The Magical Chorus - a History of Russian Culture from Tolstoy to Solzhenitsyn by Solomon Volkov - Book Report/Review Example

 Life for Russian artists during the Soviet era was quite turbulent. Beginning with Stalin's death, however, conditions for them gradually improved. This paper will trace how they were treated in the USSR in the post-Stalinist era. It will examine how their fortunes rose and fell with each regime change. Also examined will be how artists coped with the pressures and uncertainty that were a daily part of their lives. From this an accurate picture will be gained of the relationship between the Communist regime and its writers, painters and other highly gifted creative professionals. Josef Stalin, who was a dictator of The USSR, ruled his regime with an iron fist. Prone to erratic behavior, he had absolute power over his people. This proved to be tragic for artists such as Genrick Neilhaus, who was arrested in 1941 on charges of being anti-Soviet and a “defeatist.” He was held in solitary confinement for nine months. Other musicians, who were of German descent, were executed for questionable charges. This fit in well with Stalin's attitude towards artists. He felt that they were tools to be used for propaganda purposes as he saw fit. Volkov comments on this: As Stalin saw it, classical composers in the interpretation of these talented musicians were mobilized to serve Marxist ideology, and the performers were turned into ideal representatives of the socialist camp: they possessed formidable musical technique...were optimistic, and civic-minded (as they were depicted in the media), and were happy to travel at the beck and call of the Party...i Stalin tried to create a society that was immune to the influence of western media and art forms. But he failed. Such American musicians as Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong were very popular among the Soviet people. Volkov describes this:ii Jazz, one of the most important manifestations of American culture, was used right away as a propaganda weapon. Charles Bohlen, the American ambassador to the Soviet Union, had noticed the popularity of voice of America jazz programs in Moscow and at his suggestion in1955 the station began a special project, Music USA, devoted to jazz. Classical music as well was used by Americans trying to pierce the Iron Curtain. The Boston Symphony Orchestra performed in Russia in 1956 and the Philadelphia equivalent did so in 1958. These events had a major effect on Russian social and cultural life. Stalin's successor, Nikita Khrushchev, sought both to cleanse the USSR of Stalin's memory and to forge a new alliance with its artists. Several of the writers that Stalin favored were removed from their positions, replaced by ones that the new leader saw as sympathetic to his crusade to reinvent the Soviet Union.iii In fact, overall people in the arts fared more poorly under Khrushchev than his predecessor. As Volkov notes: But over the course of his years in power (1953-1964), Khrushchev never did learn how to handle the artistic intelligentsia. Even Stalin, much better read than Khrushchev and a much better psychologist, took years to start understanding how to talk to the creative elite and still died in doubt; which worked better – carrot or stick?iv Particularly offensive was how Khrushchev dealt with Boris Pasternak, author of Doctor Zhivago. The author did challenge the Soviet leader, smuggling his novel out of the USSR to a foreign publisher. He also purposely included distinctly Christian themesv. The Soviet leader retaliated against Pasternak by having Pravda and other Russian newspapers denounce the writer. He even had angry letters fabricated that condemned Doctor Zhivago and forced Pasternak’s colleagues to publicly criticize him. The Nobel winning author was harassed all the way to the grave. He died on May 30,1960. His novel was officially banned from the Soviet Union until decades later, during Gorbachev’s reign. A new day for Soviet artists dawned after Khrushchev’s ouster in October of 1964. His successor, Leonid Brezhnev, was significantly more supportive of cultural freedoms. Limited criticism of the government was even permitted, as evidenced by Elim Klimov’s 1964 film Welcome, or No Admittance, which portrayed a Soviet summer camp for youth as responsible for turning children into mindless robotsvi. Creative professionals were still kept on a fairly tight leash, however. Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel found this out when they were tried by the state and sentenced to long sentences in prison camps. Their crime was writing anti-Soviet poetry and having it smuggled to the West, where it was published. Of all dissident writers, Solzhenitsyn, along with Andrei Sakharov, were undoubtedly the main painful thorns in the government’s side. Their most vocal enemy was KGB head Yuri Andropov. Even Solzhenitsyn’s winning of the 1970 Nobel prize for literature didn’t make him safe. On February 12, 1974, he was arrested. Luckily, the Soviets forewent imprisoning or executing him. Instead, with the help of the German government, the writer was exiled from the USSR. He eventually made it to the United States, where he spent the next twenty years. This signaled a period of mass exodus from the Soviet Union of highly educated people. Volkov discusses specific individuals who escaped the USSR: Among those who ended up in the West one way or another in the following years were a number of major cultural figures who “disturbed the peace” and whom the authorities decided to get rid of: the poets Joseph Brodsky and Alexander Galich; the writers Vladimir Maximov, Andrei Sinyavsky, Viktor Nekrasov, Vassily Aksyonov, Vladimir Voinovich, and George Vladimov; the musicians Mstislav Rostropovich and his wife Galina Vishnevskaya, and Rudolf Barshai; the sculptor Ernst Neizvestny; and the artists Oskar Rabin, Mikhail Chemiakin, and Oleg Tselkov.vii The Soviet officials felt that deporting troublesome intellectuals was the soundest way to eliminate their threat to government authority. But they were wrong. As Volkov says, “In the long run, moving all those people abroad had created the worst possible threat possible for a totalitarian system – a cultural alternative.”viii A trio of creative geniuses, film director Andrei Tarkovsky, poet Joseph Brodsky, and composer Alfred Schnittke, were particularly important in creating a Russian culture that simply ignored the Communist government altogether. From early in life they were interested in the West, wearing western clothing, watching American films, and listening to jazz. Their works glorified historical Russia without giving praise to its new Soviet masters. Nonetheless, they were highly regarded for their achievements. In 1990 the Soviets offered the Lenin prize to Schnittke for his Concerto for Mixed Chorus, despite the fact that it was overtly religious. Eventually emigrating to the West, they are seen now as having minimal impact on non-Russian culture. Their primary influence was on divorcing Russian identity from Communist ideology. Brezhnev was succeeded by two short-lived leaders, Andropov and Chernenko. The next man who ascended to power in the USSR would change it forever. His name is Mikhail Gorbachev. He is popularly regarded as a leader bent on fundamentally reforming his country from the beginning of this ascent to power. It is true that he said to his wife, “The country must change” on the night before his election. In the beginning, though, he was very much in the mold of past repressive figures. He condemned Ludmila Razumovskaya’s play Dear Elena Sergeyevna, which explored the theme of juvenile delinquency in the Soviet Union. Upset by some of its lines, he is reported to have said: Just this speech should have alerted any Soviet person, much less a cultural worker or a censor. We must state that there has been a lack of supervision and an absence of political vigilance…How long are we Communists going to be ashamed of defending our Party position and our Communist morality.ix Nevertheless, times were changing. The first signs of it began in the last ten years of Brezhnev’s reign, when emigration from Russia was widely permitted. The pace was quickened when Solzhenitsyn stepped up his public criticisms of the Soviet Union. He was joined in this by other dissidents, such as Viktor Nekrasov. The voice of America had been broadcasting pro-western programming into Soviet Russia for decades, but the influx of help from talented refugees helped create ever more effective programming. Especially important was writer Sergei Dovlatov, who moved to New York from Leningrad in 1979. He pioneered efforts to create free Russian journalism, wrote short stories that were published in The New Yorker, and was a huge help to the efforts of Radio Liberty. Soviet leaders tried to disregard the effect that these broadcasts were having on their people, but it became harder and harder to do so. The Communist government tried to respond in the 1970s by allowing a limited amount of criticism of itself. This only led to confusion on what was and was not permitted to be said. As Volkov relates: Paradoxically, a position of nonengagement on the part of the Soviet postmodern artists created additional problems for the KGB because it blurred the borders between permitted and non-permitted. The nonconformist artists and poets were not openly anti-Soviet, yet the KGB felt it necessary to give them “prophylactic” talks every now and then: “They began calling us a lot in the late 1970s, after they had put away all the dissidents, and the water level dropped sharply. That is, now the heads were visible of people who were not involved in politics or in any social protests at all.”x One of the reasons the Soviets were lenient on this type of artistic expression is that the works were commanding hefty prices from western collectors. One piece went for $412,800.00 at a Moscow auction in 1988. The terms “glasnost” and “perestroika” became commonly heard on western new shows beginning in 1985. Gorbachev announced that the two terms represented his twin goals as leader of the Soviet Union: freedom of speech and an improved, restructured economy. He did not wish to destroy the Soviet Union or its socialistic policies. Instead, he wanted to salvage both. He felt that he could best do so by introducing more intellectual and expressive freedom in the nation. Plagued by few friends in high places, he sought the aid of cultural leaders. As Volkov says: Gorbachev’s aim was socialism with a human face. He first thought he could achieve it relying only on Party cadres. But encountering fierce resistance to his reforms within the party, Gorbachev decided to use cultural forces as a battering ram. As his aides insist, his plans regarding the intelligentsia were pragmatic, even cynical; it was to service, theoretically and in practice, the new course of comparatively greater freedom of speech and limited relaxation of economic and political restrictions, reminiscent of Lenin’s new Economic Policy of the 1920s.xi What quickly become obvious was that, once given an inch, the forces of democratic reform would take a mile and much more. Gorbachev and other progressive leaders were attacked by more conservative politicians, who accused them of being CIA operative and traitors to the socialist cause. One of the strongest signs that things had irreversibly changed was the emergence of rock musicians performing openly. Rock had long been condemned by Soviet authorities as evil and anti-revolutionary. But it became so popular that the government changed its tactics. Instead of trying to destroy it entirely, officials tried to allow it limited freedom while keeping it on a tight leash. But, like so many other western influences, it proved impossible to control. The end of the USSR came in 1991, when a brief takeover by conservatives was foiled. High culture was one of the many forces that undermined its power and ultimately brought it down entirely. The Magical Chorus: a History of Russian Culture from Tolstoy to Solzhenitsyn is, more than anything else, a book about the power of ideas when they are expressed in artistic ways. It is also about the power of people who think for themselves to change an entire society. From reading it, it seems that Soviet Communism never had a chance. The Russian people have a very long and distinguished history of excellence in the arts. Their writers, composers, dancers, and painters are among the best in the world. The Communists were either unwilling or unable to eradicate them completely. So, as with Stalin, they sought to use them for propaganda purposes. They tried letting the creative persons have just enough freedom and support to encourage them to support their power over the country. But the writers, musicians, and artists would not allow themselves to just be puppets or slaves. They stood up to the censors, even when it meant them going to prison for many years. In the end, they won over the Communists. They were able to tell the world the truth about the horrible civil rights violations, economic woes, and general oppression and incompetence of the Soviet Union’s leaders. This helped to bring pressure on the USSR that its strained and highly inefficient economy could not stand up to. Creative persons have tremendous power. They can speak both to people’s minds and hearts. They can communicate important truths that can’t be stamped out by guns or bombs or torture. The Russian Communists failed to realize this. They regarded the creative class as a tool to be used for their own ends. In the final act of the play, however, it was that same tool that turned on its masters and stripped them of their power over others. The book does a good job of telling this story in detail, mentioning numerous persons who struggled against the censorship and state control that hindered their self expression. But it also keeps an eye on one of the bigger theme it develops: that art, in any its forms, cannot be turned into a mere propaganda weapon. The USSR’s creative professionals were responsible in a very large way for bringing liberty to their people. In this same way, perhaps nations like Iran, Saudi Arabia, and others that oppress their citizens may one day be changed for the better. This alone is a powerful reason to encourage the arts. They stimulate the human mind, cause people to reflect on their lives, and decide for themselves what is right and wrong. No totalitarian state can exist forever when it tries to control people like that. The arts bring freedom to everyone that they touch. This is true both in Russia and the rest of the world. Notes Read More