The Rise of Soviet Censures
The late 1920’s were times of great musical experimentation for the newly emergent USSR. Party officials were still struggling to censure and mold more definitive arts and sciences to the ideals of communism, while music survived largely untouched. There were exceptions in the pure theoretical subjects, especially mathematics and chemistry, where Russian scientists had managed to stay above or outside of the world of politics. Ronald Suny writes in his book “The Soviet Experiment” that by the 1930s it became less possible with the Cultural Revolution. Music had enjoyed a moratorium from immediate censorship and would continue to be hard to control, even as stronger regulations and harder criticisms came to influence its productivity. Boris Schwarz, a novelist and historian comments on the strange predicament that the Soviet composer faced in the 1920s, as they were confronted by complex problems of social demographics. Homogeneity of class structures meant that much of the national work suffered from being barren and synthetic. The appeal of Soviet music became localized, and few works evoked any response beyond the borders of Russia. Many important composers went abroad, and those left behind tried to find new identity. Even so, Schwarz notes that “though Soviet music of the 1920s failed to achieve greatness, everything was tried-music that was epigonal or futuristic, proletarian or esoteric, programmatic or absolute.” A reign of constraint would follow this period of open creativity, but for a while, music enjoyed unchained investigation.
Jazz musicians and black artists were appealing to Soviet audiences. The civil rights struggle in America and abroad found an empathetic partner in the working classes of the USSR. Soviet ideals aligned with the burdens of exploited slave labor and the oppression of the black population and were seen as welcomed equals within their crowd. Several account from black artists who traveled and toured through Russia during the 1920s and even into the 1930s regaled their love for the treatment they received in Soviet cities. While touring through Moscow in 1926, Garvin Bushell would comment, “I wouldn’t say I adhere much to Russia’s politics, but Russia was the first country I’d ever been in where I was considered a human being-a person like anybody else.” Bushell also wrote about the discrimination he and his fellow musicians received and constantly battled in other European nations, but in Russia, they experienced equality. Paul Robeson, famous actor, singer, and civil rights activist of the 1930s and 40s was so enamored by his reception in the Soviet Union, he more than seriously considered naturalizing. In the spring of 1935, he would spend his first two weeks in a whirlwind of activity and rising enthusiasm. Martin Duberman comments in his writings about Robeson, “(Paul) found strong empathy for his own “national minority”. He went to see a Children’s Theater production, and the play turned out to be about African culture. At intermission, a little boy rushed up to Robeson, hugged him around the knees and begged him to stay in the Soviet Union, saying ‘You will be happy here with us.’” While the Soviet Union championed the rise of the workers and destruction of the bourgeoise, racism would smear its ugly face into the political sphere by the way of a national treasure name Maxim Gorky.
Gorky’s fame and renowned as a Russian author and scholar would make him a difficult figure to ignore for the state. In an effort to establish a cohesive control over literary and scientific views, Soviet Party officials decided to rely on populist writings of national figures like Gorky. Fredrick Starr notes that the decisive moment for the politicization of jazz came in April 18th, 1928 with Maxim Gorky’s Pravda review titled “Music of the Gross.” This essay would go on to define the Soviet critic of jazz. Long after Gorky’s death, this essay would be invoked any time the Soviet critic wanted to use comparisons to the decadent west or settle scores with jazz music on the whole. Gorky held such pull because of his fame in being the first Russian author to outsell Tolstoy. His earthy style had been taken up as an exotic in Western literary circles and considered a type-cast proletarian form the world of the tsars.
Gorky’s distain for jazz is noted in several instances of social awkwardness, interrupted late night writing sessions, and uncomfortable lodging partnerships with traveling bands, as noted in Fredrick Starr’s book “Red and Hot: The Fate of Jazz in the Soviet Union.” One interesting twist is that Lunacharsky, who had previously praised and appreciated jazz music, would change his tune in light of Gorky’s criticisms. He was one of the first party officials of the Soviet state to take a stance against jazz as a proletarian music. At the heart of both Gorky and Lunacharsky’s arguments was that jazz and the way of life associated with it was totally bourgeois. Starr writes “Marx had argued that Christianity was the opiate of the masses. Jazz and the fox-trot were now the dominant religion, manipulated by the new capitalist masters in order to secure and extend their dominion.”
Much that follows for early Soviet music would be marred by constant criticisms, shifting styles and tastes in a chase to capture state approval paralleled with public sensibilities, and a horrific crackdown on artistic expression in all walks of life. Joseph Stalin would enact 5-year plans that would specifically address the arts and sciences, imprisoning and terrifying all that were seen as traitors to the working class. While music would escape most of these state censures in the first plan, by 1935, there was a fully entrenched feeling of confusion for what music was appropriate, appealing, and sanctioned by party officials. Early Soviet music of the 1920s is an incredible rollercoaster of free expression, followed by a terrifying grip of confused regulations. One thing music expression proved through this era was its power over the populace, and its ability to stand outside of normal artistic and intellectual classifications. Today, it remains a means of expression that is hard to define politically, and even harder to set into a specific ideal. Everyone, even communism seems to have their own way of hearing a song.
Here is the beautiful voice of Paul Robeson in today’s listening example, singing about Joe Hill.