# Russian music in the Soviet Era



## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

I was listening to Shostakovich's 15th Symphony on the radio and after it was finished the commentator remarked that the composer's son Maxim had said that his father had told him that the symphony did not reflect his own health but, rather, that of the era. It prompted me to wonder whether or not living and working under the oppressive and downright dangerous soviet regime had any positive effect on the work of those musicians affected. Prokofiev was also not in favour with the authorities when he wrote the fantastic Symphony Concert for cello and orchestra. It's a curious thing that the Russian composers, in spite of their precarious situation, wrote some awfully brilliant stuff.

Any thoughts fans?


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

In Harold C. Schonberg's _Lives of the Great Composers_, he quotes Prokofiev's old friend Vernon Duke (Vladimir Dukelsky): "I asked Sergei (Prokofiev) a difficult question then uppermost in my mind. I wanted to know how he could live and work in the atmosphere of Soviet totalitarianism. Sergei was quiet for a moment and then said quietly and seriously: 'Here is how I feel about it: I care nothing for politics--I'm a composer first and last. Any government that lets me write my music in peace, publishes everything I compose before the ink is dry, and performs every note that comes from my pen is all right with me.'". Proko went on to say that he had a comfortable flat in Moscow, a _dacha_ in the country, and a new car, and that his sons went to an English school in Moscow. This he related to Duke on P's last trip abroad.

Later we know that Proko ran into problems with the Soviet state, and had to "recant" errors periodically, with his fingers undoubtedly crossed behind his back. But his amazing egomania and his compulsion to compose music seem to have mostly innoculated him against experiencing and internalizing the sort of dark malaise that we associate with Shostakovich's psychological profile. Prokofiev's own internalizing the need for a "new simplicity" in the music of a dutiful Soviet composer may also have served him well in the long run, as it perhaps curbed too far a wandering into the dreaded "formalism" that was the bugbear of the Soviet musical establishment, and resulted in such accessable and popular works as Romeo and Juliet, the Kije and Alexander Nevsky soundtracks, the 5th and 7th symphonies, the SQ #2, Peter and the Wolf, and so much more. Great music over the decades from a deeply flawed man.


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

Many books about Soviet art and music indicate composers were freed from some artistic imprisonment during World War II, a time when the shackles placed on people in USSR and its satellite nations were loosened because of the war. This was a brief time, however, and the late 1940s and 1950s placed similar restrictions on artists that were in place during Stalin's era of "Soviet realism" in the 1930s. In any event, the Soviet Union never produced a 12-tone composer of any note; when this music was becoming popular worldwide in the 1930s, Stalin was imposing a steel grip on the nation and its satellites. It was only in Czechoslovakia's "Prague spring" of 1968 did Soviet satellite composers from that nation feel free to use experimentation in music. The Soviets crushed that movement in middle 1968, however.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

Back in the 60s and 70s, the only biography of Prokofiev was the "official" (i.e. doctrinaire) one by Nesteyev. It's amusing and fascinating reading.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Barbebleu said:


> It prompted me to wonder whether or not living and working under the oppressive and downright dangerous soviet regime *had any positive effect on the work of those musicians affected*. … It's a curious thing that the Russian composers, in spite of their precarious situation, wrote some awfully brilliant stuff.


It likely depends on what one considers a positive effect. One _certain_ effect, however, is that Soviet composers were obliged to conceive their major works in light of Socialist Realist aesthetics. According to this "occult" doctrine, all acceptable music had meaning and expressed ideology of a positive and optimistic sort. That which did not was condemned as formalist. Consequently, composers had to consider content and meaning at every stage of the compositional process, and to possess a working knowledge of how it is inscribed in musical structure - or, at least, an understanding of how Socialist Realist critics conceived the relation of meaning and musical structure. Since the only well-formed guidance on this subject was criticism in the Beethovenian heroic tradition as expounded by writers like Adolf Bernhard Marx, Aléxandre Oulibicheff, and Wilhelm von Lenz, supplemented by Tchaikovksy's programmatic accounts of his own works based on their writing, the result was to perpetuate the heroic Beethovenian tradition well into the 20th century. If you like dramatic instrumental music unified by an overriding narrative conception, the 20thc Russians wrote enormous quantities of it for your listening pleasure long after this vein was played out in the rest of Europe. The results range from works of genius to works of cringe-worthy bombast.

For anyone interested in this subject, Richard Taruskin's "Public Lies and Unspeakable Truth: Interpreting Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony" (in Shostakovich Studies, ed. David Fanning, Cambridge University Press, 1995) is essential reading. Taruskin demonstrates how critics applied the principles of Socialist Realist criticism in arguing for and against Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony after its premier.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

MarkW said:


> Back in the 60s and 70s, the only biography of Prokofiev was the "official" (i.e. doctrinaire) one by Nesteyev. It's amusing and fascinating reading.


I can and have recommended Claude Samuel's slender biography, _Prokofiev_, first published in 1960 in its original French. It was published in English in 1971 and again in 2000. A perceptive look at an idiosyncratic, prolific genius.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

EdwardBast said:


> It likely depends on what one considers a positive effect. One _certain_ effect, however, is that Soviet composers were obliged to conceive their major works in light of Socialist Realist aesthetics. According to this "occult" doctrine, all acceptable music had meaning and expressed ideology of a positive and optimistic sort. That which did not was condemned as formalist. Consequently, composers had to consider content and meaning at every stage of the compositional process, and to possess a working knowledge of how it is inscribed in musical structure - or, at least, an understanding of how Socialist Realist critics conceived the relation of meaning and musical structure. Since the only well-formed guidance on this subject was criticism in the Beethovenian heroic tradition as expounded by writers like Adolf Bernhard Marx, Aléxandre Oulibicheff, and Wilhelm von Lenz, supplemented by Tchaikovksy's programmatic accounts of his own works based on their writing, the result was to perpetuate the heroic Beethovenian tradition well into the 20th century. If you likes dramatic instrumental music unified by an overriding narrative conception, the 20thc Russians wrote enormous quantities of it for you listening pleasure long after this vein was played out in the rest of Europe. The results range from works of genius to works of cringe-worthy bombast.
> 
> For anyone interested in this subject, Richard Taruskin's "Public Lies and Unspeakable Truth: Interpreting Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony" (in Shostakovich Studies, ed. David Fanning, Cambridge University Press, 1995) is essential reading. Taruskin demonstrates how critics applied the principles of Socialist Realist criticism in arguing for and against Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony after its premier.


I've always been impressed how the Shostakovich Fifth could at one and the same time be both a parody of the kind of music a megalomaniac like Stalin could love, and exactly the kind of music a megalomaniac like Stalin could love.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Strange Magic said:


> I can and have recommended Claude Samuel's slender biography, _Prokofiev_, first published in 1960 in its original French. It was published in English in 1971 and again in 2000. A perceptive look at an idiosyncratic, prolific genius.


I recommend Harlow Robinson's meaty _Prokofiev_, 1987 and 2002.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

MarkW said:


> I've always been impressed how the Shostakovich Fifth could at one and the same time be both a parody of the kind of music a megalomaniac like Stalin could love, and exactly the kind of music a megalomaniac like Stalin could love.


What makes you think it's a parody? Read the Taruskin. He deals with that issue and lays waste to the anti-Stalinist parody theories of Ian MacDonald, Volkov and others.

Stalin probably wouldn't have cared one way or another if he even paid attention.


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## 20centrfuge (Apr 13, 2007)

Strange Magic said:


> ... Great music over the decades from a deeply flawed man.


I'm just wanting more about this. What made him a "deeply flawed man" (Prokofiev)?


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

20centrfuge said:


> I'm just wanting more about this. What made him a "deeply flawed man" (Prokofiev)?


Just a few quick observations: Proko was very, excessively, sparing in his praise and appreciation of other composers. Ravel was one of the few (who else?) to gain P's plaudits. He seems always to have resented Stravinsky's success, influence, and popularity; he loathed Debussy's music, wrote of sleeping through Sibelius' 2nd symphony. And others reciprocated--Stravinsky and Shostakovich calling him bad names. P said he and Rachmaninoff hated one another's guts. Not Mister Warmth, and always eager for a "misunderstanding".

His treatment of his wife Lina was selfish and callous, finally abandoning her for a new disciple and leaving her to the tender mercies of the Soviet state, which jailed her.

And, as has been noted, his indifference to the downside of Soviet totalitarianism--this is no Beethoven shaking his fist in the face of oppression. But the Harlow Robinson bio offers a very complete picture--highly recommended.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

20centrfuge said:


> I'm just wanting more about this. What made him a "deeply flawed man" (Prokofiev)?


Starting life as a spoiled brat? 

Where to begin? When he was a thirteen year-old in a theory class of young adults at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, he carried a little notebook in which he kept track of his classmates' mistakes, which he later lorded over them. He was by all accounts a grade A a$$h--e. But one of the main things is that he dragged his wife and children back to the USSR without regard for their safety and comfort after establishing himself in the west. Essentially, he sold his soul for the perks of a dacha, a car, a nice apartment and the certainty of his works being performed. When his wife came under suspicion during one of the purges because of her western ties (she was a Spanish singer) and was sent to the camps in Siberia for seven years, he did nothing and then took up with a loyal communist wench before the sheets were cold.

Edit: That, and what Strange Magic said ^ ^ ^ .


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## David Phillips (Jun 26, 2017)

It's interesting that of the two totalitarian systems, the Soviets produced greater music than the Nazis. Presumably because the good German composers could leave and the Soviet composers couldn't.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

David Phillips said:


> It's interesting that of the two totalitarian systems, the Soviets produced greater music than the Nazis. Presumably because the good German composers could leave and the Soviet composers couldn't.


Hindemith, Orff, Pfitzner, Strauss pop into my mind as Germans in Germany 1933-1945. Pretty much kept a low profile, as some were part Jewish or married to perhaps "suspect" people, or just saw clearly that to stick up one's head too high was to get it chopped off. At least Stalin didn't cast over his composers as sinister a shadow as did Hitler over his, maybe because his anti-semitism and anti-"formalism" was only a small component of his blunderbuss overall brutality. Also, he enlisted his composers in efforts to glorify the motherland and energize its population. Not sure Hitler ever had that idea.


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## Guest (Dec 10, 2017)

This is a fascinating thread, especially about Proko.

It often seems like great art is produced where there is a lot of cash (eg Renaissance Italy). Despite the controls over what they wrote, did the Soviets provide better education and living standards for composers and musicians than was available in the west?


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

Also keep in mind Prokofiev's religious beliefs, which he converted to with Lina in the 1920s. Read up on some of that below. That was partially why they went to the USSR willingly despite rumors of oppression.

https://spectator.org/55393_hammer-sickle-and-christian-scientist/


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## LarryShone (Aug 29, 2014)

Indeed they wrote some marvellous stuff but getting it published was another matter! I really feel for Shostakovich, an artist living in a stifling environment.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Huilunsoittaja said:


> Also keep in mind Prokofiev's religious beliefs, which he converted to with Lina in the 1920s. Read up on some of that below. That was partially why they went to the USSR willingly despite rumors of oppression.
> 
> https://spectator.org/55393_hammer-sickle-and-christian-scientist/


Thank you so much for this link! Excellent documentation and insight into the strange person who was Sergei Prokofiev.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Fascinating stuff on Prokofiev! Many thanks for linking to the article.


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## Boston Charlie (Dec 6, 2017)

Despite the fact that Shostakovich borrowed much from Prokofiev (especially in Shostakovich's more youthful works), the two were poles apart in several ways. Prokofiev, to my ears, adheres to a classical ideal (Haydn and Mozart; hence the wonderful "Classical Symphony"); one that is abstract, objective, emotionally clear, and musical. Underneath the Early Modernism, Shostakovich is a Romantic; emotionally conflicted and subjective; like Beethoven, Tchaikovsky or Mahler, projecting his own secret war with himself into the music. Indeed, there is an undercurrent of sadness, despair, anxiety and anger in Shostakovich. 

Prokofiev was a talented chess player, a problem solver, his music fits together like a beautiful combination or endgame. Along this line, I suspect that Prokofiev's adherence to Christian Science was mostly pragmatic, useful as a means to positive thinking as opposed to a deeply felt spiritual belief. Shostakovich, on the other hand, leaves us forever trying to figure out what he means to say. 

For me, Prokofiev is almost always accessible. I can listen to Prokofiev almost anytime. For Shostakovich, I have to be in the mood for it.


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## Zhdanov (Feb 16, 2016)

Barbebleu said:


> living and working under the oppressive and downright dangerous soviet regime


it was neither oppressive or dangerous, get your facts right.


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## Zhdanov (Feb 16, 2016)

LarryShone said:


> I really feel for Shostakovich, an artist living in a stifling environment.


and which environment was not 'stifling' back then?


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## Guest (Dec 11, 2017)

Zhdanov said:


> and which environment was not 'stifling' back then?


McCarthyism.

HUAC


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Rapid decay of an interesting thread .


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## Guest (Dec 11, 2017)

Strange Magic said:


> Rapid decay of an interesting thread .


Why did Proko prefer east to west?


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Tulse said:


> Why did Proko prefer east to west?


Read the article linked to in post #16.


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## Guest (Dec 11, 2017)

I did.

But did Strange Magic?


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Tulse said:


> Why did Proko prefer east to west?


Yes, read the article. But - spoiler alert: Prokofiev preferred the USSR because everything he wrote was assured of performance - at least when he wasn't being censored and silenced for formalism. That was the only thing that really mattered to him.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Zhdanov said:


> it was neither oppressive or dangerous, get your facts right.


Yes, if one was not among the hundreds of thousands dying in the camps, the millions dying in famines from failed five-year plans, or those lucky artists being stabbed through the eyes or shot in the back of the head.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Tulse said:


> Why did Proko prefer east to west?


"In Harold C. Schonberg's Lives of the Great Composers, he quotes Prokofiev's old friend Vernon Duke (Vladimir Dukelsky): "I asked Sergei (Prokofiev) a difficult question then uppermost in my mind. I wanted to know how he could live and work in the atmosphere of Soviet totalitarianism. Sergei was quiet for a moment and then said quietly and seriously: 'Here is how I feel about it: I care nothing for politics--I'm a composer first and last. Any government that lets me write my music in peace, publishes everything I compose before the ink is dry, and performs every note that comes from my pen is all right with me.'". Proko went on to say that he had a comfortable flat in Moscow, a dacha in the country, and a new car, and that his sons went to an English school in Moscow."

Tulse, for your benefit, I repeat one of my previous posts. You must have skipped over it.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Zhdanov said:


> it was neither oppressive or dangerous, get your facts right.


From Wiki's entry on Shostakovich: "...1936 marked the beginning of the Great Terror, in which many of the composer's friends and relatives were imprisoned or killed. These included his patron Marshal Tukhachevsky (shot months after his arrest); his brother-in-law Vsevolod Frederiks (a distinguished physicist, who was eventually released but died before he got home); his close friend Nikolai Zhilyayev (a musicologist who had taught Tukhachevsky; shot shortly after his arrest); his mother-in-law, the astronomer Sofiya Mikhaylovna Varzar (sent to a camp in Karaganda); his friend the Marxist writer Galina Serebryakova (20 years in camps); his uncle Maxim Kostrykin (died); and his colleagues Boris Kornilov and Adrian Piotrovsky (executed)."

I can see how this might seem, to a sensitive soul like Dmitri, just a touch alarming. Especially after he had just been attacked by name in Pravda, the article saying, "This could all end very badly."


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## Guest (Dec 12, 2017)

EdwardBast said:


> Yes, read the article. But - spoiler alert: Prokofiev preferred the USSR because everything he wrote was assured of performance - at least when he wasn't being censored and silenced for formalism. That was the only thing that really mattered to him.


Sigh. I did. I was merely responding to Strange Magic's snarky comment in like manner.

You make my point for me. Thanks.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Tulse said:


> Sigh. I did. I was merely responding to Strange Magic's snarky comment in like manner.
> 
> You make my point for me. Thanks.


And that point is......what?


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Dovlatov

Sergei Dovlatov told about the difference between East and West: In the East life was difficult, but as an author he was in direct contact with many readers. In the West life was easy, but alas, no contact at all with any reader. I guess, that composers encountered the same experience.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

"Dovlatov wrote prose fiction but his numerous attempts to get published in the Soviet Union were in vain. Unable to publish in the Soviet Union, Dovlatov circulated his writings through samizdat and by having them smuggled into Western Europe for publication in foreign journals; an activity that caused his expulsion from the Union of Soviet Journalists in 1976."

Above quote from that Wikipedia link.


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## Zhdanov (Feb 16, 2016)

EdwardBast said:


> Yes, if one was not among the hundreds of thousands dying in the camps,


gulags were built for murderers, rapists and thieves; also it was more chance you don't die there.



EdwardBast said:


> the millions dying in famines from failed five-year plans,


not famines but mainly of natural causes. 5 year plans were mostly successful.



EdwardBast said:


> or those lucky artists being stabbed through the eyes


and who was? names?



EdwardBast said:


> or shot in the back of the head.


names? how many?


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## Zhdanov (Feb 16, 2016)

KenOC said:


> From Wiki's entry on Shostakovich


as if wiki is a reliable source... let's go through each case to clarify the relation, so that it does not turn out he in fact was not close with many of them.


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## Zhdanov (Feb 16, 2016)

Strange Magic said:


> "Dovlatov wrote prose fiction but his numerous attempts to get published in the Soviet Union were in vain. Unable to publish in the Soviet Union, Dovlatov circulated his writings through samizdat and by having them smuggled into Western Europe for publication in foreign journals; an activity that caused his expulsion from the Union of Soviet Journalists in 1976."


there's something wrong with that story and Dovlatov himself, otherwise how authors like Rasputin did get published in CCCP at all?


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

There is always "something wrong" with stories of Stalin and Stalinist brutality that emerge over the decades. In Russia today, it must be difficult to both be appalled by his history of cynicism and ruthlessness, yet compelled to--since he was Russian (was he, really?)--count him as a Great Leader rather than a gangster on a vast scale. Here's bit of history on Stalin's purges of the late 1930s that involved the military and swept up Shostakovich's Marshal Tukhachevsky, head of the Red Army:

"Out of 80 members of the 1934 Military Soviet only 5 were left in September 1938. All 11 Deputy Commissars for Defense were eliminated. Every commander of a military district (including replacements of the first "casualties") had been executed by the summer of of 1938. 13 out of 15 army commanders, 57 out of 85 corps commanders, 110 out of 195 divisional commanders, 220 out of 406 brigade commanders, were executed. But the greatest numerical loss was borne in the Soviet officer corps from the rank of colonel downward and extending to company commander level."

Alan Clark, _Barbarossa_


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

Zhdanov said:


> there's something wrong with that story and Dovlatov himself, otherwise how authors like Rasputin did get published in CCCP at all?


Sergei Dovlatov and his friend Joseph Brodsky are interesting witnesses, who were both able to compare cultural life in the Soviet Union with cultural life in 'the West'. Joseph Brodsky however became an anti-Soviet propaganda puppet  a way of earning your daily bread), but Sergei Dovlatov kept an impartial critical view on both sides, both 'East' and 'West'. This thread is about deeper understanding the fact why cultural life in the Soviet Union was 'flowering' despite all the stories about suppression of freedom. Nadezhda Mandelstam didn't like Joseph Brodsky, when he frequented the house of Anna Achmatova. So how *was* the cultural life in the Soviet Era, and I would add: how *is* cultural life in the Post-Soviet Era?


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## spidersrepublic (Dec 12, 2017)

Lets have some Schnittke:






Favorite Lesser known soviet composers?

This album is also very interesting - recordings on the ANS synthesizer by soviet composers and musicians:


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## Flamme (Dec 30, 2012)

Hey wheres my post guys...


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

About Rasputin, from the quoted Wikipedia article:

"Some critics accused Rasputin of idealizing village life and slipping into anti-modern polemics. The journal Voprosy literatury published an ongoing debate on the question, "Is the Village Prose of Valentin Rasputin Anti-Modern?" Controversy intensified in the 1980s, as Rasputin became associated with the nationalist organization Pamyat (Память: "Memory"). Originally formed to preserve monuments and examples of traditional Russian architecture, Pamyat became increasingly known for a reactionary, antisemitic form of Russian nationalism. Rasputin has been criticized for his involvement with organizations like that. Rasputin himself argues that his alleged antisemitic statements have been exaggerated and taken out of context.

Since the beginning of Perestroika, Rasputin adopted a line critical of the reforms. His repetition (at the 1st Russian Congress of People's Deputies) of Stolypin's statement "You need great upheavals. We need a great country" («Вам нужны великие потрясения. Нам нужна великая страна») made it a phrase commonly used by the antiliberal opposition. In July, 1991, Rasputin signed the open letter "A Word to the People", other signatories of which were mostly Soviet functionaries opposed to Gorbachev's reforms. In 1992, Valentin Rasputin joined the National Salvation Front (a coalition of radical opposition forces), nominally belonging to its leadership. He later supported the CPRF and its leader, Gennady Zyuganov."


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## Flamme (Dec 30, 2012)

Russia is such a vast country it can be hold together only with an iron fist...Sad but true...Also some nations have inclinations toward dictatorships, more than others...Russia, Serbia, which is pretty much ''small russia'' without the great population and resources though...


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Flamme said:


> Russia is such a vast country it can be hold together only with an iron fist...Sad but true...Also some nations have inclinations toward dictatorships, more than others...Russia, Serbia, which is pretty much ''small russia'' without the great population and resources though...


So far, so true. Russia has also been cursed with some of the worst luck in the world--when one considers the utter ineptitude of the last tsar Nicholas, and combines that with the tragedy of WWI, to stifle the real prospects for economic growth and emerging democratic government in pre-revolutionary Russia--one is struck by a sense of tragedy and doom. It is a wonder that despite its snake-bitten history, so much beauty, art, music, talent have emerged from Mother Russia.


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## Flamme (Dec 30, 2012)

Im probably ''rara avis in terra'' in my country which is ''enchanted'' by russians...I highly respect their culture and music, i even hold russian composers to be the most soothing to my ear, but when it comes to politics and economy hmm...Im part catholic and part orthodox and i know what other eastern and western slavic catholics suffered under soviet and russian rule so i can be objective...It was always gloomy there but i think such conditions in combinations with fertile and creative slavic spirit breed the literature and musical pieces that move boundaries of human experience!


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Zhdanov said:


> gulags were built for murderers, rapists and thieves; also it was more chance you don't die there.
> 
> not famines but mainly of natural causes. 5 year plans were mostly successful.
> 
> ...


Look it up in the last seven threads where we had this same discussion. 

Natural cause: collective farming

Names? How many: See Ken's post (#31) and add Meyerhold and Babel.

Answer Strange Magic's statements in #39.



Zhdanov said:


> as if wiki is a reliable source... let's go through each case to clarify the relation, so that it does not turn out he in fact was not close with many of them.


All of the information in Ken's post is supported by reputable biographies of Shostakovich - you can read the sources at the bottom of the Wiki article.


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## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrei_Zhdanov

Interesting, nyet? Whither Zhdanov?


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## Zhdanov (Feb 16, 2016)

Strange Magic said:


> Stalin's purges of the late 1930s that involved the military and swept up Shostakovich's Marshal Tukhachevsky,


as if Tukhachevsky or anyone there at the moment was angel's. Tukhachevsky is remembered only for his crushing of peasants rebellion and the failed Polish campaign, when as a result hundreds thousand Red Army soldiers perished at the hands of the Poles... he maybe a hero in Western propaganda anti-Russian textbooks, for some unclear reason, but in fact he is not. Stalin was right to get rid of those who sabotaged the drive of CCCP to glory and prosperity.


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## Zhdanov (Feb 16, 2016)

Strange Magic said:


> the utter ineptitude of the last tsar Nicholas, and combines that with the tragedy of WWI,


neither Nikolai II was inept, nor WWI was a tragedy for Imperial Russia that won the war together with France & Britain, it was the tsar who proposed to form The Triple Entente, don't confuse it with the defeat of Soviet Russia in WWI.


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## Zhdanov (Feb 16, 2016)

EdwardBast said:


> Natural cause: collective farming


nope, the Kolkhozes introduced by Stalin put an end to famines and had since then been most reliable in the world; i was there when Gorbatchov and his perestroika lead the country to crisis, in the end of 1980s, there was only the Kolkhozes left to supply shops with food on regular basis. Americans came later and destroyed most of them along with the rest of Soviet industry.



EdwardBast said:


> See Ken's post (#31) and add Meyerhold and Babel.


that is, not many.



EdwardBast said:


> All of the information in Ken's post is supported by reputable biographies of Shostakovich


there's no such thing as 'reputable biography'. you can trust only facts and common sense.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

"...the Kolkhozes introduced by Stalin put an end to famines..."

A UN statement on 10 November 2003, signed by 25 countries including Russia and Ukraine:

“In the former Soviet Union millions of men, women and children fell victims to the cruel actions and policies of the totalitarian regime. The Great Famine of 1932–1933 in Ukraine (Holodomor), took from 7 million to 10 million innocent lives and became a national tragedy for the Ukrainian people. In this regard, we note activities in observance of the seventieth anniversary of this Famine, in particular organized by the Government of Ukraine.”

“Honouring the seventieth anniversary of the Ukrainian tragedy, we also commemorate the memory of millions of Russians, Kazakhs and representatives of other nationalities who died of starvation in the Volga River region, Northern Caucasus, Kazakhstan and in other parts of the former Soviet Union, as a result of civil war and forced collectivisation, leaving deep scars in the consciousness of future generations.”


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Strangely, in the matter of Soviet economic history, I find myself siding with Zhdanov.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Zhdanov said:


> neither Nikolai II was inept, nor WWI was a tragedy for Imperial Russia that won the war together with France & Britain, it was the tsar who proposed to form The Triple Entente, don't confuse it with the defeat of Soviet Russia in WWI.


One of my favorite quotes from the classic sitcom _Cheers_ is when after Cliff Clavin has delivered up another of his ludicrous "explanations" of something or other, Frazier asks him, "Cliff, what color is the sky in your world?" Just suddenly popped into my head for no reason.


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## Guest (Dec 14, 2017)

Strange Magic said:


> One of my favorite quotes from the classic sitcom _Cheers_ is when after Cliff Clavin has delivered up another of his ludicrous "explanations" of something or other, Frazier asks him, "Cliff, what color is the sky in your world?" Just suddenly popped into my head for no reason.


Are you saying that Zhdanov has some kind of mental incapacity (because you disagree with him)?


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Having read three books on the Russian Revolution (one by a Russian), all of which naturally discuss Nicholas II, and two books dealing specifically with Nicholas II--I noted their unanimity on the subject of his utterly pedestrian mind, almost to the point of subnormal intelligence. Nicholas was mediocrity enthroned: incurious, obsessed by the minutiae of ritual and protocol, by the wearing of proper uniform, by the "need" to keep his autocracy intact, and otherwise oblivious to the world around him outside of the daily tedium of a suffocating court. Only within his family life did he display any positive qualities. Ineptitude in matters requiring leadership, statecraft, knowledge of the world therefore is perhaps too generous a term for this inert being.

I am unaware, as is the rest of the known world, that Imperial Russia won WWI. Why was I (or were we) not informed?


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Zhdanov said:


> as if Tukhachevsky or anyone there at the moment was angel's. Tukhachevsky is remembered only for his crushing of peasants rebellion and the failed Polish campaign, when as a result hundreds thousand Red Army soldiers perished at the hands of the Poles... he maybe a hero in Western propaganda anti-Russian textbooks, for some unclear reason, but in fact he is not. Stalin was right to get rid of those who sabotaged the drive of CCCP to glory and prosperity.


This then may explain the 1940 Katyn Massacre of the cream of Polish leadership and intelligentsia:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre

Stalin: a great man indeed!


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## Guest (Dec 14, 2017)

Strange Magic said:


> Having read three books on the Russian Revolution (one by a Russian), all of which naturally discuss Nicholas II, and two books dealing specifically with Nicholas II--I noted their unanimity on the subject of his utterly pedestrian mind, almost to the point of subnormal intelligence. Nicholas was mediocrity enthroned: incurious, obsessed by the minutiae of ritual and protocol, by the wearing of proper uniform, by the "need" to keep his autocracy intact, and otherwise oblivious to the world around him outside of the daily tedium of a suffocating court. Only within his family life did he display any positive qualities. Ineptitude in matters requiring leadership, statecraft, knowledge of the world therefore is perhaps too generous a term for this inert being.
> 
> I am unaware, as is the rest of the known world, that Imperial Russia won WWI. Why was I (or were we) not informed?


Are you saying that Zhdanov has some kind of mental incapacity (because you disagree with him)?


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Tulse said:


> Are you saying that Zhdanov has some kind of mental incapacity (because you disagree with him)?


Are you saying that I am saying that Zhdanov has some kind of mental incapacity (because I disagree with him)? Regarding Zhdanov, he has a source of alternative facts that he keeps in a secret location. Perhaps if we can learn the color of the sky there, we might find that source and ourselves become wise .


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## Zhdanov (Feb 16, 2016)

Strange Magic said:


> "Cliff, what color is the sky in your world?"


incidentally, i live in Russia, i was born in CCCP, i lived there; meanwhile you don't and didn't... still you talk it like you know.



Strange Magic said:


> Having read three books on the Russian Revolution (one by a Russian), all of which naturally discuss Nicholas II


don't read books. just look at facts.



Strange Magic said:


> Nicholas was mediocrity enthroned


that's a lie spawned by fraudulent scholars to justify his dethronement and murder.



Strange Magic said:


> I am unaware, as is the rest of the known world, that Imperial Russia won WWI. Why was I (or were we) not informed?


but you were informed, look at the timeline. Imperial Russia did not pull out of WWI, it was Lenin who did, and this was one of his points in Bolshevist propaganda.

on the other hand, Western scholarship does not favor going into details, to such an extent - they might have confused tsar Nicholai II with Vladimir Lenin, as well as Imperial Russia with Soviet Russia, so you end up believing Nikolai & Lenin were the same person and The Russian Empire & CCCP were the same country.

i saw movies and read publications on the subject of Russia coming from the West - what a load of BS, all of these.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Zhdanov said:


> incidentally, i live in Russia, i was born in CCCP, i lived there; meanwhile you don't and didn't... still you talk it like you know.
> 
> don't read books. just look at facts.
> 
> ...


Zhdanov, thank you for this material; it is priceless. Just to reassure you, I am capable of distinguishing Nicholas II from V. Lenin, Imperial Russia from the Soviet Union, WWI from WWII, etc. I remind you that you posted that Imperial Russia won WWI; would you care to retract that assertion at this time? But I must confess that my error clearly is that I, unlike you, read books, and am not exposed to pure "facts" as are you--you have that advantage over us all.


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## Guest (Dec 14, 2017)

Did France win WW2?


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

The thread has turned purely political. Please discuss _Russian music _ in the Soviet Era.


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## Zhdanov (Feb 16, 2016)

mmsbls said:


> The thread has turned purely political. Please discuss _Russian music _ in the Soviet Era.


but why not move this thread to Politics & Religion forum?


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

The example of the throttling of the musical voice of Alexander Mosolov, as detailed in the Wikipedia article linked below, will reveal what happened to Soviet composers who lacked the international reputation that shielded people like Prokofiev, Khachaturian, and Shostakovich from the full enthusiasm of Stalin's and the government's wrath. It makes for interesting reading:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Mosolov


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

Zhdanov said:


> but why not move this thread to Politics & Religion forum?


Maybe it should be there, but my comment would apply there as well. It is not the Politics & Religion forum but rather the Politics & Religion _in Classical Music_ forum.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

I've read more closely. I now retract my earlier statement. The sir in question has veered off into the realms of fantasy.


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

Well, how about the basic question of this thread? Is it possible to state that in the Soviet Era composing music or writing books was one of the few possibilities to free oneself from all pressures & sorrows related to the Soviet way of life? And as soon as one was recognised as a composer or writer, these composers and writers became part of a wider cultural network that inspired them to create more? Compared with this the Western culture perhaps always was much more diffuse/less present as there were/are so many possibilities to live in freedom.


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## manyene (Feb 7, 2015)

Zhdanov said:


> as if Tukhachevsky or anyone there at the moment was angel's. Tukhachevsky is remembered only for his crushing of peasants rebellion and the failed Polish campaign, when as a result hundreds thousand Red Army soldiers perished at the hands of the Poles... he maybe a hero in Western propaganda anti-Russian textbooks, for some unclear reason, but in fact he is not. Stalin was right to get rid of those who sabotaged the drive of CCCP to glory and prosperity.


Read Robert Conquest's 'The Great Terror'


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## Flamme (Dec 30, 2012)

I like the Fiery spirit of russian compositions of that era...So full of energy, stadfast, perseverence...In this hollow and empty day and age it really invokes the inner strength to fight in life...


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

TxllxT said:


> Sergei Dovlatov told about the difference between East and West: In the East life was difficult, but as an author he was in direct contact with many readers. In the West life was easy, but alas, no contact at all with any reader. I guess, that composers encountered the same experience.


Another and similar quote: "In the west, anything is possible but nothing matters. In Russia, nothing is possible but everything matters." Can't remember where I read that.


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## Zhdanov (Feb 16, 2016)

Strange Magic said:


> The example of the throttling of the musical voice of Alexander Mosolov, as detailed in the Wikipedia


can't see how did they 'throttle' him better than he did it on himself -



> _On February 4, 1936, Mosolov was expelled from the Composers' Union for treating waiters poorly and taking part in a drunken brawl in Press House, a local restaurant. After this, Mosolov traveled voluntarily to the Turkmen and Uzbek republics to collect folk songs as a form of rehabilitation. His attempts were unsuccessful, and he was arrested on November 4, 1937 for alleged counter-revolutionary activities under Article 58, Paragraph 10 of the Soviet criminal code and sentenced to eight years in the Gulag. He served in the prison from December 23, 1937 until August 25, 1938. Glière and Myaskovsky had sent a letter to Mikhail Kalinin, the chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, arguing for Mosolov's release citing his turn towards realism, his "outstanding creative ability," and the fact that neither teacher had seen in Mosolov any anti-Soviet disposition. On July 15, 1938, Mosolov's sentence was commuted to a five-year exile-he could not live in Moscow, Leningrad, or Kiev until 1942. His quick release, having only served eight months of his eight-year sentence, was possible because he had been imprisoned not on political charges but on an overblown accusation of "hooliganism" brought by Mosolov's enemies in the Composers' Union._


- and would he get off easy if happened to live in the west?


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## Zhdanov (Feb 16, 2016)

TxllxT said:


> Is it possible to state that in the Soviet Era composing music or writing books was one of the few possibilities to free oneself from all pressures & sorrows related to the Soviet way of life?


one didn't have or feel need to 'free oneself' let alone 'pressures & sorrows' in relation to 'Soviet way of life'.

i was born in CCCP and i lived there, and i remember no pressure or sorrow whatsoever.

it was only when i moved to the West for a while that i began to feel pressure indeed.

so, in reality, no composer or writer in the Soviet Union was to experience 'pressure' or 'sorrow' either.


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## Zhdanov (Feb 16, 2016)

manyene said:


> Read Robert Conquest's 'The Great Terror'


are you kidding me? Conquest was a liar and CIA & MI6 agent, look at his awards & honors... one must be very naive or malicious to believe his claims in these books.



KenOC said:


> "In the west, anything is possible but nothing matters. In Russia, nothing is possible but everything matters." Can't remember where I read that.


in some anti-Russian publication, intended to insult us Russians, i presume, but why you guys won't stop insulting us? what do you mean by 'nothing is possible'? Shostakovich, Khachaturan, Sviridov, Schnittke, Gubaidullina and many others had not ever been, you say?

i was there, and i can attest CCCP had lots of opportunities; my grandfathers and uncles were elevated from peasantry to dazzling careers, all thanks to the Soviet state and its policies.

i thus have to ask - who gave you the right to malign the country, its people and their glorious past? Western folks may feel hard done by, for some reason, but it is not Russians to blame, trust me.


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## Guest (Dec 15, 2017)

Zhdanov said:


> are you kidding me? Conquest was a liar and CIA & MI6 agent, look at his awards & honors... one must be very naive or malicious to believe his claims in these books.
> 
> in some anti-Russian publication, intended to insult us Russians, i presume, but why you guys won't stop insulting us? what do you mean by 'nothing is possible'? Shostakovich, Khachaturan, Sviridov, Schnittke, Gubaidullina and many others had not ever been, you say?
> 
> i was there, and i can attest CCCP had lots of opportunities; my grandfathers and uncles were elevated from peasantry to dazzling careers, all thanks to the Soviet state and its policies.


A lot of this Russian hating comes from the political climate in the US, ie state and media propaganda, the very thing that the west accused the USSR / CCCP of back in the day. It is hard to believe that so many Russian composers were being stifled when their output was so good. There needs to be some balance and perspective rather than this constant 'Russians and Americans' saga. Get over it. :tiphat:


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

An interesting English language website about Russian culture: 'Russia beyond the headlines' (supported by the Russian government like RT & Sputnik) today published this:

https://www.rbth.com/history/327030-worthy-of-greatest-glory-famine-help

A Dutch saying: You don't need to be more popish than the pope.

But what about the difference between East & West: where does one experience more pressure & difficulties, when one is composing, writing etc. ? Probably on both sides there are paradises in trouble...


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Zhdanov chose not to include this paragraph from the Wikipedia article on Mosolov:

"After the onset of socialist realism as the official aesthetic of the Soviet Union in 1932, Mosolov traveled to Central Asia, where he researched and collected samples of Turkmen, Tajik, Armenian, and Kyrgyz songs. Mosolov became the first composer to create a symphonic suite on a Turkmen folk song. His settings of folk songs were met with criticism from Soviet arbiters. Rather than simply set the melodies in an orchestral setting, Mosolov used dense textures and polytonality that disregarded the style of socialist realism. In 1932 and in desperation, he wrote a letter to Joseph Stalin pleading for Stalin's influence. In his letter, Mosolov wrote, "Since 1926, I am an object of permanent badgering. Now, this has become insufferable. I must compose, and my works must be performed! I must test my works against the masses; if I come to grief, I'll know where I must go." He went further to ask for Stalin to "influence the proletarian musicians and their myrmidons, who have badgered me during the whole last year, and to allow me to work in the USSR" or "authorize my departure abroad, where I, with my music, could be more useful for the USSR than here, where I am harassed and badgered, where I'm not allowed to display my forces, to test myself."

It's easy to see how somebody like this can get an 8-year sentence for "counter-revolutionary" activities. Lucky for Mosolov that Gliere and Myaskovsky (who both kept their noses clean during the Soviet era) were kind enough and brave enough and had influence enough to intervene in Mosolov's case.


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## Zhdanov (Feb 16, 2016)

TxllxT said:


> https://www.rbth.com/history/327030-worthy-of-greatest-glory-famine-help


what a nasty and fraudulent publication, for it is a fact the US was most interested in Imperial Russia's downfall. Trotsky was a US agent.



TxllxT said:


> You don't need to be more popish than the pope.


look, i don't care what Putin and his media says, they fear to enrage the West, they appease it (must have a reason for that though).



Strange Magic said:


> It's easy to see how somebody like this can get an 8-year sentence for "counter-revolutionary" activities.


no, it isn't... care to elaborate? Mosolov obviously refused to be cooperative; meanwhile it was the State that paid everyone's bill there at the time; imagine someone at Hollywood composing according to his own tastes, not to order?


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## Flamme (Dec 30, 2012)

This is not a political topic but i think Mr Putin is balancing just fine on a thin wire of internal and external relations...I never cared for the guy much but i give it to him...As for the musick this one gets me out of my shoes every time...



 typical of soviet optimism...I like how Khach uses organs, megalithic...


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Zhdanov said:


> what a nasty and fraudulent publication, for it is a fact the US was most interested in Imperial Russia's downfall. Trotsky was a US agent.
> 
> look, i don't care what Putin and his media says, they fear to enrage the West, they appease it (must have a reason for that though).
> 
> no, it isn't... care to elaborate? Mosolov obviously refused to be cooperative; meanwhile it was the State that paid everyone's bill there at the time; imagine someone at Hollywood composing according to his own tastes, not to order?


So much rich material here. The US most interested in Imperial Russia's downfall; Trotsky a US agent; Putin appeasing the West. Proof that there are alternate universes.

Regarding the composers of Hollywood: they are paid to compose to order, and seem to like it. Prokofiev seemed OK with being paid for writing to order. I am of course referring to his film score work.


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## Johnnie Burgess (Aug 30, 2015)

Strange Magic said:


> So much rich material here. The US most interested in Imperial Russia's downfall; Trotsky a US agent; Putin appeasing the West. Proof that there are alternate universes.
> 
> Regarding the composers of Hollywood: they are paid to compose to order, and seem to like it. Prokofiev seemed OK with being paid for writing to order.


You did not mention writing music the leader of a country does not like can get you thrown into jail.


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## Johnnie Burgess (Aug 30, 2015)

Zhdanov said:


> no, it isn't... care to elaborate? Mosolov obviously refused to be cooperative; meanwhile it was the State that paid everyone's bill there at the time; imagine someone at Hollywood composing according to his own tastes, not to order?


But I have not heard about hollywood having someone thrown into jail for that. They would fire them. So Soviet Union could not have just not paid the man but had to throw him into jail?


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## Kivimees (Feb 16, 2013)

"A deception that elevates us is dearer than a host of low truths."


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## Zhdanov (Feb 16, 2016)

Strange Magic said:


> Regarding the composers of Hollywood: they are paid to compose to order, and seem to like it.


the key word here being they 'seem' to like it because they have no choice.



Johnnie Burgess said:


> writing music the leader of a country does not like can get you thrown into jail.


no one was jailed for composing or writing in CCCP.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Johnnie Burgess said:


> But I have not heard about hollywood having someone thrown into jail for that. They would fire them. So Soviet Union could not have just not paid the man but had to throw him into jail?


For the record, I know of no Soviet composer who was jailed for musical reasons. I know of two who were jailed for other reasons, though.

A composer could, however, lose any paying positions, have some works banned outright, and be refused new commissions. This did happen.

And for that matter, a composer _could _be jailed or killed. This certainly happened to people in other fields of art.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Zhdanov said:


> the key word here being they 'seem' to like it because they have no choice.
> 
> no one was jailed for composing or writing in CCCP.


Just when I thought we had reached the summit, the clouds parted and showed me there were worlds yet farther above. I have asked the UN to look into charges of slave labor among Hollywood composers. But Z is probably correct that no one was formally jailed for composing wrong music or writing bad things in the USSR; without even looking I can invent 17 different other reasons for jailing them--hooliganism and counter-revolutionary activity will do for starters.


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## Star (May 27, 2017)

Zhdanov said:


> what a nasty and fraudulent publication, for it is a fact the US was most interested in Imperial Russia's downfall. Trotsky was a US agent.
> 
> look, i don't care what Putin and his media says, they fear to enrage the West, they appease it (must have a reason for that though).
> 
> no, it isn't... care to elaborate? Mosolov obviously refused to be cooperative; meanwhile it was the State that paid everyone's bill there at the time; imagine someone at Hollywood composing according to his own tastes, not to order?


I can't believe someone actually wrote this.


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## Zhdanov (Feb 16, 2016)

Strange Magic said:


> I can invent 17 different other reasons for jailing them--hooliganism and counter-revolutionary


...or sexual harassment?


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Zhdanov said:


> ...or sexual harassment?


By all means, please elaborate.


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## Zhdanov (Feb 16, 2016)

Strange Magic said:


> By all means, please elaborate.


you see, in Russia you don't get scared as easy as in the West, because you don't get stigmatised here, whatever you've done. Kevin Spacey life is ruined by merely a series of publications; which is not the case if he lived in Russia, where you don't become an outcast with people; so the local authorities would have no other choice but threaten him with prison; but this is not to be used as advantage for anti-Russian propaganda of yours and your likes.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Zhdanov said:


> you see, in Russia you don't get scared as easy as in the West, because you don't get stigmatised here, whatever you've done. Kevin Spacey life is ruined by merely a series of publications; which is not the case if he lived in Russia, where you don't become an outcast with people; so the local authorities would have no other choice but threaten him with prison; but this is not to be used as advantage for anti-Russian propaganda of yours and your likes.


Given a choice, would you rather be Kevin Spacey or Alexei Navalny?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexei_Navalny


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Strange Magic said:


> Given a choice, would you rather be Kevin Spacey or Alexei Navalny?


I'm sure we should retain some perspective. Putin has not, like one of his predecessors, had a political enemy fried, living, in a great iron pan. By that standard, Vlad is truly a Teddy bear!


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## Guest (Dec 15, 2017)

Strange Magic said:


> Given a choice, would you rather be Kevin Spacey or Alexei Navalny?
> 
> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexei_Navalny


I didn't know they were composers. 

Who would you be Strange, a CCCP composer or a composer in the wrong country at the wrong time:

Richard Nixon:

The US-directed Cambodian genocide, leading to the Khmer Rouge genocide.
The latter half of the Phoenix Program of mass torture.
Overthrow of the Chilean government.
Chemical warfare by Agent Orange and napalm in the US-Vietnam War.
Ignored Bengali genocide.
Kurdish rebels killed by Nixon's betrayal.
Mass deaths in Operation Condor.
Mass deaths by ideological blindness in the US-Vietnam War.
Pardoning mass murderer Lt. Calley.
Mitigated by: Disarmament treaties with the USSR, biological and chemical weapons ban., trade with China, continuing anti-poverty programs begun by Johnson.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Here's the deal. The USA, the West in general and in particular, have had wretched leaders at times, wretched policies; some might even find fault with our current leadership . But there are mechanisms to correct these ills, including a free press, free elections, an independent judiciary. The story we get in contrast from our friend Z is that nothing bad really ever happened in Mother Russia, whoever says otherwise is a big fat liar, despite libraries of evidence to the contrary. A final thought is that while millions struggle to get into Western Europe and the USA and Canada, where are the waves of migrants yearning to enter Russia?


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

Strange Magic said:


> Here's the deal. The USA, the West in general and in particular, have had wretched leaders at times, wretched policies; some might even find fault with our current leadership . But there are mechanisms to correct these ills, including a free press, free elections, an independent judiciary. The story we get in contrast from our friend Z is that nothing bad really ever happened in Mother Russia, whoever says otherwise is a big fat liar, despite libraries of evidence to the contrary. A final thought is that while millions struggle to get into Western Europe and the USA and Canada, where are the waves of migrants yearning to enter Russia?


Lots and lots of migrants are entering Russia from the former Soviet republics. St Peterburg & Moscow are being flooded by Uzbeks & people from the Caucasus republics. From Ukraine also recently a million fled into Russia.

Please, lets try to focus on the thread: music culture. Why does classical music do so well in Russia? Valery Gergiev has opened three Mariinsky theatres and young people are involved into choir singing etc.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

TxllxT said:


> Lots and lots of migrants are entering Russia from the former Soviet republics. St Peterburg & Moscow are being flooded by Uzbeks & people from the Caucasus republics. From Ukraine also recently a million fled into Russia.
> 
> Please, lets try to focus on the thread: music culture. Why does classical music do so well in Russia? Valery Gergiev has opened three Mariinsky theatres and young people are involved into choir singing etc.


Thanks for the info on in-migration into Russia; I can understand both movements, given the situations: the devil you know.... But still the issues and differences I addressed in the first part of my post above remain valid. Gergiev ran into quite a wave of opposition here in the USA because of Russia's openly hostile attitude toward the LGBT community in the motherland, but that anti-LGBT story is probably also to be dismissed as a big fat lie.


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## Guest (Dec 15, 2017)

Strange Magic said:


> Here's the deal. The USA,. But there are mechanisms to correct these ills, including a free press, free elections, an independent judiciary.


hahahahaha

Made my evening.


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

Strange Magic said:


> Thanks for the info on in-migration into Russia; I can understand both movements, given the situations: the devil you know.... But still the issues and differences I addressed in the first part of my post above remain valid. Gergiev ran into quite a wave of opposition here in the USA because of Russia's openly hostile attitude toward the LGBT community in the motherland, but that anti-LGBT story is probably also to be dismissed as a big fat lie.


Whatever he may be or not be, he has brought stabile employment for numerous Peterburg musicians. He flew even to Palmyra, Syria, for Russia propaganda, but at the same time people are being involved into classical music. Gergiev is clever in dealing with politicians.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Tulse said:


> hahahahaha
> 
> Made my evening.


I'm happy that the ideas of free press, free elections, and a free judiciary are a cause for mirth and merriment for you. The world can indeed be a dark place.


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## Flamme (Dec 30, 2012)

Strange Magic said:


> Here's the deal. The USA, the West in general and in particular, have had wretched leaders at times, wretched policies; some might even find fault with our current leadership . But there are mechanisms to correct these ills, including a free press, free elections, an independent judiciary. The story we get in contrast from our friend Z is that nothing bad really ever happened in Mother Russia, whoever says otherwise is a big fat liar, despite libraries of evidence to the contrary. A final thought is that while millions struggle to get into Western Europe and the USA and Canada, where are the waves of migrants yearning to enter Russia?


''Checks and balances'' are a system i prefer to theocracy, autocracy, plutocracy...


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## Flamme (Dec 30, 2012)

But i wonder how russian cmposers would sound in continuation of czarism or outright western type democracy...Communism shaped their spirit and ideas not in such bad manner, me thinks...


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Flamme said:


> But i wonder how russian cmposers would sound in continuation of czarism or outright western type democracy...Communism shaped their spirit and ideas not in such bad manner, me thinks...


Returning to the example of Prokofiev, it is somewhat ambiguous as to the extent that Soviet views of the kind of music that needed to be composed significantly altered Prokofiev's output. There is evidence that part of Prokofiev was heading in the direction of a "new simplicity" all along from early on, with the example of the first violin concerto of 1916-17 contrasted with the noisy _Scythian Suite_ and the later Symphonies No. 2 and 3 of the late teens and twenties and then the mellow second violin concerto of 1935 and melodious _Romeo and Juliet_ of 1935-36. It may be that Soviet constriction was only lightly felt by Proko much of the time; he may have been traveling a similar path anyway and perhaps often was not conscious of an outside authority constraining his freedom. The case of Shostakovich seems to be much different, though I am far less familiar with his history.


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