaia, 'O sem' e i detskikh godakh brata', in L.N. Lebedinskii (ed.), V.A. Belyi. Ocherki zhizni i
tvorchestva. Stat' i. Vospominaniia. Materialy (Moscow, 1987), p. 107; and B. Shekhter, 'Iz
vospominanii ob A. Davidenko', in Sovetskaia muzyka, 6, 1959, p. 52.
48 A.D. Kastalskii, 'My Musical Career and my Thoughts on Church Music', in The Musical Quarterly,
11, April 1925, p. 233; and E. Leonov, 'Predislovie', in A.D. Kastal' skii, Izbrannye khory (Moscow,
1981), p. 2.
49 N.Ia. Briusova, 'D.S. Vasilev-Buglai', in Sovetskaia muzyka, 2, 1948, p. 98; and E.M. [Shulgina],
'Mikhail Krasev', in Muzyka i revoliutsiia, 1, 1928, p. 15.
50 Trotskii wanted to 'create a higher biological type' who would 'rise to the heights of an Aristotle,
Goethe, or a Marx'. L. Trotsky, Literature and Revolution (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press,
1964), pp. 255–256. Lenin as recalled by Klara Zetkin. K. Zetkin, Reminiscences of Lenin (London:
Modern Books, 1929), p. 14.
51 A. Preobrazhenskii, pp. 42–43; and I. Smyslov, 'V rabochem klube', in D.V. Zhitomirskii (ed.), pp.
122–123.
52 N.Ia. Briusova, p. 98; and E.M. [Shulgina], p. 15.
53 E.M. [Shulgina], p. 16; and D.L. Lokshin, pp. 7–8.
54 M. Bruk, pp. 9–10; and I. Mamchur, 'V. Belyi', in L.N. Lebedinskii (ed.), V.A. Belyi. Ocherki zhizni
i tvorchestva. Stat'i. Vospominaniia. Materialy, p. 20.
55 L.N. Lebedinskii, 'A. Davidenko. Materialy dlia tvorcheskoi biografi', in Sovetskaia muzyka, 4,
1935, pp. 32–33.
56 Ibid.
57 A. Davidenko, 'Za oboronnuiu krasnofotskuiu pesniu', in N.A. Martynov (ed.), pp. 135–136; A.A.
Lebedev, 'Pismo medvedskogo khorkruzhka', in Muzykal'naia samodeiatel'nost', 7, 1934, p. 28; L.N.
Lebedinskii, 'A. Davidenko. Materialy dlia tvorcheskoy biografi', pp. 35–36; and Al. Surkov, 'Pamiati
soratnika', in N.A. Martynov (ed.), pp. 109–110.
58 Virtually an hour-by-hour account of Davidenko's last day is given in L. Lebedinskii, 'A.
Davidenko. Materialy dlia tvorcheskoy biografi', pp. 36–37.
7
Amateurs and enthusiasts
'I am 49' claimed a collective farmer called Natalia Petrova from the
Sinoborevo village soviet in the Sudogda district, and
have experienced both grief and need. Only in the Collective Farm have I stopped feeling old. I grew
even younger after the Olympiad where each showed his wits and ability to perform. When has it
happened that someone has brought out the talents of us village women and helped to develop these
talents?1
What was the activity that magically renewed the youthfulness of these
Collective Farm performers? Amateur musicians and groups in Russia in the
1930s frequently performed in competitions for prizes called Olympiads.
These Olympiads took place within a larger context of amateur activity
(samodeiatel'nost'), which included general amateur evenings at the local
theatres, holiday appearances in public parks, and performances by amateur
performers in factory and village clubs. The Olympiad format was essentially
a presentation of a variety show which provided a combination of song,
music, dance, and other forms in different genres. From the point of view of
the authorities, the Olympiads were more than entertainment. They also
served to meet the 'cultural' needs of the population, but proved neither
predictable nor controllable, because the participants were amateurs.2
The Olympiad phenomenon was national, but its features are easier to see at
the local level in provinces like Ivanovo. Ivanovo (Fig. 7.1) is approximately
280 kilometres east-north-east of Moscow; its capital also being called
Ivanovo. Between 1930 and 1936, the province of Ivanovo (sometimes called
the Ivanovo Industrial Province) also included what is today Iaroslavl,
Vladimir, and parts of Kostroma provinces. Soviet journals which specifcally
covered amateur activity, such as Klub [Club], Kolkhoznyi teatr [Collective
Farm Theatre], Muzykal'naia samodeiatel'nost' [Musical Amateur Activity],
and Narodnoe tvorchestvo [Folk Culture],3 usually emphasised only its
positive aspects and described amateur activity in general, historical terms.
They also tended to ignore provinces like Ivanovo. Hence, the importance of
the provincial sources that this essay largely draws from. Local newspapers
such as the Rabochii krai [Worker's Region] provide a unique view of
everyday life and almost-everyday Olympiads. They contain reviews, letters,
interviews, complaints, and the announcements of event schedules
documenting the sheer volume of activity in the province. Between the local
reviews and the complaints, there are also indications of the participants and
of the authorities' expectations of the Olympiads. Moreover, the local
coverage provides evidence of the decline of the Olympiads and their gradual
replacement by other forms of amateur entertainment, and suggests that the
assumptions of the uniform control of Soviet cultural activities during the
1930s should be challenged.
Until the late 1930s, many performances of folk music in Moscow, whether
in the concert hall or on the radio, were given by performers from the
provinces, and questions arise on a provincial level that are also rele
Figure 7.1 Ivanovo Province in the 1930s.
vant in the national context. For example, why did performers enter the
Olympiads, if they were not a required to do so? Why did they volunteer for
what Sheila Fitzpatrick described as 'the Potemkin village' of Soviet cultural
activities, and why did folk music performers in particular participate in the
Olympiads only after 1933?4 The answers to these questions have to do with
both the national political evaluation of folk music, and the specifc dynamics
of Olympiad performance. There is a fundamental human need to perform
and be appreciated by others, and the Olympiads provided willing audiences.
Olympiads satisfed the needs for folk music performers who wished to
remain amateurs, as well as for those who wished to advance their social
and/or professional status. The fact that the Olympiads provided the
opportunity at large venues also encouraged folk music performers to take
part in them.
The provincial newspapers ignored several Olympiads in Ivanovo province at
the start of the 1930s, including Iaroslavl's musical Olympiad of summer
1930 and the Ivanovo Provincial Olympiad of 1932. There were probably at
least two reasons for this. First, the general difficulty of the times and the
pressure of the collectivisation campaign gave the peasants (or authorities)
little chance to think about entertainment. Moreover, the textile mills were
centres of strikes in the 1928–32 period, and a violent two-week strike took
place in the city of Vichuga in April 1932.5 A second reason for the low
profile of the events was the infuence of the Ivanovo branch of RAPM
(Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians). Local amateurs were
discouraged by articles exhorting the Ivanovo branch of RAPM to 'make
every orchestra, choral and stage collective a real weapon of the battle for the
industrial finance plan and self-fnancing', and for the Ivanovo writers'
organisation (IVAPP) to 'secure the latest ideologically consistent
dramatisations and songs' for the city's stage and choral groups.6
Unfortunately, the seven groups participating in the amateur review of 1931
disappointed the critics, who complained that the Collective Farm group
played a waltz, one group of Komsomol singers set their slogans to the
melody of a funeral march, and another group played a foxtrot.7 Moreover,
new, rural, and informal groups usually did not enter public competitions in
Ivanovo at the beginning of the 1930s. But the situation was slowly changing,
and Ivanovo's clubs registered 81 orchestras, 24 choirs, and 97 drama circles
in June 1933.8 Local newspaper coverage and an obvious widening of interest
and activity in these events also increased in late 1933, and a series of
children's Olympiads were added to the province's cultural calendar from
November 1933 to January 1934.9
Throughout 1934 and 1935, Olympiads and the coverage of them increased at
an astounding rate. After a provincial Olympiad was announced, a
preparatory period followed during which amateur groups were encouraged
to rehearse and present their proposed programme at local clubs. New groups
were also welcomed, and the Ivanovo provincial House of Folk Culture
proudly announced that '89 [new] dramatic, choral, and musical collectives'
had been organised during the preparation for district Olympiads in 1938.10
The initial announcement of an Olympiad also included a proposed schedule
for all local-level competitions preceding the provincial finals. For example,
the first announcements of the Ivanovo provincial workers' Olympiad (spring
1934) were in late January. They noted that:
The provincial trade soviet has decided to conduct the second provincial Olympiad of worker artistic
amateur activity in February and March. Not only theatrical shows and musical-choral groups should
be take part, but also literary and graphic-arts groups. Before the provincial Olympiad, district reviews
of workers' amateur creative work will be held.11
However, the date for completion of each level was very rarely adhered to.
The collective farms, factories, and districts sometimes either did not
schedule Olympiads at all, or they were so poorly organised and publicised
that the potential participants and audiences either did not appear or were left
to their own devices. A participant in the Olympiad held in Teikovo in 1934,
for instance, complained that because of the factory directors' inattention,
twelve performers had only heard of the Olympiad from a poster the day
before.12
Because each successive level of Olympiads was built on the advancement of
winners of earlier competitions, the delays became endemic. The
aforementioned Ivanovo Provincial Olympiad had a typical delay range. Its
fnals had originally been scheduled for April 1, but then delayed until April
16, 17, and 18.13 Articles in the newspaper Rabochii krai then described the
city-level Olympiad as 'less inspiring than could be expected, and less
organised than could be demanded'.14 This suggested that the provincial
competition was running well behind time, if not quite completely derailed.
In fact, the Second Provincial Olympiad of Amateur Art eventually occurred
on May 5 and 6, 1934, and the five-week delay resulted in the length of the
Olympiad being extended by over 50 per cent.
In addition to coverage of the Olympiads in Ivanovo themselves, the reports
also included previews of future events and began to interview winners of
local Olympiads who had been selected to continue to the next competitive
level. By personalising the performers who would soon be appearing at the
provincial fnals, the reports created publicity for the upcoming Olympiad,
and support for particular performers. Although not always specifed in local
press coverage, there was also another set of attractions consistently drawing
audiences to the Ivanovo provincial Olympiads of 1934 and 1935. Ivanovo
province had two major folk instrument orchestras and two large (and
popular) choirs who regularly competed against each other in Olympiads,
winning public and state support in the process.
Russian folk instrument ensembles were primarily made up of balalaikas and
domras (fretted instruments with three or four strings). These folk
instruments had become standardised before the October Revolution, and
factories or collective farms sponsored their own amateur folk orchestras
during the Soviet period. Nationally and locally, the profle and reputations of
the folk instrument orchestras preceded those of choirs. Some critics, for
example, considered that 'by 1927–28 the string orchestras of Moscow had
already achieved great successes', but that the development of amateur choirs
throughout rural Russia had been stunted until 1934.15 The orchestras of
Ivanovo province were also perceived as organisations comparable to the
capital's amateur groups, especially Evgenii Stompelev's orchestra in
Iaroslavl, and the Rybinsk Motor Factory orchestra led by Alexander
Dorozhkin. These local orchestras demonstrated an urban competition and a
generational divide in amateur musical activity. The ambitions and
opportunities for the province's orchestra directors and members also
appeared to exemplify the Soviet emphasis on education and the
advancement of the younger generation.
Evgenii Stompelev founded his folk instrument orchestra in Vologda in 1917.
It was touring in Iaroslavl by 1921, and a small group of musicians there
persuaded Stompelev to come and lead their orchestra in the autumn of 1923.
Within two years, the orchestra's repertoire had developed from 'two or three
simple waltzes of Andreev and a few folk songs' to a substantial collection of
classical pieces.16 Soon the orchestra managed to support itself by playing
concerts at the local theatre and delighted audiences by performing the
occasional surprise work, such as an arrangement of an Offenbach operetta.17
Stompelev's orchestra then performed in Iaroslavl's first all-city musical
Olympiad in 1930, and was sent on tour by Narkompros and the All-Union
Radio Committee in 1931.18 The height of the orchestra's national success
came the following year, after winning the first Ivanovo provincial amateur
Olympiad, when it was placed second in its category at the All-Union
Olympiad of Artistic Amateur Activity in 1932. Consequently, the orchestra
was awarded the Red Banner of Labour 'for its services on the cultural front
of labouring Iaroslavl'.19 The collective again won at the provincial Olympiad
in May 1934; Stompelev received the honour of being deemed a provincial
instructor.20 In October 1934, however, the orchestra lost their practice space
in the basement room of the Engineering and Technical Workers' Club (Plate
7.1), and Stompelev complained that 'praise does not get you much, there is
no help. They only remember the orchestra on celebration days and
holidays.'21
There was also a problem with Stompelev himself. He was 48 by 1935, and
had been active in musical circles for thirty-three years. As an older man with
a pre-Revolutionary education, his was not the image the local authorities
wished to promote, despite the fact that his orchestra was the best in the
Ivanovo province and at least second best in the country as a whole.
Alexander Vasilevich Dorozhkin, on the other hand, was born only in 1908,
and led a folk instrument orchestra organised in 1930 under the auspices of
the Rybinsk provincial (okruzhnyi) trade union soviet by his
early twenties.22 The orchestra made its first appearance on Moscow Radio in
the summer of 1932, and acquired accommodation and financial support from
the Rybinsk Pavlov Motor Factory Club. It had thirty-two members by 1933,
when it reportedly performed 'revolutionary songs, songs of the peoples of
the USSR, and works from the classical literature'.23 Its members reportedly
put enormous energy into their musical education, and learned to play
musical instruments and read musical notation.24
At an Olympiad where these two orchestras competed, the public would hear
repertoire, such as Beethoven's Overture to Egmont , music from Borodin's
Kniaz' Igor' [Prince Igor] and Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail [The
Abduction from the Harem], and symphonies by Schubert. The Stompelev
orchestra's performances of cello pieces by Gluck and Mendelssohn's Violin
Concerto also impressed local reviewers, and Pravda's editorial staff were
interested enough in the ensemble to send Georgii Polianovskii, an instructor
in the Moscow Conservatory, to investigate when 'the rumour reached
Moscow that the Rybinsk folk instrument orchestra was playing Beethoven's
Fifth Symphony'.25
To consolidate their success, however, the Rybinsk orchestra needed to win
the Ivanovo provincial Olympiad. The problem was, though, that they could
never defeat Stompelev's Iaroslavl orchestra in open competition, despite the
Rybinsk orchestra having all the advantages. By the orchestra's ffth
anniversary in spring 1935, it had secured a permanent home, while the
Iaroslavl orchestra received only sporadic and grudging support from city
authorities despite its fourteen years of hard work. The Rybinsk orchestra's
director was also youthful and local (he was born in Rybinsk), while
Stompelev was from St Petersburg. The contrast of directors represented a
classic struggle: Dorozhkin was the new Soviet man, while Stompelev was
the pre-Revolutionary intellectual. Consequently, the provincial trade union
soviet made the decision to advance the interests of the Rybinsk orchestra
over those of the Iaroslavl orchestra. Stompelev's orchestra won the Iaroslavl
Olympiad in 1935 easily, and Dorozhkin's orchestra won in Rybinsk.26
Normally, the winners would be sent on to the provincial Olympiad in
Ivanovo in October, but the Iaroslavl orchestra was disqualifed from entering
on the grounds that Stompelev's stipend from the provincial trade union
soviet had reclassifed the group as a professional orchestra. In its absence, the
Rybinsk orchestra fnally won the Ivanovo provincial Olympiad.27
Between the city and provincial Olympiads in 1935, Dorozhkin and his
Rybinsk orchestra caught the eye of offcials in Moscow, and performed there
at a concert in the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions (VTsSPS)
Theatre in October 1935.28 The Rybinsk orchestra's members were thus
primed for musical and personal success, despite the obvious rigging of the
group's Olympiad win. Consequently, the orchestra's young concertmaster,
Zhenia Volkova, was promoted to her factory's inspection section in a matter
of months, while milling machine operator and fellow concertmaster B.A.
Bolshakov was allowed to enrol in the province's aviation institute.29
While these orchestras were developing, choirs were also springing up in
textile factories during the 1920s. In 1922, for example, a young choral
director called Ivan Smyslov went to the city of Vichuga and was soon
leading a choir at the Nogin textile factory complex (Plate 7.2). To ensure the
support of the authorities and be allowed to practice in the Nogin factory's
club, Smyslov and the Vichuga choir were constantly required to perform at
meetings and conferences. The Vichuga choir added Soviet revolutionary
songs and classical pieces to its original folk song repertoire, and began to
organise regular music classes. Choirs such as the Nogin factory's group,
which performed modern Soviet songs, were encouraged during the period
when RAPM was at its most influential, but other local amateur singing
groups intentionally kept a low profle. Accusations made by the authorities in
Moscow that females were orientated towards a backwards (i.e. rural) way of
life was not applied to choirs with female members like the Vichuga
ensemble in an industrial area with a large female workforce such as Ivanovo.
It came as no surprise therefore that the Vichuga ensemble was declared
Ivanovo's top choir in 1931.30
Two choral collectives from the Krasnyi Perekop complex of factories also
united to form a folk choir after they were inspired by a visit of the Piatnitskii
Choir to Iaroslavl in spring 1934.31 One of the founding collectives had
already achieved success in the most recent Ivanovo provincial Olympiad.
According to V. Gotovkin:
Plate 7.2 Vichuga's Nogin factory choir. (Source: G. Polianovskii, 'Khor vichuzhskikh tkachei', in
Narodnoe tvorchestvo, 2, 1938, p. 35.)
The most remarkable and valuable triumph for amateur art was heard yesterday with the performance
by the peasant ethnographic choir of the workers of the Krasnyi Perekop – residents of the tenth
dormitory building. All of the singers are shock workers of Perekop. Amongst them 72-year-old
Nadezhda Svistunova … and 64-year-old Mariia Danilovna Kuzminina.
The choir sang the song Zhizn' – radost' moia [Life is my Joy ]. The soloist files high, and the choir
smoothly and powerfully sings of the joys of life. They know not only how to sing, they put a lot of
play and powerful, simple conviction into their words. Each thing sung by the Perekop workers evokes
a storm of raptures from the whole auditorium.32
Within a year, the Krasnyi Perekop's choir had grown from fifteen to sixty
members, and performed on radio as well as at Olympiads, in factory clubs,
and in more traditional concert venues.33 The choir mixed 'nineteen-year-old
Komsomol members and seventy-year-old women',34 and by autumn 1935
they were competing directly with the Nogin factory choir for the top
provincial honours.
Like Smyslov's Nogin factory choir in Vichuga, the Krasnyi Perekop choir
was based in an urban textile factory, and the majority of its members were a
mix of working women of various ages. Its repertoire was based primarily on
folk song, it gave 326 concerts in three years (!), and mastered a repertoire of
around 100 songs. One of its members, Elena Marasanova, was also chosen
as a soloist in the frst All-Union radio festival.35 In terms of the friendly
competition between the Krasnyi Perekop and Nogin factory choirs however,
the latter had the advantage. This was largely down to two sisters, Mariia and
Evdokiia Vinogradova, who had set Stakhanovite records in the supervision
of 100 automatic weaving machines in late 1935. Evdokiia Vinogradova was
also a member of the Supreme Soviet, and the sisters' advocacy was
instrumental in gaining the choir a national reputation.36
The head-to-head competitions of these large instrumental and vocal amateur
groups demonstrated a number of factors concerning the perceptions and
realities of the Olympiads during the 1930s. First, apart from their success at
Olympiads, these groups needed to maintain stable day-to-day relations with
the local authorities and cultivate connections with individuals who could
protect a group's access to facilities or funds. Second, their repertoire
illustrated that the audience in Ivanovo enjoyed a variety of music, ranging
from the Soviet and classical works performed by the Nogin factory's choir to
the traditional folk songs performed by the Krasnyi Perekop's choir. Finally,
success at Olympiads raised a group's profle and provided future
opportunities for the groups and their members.
The provincial Olympiads held in Ivanovo were usually multi-day events
often with very long concerts. The Olympiad fnals in spring 1934, for
example, took place in six different clubs with the second night's fnal concert,
which was held in the State Circus before an audience of 8,000, lasting six
hours.37 The most impressive displays of successful provincial organisation,
though, were the Olympiads organised in October 1935. In the space of four
days, two large but completely separate provincial Olympiads were held: the
Cotton Workers' Olympiad and the Trade Union (profsoiuz) Olympiad. The
former was held October 21–22, while the larger Trade Union Olympiad
began on October 22 and concluded on October 24. Both held their
concluding evenings in the Ivanovo State Circus only two days apart, and
many of the same performers appeared in the two Olympiads.38 However,
there were differences between the two events. The Cotton Workers'
Olympiad had 800 participants from 39 factories, but most of the entries were
vocal groups and individual singers. The performance of instrumental music
was confned to the button accordionist Klavdiia Nemtsova and her
interpretations of music by Beethoven and Schubert, and a so-called 'novelty'
orchestra performing its repertoire of twelve tunes.39 The Trade Union
Olympiad two days later, on the other hand, had 1,200 performers and a more
impressive programme.40 Stompelev, in the absence of his own orchestra,
conducted an amalgamation of other orchestras from the province in a
performance of Schubert's Unfinished Symphony, while the folk instrument
orchestra from Rybinsk played Grieg. Orchestras from Iaroslavl and
Kostroma also performed at the Trade Union provincial Olympiad, as did a
jazz band, a rozhok (wooden-horn) choir, an ensemble of Hawaiian guitarists,
and a balalaika duet.
Even in a large provincial centre like Ivanovo, Olympiads usually
overwhelmed the city's authorities. There were, for example, two days of
constant performances spread between six venues for the Olympiad in May
1934, while 2,000 performers participated in the Olympiads in October 1935.
There were problems in housing so many performers, setting aside the
performance venues, and simply organising the events (Plate 7.3). Not
surprisingly, after the experiences of 1934 and 1935, Ivanovo decided to hold
no more back-to-back provincial Olympiads for the rest of the decade. to
book the venues at which the Olympiads were held. Local government This
decision was taken by local government officials, whose job it was officials
also either judged or selected the judges of the competitions themselves,
allowed or disallowed the entry of participants, and arranged for the prizes to
be awarded. Newspapers naturally controlled the reporting of Olympiads, and
there were certainly attempts to make the events carefully regulated rituals
'choreographed in a way that is designed to prevent surprises'.41 Yet
invariably there were delays, absent or capricious judges, lack of housing for
the participants, and the repertoire was not thoroughly vetted as the
'choreography' collapsed from the top.
Plate 7.3 Contemporary caricature about the organisational difficulties in Olympiads (a Danilov district
kolkhoz orchestra is depicted without housing). (Source: Kolkhoznaia tribuna, 12 April 1935, p. 3.)
Plate 7.4 Choirs of senior citizens at Olympiads. (Source: S.D., 'Starye I molodye', in Narodnoe
tvorchestvo, 4, 1937, p. 56.)
The fact that choirs had expanded their participation in the Olympiads (and
were so popular) was interpreted by the local authorities as a widening of
opportunities, if not a full-scale rising of the cultural level of the masses. The
perception of a growth of any kind of musical activity, be it choral or
instrumental, was also an important part of the justifcation for each Olympiad
especially after the administrative reorganisation of Ivanovo province in
1936.48
Contemporary reviewers emphasised that each Olympiad performance should
be judged fairly. Dmitrii Mozzhukhin, for example, described the judging of
an Olympiad in Viazniki in 1935 as unacceptably bureaucratic and ignoring
the artistic merits of the performers. This was illustrated by two reading
circles being awarded prizes on the basis of their good preparation for the
spring planting rather than attaining a high level of literary knowledge. The
best dancer also did not win the prize, because her lesser competitor had
'worked longer in a collective farm', and a group from a soviet which never
appeared at the Olympiad (but was politically acceptable) was chosen to
represent the district at the provincial-level Olympiad.49 The judging was
therefore as varied in quality as the performances often were in local
Olympiads.
At the conclusion of an Olympiad, prizes were routinely awarded to
successful performers. Throughout the period 1934–39, the presentation of
Olympiad prizes evolved largely on the experience of past scandalous
administrative faux pas. Prizes were at frst simply announced at the
Olympiad and then in the press reports of that Olympiad. When the system
worked well, a prize was awarded, and the story of its recipient would be
featured in print. For example, Sima Danilychev, a six-year-old accordionist
and son of the Demian Bednyi collective farm's chairman, had already
received some press coverage for his self-taught accordion playing at the
Petrovskii district Olympiad. He was then pictured with his 250-rouble prize
at the Ivanovo province collective farm Olympiad in 1935 accompanied by
an announcement of his invitation to the local music school (muztekhnikum)
(Plate 7.5). The implication was of course that the education as well as the
finances of this talented young boy would be enhanced through him being
victorious at the Olympiad.50
However, many winners discovered that the announcement of prizes at an
Olympiad did not always correspond to the prize being awarded because of
budgetary constraints. Occasionally, a newspaper would then take up the case
of children, farmers, or workers attempting to extract their prizes from local
authorities, either intervening directly with higher authorities, or by simply
printing complaints such as:
In September [1935] in the central zone of the Varegovo Peat Enterprise (Bol' shoe Selo district), an
evening of amateur activity was organised. For my playing on the button accordion, I, a ten-year-old
Pioneer, was awarded a prize – [either] 300 rubles … or a [new] button accordion. I asked [them] to
buy an accordion for me. Three months have passed – and I've received neither the accordion nor the
money. Almost every day I go down to ask about it at the Peat Committee [Offce]. There they answer:
We'll give it out tomorrow. Will this 'tomorrow' ever come?51
When winners were not awarded their prizes, the press often chastised the
local authorities, and later articles made a particular point of noting when the
prizes were distributed immediately and winners were photographed holding
their prizes.52
Common reactions to a successful Olympiad experience included participants
inspired to master their newly acquired instruments, attempt more complex
repertoire, and increase their performance schedules. The problem with
inspiration and enthusiasm, though, was the official indifference with which
it was usually met. Once the Olympiad was finally concluded, the authorities
typically ignored the amateur groups until they were needed for the next
scheduled entertainment, usually during an election campaign or
Plate 7.5 Six-year-old Serafim 'Sima' Danilychev. (Source: Ivanovskii kolkhoznik, 26 September 1935,
p. 2.)
Plate 7.6 The Volga Song and Dance Ensemble (Source: I. Tiurin, 'Ansambl' volzhskoi pesni', in
Narodnoe tvorchestvo, 5, 1938, p. 47.)
Andy Nercessian
Hovannisian points to two major factors that played an important role in the
formation of nationalist attitudes among Armenians in the nineteenth century.
First, the general plight of Armenians who, at that time, were composed
largely of peasants living in the Ottoman Empire seemed subject to
increasing exacerbation on account of unsuccessful social and economic
reforms and their consequences. Second, the increasing contact between the
Armenian elite and Western Europe, from where a multitude of ideas
connected with romanticism and nationalism were being imported.4 Together,
these factors contributed to the ever-growing presence of national self-
awareness and nationalist attitudes amongst the Armenian population of the
Ottoman Empire. It was not long, however, before a third factor joined these
two: growing nationalism amongst Turks who wanted to establish pan-Turkic
rule.
The nationalism of this period had strong repercussions in the attitude
towards music in terms both of its study and of its composition. There was,
first, the rise of a distinctively Armenian school of composition whose
members consciously ensured the Armenianness of their style. In 1868,
Arshak II (by Tigran Chukhadzhian), supposedly the first Armenian opera,
appeared.5 This began a trend in the writing of opera that climaxed with
Armen Tigranian's Anush in 1908, which was based virtually in its entirety on
Armenian folk tunes.
Second, the intensive transcription of folk songs was begun in the 1880s by a
number of figures who went into little-developed villages which they
believed harboured the 'true' or 'ancient' traditions of the Armenian people.
The systematic nature of these collections seem only to have improved in the
last few years of the 1800s with the highly passionate work of Komitas, one
of the earliest figures in musicology who perhaps rightly deserves the title of
ethnomusicologist. However, the production of musical publications titled
with phrases such as 'the music of the province of …' gained ground before
Komitas. Many of these transcriptions were carried out by musicians who
received their training in Russia and whose musical backgrounds were
therefore clearly in the Western European art music tradition. Unsurprisingly,
virtually all publications based on transcriptions of folk tunes were in
Western notation. More often than not, they demonstrated the very European
techniques of harmonisation in which its authors were versed. These
transcriptions were unambiguously regarded as collections of folk music, and
not compositions, despite the degree of transformation necessary for the
purposes of harmonising Armenian folk music.6 The harmonisation of folk
collections was, and to many still is, quite necessary if the collection is to be
presentable and publishable. According to Tsitsilia Brutian, a former music
professor from Yerevan, it is 'similar to what a publisher has to do in order to
make a book of the writings of an author; similar, that is, to a cover design'.7
Third, music periodicals, such as the Haikakan Knar (The Armenian Lyre),
appeared and societies dedicated to the promotion of Armenian music were
established. Concerts were organised, ensembles performing Armenian
classical music established, and music schools opened. The central focal
point of such societies and writings was the promulgation of the idea of a
distinctively Armenian school of music. The world had to see that there was
such a thing as Armenian music, and that it was distinctive enough and
suffciently different from Turkish, Arabic, or Persian music to justify the
belief in its independence, originality, and ancientness. That these qualities
had to be secured is also related in part to the need to justify the legitimacy of
the Armenian nation through proofs of its uniqueness and ancientness.
Fourth, there appeared what we would now subsume under the phrase 'an
ethnomusicological school' concerned with all aspects of the preservation of
Armenian folk musical culture. This was essentially the doing of Komitas,
whose activities have been consecrated and studied in minute detail by
subsequent musicologists of all persuasions in Armenia. Komitas (1869–
1935) began collecting folk songs from the Ararat plain in Armenia in the
late 1880s before leaving for Berlin where he studied composition between
1896 and 1899. Upon his return, he set out on a number of expeditions in
which he collected a huge number of folk songs (estimates vary from 4,000
to 8,000) and subsequently published them. He also published a large number
of articles on Armenian music including a short response to the absence of an
entry on Armenian music in a French music encyclopaedia, entitled
'Armenians have their distinct music'.8 Komitas's importance to Armenian
musicology was also enhanced by the fact that his extensive collections were
left in a state of disarray and many of his writings lost when he was arrested
by the Turks and taken away with other Armenian intellectuals immediately
prior to the genocide of 1915, and that this loss of his life's work led to his
insanity.9 However, there can be no doubt that the sheer and unrivalled size
of his writings and collections played the crucial role in establishing him as
something like the founder of Armenian music and musicology.
Komitas's remarkable popularity among Armenian musicians and
musicologists from the days of his activities to the present is therefore
evidence of the inclination to assess and perceive musical activity within a
national framework. It important to emphasise that this inclination arose in
the second half of the nineteenth century, well before the onset of Soviet rule,
because it is only in this context that the actual effects of Soviet cultural
policy can be completely understood.
Soviet cultural policy
The phrase 'Soviet cultural policy' has been used in musicological or music
historical writings almost interchangeably with Soviet arts or music policy,
and refers to those aspects of the Soviet official attitude towards music (or the
arts in general) that are treated as having been roughly uniform both
temporally and geographically during Soviet rule.10 However, although the
existence of the phrase testifies to there being some uniformity in policies, we
should not be led to believe that everything subsumed under the phrase was
applied in the same way to different republics at different times. Indeed,
though the Soviet Union was a highly centralised state in which policies were
heavily dependent on the Kremlin, it was also a state that was devoted to
ideology only insofar as this ideological devotion did not interfere with its
more practical interests. Music policy towards the satellite nations was either
related to nationhood in some way or was not. Though this division may be
challenged, it is sufficiently serviceable for our present purposes to disregard
the arguments of its detractors. At any rate, it is not meant as an ontological
divide, but simply as a theoretical guide that can help conceptualise the
various sorts of ideological impositions that affected musical life in Armenia.
Nationalities policy occupies a curious position in the Soviet government.
This was mainly due to the incongruence between the image of dedication to
Marxism that the government wanted to uphold, and the necessity of taking
into consideration (and catering for) nationalism, national assertion and the
problems of nationhood which came with the establishment of the Soviet
Union. In Marx's writing, the major divisions of society are horizontal, not
vertical. They are class divisions, not national divisions. Marx considered
people from different nations to have more in common if they were of the
same class, than people of different classes, regardless of whether they were
from the same nation or not. He did not, therefore, think that nationhood and
national ideology were to be taken seriously, and thought that they would
eventually die away. Lenin, on the other hand, was born into a different
socio-political climate, and was well aware of the potency of nations. He
believed that Marx was basically right, but thought that some active measures
had to be taken until such time as national differences withered away. Lenin
was also aware of the impossibility of holding together such a vast variety of
cultures and peoples without making some concessions. One of these
concessions had to be the allowance of nations' right to secede, and to defend
and preserve their cultures and traditions as they saw fit.
This attitude was to change in the late 1930s under the leadership of Stalin,
but its consequences left a mark whose effacement we have yet to witness.
The basic institutions set up were not discarded. In the folk music world,
everything remained that had arisen as a result of Lenin's attitude. Most
importantly, the idea that each nation had its own music that would be
systematically collected, studied and used as a basis for composition, not only
found a secure dwelling place in the views of ideologues, but was developed
considerably throughout Soviet rule. Furthermore, the idea of sitional styles
and techniques, became the norm. All these 'nationals' were national music,
national ensembles, national schools, and national compoto one another
would eventually result in one single Soviet musical instiof course claimed to
be merely the framework for the advancement of socialist interests, and
sufficient exposure of the different national musics tution. It was believed
that music was more likely to help this come about than language, which was
more recalcitrant to the process of merging.
The central current within nationalities policy in terms of music was thus the
use of a national framework for all aspects of musical life. This framework
would allow both a harmless form of national assertion by supplying the
necessary concession that had to be made to nations, and the vehicle for the
implementation of a cultural policy not directly related to nationhood. The
most important idea in terms of the latter with regard to musical policy
towards satellite nations was the need for advancement. This ftted in well
with the socialist ideology of equality among nations, and the advancement
of the culture of the people so that they were as sophisticated as the
bourgeoisie. But it was probably as much part of the attempt to prove the
superiority of communism over capitalism to the outside world, and was thus
useful at all levels whatever the cost.
The 'backward' culture of the people (i.e. folk music) had therefore to be
advanced to such an extent that it would not be regarded as backward or
crude by the standards of bourgeois culture. The beauty in folk music had to
be brought out so that it could be perceived to be as wonderful and
sophisticated as classical music. In this way, class differences would be
bridged, and the music of the bourgeoisie would not be victorious. Some
argued that what the Soviets actually achieved was nothing other than the
classicisation, and thus the 'bourgeoisisation' of folk music, destroying its
essence and originality in the process. But for the most part, Soviet
musicologists believed that the advancement of folk music only employed
classical models in order to progress, and not in order to become classical
itself. If sometimes these models were in fact too closely copied, and if in
certain cases the music lost some of its originality and distinctness, this was
not a fault of the process of advancement, but of the particular ways in which
it was done. A bad case of advancement should not be allowed to give the
entire process of advancement a bad name. Even today, a decade after the
collapse of the Soviet Union, advancement in the musical context is
universally regarded in Armenia as a positive step, even if certain of its
implementers are criticised for their corrupting ways.
Therefore, the two major trends that dominated Soviet cultural policy were
the providing of national frameworks for music in the sense of 'nationalising'
music, and the 'advancing' of music, to which the national framework
contributed considerably. How then did these two trends change the face of
music before and after the onset of Soviet rule?
The institutionalisation of folk music
As noted, Soviet cultural policy had a greater effect on folk than classical or
any other genre of music. Although I have no intention of repudiating the oft-
stated fact that classical music institutions received greater encouragement
and funding than before the October Revolution, it should be clarifed that
they were not fundamentally altered. Rather, the level of education was
improved, orchestras were established and financially supported, and the
arrangement of concerts flourished. However, the effect of Soviet cultural
policy on folk music led to a dramatic transformation of not only the music,
but of virtually everything to do with this music, from the folk musician's
education and the transmission of songs to the context of performance and
the way folk musicians were regarded.
This is not the place to refer to every sphere of folk musical activity that
institutionalisation affected or transformed, so reference will be made only to
those areas which best illustrate the force of institutionalisation. It is no
accident that these areas are primarily concerned with the folk ensemble or
orchestra. The ensemble was not only regarded as the most obvious path to
professionalisation, it also offered a medium for modelling folk music on the
clearly more advanced exemplar of classical music. It is diffcult to say what
exact goals Soviet ideologues had in mind when setting up the folk ensemble,
but there is no uncertainty about its role in the provision of the kind of
advancement of the art of the people noted above. Furthermore, the adoption
of the aforementioned 'national frame-work' was probably down to the
expedience it provided for the attainment of such an end. This needs to be
kept in mind to enable a clearer understanding of the main points that will be
made below with regard to institutionalisation and standardisation.
The first folk orchestra was set up in Armenia in 1926 in Yerevan and called
the Aram Merangulian Ensemble. According to oral accounts, the creation of
the orchestra was no smooth process. It involved choosing the fnest players
of the most well-known folk instruments, and bringing them together under
one roof. Quite apart from the difficulties of choosing the fnest players and
the most well-known Armenian folk instruments, there was also the curious
question of knowing what the players ought to do once they were placed in
an ensemble. The players themselves did not know how to go about playing
in such orchestras since none of the players had ever before played with such
a combination of other folk instruments, and the experiences Armenian folk
musicians had of ensembles had been on a far smaller scale. The largest
ensembles known in folk music before the 1920s were three, four, or at most,
fve instruments playing together. Now, suddenly, there was a rather
conspicuous problem of co-ordination. The solution was not difficult to fnd,
given that the implementers of such policies were not from a folk music
background, but the products of classical music education. For them, the
model was obviously to be sought in classical music, and not in folk music.
As in every classical orchestra, there was the need for a conductor without
whom the orchestra could not function.
A conductor was therefore placed at the head of folk instrument orchestras,
but this conductor had considerably more to think about than his classical
music counterpart. First, he had to compensate for the inadequacy of the folk
musicians (compared to classical musicians) that made up the orchestra.
Furthermore, he was expected to arrange the music in such a way that would
allow the instruments to play together in a coherent manner and produce
something which could be compared to the 'folk music of Armenia' (however
that was defned under such circumstances). As if all this was not enough, the
conductor was then faced with the rather weighty obstacle of the players not
being able to read any sort of notation.
Although writing for a folk ensemble was not the most challenging task with
which a conductor was faced, his greatest difficulty would have been one of
novelty. Folk music orchestras had existed in Russia since the 1880s, but in
Armenia they had not. This meant that conductors had no clear idea of the
sounds made by certain combinations of folk instruments. A classical
composer would know when a certain combination was appropriate and when
it was not through hearing experiments made by his predecessors. Conductors
of folk music ensembles, however, did not have this luxury, but certain folk
instruments bore certain similarities to their classical counterparts in way of
compensation. The shvi was a kind of fute, and employed a similar register to
the classical fute, the duduk was a kind of oboe, the kemantcha was similar to
a cello, and the daf was similar to the timpani. Moreover, folk music
conductors were hardly expected to produce great masterpieces comparable
to classical composers. Although this was the declared fnal aim, it was hardly
a realistic expectation. The conductor's main task was to bring about the
improvement and 'professionalisation' of folk music.
If players could therefore be taught notation, and sooner or later they would
have to if this whole endeavour was to succeed, the conductor would
eventually learn what worked and what did not and compose the right sort of
music in the right sort of way. However, there was yet another obstacle to be
faced. The classical orchestra had evolved over a long enough period for
instruments to learn to work together in an established way. Moreover, the
large-scale manufacture of all classical-orchestra instruments had meant the
standardisation of those instruments in terms of size, register, and technique.
Similar claims could hardly be made about folk musical instruments. A
conductor would have trouble trying to get two duduks to play in unison, so
different were the instruments that each individual player held, let alone
trying to match different instruments that had never played together nor were
constructed with the intention of performance together.
As a result, instruments had to be reconstructed using Western models of
instrument construction. This ensured that they would be compatible with one
another, more sophisticated, and enable conductors to write for them easily
and effectively. If sufficient work was done on these instruments, conductors
could perhaps even encourage players to play in the spirit of an orchestra, and
ensembles in the course of time compete with their classical counterparts and
the gap between the bourgeoisie and the folk would be bridged to a certain
degree.
For the concept of the folk orchestra to succeed, players would thus have to
learn notation, instruments would have to be reconstructed following Western
construction models, and a conductor would have to learn how to select and
arrange suitable pieces. However, the frst generation of orchestral players
were not, on the whole, successfully trained to read notation. This was
unsurprising, given that these players were considered among the best on
their respective instruments, and were therefore well-established and usually
mature musicians. But by the time these players were replaced by the
generation that followed, the foundations of the educational system that
incorporated the teaching of notation to musicians of all aspirations had been
firmly in place. By the 1950s, all folk orchestra players could read notation
competently enough to satisfy the needs of ensemble playing, although they
could not and still cannot match their classical music counterparts.
The reconstruction of instruments was completed by the 1930s. Innovations
were focused on the goal of making the instruments as playable as possible,
although issues such as the quality of sound were not omitted. Many
instruments were produced in a number of variants, capable of covering all
the needs of conductors. For instance, there were three types of duduks, each
with a different register, which allowed conductors to write for the instrument
without feeling the restrictions of registral scope. The deepest sound was
created by the Bunifon duduk, which gave the duduk the vibrancy and
sophistication that it supposedly had previously lacked. Furthermore,
instrument pitches were fxed to conform to Western pitches. Although there
was often much space left to adjust pitches to make the performance of pieces
that did not employ the Western scale possible, instruments were now
designed in such a way as to encourage the use of Western scales and
discourage in certain cases the use of non-Western tones.
With regard to the conductors themselves, most are wholly classically trained
even today. Consequently, they tend to employ classical composing
techniques in writing for the orchestra, rather than techniques which one
would expect to have developed especially for the folk-instrument ensemble
over the seven and a half decades since the first ensemble was established.
However, a technique of folk orchestra music composition has developed, but
there is still a strong inclination to look to Western classical orchestral
models for compositions (or more correctly, arrangements). The genres of
music for folk orchestra also seem to follow Western standards: for instance,
three-movement concerti for most instruments and the remainder of the
orchestra, and songs written in the form of 'theme and variations'. On the
other hand, one sometimes sees features quite alien to classical music, such
as singers using a microphone when performing with the orchestra.
Standardisation
Demographic changes
These changes left little doubt that the folk ensemble was the most
appropriate institution to cater for the needs arising from social change in the
sphere of folk music. Consequently, ensembles flourished in urban areas, as it
was not possible to organise folk ensembles within the framework of a rural
lifestyle. The changes also resulted in a change in the performance contexts
of folk music from weddings, funerals, and feasts, to the recording studio and
concert halls. Moreover, the conditions of folk music production had to
conform to the conditions of life in the city. Folk musicians were now caught
up in a world familiar to the Western orchestral player with a stressful and
hectic schedule of concert tours, recording sessions, and rehearsals. This was
not easy to deal with, and required an entirely new approach to learning
music. Arrangers come into rehearsal rooms with photocopies of the often
hastily written new arrangements of a folk song, or in certain cases, a newly
written 'folk' song. Players are then taken through the piece, and have two or
three rehearsals to come to terms with it. Perhaps the greatest surprise is that
despite such demands, players are even today not always fully profcient in
reading music. This impels the employment of acoustic techniques, such as
playing pieces numerous times on a modern Western piano, or singing them
until the music settles in the minds of musicians.
Contemporary attitudes towards this hectic schedule vary. One player
claimed that:
Sometimes it gets very tiresome, all this rehearsing and playing, but then I think that whatever job you
are in these days, you have to run around. Not a single one of my friends has a peaceful job, and if you
want to be good at what you are doing, you have to do these things and not complain. Besides it has
always been like this. At least in Soviet times, we didn't have to worry about money. Everything was
taken care of. Today we are not even sure whether we will have enough to live through the month.11
While another player stressed the importance of a hectic schedule:
This is what music is all about. If you don't learn and play new pieces and songs every day, then you
cannot grow as a musician. You will end up doing the same thing over and over again and you will no
longer be an artist. So, I'm glad my folk ensemble is so active.12
Few players deny, however, that the folk ensemble approach to music has
deprived some of the most seminal elements in folk music performance of
their vitality, especially improvisation. When one player is given the
opportunity to demonstrate his technique at certain points in the piece,
improvisation is still occasionally allowed in folk ensemble performances. It
can be compared to a cadenza in a Western concerto in the days when it was
a show of bravura, and the written note was not taken quite as seriously as it
is today. But this is relatively rare, and improvisation is virtually unheard of
in the recording studio, since it is somewhat risky, and there is not enough
time or resources to allow players to take chances.
The freedom to improvise, as well as the freedom to relax the quality and
perfection demanded of players in certain contexts, of course varies with the
type of recording or concert in question. The Aram Merangulian Ensemble
was engaged in a variety of recording genres, whether in the studio for the
record, radio, and television markets respectively, or in live performances for
the same media. Needless to say, television was the most demanding of these,
but as one of its conductors claimed:
television is the most important medium for us, because when people see you it means so much more
than when they just hear you. And more people can see you on television than anywhere else. It is our
way of keeping the Armenian tradition alive. If it were not for our affliation with the television channel,
we could not keep our national music being heard throughout Armenia, not to mention abroad.13
A conductors'/arrangers' culture
The reader will not fail to observe the emphasis placed on the importance of
institutionalisation and standardisation for the life of folk musicians and the
shape of folk music. Institutionalisation and standardisation are also two of
the factors most emphasised by theorists of nationalism in their attempts to
explain the rise of nations and national attitudes. This would seem to suggest
that the role of Soviet cultural policy, despite its ideological disavowal of
nationalism and national attitudes, was crucial to the rise of national attitudes
in terms of the sphere of music discussed so far. To anyone remotely familiar
with the principal tenets of communism, this will, to say the least, seem
strange.
Armenian national identity is today a vital force in every sphere of music,
from its composition to the choice of pieces performed, to the importance of
folk music in the musical life of musicians working in all genres. National
attitudes are clearly visible, and there can be no uncertainty concerning the
matter of Soviet opposition to national attitudes. The key questions are
therefore: Was it really Soviet cultural policy that brought about this state of
affairs, and if so, was it the intention of the Soviet authorities to do so?
Unfortunately, there is no clear-cut answer to either of these questions.
Moreover, the second question is complicated by the fact that practicalities
were always at least as important as ideology in Soviet policies. It is also
difficult to speak of the Soviet authorities having a single goal, given the
multiplicity of interests, geographical differences, and temporal contexts. The
first question, on the other hand, can be answered by reference to nationalist
attitudes before the onset of Soviet cultural policy. It is also difficult to deny
the fact that nationalism lies outside the consequences of Soviet cultural
policy, although the former was strengthened and reinforced by the latter.
Perhaps in a few decades, we will have the luxury of distance from not only
Soviet policies, but also nationalist sentiment, a distance which might allow a
more objective and effective examination of Soviet cultural policy on
national attitudes; a distance which might well abrade the present framework.
Until then, however, the limitations of the theory sketched here must remain.
Notes
1 For counterarguments to this popular thesis, it is worth exploring the work of Richard Pipes. See, for
example, R. Pipes, 'Nationalities', in M. Florinskii (ed.), McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Russia and the
Soviet Union (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1961), pp. 378–83.
2 Such statements may sound strange to the scholar of Soviet classical music. Indeed the degree of
censorship and government involvement in the life of musicians is more than enough to question the
view that the Soviet state regarded music as 'harmless'. Nevertheless, the view of musicologists
concerned with Soviet classical music differs in some critical ways from the perspective employed
here. First, it does not place music alongside other catalysts for provoking nationalist uprisings, because
the relative lack of interest in folk music does not allow it to place the powerful relationship between
folk music and nation in relief. Second, it does not compare music with art forms such as literature, in
which messages that impede state intentions can very obviously be displayed.
3 See A. Nercessian, Duduk and National Identity in Armenia (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2001),
p. 72, for an example of the context of interaction between folk music and twelve-tone compositional
technique.
4 R. Hovannisian, Armenian People from Ancient to Modern Times (New York: St. Martin's Press,
1997), pp. 203–4.
5 Or at least Arshak II is probably the subject matter of the first opera composed by an Armenian
composer and dedicated to a great Armenian figure.
6 One should note in this connection that contrary to the folk music of neighbouring Georgia, which is
highly polyphonic, Armenian music is traditionally monodic.
7 In conversation with the author in May 2000.
8 V. Nersessian, 'Armenian Sacred and Folk Music: An Introduction', in Komitas, Armenian Sacred
and Folk Music (Richmond: Curzon Press, 1998), p. 20.
9 He consequently spent the remainder of his life in an asylum in Paris.
10 For an idea of the usage of these phrases see C. Brooke, 'The Development of Soviet Music Policy,
1932–1941', Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge, 1998; A. Djumaev, 'Power Structures, Culture
Policy and Traditional Music in Soviet Asia', in Yearbook for Traditional Music, 25, 1993, pp. 43–50;
and T. Levin, 'Music in Modern Uzbekistan: The Convergence of Marxist Aesthetics and Central Asian
Tradition', in Asian Music, 12, 1, 1980, 1, pp. 49–58; and T. Levin, 'The Reterritorialisation of Culture
in the New Central Asian States: A Report from Uzbekistan', in Yearbook for Traditional Music, 25,
1993, pp. 51–59.
11 Arsen Grigorian in conversation with the author April 28, 2000 in Yerevan.
12 Pavlich in conversation with the author April 20, 2000 in Yerevan.
13 Rupen Sarkissian in conversation with the author April 28, 2000 in Yerevan.
14 See Komitas, Armenian Sacred and Folk Music, trans. E. Gulbenkian (Richmond: Curzon Press,
1998) for an idea of the nature of this literature.
15 Garen Avedissian in conversation with the author May 5, 2000, in Yerevan.
16 See, for example, A. Nercessian, 'A Look at the Emergence of the Concept of National Culture in
Armenia: The Former-Soviet Folk Ensemble', in International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology
of Music, 31.1, 2000, pp. 79–94; The Duduk and National Identity in Armenia; and 'National Identity,
Marxism-Leninism, and the Perception of Armenian Music', Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge,
2001. See also Pekka Suutari's essay in this volume (editor's note).
9
Going beyond the border
institutions and composers,2 although there are several anthologies that have
provided articles on specifc genres, such as symphonic music, choral music,
piano music, and folk music.3 The existing picture of musical life in Karelia
has therefore been rather narrow, and it is hoped that this essay will open new
avenues in the study of the subject. Due to the lack of literature, much of the
essay will be based on material acquired from interviews made in
Petrozavodsk with Finns and Karelians who participated in Karelian musical
life during the 1920s and 1930s.4
The historical context
The Karelian Workers' Commune was formed in June 1920, one week before
the peace negotiations between Finland and Russia were set in motion. The
peace treaty and 'Karelianism' were important reasons for the establishment
of the autonomous national republic, since Finland demanded civil rights for
the Karelian people whose uprisings it had supported.5 The suggestion that
the Karelian Workers' Commune should be established came from Edward
Gylling – a Finnish economist and refugee in Stockholm since the failure of
the Communist rebellion in Finland in 1918 – and it suited Lenin's idea of the
relative autonomy for minority nationalities.6 Finnish communists were sent
to Karelia to take up leading positions, partly because the Russian
intellectuals would not commit themselves to Soviet rule and the
development of the Karelian people.7 On the other hand, very few Karelians
had sufficient education to be able to lead an autonomous Karelia.8 It was
therefore the task of the Red Finns to build up the Republic on a 'national'
basis, and to draw people of Finno-Ugrian stock (Finns, Karelians and
Vepsians) into the revolutionary work. The international Communist
movement (Komintern) also planned to spread the revolution from the area
into the rest of Scandinavia, and Gylling and Lenin thought Karelia would
serve as a model for the Finnish workers and peasants.9 Moreover, Karelia
enjoyed considerable economic autonomy during the years of the NEP so that
it could develop its forestry industry. Consequently, Karelia underwent an
extraordinary development of its cultural and economic life in the 1920s,
hindered only by a shortage of workers. After the loss of economic autonomy
during the early 1930s, however, there was famine and a shortage of
materials, because the production of food decreased at a time when the
population was growing.10
The Karelian Workers' Commune was renamed the Karelian Autonomous
Soviet Socialist Republic (KASSR) in 1923. At the same time, large Russian-
speaking areas around Lake Onega were incorporated into Karelia, and its
population grew from 143,000 to 233,000. The Russians now became the
majority, while the proportion of the indigenous population decreased. This
was despite plans to promote the immigration to Karelia of Finnish and
Karelian forestry workers from Ingria, the Tver region of Russia, and
America. By the end of the 1930s, the population of the KASSR numbered
some 468,900 inhabitants, more than half of whom were immigrants from
other parts of the Soviet Union, while the proportion represented by the
Karelians, Finns and Vepsians had declined to only 27 per cent.11 More than
6,000 Finns who left the United States and Canada believing that they would
have a bright future in the Soviet Union. This proved to be untrue, but the
role played by the Finnish-Americans in the modernisation of the musical life
of the republic was particularly important (see below).
The national politics of Soviet Karelia, however, offered no solution to the
problematic relations that existed between Finland and the Soviet Union.
Nationalism was gaining strength in Finland, and distrust grew on both sides.
The Finns in Karelia were a small minority within the 'national' minority, and
their ability to represent the Karelians was limited, in spite of their strong
efforts to construct a Finno-Karelian identity for the republic through the
policy of korenizatsiia. Finnish became another official language that was
used in schools, in the administration, and in the newspapers and other media,
such as the national radio company, which was established in 1926.12
However, the Finnish language encountered strong opposition in southern
Karelia, because the southern variants of Karelian were more distant from
standard Finnish than the northern Karelian dialect. Consequently, the
political agitation and educational work conducted in Finnish was more
successful in the northern part of Karelia, especially in the district of Uhtua
called Viena. But the rest of the Karelians declared on a number of occasions
that they would rather use Russian than Finnish, which they could neither
read nor understand. The Finnish leaders had to explain this away by
claiming that the area had been so much assimilated during the tsarist era that
the population had come to feel ashamed of their language and nationality.
Demands for the creation of a literary language for Karelia were also rejected
outright, since Finnish had been claimed to represent education and workers'
culture at a higher level.13
The 'Red Finns', as the Karelian leadership was colloquially called, were
therefore in a precarious position, but they represented the core of the Soviet
Karelian elite in the 1920s and survived the widespread party purges of the
early 1930s.14 Finno-Karelians even gained an absolute majority in the
Council of People's Commissars and in the Executive Committee of Karelia,
beating off the Russian and South Karelian opposition in 1930.15 The worst
conflict was nevertheless to arise from the fact that the politics of
korenizatsiia were based on the Finnish culture and language. This was in
sharp conflict with the supranational Soviet notion of state-building, which
decreed that the development of the working class would lead to a fusion of
the different nations and not a continuation of the process of separation. The
starting-point for that process was going to be Russian culture.16
A fateful turn in events came in 1934, however, when the Finnish leaders of
Karelia, Kustaa Rovio and Gylling, were obliged to respond to accusations of
indulging in 'exaggerations of the national politics' – i.e. being anti-Soviet
(Russian) nationalists. As a result, many of the leaders of the Karelian ASSR
were executed, and thousands of Finnish workers and offcers were arrested as
the Stalinist terror progressed. The Finnish language was also banned, and
Karelian became the second official language of the Republic at the
beginning of 1938. This banning of Finnish was accompanied by a poorly
prepared proposal to create and use written Karelian. However, it was such a
compromise – a combination of three distinct Karelian dialects – that few
could understand.17 The newspapers, journals, theatre and radio used this
'Soviet Karelian' with its Cyrillic alphabet for two years, but it was quietly
buried in April 1940 when Finnish once again became the second official
language of the new Soviet Republic.
In November 1939, the so-called 'Winter War' broke out between Finland and
the Soviet Union and lasted until March 1940 when the Karelian-Finnish
Soviet Republic was formed. This Republic was set up in order to facilitate
the incorporation of Finland into the Soviet Union, but its leaders (led by
Otto Wille Kuusinen) were no longer the same Finnish refugees as in 1920–
35.18 Throughout the 1930s, a combination of international political pressures
and centralised power of Moscow had subjugated local nationalism and the
Finno-Karelian spirit of kinship. Between the world wars, the Karelians were
mere bystanders in the political manoeuvring in the triangular drama between
Finland, the Red Finns (see above), and the Moscow patriots.19
Musical life in Petrozavodsk
The capital of Soviet Karelia, Petrozavodsk, was founded in 1703, the same
year as St Petersburg. Before the October Revolution, it was the provincial
capital of the Olonets region, and had a population of approximately 17,000
people. Its public musical life was in the hands of a local choir and pianists
who gave concerts, though it was supplemented by visiting musicians from
the not too distant St Petersburg.20 However, noticeable changes occurred
soon after the Revolution, when everything seemed to be possible, and high
art was believed to be accessible to all. Consequently, a small but active
symphonic orchestra of some twenty players, an orchestra of Russian folk
instruments, a choir, a brass band and an amateur theatre group had been
established by 1918.21 During the frst concert season forty orchestral concerts
and twenty-nine musical-vocal evenings were arranged, usually the cinema
Triumf. The programmes consisted of Russian and Western classical music,
as well as revolutionary songs such as The Internationale.22 The Olonets
branch of Proletkult also started up an aggressive but short-lived campaign
against the classical (i.e. bourgeois) repertoire, which reportedly had 'no
constructive impact'.23 A musical school opened in December 1918 with an
ambitious curriculum, and a conservatory was planned. Its principal was
Nestor Zagornyi, who had studied in St Petersburg, but the other teachers
(like the players in the orchestra) were mainly local self-taught musicians.24
Most of the earliest post-Revolutionary musical activities, however,
disappeared during the years 1920–22. The orchestra, which had originally
consisted of a combination of a local string orchestra and the military band of
the Lake Onega navy, disbanded as a result of fnancial problems, while the
music school was also closed down.25 The orchestra of Russian folk
instruments, on the other hand, existed for only three months, but was re-
formed in 1931.26
During the early post-Revolutionary period, music in Petrozavodsk was
primarily used for educational and propaganda purposes, and musical life was
supported by members of the local Russian and Jewish intelligentsia, as well
as by military musicians. Musicians were asked to tour the villages and take
on the role of political agitators. After the establishment of the Karelian
Workers' Commune (and later KASSR), cultural policy was orientated
towards developing so-called 'national circles'27 and improving the level of
literacy amongst the Karelian peasantry. The Commune was primarily
established to unite the Karelians and encourage their support for the new
regime. Consequently, its minimal resources were directed towards the
creation of new schools and 'red corners' in order to educate the masses,
rather than to foster the development of professional, classical music-making.
Most of the music-making in Karelia during the 1920s was therefore carried
out on an amateur basis, and there was a rapid turnover of concert troupes.
Guest performers, including complete opera companies, visited
Petrozavodsk, usually from Leningrad, and performances of operettas and
other light entertainments took place despite condemnation from members of
the Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians (RAPM).28 A more
permanent centre of musical life in Petrozavodsk, however, developed around
the Finnish Pedagogical College (Pedteknikum), which had been founded in
November 1920 to speed up the training of Finnish-speaking A more
permanent centre of musical life in Petrozavodsk, however, developed around
the Finnish Pedagogical College (Pedteknikum) that had been founded in
November 1920 to speed up the training of Finnish-speaking teachers to work
in Karelian schools.29 All of the teachers were Finns from either Finland
itself, Ingria, or America, and its chief music instructor was Kalle Rautio
(1889–1963). Rautio had come from California to Kantalahti in 1922, but
soon moved to Petrozavodsk.30 He had been born in Finland, but had lived in
the United States since 1903, where he studied composition privately and
directed choirs in the American-Finnish Workers' Halls. At the Pedteknikum
he conducted a choir and a small orchestra of up to twelve players, which
performed regularly both in and outside the college.31 A type of concert that
proved particularly successful were the so-called 'lecture-concerts', which
started in 1923. They were usually performed by Rautio's ensemble, while the
lecturer was Santeri Nuorteva, the leader of the Karelian Central Executive
Committee and a Communist refugee from Finland. Nuorteva's lectures
invariably dealt with the musical cultures of different nations, and how
classical music could be interpreted in terms of Communist principles.32
In the 1920s and early 1930s most of the new music written in Karelia
consisted of songs. The texts were usually written by local poets, such as
Jalmari Virtanen, Lea Helo, Lauri Letonmäki and Ragnar Rusko, and refected
the politics of the period with their heroic shock workers and collective-farm
workers, lumberjacks and milkmaids. The songs of the 1920s also dealt with
the revolution and the 'red' fghters, and the defeat of the revolution in
Finland.33 The music was usually tonal and constructed from simple melodic
sequences and rhythmic techniques. However, in the songs written by
Karelian composers, the use of the minor key was as common as the major,
and folk songs had become an essential part of national music policy in the
early 1930s. The aforementioned Kalle Rautio was also a particularly prolifc
composer of both vocal and instrumental music. His best-known orchestral
work, Karel'skaia svad'ba [The Karelian Wedding] (1926, revised 1938),
provided a model for numerous symphonic works by Karelian composers.34
It is a simple but charming piece composed in a romantic, tonal idiom, and
the first orchestral composition by a Karelian composer to use indigenous
folk themes.35
Rautio's work as a composer, however, has been overshadowed by his
activities as a teacher and organiser of choirs and orchestras, and it has been
claimed that amateur choirs and music groups were established everywhere
he went.36 As noted, he was the founder of orchestras for the Pedteknikum
and the Radio Committee, established music groups and a choir in Uhtua and
Olonets, and was for a while music director at the Finnish Theatre in
Petrozavodsk. Of the groups that Rautio founded, the Symphony Orchestra of
Karelian Radio was of particular importance. It was formed from members of
the Pedteknikum orchestra in July 1932 (although its personnel changed when
it began play professionally and on a full-time basis) and grew to a full-size
orchestra by the end of the following year. Initially, at least twenty-one
members of the orchestra were Finns who had come to Karelia from the
United States or Canada, where they had studied and purchased their musical
instruments.37 None were originally professional musicians, but after their
arrival in Karelia, they were able to fnd work at the numerous institutions
founded during the early 1930s.38 They were also part of the Finnish
intelligentsia in Petrozavodsk that included the Karelian political elite from
1920 to 1935, and which contributed to the construction of a Finnish-
Karelian identity.
Thanks partly to the establishment of new orchestras and music groups,
Karelian composers were encouraged to increase their output of orchestral
and instrumental music during the 1930s. A resolution of the Eleventh
Karelian Party Conference, which was held in Petrozavodsk in January 1932,
reiterated the official line that 'contents are the key to the problem of art', and
Karelian music had to be national in form and socialist in its content.39
Consequently, numerous suites and orchestral arrangements based on
Karelian (i.e. Finnish and Vepsian) and Pomorrian (the Russian-speaking
region on the coast of the White Sea in the north of Karelia) folk songs and
themes were composed. They included Lauri Jousinen's Severnoe siianie
[Northern Lustre] (1936), Leopold Teplitskii's Siuita na karelskie temy [Suite
on Karelian Themes] (1939), Ruvim Pergament's Karelskaia siiuta [Karelian
Suite] (1938), and Helmer Sinisalo's Flute Concerto (1940). The tendency
towards writing music and orchestral arrangements on 'national' themes was
continued after the Second World War by Karelian composers and those
working in Karelia, such as Leopold Teplitskii, Ruvim Pergament, and
Helmer Sinisalo.40
In addition to suites, rhapsodies, scherzos, and miniatures based on
indigenous folk motifs, Karelian composers also wrote a number of large-
scale, orchestral works inspired by The Kalevala, the Finnish national epic.
The earliest example of such a work was Ruvim Pergament's symphonic
poem Aino (1936). Commissioned for the centennial celebrations of The
Kalevala that were held in Petrozavodsk in 1935,41 Aino told the story of a
girl (Aino) who would rather drown herself than marry the elderly hero and
healer Väinämöinen. Its music was based on a number of folk melodies, with
the Kalevalaic Eagle Song particularly prominent, and slow sections were
interspersed with dance-like quicker moments. In common with the other
orchestral compositions referred to above, Aino could be described as
'socialist realist'. Its folk-inspired, tonal music was joyous and accessible to
audiences, and its explicit aim was to create a feeling of brotherhood amongst
the peoples of Karelia.42
Towards the end of the 1930s, the Radio Committee's orchestra played a
large number of works by the Karelian composers in addition to works by
established composers, such as Beethoven and Sibelius. It performed in
traditional venues, and like other orchestras in the Soviet Union at the time,
in parks during the summer, and factories and workers' clubs during the
winter. The orchestra also extensively toured the villages of Karelia, usually
travelling on the back of a lorry.43 Nevertheless, the orchestra's main task was
to perform in radio concerts, and it had to meet every night in the studio to
play The Internationale in order to mark the end of the day's broadcasting.
But the highlight of its activities was to perform to rave reviews during the
ten-day festival (dekada) of Karelian arts in Leningrad in March 1937.44
However, the following year, the Communist Party of Karelia decided to
invite several so-called 'qualifed' musicians from Leningrad to Petrozavodsk
to help the orchestra develop 'more quickly',45 since it was in a state of crisis
as a result of Stalin's terror. In the space of two years (1937 and 1938),
fourteen of the orchestra's Finnish-American players were executed, while
three others were sent to prison camps as part of the campaign to liquidate
Finnish nationalism in Karelia.46 However, there were some lucky escapes.
Väinö Rintala, for example, perhaps the orchestra's most celebrated player,
only survived because he escaped to the Ukraine and became a jazz musician
just before the severest period of persecution broke out.
The role played by Finnish immigrants, whether they were Ingrians, 'red'
refugees, or Finnish-Americans, was therefore central to the development of
music and musical life in Petrozavodsk. This was because of their existing
high level of music education, and their ability to fulfil the authorities' need
to compose so-called 'national' music – of various genres and in a romantic,
tonal and folkloric idiom – that in turn would help create a new Finnish-
Karelian identity. The same immigrants also organised institutions such as
choirs, orchestras and music schools, and took advantage of the opportunities
provided by the authorities at the start of the 1930s to work as professionals,
rather than mere amateurs. The conditions under which these often very
hungry musicians worked were often appalling, but they left a rich legacy in
terms of the creation of musical practices and of music itself.
Amateur musical activities and folk culture
The most important musical institution in Soviet Karelia was the State
Ensemble of Singing and Dancing Kantele founded by Viktor Gudkov (Plate
9.1). The kantele was a particularly potent symbol of cultural identity and
consequently the possibility of it becoming a mass-produced, proletarian
instrument had been a source of debate and discussion in the journal of the
Petrozavodsk writers' association, Puna-Kantele [Red Kantele], since the
1920s.56 As for the Kantele Ensemble itself, it started as a youth ensemble
founded in Petrozavodsk in the autumn of 1933 that was made up of pupils
from the Finnish Pedagogical Institute, the majority of whom were children
of Finnish immigrants from America. It performed at the local Communist
Party's House of Enlightenment and worker's clubs, and for Red Army units
and on the radio, but achieved particular popularity after appearing in
concerts at the House of National Culture in Petrozavodsk on 28 February
and 1 March 1935 that were part of the celebrations to mark the centenary of
The Kalevala.57 At the end of the year, the students at the Pedagogical
Institute graduated, and the ensemble broke up. It soon reformed, however,
under the auspices of the Red Army, and a sextet from the ensemble took part
to great acclaim in the All-Soviet Radio Festival in Moscow (23 March–6
April 1936).58 Two months later the Kantele Ensemble became a professional
organisation and received the honour of performing for Stalin at the end of
1936.
The founder and director of the Kantele Ensemble, Viktor Gudkov (1899–
1942), was born in the southern Russian town of Voronezh. He had moved
with his family to Murmansk in 1917, and became the Party's supervisor for
so-called 'collective cultural work' in the Karelian town of Kantalahti in 1928.
Although enthusiastic about The Kalevala and Finnish folk music, Gudkov
had never set eyes on a kantele before 1931, when he was introduced to the
instrument by the labourer and performer Andrei
Plate 9.1 The Kantele Sextet with Viktor Gudhov (far right).
1 I. Takala, 'Kansallisuuskysymys tilaston valossa', in Punalippu, 11, 1989, p. 132. At the same time,
more than 400,000 people lived in Finnish Karelia, of whom almost 50,000 spoke Karelian as their
mother tongue, while most of the others spoke Finnish with a Karelian accent. T. Hämynen, 'Mikä
Karjala?', in T. Hämynen (ed.), Kahden Karjalan välillä, kahden riikin riitamaalla (Studia Carelica
Humanistica 5, University of Joensuu, 1994), p. 26.
2 G.I. Lapchinskii, Muzyka sovetskoi Karelii (Petrozavodsk, 1970).
3 Such as R.F. Zelinskii (ed.), Muzykal'noe iskusstvo Karelii: Sbornik nauchnykh trudov (Leningrad,
1983), and Iu.G. Kon and N.Iu. Grodnitskaia (eds), Professional'nia muzyka Karelii: Ocherki
(Petrozavodsk, 1995).
4 The discussion of music as a leisure-time activity is therefore restricted to Finnish clubs and
communities, although the interviews certainly shed light on why the music itself was composed. I
would like to acknowledge those whom I interviewed in Petrozavodsk from April to June 1993: Väinö
Rintala, Impi Vauhkonen, Allan Sihvola, Heidi Sihvola, Elmer Nousiainen, Sanni Bocharnikova,
Maksim Gavrilov, Eila Rautio, Ernst Haapaniemi, Ruth Niskanen, Aarne Rikka, Urho Ruhanen,
Mildred Rossi, Pentti Rossi, Lillian Salo, and Liisa Sevander. All the interviewees were personally
involved with the development of musical life in Karelia during the 1920s and 1930s.
5 For more details of international relations and the political history of Soviet Karelia during the 1920s,
see M. Kangaspuro, Neuvosto-Karjalan taistelu itsehallinnosta: nationalismi ja suomalaiset punaiset
Neuvostoliiton vallankäytössä 1920–1939 (Helsinki: SKS, 2000), pp. 75–83.
6 The unity of the working class would come later. Ibid., pp. 51–55.
7 A. Afanaseva, 'Neuvosto-Karjalan sivistyneistö 1920-luvulta 1930-luvun puoliväliin', in A. Laine
(ed.), Karjala ja Komi nuoren Neuvostoliiton tasavaltoina 1920-ja 30-luvuilla (University of Joensuu:
Karelian Institute. Working Papers no. 5, 1995), p. 22.
8 The rate of literacy in Karelia was 31.3 per cent in 1897, a little higher than the average for the
Russian Empire as a whole. However, the amount of illiteracy was considerably higher amongst the
Karelians, of whom only 10.4 per cent could read. Thanks to the Bolshevik campaigns for literacy,
though, it reached 36.9 per cent in 1926 and 73.8 per cent in 1933 amongst Karelians, and 84.5 per cent
for the republic as a whole. M. Kangaspuro, p. 161. In addition, 191 Finnish-speaking primary and
secondary schools opened in Karelia by 1931. L. Letonmäki, Karjalan historia (Leningrad, 1931), p.
225.
9 M. Kangaspuro, p. 143.
10 When autonomy was rejected and Karelia became subject to Moscow's centralised planning, its
primary task was to produce raw timber. The agricul ture of the area remained underdeveloped,
however, while the population of Karelia had almost doubled by the start of the 1930s. This resulted in
an acute shortage of foodstuffs, housing and clothing, especially between 1932 and 1934, but special
insnab shops and hard-currency shops were opened for the exclusive use of immigrants to help them
adjust. S. Autio, Suunnitelmatalous Neuvosto-Karjalassa 1928–1941: paikallistason rooli
Neuvostoliiton teollistamisessa (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 2002).
11 I. Takala (1989), p. 148.
12 K. Skön and S. Torkkola, "Täällä Petroskoi": Omakielisten radio-ja televisioohjelmien merkitys
Venäjän Karjalan kansallisille vähemmistöille (University of Joensuu: Karelian Institute. Working
papers no. 2, 1997), p. 32.
13 M. Kangaspuro, pp. 64–169.
14 M. Kangaspuro, '"Ison vihan" tausta Karjalassa: Vuoden 1933 puoluepuhdistus ei etene Karjalassa
toivotulla tavalla', in A. Laine (ed.), pp. 136–138.
15 M. Kangaspuro (2000), p. 231.
16 Ibid., p. 147.
17 Especially when the speakers had to try and incorporate politically correct Soviet vocabulary into
everyday speech. E. Anttikoski, ' "Uuven vuuven lahja": Karjalan kirjakieli 1937–40', in A. Laine (ed.),
pp. 151–173.
18 O. Hyytiä, Karjalais-Suomalainen Neuvostotasavalta 1940–1956: Kansallinen tasavalta? (Helsinki:
Suomen historiallinen seura, 1999), pp. 19–28.
19 A. Laine and M. Ylikangas (eds), Rise and Fall of Soviet Karelia: People and Power (Helsinki:
Kikimora Publications, 2002), p. 11.
20 V. Portnoi, 'Karjalan musiikkielämä vuosisadan vaihteessa', in Punalippu, 3, 1986, p. 119.
21 G.I. Lapchinskii, pp. 11–17.
22 Ibid.
23 Ibid., pp. 17–18. For more information about the musical activities of Proletkult, see N. Edmunds,
The Soviet Proletarian Music Movement (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2000), pp. 65–79.
24 V. Portnoi, p. 120.
25 L.M. Butir, 'Simfonicheskaia muzyka karelii', in Iu.G. Kon and N.Iu. Grodnitskaia, p. 9.
26 B.H. Tsykov, 'K istorii orkestra russkikh narodnykh instrumentov v Karelii', in Muzykal'naia
kul'tura Karelii (Petrozavodsk, 1988), pp. 194–201.
27 That is 'national circles' of local minorities: Karelians, Finns, Ingrians, and Vepsians, etc., but not
Russians. This was the starting point of the policy of korenizatsiia. See Michael Rouland's essay in this
volume for further details of this policy in the Kazak context (Editor's note).
28 G.I. Lapchinskii, p. 29. For further details about RAPM, see N. Edmunds, 'Music and Politics: The
Case of the Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians', in Slavonic and East European Review, vol.
78, no. 1, January 2000, pp. 66–89; and A. Nelson, 'The Struggle for Proletarian Music. RAPM and the
Cultural Revolution', in Slavic Review, vol. 59, no. 1, Spring 2000, pp. 101–132.
29 V. Portnoi, 'Fortepianaia kultura Karelii', candidate dissertation. Leningrad Conservatory, 1985, pp.
58–61.
30 A typical member of the orchestra was Lauri Jousinen (1889–1948). He came from California as
part of the same fishing cooperative as Rautio, and was a self-taught viola player and composer.
31 The orchestra gave concerts and performed in local dance halls. U. Ruhanen, Syytettynä
suomalainen (Oulu: Pohjoinen, 1989), p. 51.
32 G.I. Lapchinskii, p. 22; and V. Portnoi (1985), p. 63.
33 B.D. Napreyev, … Ty, serpa i molota vol'naia otchizna (Petrozavodsk, 1982), p. 12.
34 L.M. Butir, p. 11.
35 Karel'skaya svad'ba was based on wedding melodies from the Uhtua district of Karelia collected by
Rautio's student Risto Sirén.
36 Information acquired from numerous interviews, especially with Eila Rautio. See also A. Timonen
and G. Lapchinskii, Kompozitor K. E. Rautio. Zhizn', tvorch-estvo, muzykal'no-obshchestvennaia
deiatel'nost' (Petrozavodsk, 1964), pp. 21, 25–37, 33, and 40.
37 Interview with Väinö Rintala; and M. Sevander, Vaeltajat (Turku: Siirtolaisuusinstituutti, 2000), pp.
108–111.
38 As well as the Symphony Orchestra of the Karelian Radio Committee, such institutions included the
State Finnish Drama Theatre, which was founded in 1932, a Kantele ensemble, and a music school that
was established in 1935 and reorganised (and renamed) in 1938 as the Kalle Rautio Musical College.
Immigrants who came to Karelia with a musical education and their own instruments could also ply
their trade in the numerous cinemas and clubs that were established during this period.
39 G.I. Lapchinskii, pp. 33–34.
40 Both Ruvim Pergament (1906–65) and Helmer Sinisalo (1920–89) hailed from Petrozavodsk, and
became chairmen of the Karelian composers' union. Leopold Teplitskii (1910–1965), on the other hand,
studied at the Leningrad Conservatory and only arrived in Petrozavodsk in 1933 after his release from a
prison camp. He was co-principal conductor of the Radio Committee's orchestra with Rautio, and a
pioneer of Russian jazz. In fact, Teplitskii was sent by Anatoly Lunacharskii, the Commissar of
Enlightenment, to the USA in 1926 to study jazz in New York and collect the scores of 'modern' music
for use in films. When he returned to Leningrad, he set up the frst 'symphonic jazz band' in the Soviet
Union together with teachers at the Leningrad Conservatory. The band existed, however, for only a
year, before Teplitskii was sent to a prison camp in Karelia in 1930.
41 Only the first part of Aino was ready in time for the celebrations, however, and it was premiered in a
concert hall that was also only partially built!
42 G.I. Lapchinskii, pp. 52–54.
43 And, as Väinö Rintala recalled in an interview with the author, once getting soaked by rain as a
result and being 'forced' to dry themselves by drinking vodka and dancing!
44 The Karelian Symphonic Orchestra played in Leningrad Pergament's Aino, Rautio's Karelian
Wedding and Novaia Kareliia [New Karelia], and Jousinen's Kullervo. Folk singers, dancers, and
choirs, as well as the Kantele Ensemble, also performed in dekadia of Karelian arts. G.I. Lapchinskii, p.
51.
45 Ibid, pp. 49–50.
46 The State Finnish Drama Theatre suffered even more than the orchestra, as most of its actors and
writers were eliminated. J. Rugojev, 'Puna-Kantele, soi surut synkkähän korpeen … ', in Punalippu, 3,
1988, pp. 12–13.
47 Interview with Allan Sihvola.
48 According Lillian Salo, whose brother was a member of the band, they were asked to play on board
a ship for Stalin and other Party leaders. However, because Stalin feared to such an extent about his
safety, he insisted that only a band made up of children should be allowed to play to him.
49 Consequently, the manuscripts kept in the Communist Party archives in Petrozavodsk often read
more like Party programmes than literary drama! See, for example, the Karelian State Archive of
Modern History, f. 3, op. 1/54, d. 724, ll. 34–35.
50 'Living newspapers' were short tableaux-vivants, usually performed by amateurs. They were popular
in the Soviet Union during the 1920s, since 'They aimed to portray contemporary socio-political events
in ways that even the illiterate could understand.' N. Edmunds, p. 129. Performances by collectives
were preferred to performances by soloists, which, on occasions, were even banned. R. Stites, Russian
Popular Culture: Entertainment and Society since 1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1992), p. 72.
51 Interview with Urho Ruhanen. I would like to thank Sebastian Stotesbury for translating the rest of
this essay from Finnish.
52 Only citizens with a foreign passport could shop in insnab shops. An equally wide assortment of
goods were to be found in hard-currency shops (torgsin).
53 The most popular place for the Finns seems to have been the Uritskii club, which was located close
to the Finnish immigrants' accommodation, the so-called 'middle barracks'.
54 Besides Petrozavodsk, jazz was also frequently played in Kondopoga, where many Finnish-
Americans had settled round the paper mill there. Interview with Allan Sihvola. See also V. Puhov,
'Karjalan jazzin alkusoittoja', in Carelia, 9, 2001, p. 106.
55 Interviews with Allan Sihvola and Elmer Nousiainen.
56 For details of this debate, see K. Viljanen, 'Miten alkukantaisesta kanteleesta syntyi orkesterisoitin',
in Carelia, 2, 1991, pp. 82–83.
57 For details of the programmes of concerts, which included arrangements of Karelian and Finnish
folk songs and dances, as well as works by Tchaikovsky, Serov, and Schubert, see ibid., p. 106.
58 Where it included a performance of Leopold Teplitskii's Karelian Prélude in its programme.
59 Gudkov invented a family of seven kanteles during the 1930s ranging in size from a large bass
kantele and a small piccolo kantele made by carpenters who were especially trained for the task. K.
Viljanen, 'Kantele-yhtyeen esihistoriaa', in Punalippu, 2, 1987, p. 102; and K. Dahlblom, 'Itäkarjalainen
kantele'. Unpublished manuscript, Jyväskylä, 1998, pp. 5–6.
60 For further details of Gudkov's activities, see K. Dahlblom, pp. 9–10; and K. Viljanen (1991), pp.
83–84
61 Gudkov quoted in K. Dahlblom, p. 10.
62 Ibid.
63 Ibid, p. 12.
64 Information from interview with Maksim Gavrilov.
65 The work of the Kantele Ensemble, and other groups like it that were founded during the 1930s
throughout the Soviet Union, can also be frmly set in the Russian tradition of staged folklore.
66 L. Letonmäki, p. 224.
67 Ibid., p. 232.
68 Ibid., p. 235.
69 Interview with Maksim Gavrilov.
10
A nation on stage
If one accepts that the Soviet authorities were interested in creating nations as
part of the socialist concept of internationalism, one still needs to ascertain
how culture assumed such a central role. Lenin argued that a culture designed
to educate the masses was an essential foundation of socialism.19 Culture was
the preferred means to transmit a new revolutionary ideology, and cultural
institutions designed to promote national state formation within the Soviet
Union were established in each national territory. 'Cultural institutions in the
national republics,' Mark Saroyan wrote, 'organized the creation, not simply
of a national culture in general, but of one that would contribute to the
identity formation and ethnic cohesion of the politically designed titular
nationality of each republic.'20 In the Kazak case, the nominal and actual
promotion of native leadership and native culture created a systemic
legitimacy that played a significant role in national identity formation.
Korenizatsiia, the policy of 'rooting' indigenous languages and native party
cadres in Soviet national governments, increased local knowledge and public
accessibility to Soviet ideology and political institutions. Ultimately, the
policy was designed to integrate nationalities into the multinational state that
Stalin conceived.21 In addition to the official emphasis on language policy
and the promotion of local elites, there is the cultural aspect of korenizatsiia
that is often overlooked.22 The effort to transcribe national histories, to build
and promote libraries, and to modernise national folk arts served to inculcate
national consciousness as well as socialist values among the local
nationalities. This form of cultural incorporation and indoctrination had an
enduring infuence well beyond the official end of korenizatsiia; in fact,
cultural korenizatsiia ultimately became an integral part of the socialist realist
aesthetic.
In Marxism and the National Question, Stalin provided additional clues to his
understanding of national consciousness. He affirmed,
'National character' is not a thing that is fxed once and for all, but is modifed by changes in the
conditions of life; but since it exists at every given moment, it leaves its impress on the physiognomy of
the nation.23
Stalin's statement is central to the understanding of early Soviet nationality
culture. Here again, Mark Saroyan's work provides insight:
While the culturally mediated 'nationalization' of the republics often referred back to ethnic traditions,
the process of national-cultural construction developed not simply from the amorphous activisation of
'tradition' by the cultural intelligentsia but refected the 'modern' institutional innovations of Soviet
national-state formation.24
Eventually, the ethnic construct of 'national in form' was subsumed by the
modernist notion of 'socialist in content'. Following the early evolution of
Kazak culture allows us better to understand how this process took place.
The idea that art plays a role in modern national consciousness emerged
during the European Romantic movement of the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries. Johann Gottfried von Herder proclaimed that: 'A poet is
the creator of the nation around him; he gives them a world to see and has
their souls in his hand so that he can lead them to it.'25 The artist thus holds
the key to the Volksgeist. As European nationalism spread in the nineteenth
century, national schools of literature and music followed. In his infuential
history of modern European music, Carl Dalhaus avers that folk music
expresses a national spirit at a fundamental level.26 He further identifes
modern symphonies from Beethoven's Eroica to Mahler's Das Lied von der
Erde as mobilisers of the musical nation-building effort.
Marina Frolova-Walker addresses similar concerns in her recent work on
Soviet Central Asian music. Using musical production in Uzbekistan as her
platform, she maintains that national cultures developed within the authority
of Moscow while being presented as genuinely native.27 This is part of the
Soviet modernisation process that brought Central Asian culture closer to
Russian and European models. Shirin Akiner argues that Soviet Kazak
culture was designed to fulfil an ideological role that replaced 'primitive'
traditional art, to create strong linkages with other Soviet cultures while
maintaining diversity, and to shape local understanding of their historical
past.28 This process of transforming native music from ethnographic subject
to a nationalising force did not make either culture less authentic, but
recontextualised and reinterpreted music along national and modern lines.
Certainly, scholars voiced criticism of the new Soviet artistic ethic from
abroad. Andrey Olkhovsky, for example, claimed:
The musical creative life of the other Soviet republics is extremely weakly developed. These republics
have neither national composers of their own nor a sufficient basis for their development, since their
artistic consciousness has not yet been developed. At best, ethnographism fourishes and even that only
within the limit of harmonization of folk songs.29
He then described the development of 'national' arts as follows: 'As a rule
experienced composers are periodically sent out to these areas on missions
from Moscow; they collect ethnographic material and then, back in Moscow,
write a "national opera" for yet another musical festival in Moscow.'30 In his
view, a process of Gleichschaltung31 prevailed in which music corresponded
to party dogma rather than celebrating the artistic innovation of a pre-existing
cultural tradition.
It is easy to dismiss early Soviet music as kitsch, and many scholars have
chosen to ignore Soviet Kazak art for this reason. Several writers, however,
have reclaimed the otherwise dismissed Soviet folk art and public
celebrations of Soviet power that were laden with official rhetoric and
imbued them with a manipulation of meanings.32 The emergence of new
styles, the discourse on nation, and the reinterpretation of folk traditions
provide a rich read for analysis. Rather than fatly dismissing 'nationality
music' for its lack of artistic merit, we should consider it a lens through which
to understand the cultural climate of the time and place. Roger Scruton
reminds us that 'a musical culture arises wherever music enters into the life of
the tribe, to become a system of allusion, and a way of "joining in".'33 In
Soviet music under Lenin and Stalin, the music became the way that the
masses as well as the nationalities 'joined' the Soviet experience.
Cultural Revolution on the Steppe
I am grateful to Natalie Rouland, Richard Stites, Laura Adams, James Class, and the history kruzhok at
Stanford University for helpful comments and suggestions. A draft of this essay was presented at the
Third Annual Conference of the Central Eurasian Studies Society meeting in Madison, Wisconsin.
Research was funded by the International Research and Exchanges Board and the American Council's
ACTR/ACCELS programme with funds provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the
United States Information Agency, and the US Department of State, which administers the Russian,
Eurasian, and East European Research Program (Title VIII).
1 M. Auezov, 'Kazakhskaia muzyka', in Izvestiia, 21 May 1936, p. 4.
2 With regard to transliteration, I generally used a Russian transliteration system as Kazak is written
with the Cyrillic alphabet. However, I chose the blending of the English and Continental 'j' and 'ï'
because it is less cumbersome and more distinctive than the Russian 'dzh,' 'zh', and 'y'. For the same
reasons, I used 'k' and 'g' for both hard and soft forms of the letters. These choices were made in order
to make Kazak spelling more accessible to a Russian scholarly audience while maintaining a degree of
Kazak distinction. During the period under Lenin and Stalin, the official name for the Kazak state
underwent several transformations. First, in 1920 the territory that became Kazakstan was known as the
Kirgiz Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. Then, in 1925 the 'Kirgiz' was changed to 'Kazak' to
better refect the historical and ethnic differences between the Kyrgyz (of the mountains) and Kazaks (of
the steppe). Lastly, the 'Kazak' was changed to 'Kazakh' in 1936 as the territory evolved into the
Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic offcially in order to refect 'the native pronunciation', but in reality it
was to draw a greater distinction between the Russian words for Cossacks ('Kazak') and Kazaks
('Kazakh').
3 W. Malm, The Music Culture of the Pacifc, the Near East, and Asia, 3rd edition (Princeton: Prentice
Hall, 1996), p. 112.
4 By 'popular culture', I mean traditional folk culture that had popular appeal and participation, rather
than commercial popular culture.
5 B. Erzakovich, 'Narodnyi pesni Kazakhstana', in Izvestiia Akademii nauk Kazakhskoi SSR, Seriia
iskusstvovedeniia, vyp. 1, 1950, p. 29. There is a wide literature on the role of the akïns (itinerant poet-
composers) as the keepers of the spiritual and ethnic culture of the steppe. See, for example, A.A.
Asankanov, Akïndar zhane manashlar: kyrgyz elinin rukanii madaniiatyn tuzuuchulor zhana
saktoochular (Bishkek, 1999).
6 See M. Karataev, Ot dombry do knigi (Moscow, 1969); and M. Auezov, 'Kazakhskaia muzyka', in
Izvestiia, 21 May 1936, p. 4.
7 Important more recent works on the studies of nationality include B. Anderson, Imagined
Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983); E. Gellner,
Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983); E.J. Hobsbawm, Nations and
Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990);
M. Hroch, Social Preconditions of National Revival in Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1985); and A. Smith, The Ethnic Origin of Nations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986). The study of
nationalism through music is one area in which we can take advantage of recent research in the felds of
post-modern and post-colonial studies, such as C. Dalhaus, 'Nationalism in Music', in Between
Romanticism and Modernism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980); M. Frolova-Walker,
'National in Form, Socialist in Content: Musical Nation-Building in the Soviet Republics', in Journal of
the American Musicological Society, 2, 1998, pp. 331–71; R. Taruskin, Defining Russia Musically:
Historical and Hermeneutical Essays (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997); and P. Wade,
Music, Race, and Nation: Musica Tropical in Colombia (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000).
8 R. Brubaker, Reframing Nationalism: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); R.J. Kaiser, The Geography of Nationalism in Russia
and the USSR (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994); T. Rakowska-Harmstone, 'The Dialectics
of Nationalism in the USSR', in Problems of Communism, 3, 1974, pp. 1–22; Y. Slezkine, 'The USSR
as a Communal Apartment, or How a Socialist State Promoted Ethnic Particularism', in Slavic Review,
2, 1994, pp. 414–52; R.G. Suny, The Making of the Georgian Nation (Bloomington: University of
Indiana Press, 1994); and R.G. Suny, The Revenge of the Past: Nationalism, Revolution, and the
Collapse of the Soviet Union (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993).
9 Even the most recent general works on Central Asia continue to emphasise the lack of national
identity in the region before the Soviet 'divide-and-conquer' stage. See, for example, O. Roy, The New
Central Asia: The Creation of Nations (London: I.B. Tauris, 2000); and P.G. Geiss, Nationenwerdung
in Mittelasien (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1995).
10 D. Brandenberger, 'National Bolshevism: Stalinist Mass Culture and the Formation of Modern
Russian National Identity, 1931–1956' (Ph.D. Dissertation, Harvard University, 2000); A. Edgar, 'The
Creation of Soviet Turkmenistan, 1924–1938' (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1999); F.
Hirsch, 'Empire of Nations: Colonial Technologies and the Making of the Soviet Union, 1917–1939'
(Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1998); S. Keller, To Moscow not Mecca: The Soviet Campaign
against Islam in Central Asia, 1917–1941 (Westport: Praeger, 2001); A. Khalid, The Politics of Muslim
Cultural Reform: Jadidism in Central Asia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998); T. Martin,
An Affirmative-Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923–1939 (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 2001); P. Michaels, 'Shamans and Surgeons: The Politics of Health Care in
Soviet Kazakhstan, 1928–1941' (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 1997);
D. Northrop, 'Uzbek Women and the Veil: Gender and Power in Stalinist Central Asia, (Ph.D.
Dissertation, Stanford University, 1999); M. Payne, Stalin's Railroad: Turksib and the Building of
Socialism (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001); and J. Smith, The Bolsheviks and the
National Question, 1917–1923 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999).
11 G. Liber, Soviet Nationality Policy, Urban Growth, and Identity Change in the Ukrainian SSR,
1923–1934 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 2–3, 33–37, and 107–20.
12 See G. Massell, The Surrogate Proletariat: Moslem Women and Revolutionary Strategies in Soviet
Central Asia, 1919–1929 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974).
13 N.A. Baskakov and R.G. Kuzeev (eds), Razvitie iazykov i kul'tur narodov SSSR v ikh vzaimosviazi i
vzaimodeistvii (Ufa, 1976); G. Estraikh, Soviet Yiddish: Language Planning and Linguistic
Development (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999); W. Fierman, Language Planning and
National Development: The Uzbek Experience (New York: Mouton, 1991); R. Masov, Istoriia
topornogo razdeleniia (Dushanbe, 1991); S. Shermukhamedov, Na iazyke edinstva (Tashkent, 1991);
and M. Smith, Language and Power in the Creation of the USSR, 1917–1953 (Berlin: Mouton de
Gruyter, 1998).
14 The Kazak Constitution of 1924 established both Russian and Kazak as official languages of the
state.
15 J. Stalin, 'Marxism and the National Question', in Works, 2 (Moscow, 1953), pp. 300–81.
16Ibid., p. 307.
17 M. Saroyan, 'Beyond the Nation-State: Culture and Ethnic Politics in Soviet Transcaucasia', in R.G.
Suny (ed.), Transcaucasia, Nationalism, and Social Change: Essays in the History of Armenia,
Azerbaijan, and Georgia (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996), p. 404. Note also T.
Martin, op. cit.
18 Stalin uses this phrase to describe the multinational state when he introduces the 1936 constitution,
in Pravda, 26 November 1936, p. 2. For more details on the displacement of the concept, see T. Martin,
pp. 432–42.
19 V.I. Lenin, 'The Tasks of the Youth Leagues', in Selected Works, 3 (Moscow: Progress Press, 1971),
pp. 470–83.
20 M. Saroyan, p. 405.
21 For an in-depth discussion of the policy of korenizatsiia, see T. Martin, pp. 172–81.
22 For similar shortcomings, see ibid., pp. 182–84.
23 J. Stalin, p. 307.
24 M. Saroyan, pp. 405–6.
25 J.G. Herder, Ueber die Würkung der Dichtkunst auf die Sitten der Völker in alten und neuen Zeiten
(1778), VIII, p. 433.
26 C. Dalhaus, op. cit.
27 M. Frolova-Walker, pp. 338–39.
28 S. Akiner, The Formation of Kazakh Identity: From Tribe to Nation-State (London: Royal Institute
for International Affairs, 1995), pp. 38–39.
29 A. Olkhovsky, Music under the Soviets: The Agony of Art (New York: Praeger, 1955), p. 265.
30 Ibid.
31 Gleichschaltung in this sense can be translated as 'an elimination of opponents'.
32 See, for example, F. Miller, Folklore for Stalin: Russian Folklore and Pseudofolklore of the Stalin
Era (London: M.E. Sharpe, 1990); K. Petrone, Life Has Become More Joyous, Comrades: Celebrations
in the Time of Stalin (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000); and J. von Geldern, Bolshevik
Festivals, 1917–1920 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).
33 R. Scruton, The Aesthetics of Music (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), p. 478.
34 Early sources on Kazaks generally use the term 'kirgiz' to describe them. In fact, sources on Central
Asia consistently confuse Kirgiz and Kazak until the Soviets officially differentiated between the two
in 1925.
35 TsGARK (Central State Archive of the Republic of Kazakstan), f. 693, op. 1, d. 1, l.1. The name
was changed in 1925 to Society for the Study of Kazakstan.
36 This was not the first such study. The collecting and classifcation of traditional Kazak culture and
songs by Russian trained ethnographers began with Chokan Valikhanov in the mid-nineteenth century.
M. Rouland, 'Chokan Valikhanov and the Russian Intelligentsia: Reform and Enlightenment in Mid-
nineteenth Century Russia', in Otan Tariki, 2, 1999, pp. 21–31. Valikhanov was followed by a host of
geographers and ethnographers in the late-nineteenth century who recorded and transcribed Kazak folk
songs and epics.
37 R. Moisenko, Realist Music: 25 Soviet Composers (London: Meridian Books, 1949), pp. 30–31.
38 A. Zataevich, 1000 pesen kirgizskogo naroda (Orenburg, 1925), p. xi.
39 V.P. Dernova, A. V. Zataevich i Kazakhskaia narodnaia muzyka (Avtoreferat, kand. isk.,
Leningradskaia Konservatoriia, 1960).
40 Quoted from ibid., p. 8.
41 G. K. Kotlova, 'Priemy var' irovaniia v fortepiannoi p' esakh A. V. Zataevicha', in Muzykoznanie, 5
(Alma-Ata, 1971), p. 153.
42 V.P. Dernova, p. 6. The document she mentions is available in GTsMMK (The Glinka State Central
Museum of Musical Culture) f. 6, inv. 1.
43 The Society for the Study of Kazakstan organised a series of concerts of Kazak music led by
Zataevich at the Polytechnical Museum in Moscow in 1923–24. Zataevich also published fve series of
'Kazak Songs in the form of Miniatures on folk themes for the piano' from 1923 to 1927 in Leningrad
and Moscow. Moreover, he played an important role in preparing Amre Kashaubaev to perform with
other artists from the Soviet Union in Paris at the International Exposition of Decorative and Modern
Industrial Arts in 1925 and in Frankfurt at the International Music Festival ('Music in the Life of the
Nation') in 1927.
44 I. Levitskaia, Zhivye dragotsennosti (Alma-Ata, 1976), p. 142.
45 V.S. Vinogradov, Muzyka sovetskogo vostoka: ot unisona k polifonii (Moscow, 1968), p. 216.
Grigorii Liubimov founded the first professional orchestra of the four-stringed dombïra in Petrograd in
1919. The Kazak dombïra, though, traditionally has two strings.
46 See F. Oinas, 'The Political Uses and Themes of Folklore in the Soviet Union', in idem (ed.),
Folklore Nationalism & Politics (Columbus: Slavica Publishers, 1978), pp. 77–95.
47 I. Sokolov, Russkii fol'klor (Moscow, 1938), p. 111. 'Soviet folkloristics [sic]', he continued on the
same page, 'has promoted the opening of the agitational and propagandist signifcance of folklore. And
therefore Soviet folkloristics [sic] has frmly linked itself with the practical tasks of our public lives.'
48 TsGARK f. 847, op. 1, d. 1, l. 1; Orenburg rabochii, 1 April 1923.
49 M. Nemchenko, Natsional'noe razmezhevanie Srednei Azii (Moscow, 1925).
50 See A.A. Gordienko, Sozdanie sovetskoi natsional'noi gosudarstvennosti v Srednei Azii (Moscow,
1959), p. 168.
51 R.B. Suleimenov and Kh.I. Bisenov, Sotsial'nyi put' kul'turnogo progressa otstalykh narodov
(Alma-Ata, 1967), pp. 140–43.
52 The akïn is a traditional Kazak poet-composer who travelled from village to village. They gained
fame for their musical improvisational abilities honed to a high level in 'steppe-music' competitions
called aitïs.
53 Ibid., p. 145. For a general discussion of the early years of Kazak theatre, see G. Sharipova,
'Kazakhskii teatr', in I. Shukhov (ed.), Kazakhstan: sbornik khudozhestvennykh ocherkov (Alma-Ata,
1940), pp. 488–503.
54 Ibid., p. 500.
55 As part of the re-districting in Central Asia, the Kazak capital was moved from Orenburg to Ak-
Mechet (later named Kïzl-Orda). The capital was then moved in 1929 to Alma-Ata.
56 Carole Pegg offers a similar account of the process in Mongolia. C. Pegg, Mongolian Music, Dance,
and Oral Narrative: Performing Diverse Identities (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001), pp.
253–283.
57 For an account of the political repression among native elites in the 1920s and 1930s, see L.D.
Kuderina, Genotsid v Kazakhstana (Moscow, 1994). Zh. Abylkhozhin, Traditsionnaia struktura
Kazakhstana (Alma-Ata, 1991) is still the most complete account of the urbanisation and
collectivisation drives of the 1920s in Kazakstan.
58 M. Auezov (ed.), Istoriia Kazakhskoi SSR, vol. 2 (Alma-Ata, 1959), p. 347.
59 See the discussion in N. Edmunds, The Soviet Proletarian Music Movement (Oxford: Peter Lang,
2000), pp. 289–97.
60 Sovetskaia muzyka, 1, 1934, p. 3.
61 V. Iokhelson, 'Tvorcheskaia diskussia v Leningrade', in Sovetskaia muzyka, 4, 1936, pp. 5–15;
quoted in R. Taruskin, 'Public Lies and Unspeakable Truth', in D. Fanning (ed.), Shostakovich Studies
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 33.
62 See the debates in APRK (Archive of the President of the Republic of Kazakstan) f. 141, op. 1, d.
6209, l. 33–36; APRK f. 141, op. 1, d. 6212, l. 32–39; and APRK f. 141, op. 1, d. 6213, l. 74–75.
63 The Kazak state statute 'O meropriiatiakh po podgotovke natsional'nykh muzykal'nykh-teatral'nykh
kadrov', TsGARK f. 30, op. 6, d. 19, l. 404–406 and 'O meropriiatiiakh po razvitiiu natsional'nogo
iskusstva', APRK f. 141, op. 1, d. 6560, l. 130–131.
64 Sh. Khusainov, 'Rozhednie kazakhskoi opery', in I. Shukhov (ed.), p. 512.
65 Ibid., p. 514.
66 There was a trend by Soviet scholars to erase the pre-Soviet cultural past of the Kazaks and deny the
continuity between feudal and socialist artistic expression. Edward Allworth's pioneering study on
Soviet theatre in Central Asia shows that native culture had a strong tradition before the onset of Soviet
cultural infuence, despite Soviet claims otherwise. E. Allworth, 'The Beginnings of the Modern
Turkestanian Theater', in Slavic Review, 4, 1964, pp. 676–687. Allworth argued that despite claims that
professional artists came only with Soviet education, the roots of Kazak opera can be found in the street
performing singers of sal and sere. Although cast out by the secular and religious elite, they performed
lyrical poetry and songs at bazaars, auls, and on the steppe. Soviet sources, however, maintained that
'Soviet Kazakstan began from practically nothing.' Article celebrating the fifteenth anniversary of the
Kazak Autonomous Republic in 1935 quoted in A. Nazarov, 'Prazdnik Kazakskogo naroda', in Pravda,
25 October 1935, p. 1.
67 Sh. Khusainov, 'Rozhednie kazakhskoi opery', in I. Shukhov (ed.), p. 513.
68 B. Gizatov, Akademik Akhmet Zhubanov: Zhizn' i tvorchestvo (1906–1968) (Alma-Ata, 1972), p. 21.
69 A full account of the development of the Kazak orchestra can be found in B. Gizatov, ibid., pp. 40–
73; and B. Gizatov, Ot kiuia do simfonii (Alma-Ata, 1976), pp. 30–41. Jubanov studied Russian folk
orchestra at the Leningrad Conservatory, and his orchestra is based on the Russian folk instrument
orchestras that emerged in the 1920s and 1930s. For a study on the Russian folk orchestra, see E.
Maksimov, Orkestry i ansambli russkikh narodnykh instrumentov: istoricheskie ocherki (Moscow,
1983). An interesting contemporary account is available in K.S. Alekseev, Kak organizovat' ansambl'
massovykh strunnykh instrumentov v derevne (Moscow, 1936).
70 R. Moisenko, p. 33.
71 P. Kerzhentsev, 'Kazakhskoe iskusstvo', in Pravda, 24 May 1936, p. 4. For more information on the
career of Platon Kerzhentsev, see R. Stites, Revolutionary Dreams: Utopian Vision and Experimental
Life in the Russian Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. 155–159.
72 A list of the festivals ( dekady) and their dates is as follows: Ukraine (11–21 March 1936);
Kazakstan (17–25 May 1936); Georgia (5–15 January 1937); Uzbekistan (21–30 May 1937);
Azerbaidzhan (5–15 April 1938); Kirgizia (26 May–4 June 1939); Armenia (20–29 October 1939);
Belorussia (5–15 June 1940); Buriat-Mongolia (20–27 October 1940); and Tadzhikistan (12–20 April
1941).
73 Two articles reveal the official enthusiasm for the Ukrainian art festival: Anon, 'Mastera
ukrainskogo iskusstva v Moskve', in Teatr i dramaturgiia, 4, 1936, p. 229; and K. Kuznetsov,
'Ukrainskaia opera v Moskve', in Sovetskaia muzyka, 4, 1936, pp. 16–20. However, they contrast with
the émigré musicians' account of events. See, for example, H. Kytasty, 'Some Aspects of Ukrainian
Music under the Soviets', in Research Papers on the U.S.S.R., vol. 65 (New York, 1954).
74 There is a detailed discussion of plans and concerns for the festival in APRK, f. 141, op. 1, d.
10682a.
75 H. Kytasty, p. 34.
76 A. Olkhovsky, p. 266. Note also J. Brooks, Thank You Comrade Stalin: Soviet Public Culture from
Revolution to Cold War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000); and K. Petrone, op. cit., on the
wider implications of 'banners of gratitude' and 'happy lives'.
77 It included Eleubai Umurzakov, Kuliash Baisetova, Kanabek Baisetov, Kormanbek Zhandarbekov,
Kalï bek Kuanïshbaev, Akhmet Jubanov, Evgenii Brusilovskii, Saken Seifullin, Ilias Zhansugurov,
Mukhtar Auezov, Sabit Mukanov, and Beimbet Mailin amongst others.
78 The Moscow papers in May 1936 were full of articles about Kazak culture and art. They included G.
Togzhanov, 'Prazdnik kazakhskogo iskusstva', in Literaturnaia gazeta, 1 May 1936, p. 2; Zh. Shanin,
'Prazdnik kazakhskogo iskusstva', in Vecherniaia Moskva, 8 May 1936, p. 3; A. Zataevich, 'Kazakhskie
pesni', in Izvestiia, 10 May 1936, p. 4; G. Sharipova, 'Baimbet Mailin', in Literaturnaia gazeta, 10 May
1936, p. 4; K. Altaiskii, 'Akyny Kazakhstana', in Literaturnaia gazeta, 10 May 1936, p. 4; M. Auezov,
'Kul ' tura vozrozhdennoi strany', in Sovetskoe iskusstvo, 11 May 1936, p. 1; 'Artisty Kazakhskogo
naroda', in Sovetskoe iskusstvo, 17 May 1936, p. 1; and A. Gaiamov, 'Rozhdenie iskusstv', in
Vecherniaia Moskva, 19 May 1936, p. 3.
79 Izvestiia, 17 May 1936, p. 3.
80 Sovetskoe iskusstvo, 23 May 1936, pp. 2–3. Literaturnaia gazeta ran its two-page spread welcoming
the Kazak artists as well on 15 May 1936, pp. 2–3. When the medals were awarded and the Kazak
delegation left, Pravda ran its entire front-page tribute on 27 May 1936 under the title 'Iskusstvo
pobedivshego naroda'. See also Izvestiia, 21 May 1936, p. 1 and 'Dekada Kazakhskogo iskusstva v
Moskve', in Teatr i dramaturgiia, 6, 1936, p. 382 for other glowing tributes.
81 The use (or overuse) of the word razvitie or 'progress' in scholarly literature should be questioned. In
the Soviet Union, the predominant idea of historical development required that 'feudal' or 'backward'
peoples like the Kazaks needed to pass through a stage of national development before they could reach
socialism. Literacy, building economic infrastructure, national literature and culture were therefore all
part of the socialist nation-building project.
82 B. Asaf'ev, 'Muzyka Kazakhstana', in Muzykal'naia kultura Kazakhstana (Alma-Ata, 1955), p. 6.
83 R. Moisenko, p. 34.
84 J. von Geldern, op. cit.; and K. Petrone, op. cit.
85 The word comes from aitu (to speak or talk), literally meaning a 'conversation'. The dombïra has
two strings, tied on frets and usually tuned to the fourth string (sometimes the fifth). Dombïra pieces are
set in continuous two-part polyphony where the melody is played on one string and the drone is played
on the other. The music is made through strumming both strings.
86 M. Auezov, 'Kazakhskii epos i dorevoliutsionnyi fol'klor', in L. Sobolev (ed.), Pesni stepei:
antologiia kazakhskoi literatury (Moscow, 1940), pp. 15–16.
87 Pravda, 25 May 1936, p. 4.
88 Ibid.
89 P. Kerzhentsev, in Pravda, 24 May 1936, p. 4.
90 Ibid.
91 Ibid.
92 Pravda, 25 May 1936, p. 4. As an ancient two-stringed instrument with a bow, the kobïz is
considered an ancestor of the violin.
93 Quoted from Moscow Daily News, 15 May 1936, p. 1. Rolland wrote to Zataevich after reading his
A Thousand Songs of the Kazaks. P.V. Aravin et al. (eds.), A. V. Zataevich: issledovaniia,
vospominaniia, pis'ma i dokumenty (Alma-Ata, 1958), p. 275.
94 L. I. Goncharova, 'Kyz Zhibek', in A. Zhubanov (ed.), Ocherki po istorii kazakhskoi sovetskoi
muzyki (Alma-Ata, 1962), p. 38.
95 G. Zhubanova, Mir Moi – Muzyka, vol. 1 (Almaty, 1997), p. 20.
96 For more information on the structural significance of the aitïs in Kïz Jibek, see A. Omarova,
Traditsiia aitysa i kazakhskaia opera: Brusilovskii E. G. 'KyzZhibek' (Almaty: 1993).
97 N. Kuznetsov, 'Kazakhskii muzykal'nyi teatr v Moskve', in Sovetskaia muzyka, 7, 1936, p. 54.
98 R. Moisenko, p. 32.
99 V.P. Dernova, p. 14.
100 There are eleven recorded versions of the legend. See B.G. Erzakovich, Muzykal'noe nasledie
kazakhskogo naroda (Alma-Ata, 1979), p. 14 for the precise classifcation of each version. Gabit
Musrepov wrote the libretto, and Evgenii Brusilovskii composed the music for the version presented as
the first Kazak opera.
101 A basic description can be found in A. Zhubanov (ed.), Ocherki po istorii kazakhskoi sovetskoi
muzyki (Alma-Ata, 1962), p. 37. For a more complete description, see L. Sobolev (ed.), Pesni stepei:
Antologiia kazakhskoi literatury, pp. 92–107.
102 M. Auezov, Mysli raznykh let (Alma-Ata, 1961), p. 437.
103 T.G. Winner, The Oral Art and Literature of the Kazakhs of Russian Central Asia (Durham, NC:
Duke University Press, 1958), p. 75.
104 The author of the libretto is Beimbet Mailin, who personally knew Jalbïr and his friends, and the
composer is Evgenii Brusilovskii once again. Recently, more archival information has become
available on 1916. See, for example, the two-volume collection, M. Kozybaev (ed.), Kaharlï 1916 jïl:
Groznyi 1916-i god (Almaty, 1998). This work, however, provides no mention of Jalbïr.
105 A. Zhubanov (ed.), Ocherki po istorii kazakhskoi sovetskoi muzyki, pp. 48–49.
106 A good visual representation of this threat as it concerns Mongolia is described in Pudovkin's film
Potomok Chingis-khana [Storm Over Asia, 1929].
107 K. Jandarbekov wrote the version of the song used in the opera, and great efforts were made to
avoid ruining the original popular appeal and sense of the songs. A. Zhubanov (ed.), Ocherki po istorii
kazakhskoi sovetskoi muzyki, p. 51. According to Jubanov, this illustrates the serious effort to include a
symphonic element in one of the first Kazak operas. Ibid., p. 53.
108 'Koshtasu' means 'to bid farewell'. It is often used in epics to express farewell to one's native land,
loved ones, or even horses. T.G. Winner, p. 42.
109 Quoted from ibid. It can also be found in Kazak and Russian in T. Zhumalieva and A.
Temirbekova (eds.), Istoriia kazakhskoi muzyki, vol. 1 (Almaty, 2000), p. 85.
110 'Khronika', in Sovetskaia muzyka, 6, 1936, pp. 72–73. As well as director of the Institute of
Nationalities of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR, Semen Dimanshtein was deputy
secretary of the Council of Nationalities and editor of Revoliutsiia i nationalnosti.
111 Ibid., p. 73.
112 For one example, see G. Liber, p. 152.
113 G. Togzhanov, 'Prazdnik Kazakhskogo iskusstvo', in Literaturnaia gazeta, 1 May 1936, p. 2. An
'aul' is a village.
114 G. Ormanov, 'Den' Dzhambula', in I. Shukhov (ed.), pp. 504–10.
115 Despite (or possibly because of) his place as a mouthpiece for the state, Jambïl's infuence in Kazak
music remains unsubstantiated despite the praice. In her account of Brusilovskii, Rena Moisenko, for
example, claims that Jambïl had a particular infuence on Brusilovskii's work. R. Moisenko, pp. 56–62.
For more specifc studies on Jambïl, see: M.I. Festisov, Dzhambul Dzhabaev: zhizn' i tvochestvo (Alma-
Ata, 1946); N.S. Smirnov (ed.), Tvorchestvo Dzhambula: stat'i, zametki, materialy (Alma-Ata, 1956);
E. Ismailov, Akyny: monografiia o tvorchestve Dzhambula i drugikh narodnykh akïnov (Alma-Ata,
1957); M. Duisenov, Dzhambul i sovremennoe narodnoe tvorchestvo (Alma-Ata, 1975); N. Torekulov
(ed.), Dastan ata: Jambïl Jabaev turalï (Almaty, 1989); and S. Sadyrbaev, Fol'klor jane Jambïl
(Almaty, 1996).
116 Brusilovskii was also a student of Maximillian Steinberg and in the year below Shostakovich at the
Leningrad Conservatory. Shostakovich also refers to his source as a sort of 'courtly musician', which
Brusilovskii certainly was for Kazakstan.
117 S. Volkov (ed.), Testimony: The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich, trans. A. Bouis (New York:
Harper & Row, 1979), p. 209.
118 Ibid., pp. 210–11.
119 Ibid., p. 211.
120 R. Moisenko, p. 58.
121 Dzhambul, 'Moia rodina', in Pravda, 7 May 1936, p. 3.
122 A general description of the concert can be found in Z. Dikovskii, 'Kazakhskii kontsert v Bol'shom
teatre', in Pravda, 25 May 1936, p. 4.
123 A. Jubanov, Kazaktïn kalïk kompozitorï Kurmangazï (Alma-Ata, 1936). Jubanov predictably
selected the songs of Kurmangazï after the recent publication of his collected works. For a deeper
discussion on the infuence of Kurmangazï in Jubanov's work, see Z. Kospakov, Kazaktïn anshilik oneri
(Almaty, 1999), pp. 165–83.
124 R. M. Glière, 'Sokrovishchnitsa muzykal'nogo tvorchestvo', in Pravda, 26 May 1936, p. 4.
125 P. Kerzhentsev, 'Kazakhskoe iskusstvo', in Pravda, 24 May 1936, p. 4.
126 See the Stakhanovite letter by K. Volkov, quoted in A. Zhubanov (ed.), Ocherki po istorii
kazakhskoi sovetskoi muzyki, p. 61.
127 P. Kerzhentsev, 'Kazakhskoe iskusstvo', in Pravda, 24 May 1936, p. 4.
128 At the end of the competition, numerous Kazaks were awarded prizes. Kuliash Beisetov was
named an artist of the Soviet Union, while Kuliash Baisetova, Saken Seifullin, Eleubai Umurzakov,
Kurmanbek Jandarbekov, and Temirbek Jurgenev received the Order of the Red Banner of Labour.
Kanabek Baisetov, Evgenii Brusilovskii, Manarbek Erjanov, Serke Kojamkulov, Kalibek Kuanïshbaev,
Uriia Turdukulova, Shara Jandarbekova, and Akhmet Jubanov also received the Order of the Badge of
Honour. When Jambïl was given an award for his contribution to Soviet arts, he extolled: 'he was not
the one being honoured, but the national poetry of Kazakstan', in N. Kuznetsov, 'Kazakhskii
muzykal'nyi teatr v Moskve', in Sovetskaia muzyka, 7, 1936, p. 53.
129 TsGARK, f. 1242, op. 1, d. 40, ll. 17–20.
130 N. Kuznetsov, 'Kazakhskii muzykal 'nyi teatr v Moskve', in Sovetskaia muzyka, 7, 1936, p. 52.
11
Uzeyir Hajibeyov and his role in the development of musical
life in Azerbaidzhan
Matthew O'Brien
Hajibeyov's prolifc period that began with Leyli and Majnun ended with the
composition of Arshin Mal Alan. Events of a wider political and military
significance were then to overtake him, and for numerous reasons he would
never again attain the same levels of creativity. The declaration of war
between Russia and the Axis powers in 1914 was shortly to be followed by a
declaration of war between Russia and Turkey. The main theatre of the war
was eastern Turkey and the southern Caucasus. The October Revolution then
sparked a conflict that was often based on ethnic and religious ties between
various political parties and the Bolsheviks. We know very little about
Hajibeyov's movements at this time except that he was a member of the
Musavat Party, which played a leading role in the short-lived Azerbaidzhan
Democratic Republic (ADR), and he wrote the ADR's national anthem. One
source has also claimed that during this period Hajibeyov wrote a number of
newspaper articles, often under various pseudonyms, in which he attacked the
tsarists and Bolsheviks.30 While there is no strong evidence to support this
claim, it would certainly account for the lack of information about this period
of Hajibeyov's life in Soviet sources.
Whatever Hajibeyov's links to the opposition to the Bolshevik takeover of the
ADR, one can only assume that he was soon on good terms with the new
government. This is the impression given in light of the sheer breadth of his
involvement in the organisation of Azeri musical life over the next few
decades. From the early 1920s, Hajibeyov was to hold a number of
increasingly important official positions within the cultural and political life
of what was to become the Azerbaidzhan SSR. If Hajibeyov's earlier
opposition to the Bolsheviks was true, it is at first glance difficult to explain
the apparent volte-face in Hajibeyov's attitude to Soviet rule. There are,
though, a number of factors that could be taken into account. First, Hajibeyov
had been involved in the opposition to the Soviet takeover, and many of his
former colleagues in the Musavat Party, like his brother Jeyhun, were in exile
abroad or had met their deaths when Azerbaidzhan lost its independence in
1920. It is therefore quite probable that Hajibeyov sensibly decided to err on
the side of caution and make himself useful to the new regime. From the new
regime's perspective, there was also only one real candidate when it came to
finding someone to help organise the cultural life of the region. Such a
mutually benefcial arrangement thus suited both parties, however wary they
might have been of each other. Second, it is possible that Hajibeyov did not
entirely disagree with the Bolshevik agenda. The final emancipation of
Muslim women, a subject close to Hajibeyov's heart, had after all occurred in
the early years of Soviet rule in Azerbaidzhan. Third, according to Igor
Boelza: 'the October revolution opened unheard of possibilities for the
development of national cultures in the Soviet Union, and from that time he
[Hajibeyov] could devote himself wholly to Azerbaidzhan music'.31 Whilst
the first part of Boelza's statement did not always ring true, he is quite correct
with regard to Hajibeyov and the development of music in Azerbaidzhan.32
Hajibeyov very astutely saw the opportunity to take advantage of the Soviet
policy of bringing culture to the masses. In fact, Safarova describes the 1920s
as the 'organisational years' in the history of Azerbaidzhan music, and credits
Hajibeyov with being at the forefront of the movement to improve musical
education in Azerbaidzhan.33
In 1922, Hajibeyov helped establish the Baku Music School, an institution
that he himself would have benefted from had there been such a place in his
youth. In 1926, the Music School was upgraded to become the Baku State
Conservatory of Music, and Hajibeyov was appointed its permanent director
twelve years later after heading its traditional music department. Due to the
lack of sufficient local composers and musicians who were suitable for
teaching posts, it was necessary for Hajibeyov, in a move reminiscent of the
Rubinstein brothers the previous century, to invite a number of outsiders (i.e.
Russian and especially Russian Jews) to fill the teaching positions. Ironically,
one of those invited to come and teach in Baku was Georgi Sharoev, a pianist
and the grandson of the great Anton Rubinstein, while another of the teachers
Hajibeyov invited was the cellist Leopold Rostropovich, father of Mstislav
Rostropovich.
Composers who took up residence in Baku to teach at the Conservatory
included Boris Karagichev (from 1922 and 1931), the Latvian-born Leopold
Rudolf (from 1932 to 1938), and Boris Zeidman (from 1939 to 1957).34
Zeidman in particular was to play a major part in the education of
Azerbaidzhan's future composers. Amongst his pupils were Suleyman
Alasgarov, Fikret Amirov, Afasiyab Badabeyli, Sultan Hajibeyov, Jahangir
Jahangirov, and Azer Rezayev. Consequently, one writer, in crediting
Hajibeyov for encouraging this infux of teaching talent to Baku in the 1920s
and 1930s, notes that: 'with superb trainers at the helm of our educational
system, we went from what might be called "zero level" to being able to
compete at world class standards in a very brief period of about 30–40
years'.35 Hajibeyov also signifcantly contributed to the future development of
Azeri music as a pedagogue. In addition to teaching many of the
aforementioned composers, he also taught Kara Karaev, Jovdat Hajiyev,
Niyazi, and Asaf Zeynally. Perhaps even more important, however, was the
encouragement Hajibeyov gave to young Azeri women to take up a musical
career. In 1934, just fve years after the chador (the veil worn by Muslim
women) had been banned, the frst young Azerbaidzhani women began their
studies at the Conservatory. Young women such as Aghabaji Rezayeva and
Adila Huseinzade were actively encouraged by Hajibeyov to take up
composition and became Azerbaidzhan's frst female, professional
composers.36
Most studies of musical life in the Soviet Union in the 1920s quite rightly
highlight the ideological battle between the politically militant Russian
Association of Proletarian Musicians and members of the musically
progressive members of the Association of Contemporary Music. These
conflicts were mainly confined to the main musical centres of Moscow and
Leningrad, but this is not to say that there were no ideological debates on the
future of music taking place in the outlying republics. In Azerbaidzhan, for
example, there was a lively debate during the 1920s as to what degree of
Westernisation was acceptable in music. This debate was partly the result of
the cultural tastes of Mustafa Guliyev, Azerbaidzhan's Minister for
Education. Guliyev was a frm believer in the Westernisation (i.e.
Russifcation) of Azerbaidzhan. In 1924, he turned his attention to the
blossoming genre of mugam opera, criticising it for being bourgeois and
provincial. His criticisms of mugam opera found support amongst certain
sections of the populace. There was a sudden infux of letters in the local press
from oil and rail workers demanding 'cultural modern opera or nothing' and
that 'Turk opera must go', 37 and performances on traditional folk instruments
such as the tar, kamanche and zurna came under attack. Local poets also
became embroiled in the westernisation controversy. Suleyman Rustam, for
instance, wrote: 'Stop tar, stop tar. You're not loved by proletar!', only to
prompt Mikayil Mushfig's reply: 'Sing tar, sing tar! Who can forget you?38
One of the practical results of Guliyev's policy of westernising Azeri music
was the commissioning of Reinhold Glière's opera Shakh Senem, which is
often erroneously described as the first national opera of Azerbaidzhan.39 The
debate over the direction Azerbaidzhani opera should take led to the
obsolescence of mugam opera as a viable musical genre. However, mugam
operas survived in performance largely as a result of Hajibeyov's official
successes in the late 1930s, and President Nasser of Egypt was entertained on
the frst night of his state visit to Azerbaidzhan with a performance of Leyli
and Majnun in 1957. Accompanying Nasser were members of the
Azerbaidzhan Supreme Soviet. Leyli and Majnun was now perceived as an
important cultural achievement, rather than as an embarrassing example of
pre-Revolutionary bourgeois art.40 Conse- quently, later Soviet writers would
brand the attacks on mugam opera during the 1920s as constituting 'a far from
true Marxist dialectical attitude to the heritage of the past'.41
Hajibeyov's role amidst the controversies of the 1920s was as a unifying and
conciliatory figure between the opposing factions. He played a large part in
inviting Russian musicians to teach in Baku, and was thus certainly not
averse to westernising Azeri music. It could be argued in fact that from Leyli
and Majnun onwards, one of Hajibeyov's main aims was to modernise (and
therefore westernise) Azeri music. Conveniently, this aim also happened to
be in line with Soviet musical policy during the 1930s. Hajibeyov's attempts
to westernise certain aspects of Azerbaidzhani music can clearly be seen in
his work with various choral groups during the 1920s and 1930s. Azeri music
was essentially monophonic, unlike that of the neighbouring Armenians and
Georgians, and primarily performed by itinerant solo singers and
instrumentalists (ashugs and khanandes). Choral music and polyphony was
alien to Azeri musical traditions, but Hajibeyov had included it in Leyli and
Majnun. The choruses in question were somewhat basic, partly as a result of
his own limited technique at the time, and partly because of the quality of
performers available to him. Hence, the aforementioned invitation to a Jewish
chorus to perform in Sheikh Senan, because the local Azeri singers were not
up to the task. Hajibeyov set about rectifying this defciency, however, when
in 1926 he organised and trained Azerbaidzhan's first choir, and founded the
Azerbaidzhan State Choir in 1936, a decision also infuenced by the desire to
have a local ensemble capable of performing his new work, Koroghlu . It was
no coincidence therefore that the writing for the chorus is noticeably more
sophisticated in Koroghlu than in earlier works.
While Hajibeyov was engaged in westernising certain aspects of Azeri music,
he was also safeguarding the survival of the performance of traditional
instruments and music. He made a systematic study of Azeri folk music in
the mid-1920s with Muslim Magomayev that resulted in numerous
transcriptions of folk songs, which were published in 1927, and the book
Osnovy azerbaidzhanskoi narodnoi muzyki [The Foundations of
Azerbaidzhani Folk Music] (1945). Hajibeyov also founded an ensemble of
folk instruments in 1931 for which he wrote a number of pieces, including
the two fantasises Chahargar and Shur, and arranged a number of works by
Western and Russian composers. Moreover, Hajibeyov helped ensure the
survival of Azeri folk instruments by incorporating them into the traditional
Western symphonic orchestra. Whilst he included instruments like the tar in
nearly all of his works, it is in Koroghlu that Hajibeyov assimilated Azeri
instruments into a European orchestra in the most sophisticated fashion. The
choruses of Koroghlu give the work a rather Western feel, but there can be
little doubt about the work's nation of origin in passages such as the Jangi
[Warrior's Dance] with its full array of folk instruments. The incorporation of
folk instruments into a symphonic orchestra would also become standard
practice in Azerbaidzhan, although later composers were to go one step
further and write concertos for solo folk instruments and orchestra.42
Hajibeyov was therefore involved in many aspects of musical life in
Azerbaidzhan during the 1920s and early 1930s. However, he was not
particularly prolifc as a composer in comparison to his pre-Revolutionary
period, since much of his time was devoted to education. Apart from the
aforementioned works for folk instrument orchestra, Hajibeyov also
composed a trio for piano, violin and cello called Ashug saiaghi (1931).
Furthermore, the only works of Hajibeyov that were being regularly
performed at the time were his comedies Arshin Mal Alan and O Olmasin Bu
Olsin, and even they were only staged in Azerbaidzhan. This perhaps
explains why his profle, although high in his native Azerbaidzhan, was rather
low in the Soviet Union and almost totally non-existent in the West. But the
situation was to change dramatically in 1938 with the performance in
Moscow of his new opera Koroghlu as part of the first dekada of Azeri
National Art. The dekadas were ten-day festivals that had recently been
organised to introduce Russian audiences to the culture of the other ethnic
groups of the Soviet Union. At the same time they served the propaganda
purpose of highlighting to the Western world the Soviet regime's celebration
and supposed tolerance of nationality and ethnicity.43
Koroghlu can be regarded as the crowning achievement of Hajibeyov's career
as a composer. The opera's libretto, written by Mammad Sayid Ordubadi in
close collaboration with the composer, tells the story of the Ashug Rovshan's
rebellion against the oppressive local khans and beys after his father Ali had
been blinded by Hasan Khan; hence, Rovshan's nickname of Koroghlu ('the
blind man's son'). Undoubtedly the plot of Koroghlu helped the work gain
official favour from the Soviet press and Party members.44 Anecdotal
evidence suggests that a number of top Party officials approached Hajibeyov
after the Moscow premiere and started to congratulate the composer. One
official then suggested that he should compose a couple more operas like
Koroghlu. The speaker, however, was interrupted by an emphatic 'No!' from
no less a person than Stalin. This interjection resulted in Hajibeyov breaking
out in a cold sweat in fear, but he needn't have worried, because after a long
pause Stalin exclaimed: 'don't write a couple more, write two couples!'45
Hajibeyov certainly benefited from Stalin's approval of his work, and he was
awarded a Lenin Prize for Koroghlu in 1938. The opera also won for the
composer the newly inaugurated Stalin Prize in 1941, which amounted to
nearly 50,000 roubles, and Hajibeyov became the first Azeri to be made a
People's Artist of the Soviet Union in 1941. The high critical and political
esteem that both Koroghlu and its composer were held in at the time is
particularly well illustrated in a drawing (Plate 11.1) by an artist known only
by his surname, Aleksich, dating from 1940. Based on Repin's The Barge
Haulers, it depicted a number of leading Soviet composers of operas,
including Prokofiev, Kabalevskii, Khrennikov, and Shaporin, but the
composer chosen to lead the group with a tar in his hand was Hajibeyov. In
conversation with Ramazan Khalilov, the artist claimed that Koroghlu was
considered by many to be the best Soviet opera ever composed, and as a
result Hajibeyov deserved his position at the head of the procession.46
Evidence has also recently come to light that suggests that Koroghlu not only
increased Hajibeyov's reputation as a composer, but that it may also have
saved his life. The opera was produced at the height of Stalin's Terror when
the charge of Pan-Turkism or religious fundamentalism resulted in a number
of intellectuals and cultural figures in Azerbaidzhan being either arrested and
sent to the gulags or simply murdered. One victim of this purge was the poet
Mikayil Mushfig, who like Hajibeyov had been a vocifierous supporter of the
use of Azeri traditional instruments. The composer also feared for his own
safety, and according to Rugiyia Rezhayeva, a former student of Hajibeyov,
Mir Jafar Baghirov, one of Stalin's henchmen in Azerbaidzhan, asked
Huseingulu Sarabski in 1937, who had performed Majnun in the premiere of
Leyli and Majnun, whether he should 'get rid of' Hajibeyov. Sarabski
dissuaded Baghirov by saying that Hajibeyov
Plate 11.1 Drawing by Aleksich depicting leading Soviet composers with Hajibeyov at their head.
was needed to help organise and participate in the forthcoming Azeri Arts
Festival in Moscow.47 Fortunately, the festival was a success, the threat to the
composer receded, and Stalin personally authorised Hajibeyov's membership
of the Party shortly after the Moscow performance of Koroghlu .
The success of Koroghlu not only raised Hajibeyov's profle in the Soviet
Union, but it also raised awareness of him in the West. Consequently, he
received a mention in a number of publications dating from the 1940s. There
are references to him in Vodarskii-Shiraeff's Russian Composers and
Musicians (1940), Boelza's Handbook of Soviet Musicians (trans. Alan Bush,
1943), Calvocoressi's Survey of Russian Music (1944), and Moisenko's
Realist Music (1949). With the exception of Boelza's work, however, these
books all display a lack of accurate information on the composer. Vodarskii-
Shiraeff, for instance, claims that Hajibeyov only became prominent as a
composer after the revolution, and the only compositions she lists are Leyli
and Majnun and Koroghlu.48 Despite devoting eight pages to Hajibeyov,
Moisenko only refers to Leyli and Majnun and Koroghlu , and a cantata he
wrote in 1947 for the 800th anniversary of the birth of the Azeri poet
Nizami.49 One possible reason why Western authors were so poorly informed
about the true extent of Hajibeyov's compositions prior to the October
Revolution was because his works were still mostly unknown outside
Azerbaidzhan. Moreover, Hajibeyov's work had also been ignored in other
parts of the Soviet Union prior to the success of Koroghlu , despite the
official claims by the regime of its dedication to developing the cultures of
the non-Russian nationalities. Only after the success of Koroghlu was it
remembered how thirty years earlier Hajibeyov had composed Leyli and
Majnun, but his other works were neglected.
The situation changed in the Soviet Union during the late 1930s, however,
and Hajibeyov found himself the man of the moment as earlier works, such
as the musical comedy Arshin Mal Alan, were revived.50 The rehabilitation of
Arshin Mal Alan was completed in 1944 when Stalin personally
commissioned a film version of the work. Hajibeyov was too ill to adapt the
original score for the cinema himself, but his nephew, the conductor Niyazi,
carried out the task. The film proved a critical (and political) success, and
Hajibeyov was awarded his second Stalin Prize in 1946. Arshin Mal Alan was
undoubtedly one of the most famous films produced in Azerbaidzhan, and it
launched the career of the popular singer Rashid Behbudov.51 The original
comedy was well suited for adaptation to the big screen, and has been
recently praised for the 'beauty, the refnement and the melodic wealth' of its
music.52 The success of Arshin Mal Alan also contributed to the adaptation of
another of Hajibeyov's early works, O Olmasin Bu Olsin, for the cinema in
1956. It was renamed Mashadi Ibad after its main character, and proved to be
almost as popular as Arshin Mal Alan.
When Hajibeyov succumbed to the diabetes that had plagued him in his later
years and died in 1948, the seeds he had sown in laying the foundations of
Azeri music and musical life had only just begun to blossom. A whole
generation of composers, including Fikret Amirov and Kara Karaev, would
shortly make their mark not only in Azerbaidzhan, but also in the rest of the
Soviet Union and abroad. The experiments in adapting the mugam to Western
musical forms that Hajibeyov began in 1908 with Leyli and Majnun would
continue in the symphonic mugams of Amirov and Niyazi, and the art of
mugam would later also be adapted to other types of music, most notably the
mugam jazz of Vagif Mustafazade. Composers such as Amirov, Karaev,
Sultan Hajibeyov, Jovdat Hajiyev, Haji Khanmammadov, Arif Malikov, and
Niyazi would also go on to create an Azeri repertoire of symphonies,
concertos, chamber music, and ballets. Moreover, the popularity of singers
like Rashid Behbudov, who had had their frst successes performing
Hajibeyov's music, would infuence songwriters, such as Tofg Guliyev, to
compose for them and thus give birth to the genre of Azeri popular song.53
However, in the genres of musical comedy and opera, Uzeyir Hajibeyov still
reigns supreme almost a century after he composed his first stage work.
Conclusion
1 I have decided upon the spelling of Hajibeyov, because this has been the spelling in the last two
additions of the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians , and it is the correct transliteration
from the Azeri. Other spellings that occur in texts cited in this essay include Gajibekov, Gadzhibekov,
Hadjibekov, and Khadzhibekov.
2 R. Moisenko, Realist Music (London: Meridian Books Ltd., 1949), p. 80.
3 Z. Safarova, Uzeir Hajibeyov (Baku, 1985), p. 14.
4 Gori was of course also the birthplace of Joseph Stalin. I. Boelza, Handbook of Soviet Musicians
(London: Pilot Press, 1943), p. 8.
5 For greater detail on the social and political issues tackled by Molla Nasraddin, see N. Qiiasbeyli
(Jala Garibova), 'Molla Nasraddin – The Magazine', in Azerbaijan International, Autumn, 4.3, 1996,
pp. 22–23.
6 Chukhadjian was the author of Arshak II , the first Armenian opera, which was composed as early as
1868. The other composers noted also did a lot of valuable work in notating, transcribing and recording
folk songs, as well as composing original works. See Andy Nercessian's essay in this volume for further
details of these composers' activities. (Editor's note).
7 Meliton Balanchivadze was the father of the composer Andrei Balanchivadze and the choreographer
George Balanchine.
8 Ippolitov-Ivanov was active in Tifis between 1882 and 1893. A direct result of his stay there was his
two sets of Kavkazskie eskizy [Caucasian Sketches]. When he joined the staff of the Moscow
Conservatory in 1893, he was replaced by Klenovskii, who stayed in Tifis until 1902.
9 Of the Armenian and Georgian composers mentioned, only Chukhadjian (who studied in Milan),
Kara-Murza and Tigranian (who was taught by Klenovskii in Tifis) did not seem to have had any
training in either Moscow or St Petersburg.
10 For more information on the casting and original production of Leyli and Majnun, see R. Khalilov,
'Leyli and Majnun – 90th Jubilee – The Opera that Shaped the Music of a Nation', in Azerbaijan
International, Winter, 5.4, 1997, p. 25. For some amusing anecdotes concerning Farajev's belated jitters
about performing the role of a woman on stage, see F. Alakbarov, The Diary of Actor Huseingulu
Sarabski (1879–1945): Staging Hajibeyov's Opera 'Leyli and Majnun', www.Hajibeyov.com.
11 R. Moisenko, p. 81.
12 Ibid., p. 83.
13 M.D. Calvocoressi, A Survey of Russian Music (Penguin Books: Harmondsworth, 1944), p. 122.
14 M. Frolova-Walker, 'National in Form Socialist in Content: Musical Nation Building in the Soviet
Republics', in Journal of the American Musical Society, vol. 51, no. 2, 1998, p. 340.
15 Ibid.
16 S. Krebs, Soviet Composers and the Development of Soviet Music (Allen & Unwin: London, 1970),
p. 134.
17 For a discussion of Hajibeyov's use of the traditions of destan and shabekh, in addition to different
mugams, such as rast and shur, see A. Huseynova, 'Azerbaijani Mugam Opera: Challenge of the East',
in P.V. Sysoyev (ed.), Identity, Culture, and Language Teaching (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press,
2002), pp. 62–64. The destan and shabekh are both Persian in origin and date back to medieval times.
The latter can be compared to the Western oratorio in its alternating solo and choral sections, while the
former is an epic genre consisting of the spoken word and music. It is the inclusion of choral singing in
the destan and shabekh that distinguishes them from native Azeri genres.
18 Ibid., p. 66.
19 B. Blair and F. Akhundov, About Uzeyir Hajibeyov – A Conversation with Ramazan Khalilov,
www.Hajibeyov.com.
20 Ibid.
21 U. Hajibeyov, 'Letter to his Brother, Jeyhun – Moscow 1912', originally published in the paper
Adabiiat va Injasanet [Literature and Art ], 4 November 1988, no. 45, 2336, www.Hajibeyov.com.
22 I. Boelza, p. 8.
23 Z. Safarova, p. 37.
24 There is still some controversy over Jeyhun's role, since for political reasons, he was not credited for
his role in co-writing the libretto of Leyli and Majnun during the Soviet period. While credit for this has
now been given, Jeyhun's grandson, Clement Bailly, has expressed his belief in a letter posted on the
Hajibeyov.com website that there is evidence to show that Jeyhun closely collaborated with his brother
on all the works from this period. See www.hjibeyov.com/reesearch/clement/clement2.html, for further
details.
25 For a fine article detailing some of the background to some of the social satire in O Olmasin Bu
Olsin, see A. Bahadori, 'Mashadi Ibad', Azerbaijan International, Winter 1998, 6.4, pp. 18–21.
26 B. Blair, 'Arshin Mal Alan (The Cloth Peddler)', in Azerbaijan International, Autumn 2001, 9.3, p.
58.
27 U. Hajibeyov, 'Some Observations About My Work – Arshin Mal Alan', republished in M. Aslanov
(ed.), Uzeyir Hajibeyov – Selected Works (Baku, 1985).
28 Z. Safarova, pp. 43–44.
29 U. Hajibeyov, op. cit.
30 A. Malikov, 'Hajibeyov – His Real Genius', in Azerbaijan International, Winter 1997, 5.4, p. 27.
31 I. Boelza, p. 8.
32 Perhaps the best example of a national school that did not beneft from the October Revolution was
the Jewish national school. It was fully established prior to 1917, but had been forcibly disbanded by
the end of the 1920s. Those Jewish composers who stayed in the Soviet Union, such as Mikhail
Gnessin, Alexander Krein and Alexander Veprik, were 'encouraged' to use the indigenous music of
other nationalities of the Soviet Union in their work.
33 Z. Safarova, p. 48.
34 Karagichev (1869–1946) and Rudolf (1877–1938) had been pupils of Sergei Taneev. Zeidman
(1908–81) had graduated from the Leningrad Conservatory where he been taught by Maximillian
Steinberg.
35 A. Malikov, p. 26.
36 For some recollections surrounding some of the earliest women to attend the Conservatory see A.
Huseinzade, Reminiscences of Uzeyir Hajibeyov; and R. Rezayeva, Memories of Uzeyir Hajibeyov.
Both can be found online at www.Hajibeyov.com.
37 M. Frolova-Walker, p. 340.
38 A. Malikov, p. 27.
39 For example, see M. Frolova-Walker, p. 336.
40 J. Hajibeyli, 'Fiftieth Anniversary of Azerbaijan Opera – Hajibeyov's "Leyli and Majnun" (1908)', in
Caucasian Review, Munich Institute for the Study of the USSR, vol. 7. www.hajibeyov.com.
41 Z. Safarova, p. 47.
42 There are currently over twenty concertos for tar and orchestra by Azeri composers, the first
composed by Haji Khanmammadov in 1952, who was selected by Hajibeyov to perform the tar in the
early performances of Koroghlu. F. Sadikhova, 'Famous People: Then and Now – An Interview with
Haji Khanmammadov', in Azerbaijan International, Winter 1999, 7.4, p. 44.
43 The dekada of Azeri art in 1938 was the fourth such festival, following those of Kazakhstan and
Ukraine in 1936, and Uzbekistan in 1937. See Michael Rouland's essay in this volume for further
details of the dekada of Kazakh art (Editor's note).
44 There is no evidence to corroborate Marina Frolova-Walker's claim that Hajibeyov wrote Koroghlu
'at the behest of the Soviet authorities'. In fact, the author contradicts this with the earlier and equally
erroneous assertion that Koroghlu was 'consciously written as a corrective to the orientalism of Glière's
Shakh Senem'. M. Frolova-Walker, p. 355.
45 B. Blair, 'Koroghlu – Son of a Blind Man', Azerbaijan International, Autumn 2001, 9.3, p. 59.
46 B. Blair and F. Akhundov, About Uzeyir Hajibeyov – A Conversation with Ramazan Khalilov.
www.hajibeyov.com.
47 R. Rezayeva, Memories of Uzeyir Hajibeyov. www.hajibeyov.com. Ironically, Baghirov was one of
the pallbearers at Hajibeyov's funeral.
48 A. Vodarskii-Shiraeff, Russian Composers and Musicians (New York: Greenwood Press, 1940), p.
46. Calvocoressi also mentions only these two works. M.D. Calvocoressi, pp. 122–123.
49 Moisenko also claims that Hajibeyov completed an opera, Iskander Name, based on the life of
Alexander the Great in 1941. R. Moisenko, pp. 86–87. However, this is not corroborated in any other
source. Moisenko was possibly thinking of the children's opera Iskander i pastukh [Alexander and the
Shepherd] that was composed by Hajibeyov's nephew Sultan Hajibeyov in 1947.
50 An article written by Hajibeyov that was published in 1938 fnds him discussing the musical comedy
Arshin Mal Alan (1913), his last stage work prior to Koroghlu. From the article it is clear that
Hajibeyov is describing a recent performance of Arshin Mal Alan, because he describes how well the
leading tenor, Bulbul, made the transition from Koroghlu to the role of the merchant Asgar. The article
was clearly written to introduce a work that previously was little known to the Soviet public. Hajibeyov
adds with more than a trace of irony at the end of the article that 'I would like to thank the Party and our
State for preserving the most valuable of my earlier works.' U. Hajibeyov, in M. Aslanov (ed.),
www.Hajibeyov.com.
51 Behbudov would also take the role of Asgar in the colour version of the film when it was released in
1965.
52 T. Egorova, Soviet Film Music – An Historical Survey (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers,
1997), p. 89.
53 Young Azerbaidzhani composers in the late 1960s and 1970s also began to embrace modernism.
The main exponents of this so-called 'yeni musiqi' ('new music') included Kara Karaev and Ismail
Hajibeyov. The combination of modern compositional techniques with mugam elements has also
brought a measure of recognition to Franghiz Ali-Zadeh, whose music has been performed by artists of
the calibre of Yo Yo Ma and the Kronos Quartet.
54 S. Krebs, p. 133.
55 The Azerbaidzhani poet Vagif Samadoghlu, for example, has recently summed up Hajibeyov's
contribution to the development of Azerbaidzhani music as: 'he alone did the work of an entire nation'.
V. Samadoghlu, Memories of Uzeyir Hajibeyov. www.hajibeyov.com.
56 M. Frolova-Walker, p. 332.
57 B. Blair, 'Koroghlu – Son of a Blind Man', p. 59. Furthermore, after Azerbaidzhan gained its
independence it was Hajibeyov's national anthem of 1918 for the Azerbaidzhan Republic that was
chosen to replace the anthem that Hajibeyov himself had written for the Azerbaidzhan SSR.
Index
Afinogenev, Alexander 47
Agatov, V. 28
'agitmuzyka' 106, 107
Agitodel 12, 105–6, 107, 108, 115, 117
Aino (Pergament) 169–70
aitïs 192, 193
Akhliyev-Mamedov, A. 215
Akimov, Nikolai Pavlovich 33, 40, 44, 47–8
Akiner, Shirin 185
akïns 187, 192, 197–8, 200n
'Akvarium' 39
Alasgarov, Suleyman 217
Aleksich (artist) 220
Alexanderov, Grigorii 15, 43–4
Ali-Zadeh, Franghiz 226n
All-Union Radio Committee 127
Allworth, Edward 204n
Alone (film) 67, 68, 69
amateur activities:
drama groups 171;
mugam opera in Azerbaidzhan 210–11;
musical activities in Karelia 5, 163, 168, 169, 171–5, 176;
musical propaganda 112–13, 115;
Olympiads 4, 5, 123–43;
professionalisation 4, 5, 139–40, 141, 153–4, 155–6, 210
American Congress of Scientific and Art Workers in Defense of Peace March (1949) 74
Amirov, Fikret 217, 222
Anush (Armenian opera) 150
Ar va Arvad/Husband and Wife (Hajibeyov) 214
Arakishvili, Dmitrii 210
Aram Merangulian Ensemble 5, 153, 159
Armenian folk music 15, 148–62;
composers 210;
demographic context 157;
ethnomusicological school 150–1, 159–60;
folk music ensembles 153–6, 158–61;
and nationalism 149–50, 152, 160–1;
and Soviet cultural policy 4, 149, 151–61
Arnshtam, Lev 69
Arshak II (Armenian opera) 150
Arshin Mal Alan/The Cloth Peddler (Hajibeyov) 2, 210, 214–15, 219, 223;
film version 221
Arte Nova (record label) 1
Asafiev, Boris 10, 11, 191
Aseev, Nikolai 40
Asfendiarov, Sanjar 191
Association of Contemporary Music (ASM) 11, 12, 188, 217
Association of Proletarian Musicians 12, 107
Association of Revolutionary Composers and Musical Activists(ORKiMD) 105, 106, 107, 116
Atovmian, Lev 71, 72, 74
Attraktsiony v deistvii/Attractions in Action (music-hall show) 41–2
Auezov, Mukhtar 181, 187–8, 194
avant-garde:
European and Russian connections 82, 83, 84;
film music 67;
and music-hall 35, 38;
Prokofiev's Le Pas d'Acier 3–4, 81, 82;
tonal compositions 10–11, 22
Avedissian, Garen 160
Avraamov, Arsenii 10, 89
Azerbaidzhan 4, 5, 209–27;
composers in 209–27, 216–17, 222;
lack of classical tradition 210–11;
mugam opera and music 210–13, 213–14, 217–18, 222;
music education 216–17;
music under Soviet regime 215–22, 223;
popular song 222;
westernisation of music 212, 217–18;
women in society 210, 214–15, 216, 217;
see also Hajibeyov, Uzeyir
Azerbaidzhan Democratic Republic(ADR) 215
Azerbaidzhan State Choir 218
Azerbaijan International (journal) 223
Gabo, Naum 82
Garafola, Lynn 83
Garland, Judy 71
Gastev, Aleksei 87–8
Gavrilov, Maksim 176
Geldern, James von 191
Georgia:
composers 210;
folk music 149
Germany:
Germans ridiculed in song 27–8;
invasion of Soviet Union (1941) 15
Gershuni, E.P. 49
Gladkovskii, Arsenii 114
Glan, Natalia Alexanderovna 48–9
Gleichschaltung 185
Glière, Reinhold 5, 13, 111, 198–9, 212, 217–18
Glikman, Isaak 74–5
Glinka, Mikhail Ivanovich 2, 222
Gnessin, Mikhail 225n
Gogol, Nikolai:
Nos opera 13–14, 36–7
Golden Age, The (ballet) 36, 37, 47, 53
Golden Mountains, The (film) 67, 68, 69
Golden Steppe, The (song) 192, 198
Goleizovskii, Kassian 83
Goncharova, L.I. 193
Gorbenko, Arkadii 47
Gorky, Maxim 24
Gotovkin, V. 129–30
Grach, D.Ia. 40
Great Patriotic War music 15–16, 27–9
'Great Retreat' campaign 25
Gubaidulina, Sofa 17
Gudkov, Viktor 5, 172, 173–4, 175
GULag:
jazz in 29
Guliyev, Mustafa 217
Guliyev, Tofg 222
Guzman, Boris 101
Gylling, Edward 164–5, 166
'gypsy' music 19–20, 22, 24
O Olmasin Bu Olsin/If Not That One, Then This One (Hajibeyov) 210, 219, 223;
film version 221
OBERIU 38
O'Connell, Charles 71
Odisseia/The Odyssey (comic play) 40–1
Odna/Alone (film) 67, 68, 69
Ogolovets, Aleksei 196
Okurokov, E.I. 47
older Olympiad performers 134, 135
Oleynikov, Nikolai Makarovich 38
Olkhovsky, Andrey 185
Olympia (record label) 1
Olympiads 4, 123–47;
choirs 129–31, 133–5, 138, 139, 141;
cultural aims 134–8, 140, 142;
factors for success 142;
judging and prize-giving 135–6;
orchestras 126–9, 131, 133, 138–9;
organisational shortcomings 126, 132, 136, 140;
press coverage 124, 125, 136, 137;
professionalisation of performers 139–40, 141;
range ofrepertoires 133–4;
staging of events 131–3, 140–1
opera 2, 5;
in Armenia 150;
in Azerbaidzhan 2, 210–13, 217–18, 219–21;
in Kazakstan 188, 190, 191, 192, 193–7, 199;
musical propaganda 112;
Party resolution against 16;
Prokofiev 13, 17;
Shostakovich 13–14, 36–7, 47;
song opera 14–15
operettas 30, 49;
Shostakovich 67, 74–5
orchestras:
folk music revival 25;
in Karelia 5, 167, 168, 169, 170;
Kazak National Orchestra 198–9;
see also folk instrument ensembles
Ordubadi, Mammad Sayid 219
Oreshkov, N.S. 40
ORKiMD 105, 106, 107, 116
Orlova, Liubov' 64n
Wagner, Richard 98
Wait for Me (song) 28
War and Peace (Prokofiev) 17
war symphonies 15–16
Webern, Anton 17
Western music:
composers in Russia 8–9, 11;
influence of popular music 22–7;
Westernisation of Azeri music 212, 217–18;
see also jazz
Whiteman, Paul 23
women in Azerbaidzhan society 210, 214–15, 216, 217
Wood, Henry 71
Workers' Music Association (UK) 70
World of Art group 8
World War II see Great Patriotic War
Yekmalian, Makar 210
Youmans, Vincent 22