Part Two: Musicology, Psychology, and Censorship of Classical Music in the Soviet Union

*Disclaimer: This post is not peer-reviewed. I do have experience in historical research and writing, and my goal here is to analyze, not to compare.

Dimitri Shostakovich is a particular example of someone who faced both public adoration and political scrutiny. Consider how Soviet music critics received composer Shostakovich’s opera, Lady Macbeth, in the primary newspaper Pravda. Critics published Sumbur vmeste muzyki (Chaos Instead of Music) on January 28^th, 1936, full of scathing criticism and a near public condemnation of Shostakovich. Near the beginning of the article, it states,

“From the first minute, the listener is shocked by deliberate dissonance, by a confused stream of sound. Snatches of melody, the beginnings of a musical phrase, are drowned, emerge again, and disappear in a grinding and squealing roar. To follow this “music” is most difficult; to remember it, impossible.”

One can infer three things from this quote: it is formalist to use “excessive” deliberate dissonance, brief snippets of melody rather than long melodic lines, and memorability. These all dictated the value of the composition.

(Dimitri Shostakovich)

People throughout history and in current music spheres have associated long melodic lines with pre-Soviet Russian music, and Soviet critics wanted to retain that approach to music commonly associated with Sergei Rachmaninoff and Pyotr Tchaikovsky; however, composers such as Sergei Prokofiev and Dimitri Shostakovich, assumedly, attained a disinterest in the zeal for life and beauty while living under a regime that stifled expression, so dissonance became a powerful tool. 

         Despite the disdain for the opera, critics saw talent and potential in the then-younger Shostakovich; they believed that he needed constructive criticism and not “false” praise, even though the audiences in the Soviet Union and abroad generally received the opera well. They accused Shostakovich of sacrificing the infectiousness of good music to formalism and “cheap clowning” to create originality. The critics perceived the opera as “nervous,” “convulsive,” and “spasmodic,” which they associated with jazz. 

Stalin did not legally ban jazz music until 1946, but much of Soviet society reacted negatively to it as it encouraged “degenerate” behavior. The situation regarding Shostakovich holds interest because, several times, the government labeled him as an enemy of the people for some compositions and then praised other compositions. (4) He was an enthusiastic revolutionary who even wrote propagandistic compositions in the 1920s, but later turned to detest Stalin. (5)

He titled his seventh symphony “Leningrad Symphony,” and critics heard it as a patriotic piece against fascism. (6) However, in Shostakovich's memoirs written post-Stalin, he wrote, “I feel pain for those who were killed by Hitler, but I feel no less pain for those who were killed on Stalin's orders. I suffer for everyone who was tortured, shot, or starved to death.... The war brought much new sorrow and much new destruction, but I haven't forgotten the terrible pre-war years.” (7)

Many composers learned to conform their compositional style while also conveying a secretive protest. Prokofiev was less savvy in his execution; a music critic interpreted Prokofiev’s music as “buffoonery” to “mask” his hostility. (8) These composers did enough to get in trouble, but the public loved these cultural figures, which politically protected them to an extent.

         Andrei Zhdanov, a Soviet politician who commanded extreme cultural art control and held an anti-Western perspective, gave a speech at a conference to discuss Soviet composers in 1948, with Tikhon Khrennikov offering a response after. He believed that composers were distancing themselves from the audiences, creating more dissonant and “anti-realistic” music. Khrennikov states after Zhdanov,

“These tendencies are peculiar to the bourgeois movement of the era of imperialism: the rejection of melodiousness in music, neglect of vocal forms, infatuation with rhythmic and orchestral effects, the piling-up of noisy ear-splitting harmonies, intentional illogicality and unemotionality of music. All these tendencies lead in actual fact to the liquidation of music as one of the strongest expressions of human feelings and thoughts.” (9)

He condemned Prokofiev for turning instruments such as the piano and violin into percussive instruments instead of retaining their “melodious” nature. Zhdanov and Khrennikov seem argue that good music must have a logical predictability as composers practiced and implemented harmonically in the previous musical era.

Many composers in the 20^th century experimented with timbre, even Aram Khachaturian, who implemented long melodies in most of his music, experimented with a “musical wood saw” in the second movement of his piano concerto.

         Some critics were not even musicians, and the others, ironically, did not achieve much success. The composers that were condemned by the critics were still adored by the masses. How much of it was purely political? Could it be that envy pioneered some of the disdain toward these composers? Khachaturian, who was Armenian, composed harmonically pleasing music and melodic, long lines. Was he censored partly because an Armenian should not surpass a Russian in portraying “Russian” culture?

When Nikita Kruschev gained power over the Soviet Union, he lifted the ban on jazz in 1953. Before, the Soviet Union implemented a cultural wall and demonized music they perceived as unnatural or promoting deviant behavior. The fact that cultural integration was allowed on even a minor scale showed incredible significance. 

Formalism became a less serious offense. On March 28^th, 1963, Kruschev gave a declaration on music in Soviet society. (10) He seems to appreciate and understand culture with some nuance. In a section in which he talks about jazz, he describes how society has an unusual infatuation with it, how there is some good jazz that he likes but cannot listen to in excess, and how some jazz makes one feel physically ill. The extent of this opinion indicates significant exposure to the genre.

However, people do not typically associate melodies with jazz but with thicker harmonies. Khruschev stated, “Music in which there is no melody produces nothing but irritation. They tell us that such opinions as mine reveal a lack of understanding. It is indeed impossible to understand some jazz music which is repugnant to the ear. We must object also to so-called modern dance seeping through from the west into our land.” He provided more cultural tolerance, but cultural freedom did not exist in the way many people in certain Western countries understood it. 

The incoming culture still needed to be filtered, but fear of the West was not as consuming. Soviet society still generally valued stoicism and did not approve of promiscuity. He considered “dodecaphonic” (12-tone or atonal) music as “trash” and that the Soviet Union required music that encouraged patriotism, “constructive labor”, and “heroic deeds”. There was still no room for pessimism in music.

Musicians worked in an unstable environment where safe expression was not allowed for decades. Composers were to be servants of the government and not expressors of life. Is music a true representation of culture if its existence is tainted and manipulated by politics? Musicology expresses that the personality, culture, and politics of the composer can influence the music that they produce. But musicians tend to find a way to hide their agendas, especially with music that contains no words. Shostakovich and Prokofiev practiced this tactic frequently, but still faced public criticism.

         Asafev believed that music could connect spiritual beings. Consider why many of these composers wrote dark and pessimistic music despite the opposite being asked of them. Also consider why audiences loved those works. Music can affect the nervous system, and during the time of the Soviet Union, people experienced extreme paranoia and misery, and this pessimistic music acted as a catharsis to this suffering population.

Party members and music critics had no control over that, and that terrified them to such an extent that they implemented extreme censorship on composers who led musical culture. Did the government have awareness of the suffering of its people? They certainly tried to convince the population that they were not experiencing true suffering. 

Even though the Soviet government imposed extreme restrictions and punished musicians for representing anti-revolutionary, immoral, or pessimistic music, it did not stifle the production of the genre. Musicologists thought that people wanted healthy and positive music, but negative music was often received better. That is a reason composers still composed in that style; they cared more for honesty rather than conforming.

Despite the fear and mass efforts of censorship, these composers kept writing what felt honest to them, and they are among the most well-known of the 20^th century.

(4) Mulcahy, Kevin, “Official Culture and Cultural Repression”: 73.

(5) George G. Weickhardt, “Dictatorship And Music: How Russian Music Survived The Soviet Regime.” Russian History 31, no. 1/2 (2004): 124.

(6) Weickhardt, George G. “Dictatorship And Music”: 123.

(7)  Mulcahy, Kevin, “Official Culture and Cultural Repression”: 77-78.

(8)  Taylor, James, “Revolutionaries or Delinquents”: 52.

(9)  Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party, “Against Formalistic Tendencies In Soviet Music.” February 10, 1948. Seventeen Moments in Soviet History

(10)  Nikita Khruschev, Declaration on Music in Soviet Society. March 8, 1963. Seventeen Moments in Soviet History.

Bibliography

Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party, “Against Formalistic Tendencies In Soviet Music.” February 10, 1948. Seventeen Moments in Soviet History

Mulcahy, Kevin V. “Official Culture and Cultural Repression: The Case of Dmitri Shostakovich.” Journal of Aesthetic Education 18, no. 3 (1984): 69–83.

Khruschev, Nikita, Declaration on Music in Soviet Society. March 8, 1963. Seventeen Moments in Soviet History.

Sumbur vmeste muzyki (Chaos Instead of Music), Pravda, 28 January 1936. Seventeen Moments in Soviet History.

Taylor, James. “Revolutionaries or Delinquents: The Biopsychological Appraisals of Composers and Their Music in Early Soviet Russia.” The Slavonic and East European Review 97, no. 1 (2019): 39–72.

Viljanen, Elina. “The Formation of Soviet Cultural Theory of Music (1917–1948).” Studies in the East European Thought 72, no. 2. (2020): 135–59.

Weickhardt, George G. “Dictatorship And Music: How Russian Music Survived The Soviet Regime.” Russian History 31, no. 1/2 (2004): 121–41.