Music and Musical Life in Soviet Russia, Enlarged Edition:1917-1981

by Boris Schwarz

An excellent survey of the whole culture of Soviet music after the revolution and through Khruschev when the government was controlled the state-supported composers.

Genres: Music

722 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1972

Reviews

[John]

This is an excellent and somewhat painful survey of the whole culture of Soviet music after the revolution and through Khruschev. Painful because I can't imagine trying to create with the government looking over my shoulder telling me what was and was not permissible, but of course all of these composers were state-supported, so I guess it goes with the territory. Schwarz goes to great lengths to debunk the idea of Shostakovich and Prokofiev as unwilling victims of the system, though, a point on which he disagrees with lots of other western writers. His take on them is that they believed in what the state was trying to do and thought their own sacrifices to be reasonable, even when it involved public humiliation. Hard for us to imagine, but maybe true. I read this to prepare for a week-long Prokofiev festival, and found it very enlightening on the subject of his music and everyone else's.