3 Stalin by starlight 1928-1941 Mass culture In the 1930s ~ a decade that rocked many a’nation’s values =Russian popular culture got the shape it would have for the next fifty years The “great change” launched by Stalin in 1928 transformed the economy of the USSR, The NEP, with its capitalism, private trading, landowning, and private demimondes, was brutally abolished. The new Soviet bosses outdid themselves and each other in the dramatic surge for building, Youth, propelled by exuberant idealism, rushed to the great construction sites in order to forge a new world. Shock workers and later Stakhanovites led drives for productivity that were replete with military and religious imagery. In the accompanying cultural revolution, critics claiming to speak on behalf of the proletariat in art, architecture, music, literature, radio, and film demanded a parallel liquidation of the NEP cultural system. They wanted to upturn the world once again and for the last time, to silence the noisy purloiners of vulgarity, to drown out the sickly whimpers of gypsy violins with the shrill of the factory whistle. Butthe main figuresin the "proletarian’campsof the cultural revolution were intelleciuaksnot workers; and they scorned the eclecticism and plural- ism of the original Proetcult movement, Indeed, their program ought to be called ~ in an analogy with folklorism ~ “‘proletarianismy”: the adaptation of certain features of working class life and culture to their own aesthetic and political demands. The: proletarianists assaulted science fiction, detective stories, fairy tales, folk music, jazz, urban songe-and escape movies as the effusion of decadent intellectuals produced! for the unhealthy appetites of degenerate businessmen and allowed: to-flourish-in-dark and’ noisome corners of the NEP. The self-proclaimed guardians of proletarian sensibilities almost succeeded in destroying, what was left of popular culture in the years 1928-19324! The cultural revolution as such ended! as suddenly as it had begun ot Stalin by starlight 1928-1941 6 By 1933-1934, a turnabout had begun, iconoclasm and anti-intellectual- ism was curbed, and a partial restoration of older values enunciated. Party leaders angrily denounced the arrogant reductionism of the proletarianist movements, their vulgar sociologism, their hostility to everything old and foreign. The reaction to the excesses of the cultural revolution coincided with a huge blast of triumphant euphoria that came with the end of the five year plan and with the mood of many people who were happy for the chance to celebrate. The result was an outpouring of spontaneous fun and joy for three or four years Popular culture reemerged with great vigor — as it had done alter the storms of the civil war. But in 1936, another reversal took place: “excesses” were checked! in jazz music, estrada, and the movies and solemn jay in a dignified setting replaced the zany fun. The popular crlture ofthe 1930s, even after the restraining ordersof 1936, was more pluralistic than that favored by the fanatics ofthe cultural revolution. But it also promoted optimism aver self-pity, exuberance over intro- spection, comradely devotion over sex, directed satire over open- ended comedy, and systematic formula over experiment. The constant gyrations in popular culture reflected the leadership's desire to capture mass audiences and to respond to the new taste culture generated by the Stalinist social revolution, When the political intelligentsia was purged and replaced by people ofa lower middle or working class background with a technical schooling, the newcomers were invested with privilege and expected to develop: respectable habits and tastes, The new elite had their own tailorsand haberdashers _ and displayed status symbols (auch as Parker pens and Troika cigaret- tes) to illustrate and embellish their power. Promotees from the working class were instructed by their bosses to wear business suits and carry briefcases. Having. risen from proletarian origins, theyhad © little taste for narrowly construed “proletarian’ culture. They'thissted —¢ for old high culture as a badge of distinction; for entertainment they enjoyed sentimentalism, fun, uplift, and an affirmation of their values. Late love is « powerful force, and when leaders and. managers who (= had spent their youth in a village or a factory. dorm discovered“ traditional high culture they canonized classical music, ballet, and gf architecture, realistic theater, and didactic painting, At the same time Wy they helped fashion a “mass culture” of socialist realist fiction, state- sponsored folklore, mass song, military bands, parades, movies, and‘, radio = accessible to all, politically impeccable, and bearing some of the solemn hallmarks of high culture is The thematies of mas culture in this era mythically fused national °66 Russian popular culture accomplishment, social mobility, and personal success. Construction, mechanization, and the promethean battle against nature through exploration, aviation exploits, and. production heroism were made palpable and attractive in the same way that military valor and colonial conquest were romanticized in earlier eras. The immense canvas of achievement - displayed to the Soviet public through all the arts and media ~ sanctified the leaders but also depicted common workers loyal to the principles of Soviet socialism climbing the triumphal stairway to the top of an edifice through hard work. One stairway provided the familiar ascent from the menial world of physical labor to white collar management or professionalism; the more novel one rose from the lower reaches of manual work to the extraordinary heights of superlabor. This only partly resembled the American myth of success whose main ingredient was the rise of a poor and humble male to high places and private fortunes. In Russia it ‘meant rank, decorations, titles, better pay and privileges bestowed by the state; and for the very best men and women, a journey to the enchanted castle ofthe prince. The cult of Stalin was a key ingredient in the myth. It portrayed him. a5 a poor man from a backwater of the Russian empire, a friend of Lenin, a dashing hero of revolution and civil war, a father to his people =a prince, hero, wise elder, and godlike figure to be worshipped and obeyed. The industrialization of the country was heralded as Stalin’s public achievement. His systematic invilation of working class and peasant achievers to the theaters and palaces of the Kremlin not only. honored the guests but “plebeianized” the host. Stakhanovites and aviators marveled at the simplicity of the great leader and were impressed by his small gestures of politeness to “ordinary” people. All ‘of this was wreathed in sunny optimism and jubilation and celebrated. in story, song, and movie, integrated and carefully monitored by censorship, prescriptive orders from above, and the corporate respon sibility of producers. It was also regulated by a highly centralized bureaucracy which required planning, fulfillment, and ideological correctness from all its branches Fairy tales can come true During the literary battles of the early 1930s that strewed the fielel with many a corpse, the proletarianists assaulted “our Mayne Reids and Jules Vernes” — light entertainment fietion in general, Bu influential Figures such as Maxim Gorky and others wanted a fietion that would Stalin by starlight 1928-1941 or reach the masses. After much fierce debate, a “solution” was reached. ‘Commercial popular writing and avant-garde literature as well as the mysticism and eroticism of the old regime were rejected in favor of a single literary art that would teach the people and serve the state. After such terms as “proletarian realism” and “revolutionary romanticism” were rejected, i: came to be called “socialist realism,’ a syncretic blend. of theories insp red by Gorky’s Mother, Furmanov’s Chapnev, Gladkov's Cement (1925), and Facieev's The Row! (1927). Popular tastes rooted in tradition were :o be recognized, though purged of religious or other harmful elements. As one scholar has put it so vividly, “it projected ‘Tarzan as well as adventure stories and Pugachev and his rebellions conto the positive hero constructing dams, and St. George overcoming the dragon as well as Ivan the simple-minded or the bugatyri of the chansons de geste and traditional byliy."* The official status of the new art meant that writers were provided with standardized character types, resolutions, and even settings. Socialist realism gave the public partof what it wanteds “realism,” adventure, and moral guidance. Realism meant simpleand readable prose and the here and now or a heroic past for the plotand setting — enterprise; factory, collective farm, research institute, and revolution- ary or national battlefield. Socialism meant fantasized political. per- sonalities and a masterplot about a young, person, under the tutelage ‘of a. mentor, achieving consciousness by doing battle with obstractio- nist forces. The masses consumed the new literature partly because no competition was permitted, but also because its characters were largely folkloric: firm end self-controlled, but loving and good and brave — people that the common reader could recognize fom popular notions ‘of how characters should act and speak. Asin most popular fiction, the plots were formulaic and the writing contained the familiar com- plement of “furrowed brows” and “shining eyes.” The descriptive lexicon was coded to exalt reason, technology, and the city and to tenwrap such impulses as sex in the dark shades of chaos. The result was a peculiar variety of didactic middlebrow literature whose rules and codes quiesly migrated to statuary, film, radio drama, and song. Socialist realist culture as a whole was a tortuous compromise between the art of old masters, folk culture, ideology, and some elements oF popular commercial art. Its output was enormous and itembraced not ‘only fiction, but fictionalized history, communist hagiography, travel prose, and folk materials, as the following few examples will show. Nikolai Ostrevsky’s How the Steet Was Tempered (1932-1934) became the classic novel of socialist realism and its hero Pavel Korchagin the68 Russian popular culture quintessential positive hero. [tis a erude semi-autobiographical chain of episodes that begins with the portrait of a lowborn, uneducated, and undisciplined boy resembling in some ways the orphaned and homeless children of the time. During his civil war adventures, Kor- chagin is gradually shaped into consciousness by a series of mentors, The theme of the foolish but brave and decent hothead who grows into a hero had and still has enormous power. It enlivens not only many Soviet boyhood and military adventures — on page, stage, and screen — but also American cowboy, orphan, street gang, and aviation tales. The success of Korchagin’s saga was also due partly to its heavy promotion by the Komsomol. The only historical novel that gained. wide popularity in the 1930s was Alexei Tolstoy's epic Peter the First (1929-1945), Tolstoy erected a mighty symbolic ancestor of Stalin in the energetic Peter, surrounded, as in Stalin's mythic hierarchy, by enter- prising engineers and. proto-proletarians who ascend the ladder of mobility provided by his revolution from above. Its screen version of 1936 was a huge hit with Soviet audiences. Illusion and allusion are used with great effect at the novel's end: a dreamy vista of a bright future suspended over a concrete reality. It would be the trademark of many a novel and film of that ages Utopian science fiction was suppressed in the early 1930s because of its dangerous comparisons to the present and. its revolutionary: idealism. So was the “red detective story” which was blasted during, the cultural revolution for its alleged vulgar qualities. In the 1930s, the manichean struggle of socialist heaven and capitalist hell that had infused both genres was reduced to crude plots about espionage and. military vigilance. The crime motif was preserved by Yury German who used the ordinary militia as his force of heroes but broke sharply with the style and content of the old Pinkerton stories, red or other~ wise, His best-known work; {oa Lapsiin(1937), was police novelin a provincial setting: whose main theme was the integration of criminals into society through order and. labor. In this sense it resembles old bandit tales in which outlaws are reintegrated into society by colluding, with the authorities. The novel incorporates a vision of collectivity (the policemen live in a commune}, rationalism, culture, and social tran- quility unperturbed by the black discord of crime. For good measure, Lapshin acts as mentor to his junior colleague. All of this'is captured, witha twist, in the brilliant film version, ‘My Friend low Lapshin made by the author’s son, Alexei German in the 1980s" In the Stalinist fairy tale, figures from real life were transformed into living legends or martyred saints, The most famous martyr way Pavlik Stalin by starlight 1928-1941 6 Morozov. According to the mythical official account, in 1932.during the collectivization wars, the 13-year-old country lad appeared in his Pioneer uniform at the local courthouse and, standing beneath Lenin's portrait, denounced his own father as@ friend of kulats. Shortly after, he and his younge: brother were brutally murdered by their grandfather and an accomplice. At the urging of Gorky, Morozov became a legend. His village in the Urals was made into a Young Pioneer shrine, streets and youth groups were named after him, and mythologized stories flooded the school;om. The! Kamsomol commissioned Alexander Reheshevsky te fictionalize thee episode. His story, which combined ‘Turgeney’s "Bezhin Meadow’ with the Morozov case, became the basis of Kisenstein’s il-fated film of the same name. Morozov's early child- hood was romanticized and he entered the Bolshevik martyrology alongside the victims of tsarist police and counter-revolution.” A literary and journalistic theme that had much resonance in the popular arts was the romance of exploration, settlement, and pro- duction. During the twilight period of European overseas imperialism, from about 1900 to 1940, arctic and antarctic exploration captured the fancy of the reading and filmgoing world, a fancy later caught by. World War Il and then by space travel. The new Kiplings and Hag- gards of the newsreel cameras thrilled world audiences with adven- lure on the ice One of the first Soviet writings to bring to life the hardships and heroism of polar exploration was Alexei Garris Ice and People (1928), aselt-consciously cinematic travel adventure based upon the author's harrowing experience in the rescue of the Nobile expedi- tion. For Soviet readers, Garri’s vivid reportage fed the fascination and also delivered heavy doses of machinolotry im its prose closeups of engines, ski-planes, and icebreakers. Movie screens, radio waves, and even the variety stage were filled with their images and sounds throughout the decades Pilots and aviators played a special role in the mythology of the 1930s ~ and not only in the USSR. They embodied the leading edge of applied science and technology, the frontier spirit, bravery and adven- ture in distant and forbidding locales, and spirited youth tempered by fatherly mentors, Record flyers and the heroes who soared over arctic wastelands became overnight media personalities. Stalin adopted them as his “faleons"; and writers, actors, singers, and comedians feted them at their clubs and made radio shows and films about them. The hit song, “Aviamarsh” or “Ever Higher’ (see ch. 2) blended aviation ‘and optimism, Valery Chkalov (1904-1938), the ultimate romantic aviator, was the star of stars whose audacious stunts such as flying,7 Russian popular culture against orders beneath a Neva River bridge in Leningrad were as endearing as his spectacular transpolar flights. He became an idol among the actors of the Moscow Art Theater. The fame of the female flyers, Osipenko, Raskova, and Grizodubova, was employed ta recruit women aviators in World War IL. The fact that the geophysicist and arctic explorer Otto Schmidt held high-ranking scientific and govern- ment posts helped make aviation and exploration media fetishes.? The pioneering trge to: break new. ground:and create cities and factories in-the wilderness led tens of thousands of young, people out to consiruction sites in the mountains, steppes,.and riverbanks of the Soviet land. Youngsters and seasoned. workers pitched their tents/on the emptiness-of the Urals and erected Magnetic Mountain (Magnito- orsk); and they created gigantic complexes on the Dnieper, the Don, and the Volga. These exploits unleashed a deluge of folklore. The most distant of the projects of those days was Komsomol City-on-the-Amur, begun in 1932 deep in the primeval taiga of the Soviet Far East. It was a construction epic adorned with a promotion campaign extravagant even for those days of state-sponsored hoopla. Like the Virgin Lands and the Baikal-Amur campaigns of later years, it helped to slake youth's thirst for the euphoria of trailblazing in exotic places. One of the most popular children’s stories of industrial romanticism was written by a trained engineer from a famous family of children’s ‘writers, M. Tin (llya Marshak): Story of the Great Plan (1930), widely translated and once a bestseller in the West. Its descriptions of the hydroelectric dam at Dneprostroi, the Donbass mining community, and a tractor assembly plant were couched in a simple and sometimes poetic language that also throbbed with the dynamism of the age ~ omitting of course all the hardships, mismanagement, and suffering that accompanied Stalin’s industrial revolution. Alexei Stakhanov (1906-1977) and his numerous imitators on the front of industrial superheroism were mythologized in the romance of production, Stakhanov was endowed in the popular literature and ‘media with an idealized childhood, an older mentor, a heroic deed, and an immortal persona, Less famous now, but universally known at the time was the tractor driver, Praskovya. (Pasha) Angelina (1913- 1959),.the most famous young woman in Russia of the early 1930s, ‘whose minidrama was captured by the playwright Sergei Tretyakov, in” Nine Girls” (1935), Her family was presented asa model of upward. mobility and technical, military, and agricultural attainment. Her achievement and style provided the lexicon of the Stalinist success story: peasant simpli ly, toughness, a struggle against all odds Stalin by starlight 1928-1941 n (including sabotage), a production promise to Stalin, triumph on the furrow front, and the climactic journey to the Kremlin (in an olive- colored Lincoln!) to be received by the Great Leader. When Angelina decided to marry, the anxiety on her tractor team about the loss of a champion gave birth to a fertile plot idea that seeded innumerable tractor novels, kollhoz operettas, and rustic film comedies. Pasha Angelina was the socialist Cinderella supreme. She and other worker prodigies were turned into postcard heroes and cultic idols of kitsch, models for youth and paragons of virtue." Industrial folklore invaded the printed page on a grand scale in such works as People ofthe Stalin Tractor Works (thirty-two autobiographies) and White Soa Canal, written by a collective of thirty-seven writers, one of the most extraordinary apologias for slave labor camps ever written, complete with eulogies to Yagoda, head of the security police, and. Berman, director of its camp complex. A huge corpus of factory histo- ries, workers’ memoirs, and the reports of factory, village, and barracks correspondents flooded the press in these years and a synthetic folk lore was woven around heroic workers in proletarian periodicals such as The Stakhanovite, Club, and The Worker af Magnitogorsk. These were bourgeoisified. proletarian: success’ stories: containing, idealized: bio- sraphies, pious homilies on» sobriety-and. the work ethic, a-cult-of viclory in life (by “conquest of a mountain or winning at sport), and carnestly minute descriptionsiof the trophies that victory could bring: a. good-apartment with fine furniture, a bieyele, a phonograph, a free vacation, ora bottle of Crimea Rose perfume.!? Peasant or folk culture, after years of neglect or abuse, finally became legitimized ~ though in adapted and coopted form (and minus one of its key ingredients, religious rituals and festivals). At the 1934 congress, of writers, Gorky urged the use of folklore in the new Soviet literature because it was earthy, optimistic, and artistically precious and because its heroic types were dear to the people. In 1934-1935, ethnographic 5 teams were sent into the countryside to gather remnants of authentic 5 folk culture. But at the same time a whole new industry of folklorism for pseudlofolklore was created as an instrument of propaganda. U: Workers were given folk tales to read as models for their own auto biographies, By the mid 1930s a whole array of tellers and bards had surfaced, including, the Russian Maria Kryukova (1846-1954) and the Kazakh Dzhambul Dzhabaev (1846-1945). Using traditional forms they fashioned novink! or new folk tales such as Kryukova's improvised nartative on Lenin's death, “All tone-Built Moscow Went a-Weepin” ron the exploits of Stalin Joseph Bright), Voroshilov (a wondrous72 Russian popular culture knight), Chapaev (an eagle), and the aviation heroes of the day. The writers and singers were guided by political tutors to insure correct ideological content and their works were read on the radio, recorded on the phonograph, printed in huge runs, and adapted to stage and screen in various forms." It is hardly an exaggeration to say that after 1996 virtually all of Soviet mass culture became “folklorized” under the impact of literary models. It differed substantially from that of the 1920s, in that it was, nearly monopolistic, suffering little competition from spontaneous, forms (except for the highly constricted underground subcultures of the streets, schoolrooms, barracks, and prison camps). Its themes of optimism, affirmation of life, healthy work and construction, collective ambition and success, hot-blooded heroism yoked to cool-headed wisdom made their way into song lyrics, circus acts, and movies. Sing a song of joyous life The first five year plan stirred the Russian Association of Proletarian, Musicians to feverish militancy. Quasi-religious preachers against sinful music called Western popular music “the song and dance of the period of the catastrophe of capitalism,” foxtrot a “dance of slaves,” and tango “the music of impotents.” The Association of Workers on the Revolutionary Radio Front assaulted tsygarshching, fokstrotshchina, and Viennese waltzes as “counter-revolutionary.” “We send [com- posers] to the factories’” complained a musician, “to learn the new thythms of trip hammer and blast furnace, and they compose their ‘works, and then [the radio programers] play Chopin and Schubert and. Bach.” When RAPM forces captured the conservatory in 1929, they abolished solo singing, grades, and examinations, taught primitive music history, and excoriated all forms of music ~ gypsy, jazz, folk, operetta, and classical - except that propagating industrial construc- tion, The Moscow composers group and the “light music” department in the Commissariat of Enlightenment were dissolved. Popular singers such as Tsereteli were tested! and graded by high culture commissions and their old repertoires branded by RAPM as not only “sickness” but “sabotage,” a dangerous charge in an era when “wreckers” in industry. were tried and jailed, Private sheet music publishing ended in 1929 and gypsy music was banned on ractio, Proletarianist composers formed themselves into shock brigades fo churn out songs for workers and collectivized farmers." The bitter da decade of invective; all impaign against jazz cod Stalin by starlight 1928-1941 2 subsequent ondaughts on popular music have been ritualistic reissues Of this one, In 1928 the recently returned Gorky identified jazz with homosexuality, drugs, and bourgeois eroticism ~ charges that were later recycled “0 fit the rock culture of our time, Even a ban on saxophones was suggested in 1929 (and would be carried out twenty years later). Komsomols patrolled public dance places and antisjazz lecturers marched into schoolrooms, On the folk front, the Pyatnitsky choir was given a mock trial on the radio and then banned from the airwaves because it allegedly encouraged a cult of the old village and was thus harmful to socialism. But the proletarian musicians still failed to produce popular substitutes. They were generally poor composers who could crea:e only simple songs with primitive harmonies, march- like rhythms, and some folk elements.* The iron mus cal dictatorship of proletarian musicians was broken in the same reversal that recast the canons of fiction. The success enjoyed by songs from the frst sound film hits revealed that the masses wanted more than proletarian hymns to sing, In 1932RAPM wasabolished and in 1933 the end of the first five year plan was heralded as a major national victory worthy of jubilation. The leaders now promoted a lightening up o’ feelings. Popular music of every kind reemerged. The old gypsy favorite “Dark Eyes,” the orphan song “Forgotten and Forsaken," and the foreign hits “Ramona” and "How Do You Do, Do, Do, Mr Brown’ were heard all over Moscow. With Ziegler's Czech Jazz playing the Hotel Metropole and the Tsfasman and Utesov bands the National, tea dances on Sunday aftemoon, and the novelty song “Little Lemons’ blasting out at the cellar cafe Kanatik, it seemed like a return if not to 1916 then at least to 1921. At the Praga Restaurant on the Arbat, the same Moscow gypsy band that used to accompany Varvara Panina and serenade Rasputin in the Yar Restaurant before the war was rending the air with passionate music. But the revival of competition also induced envy: gypsy performers began to hate jazz, for its popularity, just as jazzmen would one day resent the success of rock," The 1930s brought the restoration of the “star system” in popular entertainment. Celebrity, as a socio-cultural phenomenon, returned along, with officers’ ranks and other signs of privilege. In popular music, Tsereteli and Izabella Yureva (1902-2) revived the gypsy tradi- tion. Klavdiya Shulzhenko (1906-1984), began her long career as a big, bond singer. The queen of popular.song, the peasant-born Lydia Ruslanova (190:-1973), made “Gver Hill and Dale” and “Katyusha’” into huge hits 60 radio and records. The major male non-jazz vocalist74 Russian popular culture of the 1930s was Vadim Kozin (1903- ), the son of a singer of gypsy songs. Possessed of a marvelous lyric tenor voice and a gift for song ‘writing, Kozin had begun as a movie house singer in the 1920s and in the 1930s performed and recorded urban songs and tangos ~ personal, introspective, and nonpolitical, ike those of his emigre contemporary Vertinsky. In Kozin’s rendition of “Lyuba” one can hear woodwind arabesques that combine Yiddish and gypsy acceleration with Dixie- land syncopation. His “Farewell My Tabor’ is a parting lament to the Gypsy world with sudden modulations into a dark minor key. And in, the haunting “Autumn,” all the sentimental stops are pulled out in a gloriously nostalgic evocation of lost love. By 1938-1939, Kozin had become a national star. These singers represented 1930s Russian popular song at its best.” In the years of the “red jazz age" (1932-1936) European and Soviet bandswere heard. in dozens of cities. The kings were Alexander ‘Tsfasman and Leonid Utesov. Tsfasman, the son of a Jewish barber in the Ukraine, rose to become one of the richest men in the USSR, leading a half dozen bands, and a star of radio, concert hall, and film. Tsfasman cultivated an American style, called himself “Bob,” married an American, and saturated the Soviet musical scene in the 1930s and 419403 with songs like “The Man I Love,” “Shanty Town,’ and the Glenn Miller classic, “Chattanooga Choo-choo” from the movie, Sit Valley Serenade. Utesov ~ musically far less gifted ~ was actually more popular than Tsfasman, partly because of the spectacular success of his comedy film Hapy-Go-Lucky Guys, but mostly because his Odessa background and his circus andl carnival road experience on the south: em borscht belt gave him a clowning manner. He resembled his idol, the personable Ted ("Is everybody happy?” Lewis more than he did any of the great jazz figures of the time. In fact Utesov was the typical estrada entertainer ~ quick witted, versatile, and funny. He was not only one of the stars of the 1930s but also a personal favorite of Stalin." Utesov’s mature jazz style was more European than American When jazz migrated from the river ports of the Mississippi, it adapted local strains and styles ~ some of them quite alien to its original spirit ‘There is nothing impure about this process; itis endemic to all popular calture, The glossy syncretism of Paul Whiteman or Guy Lombardo. ‘was a natural product of adaptation. In European jazz, the same thing, occurred, but with different local ingredients: English music hall styles, German oompah, central European folk and gypsy gentes. Utesov certainly had, as a historian has noted, one war cocked to his masters in the Kremliny but he had the other ear wide open to the Stalin Ly starlight 1925-1941 3 tastes of his audience and to the styles around them. His band music ‘was made for tie dance of his time. Like jazz, itemployed bouncy and slightly syncopated sounds of saxophones, muted trumpets, and drum traps. But the melodies were mostly Slavic, gypsy, and Jewish, the rhythms often tangoesque rather than swinging, and the jazz horns backed by strings and accordions. The strains of an Odessa Jewish wedding were never far away. Jazzy solos were passed around, but nothing like the great riffs of Western 1930s jazzmen were heard. If urban jazzmen in the States adapted black music motifs to their art, their Soviet counterparts did the same thing with the materials at hand ~ gypsy, Jewish, and folk.!® ‘With the triumph of jazz, a new dance craze set in. blonde Swede and an American black taught steps to the actors of the Vakhtangov Theater. Dance classes were made mandatory for officers in the Red Army by its commander, Kliment Voroshilov; he and Vyacheslav Molotov studied the tango. Dance halls sprung up even in small towns. Asin many hierarchical societies, elites began dancing with one another as wirness this news item on a New Year's Eve party, a stunning summary of the new cultural values: ‘he brigadr-welder V1. Baranow 8, the best Stakhanovite at Elektrozavod) {glided across the floor ina slow tango with Shura Ovehinnikova (20, the best Slakhanovite at TSG), He was dressed in a black Boston [wool gabardine] suit that fully accentuated his solidly built igure; she was ina erépe de Chine dress and black shoes with white timming, The tango revival was partly an import from neighboring countries, Kozin and others rode upon the wave. Ballroom dancing to Soviet jazz bands became the thing at diplomatic attarrs and Kremlin functions. But the dance also captured ordinary people. A visitor in 1936 recalled the popular rage for American dances and recordings; nighttime dancing in the parks of culture included foxtrot, rhumba, and the Boston waltz. The jazz age corresponded with the breathing spell that gave way in 1936 to a new wave of violence unleashed in the form of bloody purges. At the moment of its peak, jaz fell vietim to a new assault by ‘envious musicians from other genres and nationalists and conserva- tives resentful af imported culture. Division and ambivalence reigned fora while, even among the leaders, But when the purge came, it hit hard, One bancHleader was arrested on the podium. Others were sent to camps. Tsfasman, Utesov, and a few others remained untouched, but only at the price of converting their jazz. into a Soviet product, cleansed of “decadence.” State Jazz (later Estrada) Orchestras were \76 Russian popular culture formed, large well-dressed ensembles that played an assortment of ballroom music, classics, and smoothed out “jazz in carefully written arrangements with an emphasis on orchestral color and texture rather than on swinging spontaneity. A famous example of this was Utesov’s| rendition of “Suliko” a favorite song of Stalin. American tunes were often dished up with Russian words as in Utesov’s “Smugglers” sung to the tune of My Blue Heaven,” Asa whole, Stalin’s cleanup of jazz. resembled that in Hitler’s Germany where dance music had to be slow and smooth, with strings and some “folk” instruments added to the "jazz" complement?! Folk music (see next section) and-a genre that-came'to be knownas “mass song” (a term from the 1920s) filled the gap left by the purge of jazzy dance music. The new mass song was infused with a pathos of affirmation rather than revolt and negation, Its motifs were optimistic, humanitarian, and positive; the tunes were accessible and the lyrics uplifting. Jazz figures clung to their melodies for a while but were ‘gradually replaced by folkish ones. In the 1930s mass songs were given, a tremendous boost by their association with Soviet musical films, which in turn were made popular by the songs performed in them by stars like Lyubov Orlova and by recordings and radio. A song contest 1935-1936 yielded 6,575 entries. Mass song swelled to a crescendo in the years 1936-1941 when jazz was being Sovietized*? Most of the song writers were Jews from the Pale ~ Blanter from near Mogilev, Khait and the Pokrass brothers from Kiev, Feltsman from Odessa — who had received classical training and then had turned to light music This was also true of the main figures of the operetta and jazz worlds, ‘There was thus a musical connection between mass song, Jazz, and Jewish motifs and rhythms. Matvei [saakovich Blanter (1903-) turned. from classical music to the variety show’ of Leningrad in the 1920s and then became one of the half-dozen masters of mass song ~ brisk, popular, and politically impeccable. In their promotion of national values, Jewish origin was no more an obstacle to this than it was for the American Irving Berlin or patriotic Jews of other lands: Isaac Osipovich Dunaevsky' (1900-1955; see fig. 9) was the acknowl- edged. master of the genre, producing hundreds of marches. and songs, twenty film scores, two ballets, music forsthinty- dramas, aril a dozen. operettas. in. collaboration. with librettists: Lebedev-Kumach, Matusovsky,.and.d’AKtil, He was born near Kharkov of a Jewish family, studied classical music, flirted with avant-garde trends, and then moved into jazzand variety in the 1920s. In the 1930she was decor ated, highly paid, ancl honored throughout the country, Dunaevsky Stalin by starlight 1928-1941, 7 intersected professionally with virtually every major figure in music, theater, and film of his era. Facility and a melodic gift brought him success, He has been accused of plagiarizing Russian, Mexican, American, and Neapolitan songs. But his compositions, especially the film tunes, were and are undeniably enchanting and they became enormous national hits precisely because he fused different styles revolutionary hymn, light romance, operetta, and jazz. In his relation- ship to Stalin, power and culture met in the way it often does in lands of princes and their courts. Dunaevsky might have been sincere in his privately voiced admiration for Stalin, although the song he wrote for him disappointed the leader. Stalin for his part enjoyed Dunaevsky’s ‘music but disliked the man. ‘The 1932 “Song of the Counterplan” (Shostakovich/Kornilov) for the sound film Couerplan became the model for movie hits of the decade. ‘A rousing, optimistic march, its catchy melody was adopted as hymn. of the United Nations during the war (and then dropped at the onset of the Cold War). The movie Happy-Go-Lucky Guys (1934) launched Dunaevsky’s famous “Heart” into the hearts of millions, many of whom recognize at once a half century later its opening wards: How many lovely girls there are! How many tender girlish names! The biggest non-movie hit was Blanter’s “Katyusha’’ (1938) destined to achieve world renown during the war. The rocket mortar invented by A.G. Kostikov and first used in the Russo-Finnish War of 1939 was named after it. The lyrics of Mikhail Isakovsky (1900-1973) are strictly folkloric in their use of repetitive figures: Little apples, litle pears were blooming, Soft did mist upon the river le To its bank wandered peasant lass Katyusha To its steep bank, to its bank 50 high, Military, sports, and youth organizations provided occasions and patronage for mass songs, performed by dance bands, huge orchestras, and choirs, which saturated air waves, soundtracks, stages, and public parks. A major vehicle for them was the brass band. Semen Cher- hetsky, Inspector General of Red Army Bands, organized elaborate ‘contests for composers of marches attended by the cream of Soviet song, writers = Khait, Dunaevsky, and others ~ as well as Voroshilov and the top brass. Bands were’ mandatory on holidays; in the big November 7 celebrations of Red Square, the United NKVD Band of78 Russian popular culture 400-500 players would blare out music all through the day as the parades passed by. The most famous military ensemble was that of General Alexander Alexandrov (1883-1946) who had studied before the revolution in the St. Petersburg conservatory and then rose from a provincial music teacher to a professorship at the Moscow conserva- tory. His Red Army Band, formed in the 1920s with a dozen members, gained a huge following during the five year plan, and reached 200 players and singers in the 1930s. The military band was a metaphor for official culture — just as it often was of the patriotic culture of other lands2* An honest film about the early 1930s, My Friend loan Lapshir, employs the metaphor throughout as a counterpoint to the otherwise grim surroundings; one of its characters comments that “there is. a band for every soul in this town. In the finale following the violent climax a tramear adorned with the face of Stalin carries a brass band into the town square to play a bright military march. Return of the folk Folklorism ~ politicized folk adaptation ~ became a major industry in the Stalin era. After undergoing assault during the cultural revolution, folk performance rade back into favor on the wave of the literary folk revival. In 1936 a Theater of Folk Art was established in Moscow with Igor Moiseev (1906-) asits choreographer and dancing coach, A former ballet dancer and - along with George Balanchine ~ a disciple of the great innovator Kasyan Goleizovsky, Moiseev wanted to extend the Plasticity of the body in dance, After a 1936 youth festival, he founded Ins folk dance ensemble which brilliantly combined the rigor of classical ballet with folkloric steps and village scenes, The State Russian Folk Orchestra, still bearing Andreev’s name, was reorganized several times under various leaders and made part of the Leningrad Philharm- onic organization in 1936. In the next four years its sixty players gave S71 concerts in fifty-three towns in eight republics at cubs, barracks, factories, and concert halls. Solemn cantatas, revolutionary hymns, and mass songs were added to its repertoire, thus blurring its folkish character. In 1940 the balalaika player Nikolai Osipov became the orchestra's director and it later took his name, while a Leningrad branch of it took the name. of Andreev. The Pyatnitsky folksong ensemble (whose founder had died in 1927) was upgraded and legit mized, spawning a dozen imitators? The names Moiseev, Osipoy, Virsky, and Pyatnitsky are known the world over due to this revival of the original Andyeev ancl Pyatnitsky Stalin by starlight 1928-1931 ” ‘cultural forms. The pioneers of folklorism had wanted to democratize the art, to give it back to the people and not just play it to the cities. This now happened: a nationwide network of amateur folk choirs and ensembles was sponsored by the state, thus making folk a participa tory as wellas a spectator art, Amateur choirs, bands/singers;reciters, solo instrumentalists, and dance campanies fromvall over the country made pilgrimages to Moisocv’s theater in Moscow to perform folkand. popular music, a social episode that inspired one of the great musical comedy films-of-the era (Volga, Volga; see below). An elaborate system © of vocal, instrumental, and dance companies was established with state support, training schools, and guaranteed bookings. By the late 1930), Sovie: factories were producing a million and half balalaikas and domras a year. By the eve of war, folklorism had become a thoroughly Soviet natioxal art and remains so until this day.” “ But the victory of folk music in Stalin's Russia also meant the strengthening of conservatism and nationalism in music. Competition for state resources led to animosity reinforced by personal tastes and ideological-cultural perspectives, Jazzmen were notorious in their con- tempt for the balalaika and accordion even though those instruments were sometimes forced on their big bands to add “national” flavor, The animosty was deepened in wartime when both these forms of music were set loose in frontline entertainment. After the war, one of the harshest voices against deviation in musie was the co-leader and composer for the Pyatnitsky ensemble, Viadimir Zakharov (see fig. 10) The composition and deployment of the sexes in the folk ensembles also reinforced the gender and authority images of the Stalinist era Building on prerevolutionary precedents and their lingering rem> nants, the prettified and theatricalized Stalinist ensembles — like those in Eastern Europe ~ served to symbolize collective values (as in the ringrdance) and promote images af national solidarity, reverence for the past, and happy peasants. As with literary folklore, the ensembles were used .0 endow collective farm and factory life with cultural legitimation2* ‘Although circus was battered like everything, else during the cul: tural revolution and almost drowned in the alphabet soup of TsUGTs, GOMETs, and GUTs ~ acronyms of the successive bodies controlling it and estrada ~it survived very well. Once circus managers learned that it was wise fo do s0, they had no trouble adapting political texts to its rlainments because circus had done this long before the revo> lution, The fist fully Soviet ircus extravaganza was Makhno’s Escn- pues (1929). In it the clown Lazarenko, interpreting Makhno axa crude