Soviet arts organisations had gained complete control over cultural life by the mid-i930s. In retrospect, these were golden years for average Soviet audiences. Hugely popular songs, novels and movies were easily available, and came out in a fairly steady stream. Audiences had more free time and disposable income than they ever had before. That these resources were paltry in comparison to Western societies seemed to matter little. Yet much of the same witch-hunting that struck the political world during the purge trials of 1936 took place as well in the arts, invisible to the public eye. By the end of the decade, artists as diverse as Mandel' shtam and Kozin were either dead or lost in the prison camps, as were many, many others, including Babel , Meyerhold and Pil niak. Mikhail Bulgakov s great novel Master and Margarita, a decade in the making, was completed and lost deep in a desk drawer, not to emerge until 1966, after which it became perhaps the most beloved Russian novel of the century. Cruel fate struck artists from the most popular to the most elusive, from wholehearted Bolshevik to apolitical elitist, from Russian to Jew.
Emblematic of the unpredictability was the fate of two operas, Lady Macbeth ofMtsensk, composed by Dmitrii Shostakovich, and Ancient Heroes (Bogatyri), a libretto written by Demian Bednyi to an old comic opera by Borodin. The young Shostakovich was a rising star in Soviet music, and Lady Macbeth one of his first resounding successes. Based on a story by Nikolai Leskov, the opera tells of a strong-willed woman trapped in a loveless marriage in the Russian provinces, ruined finally when her passionate affair leads to the murder of her husband and his father. First performed in 1934, it won instant acclaim for the daring use of instruments such as the trombone and saxophone, and its bold dissonance and discordant rhythms. Yet when Stalin attended a 1936 performance and walked out in evident disgust, Shostakovich was dangerously exposed. Within two days Pravda featured an editorial entitled 'Chaos instead of Music', castigating Shostakovich, and performance of the opera ceased.[37]More surprising was the fate of Bednyi. A poet and staunch comrade of Lenin, Bednyi had once defined Soviet political correctness. During the civil war his caustic verse scored points against priests, capitalists and monarchists, and afterwards he remained an effective political versifier. His libretto for Heroes was in the same spirit of mockery, yet much to his shock, Pravda denounced its debut performance for disparaging the role of Christianity in Russian history.[38]
Though the final third of the 1930s was a period of profound repression in the arts, to many Soviet citizens it was a time when their tastes were served. Audiences continued to find new movies to suittheirtastes, many oftheminthe musical genre they had come to love. Aleksandrov scored new hits with Volga- Volga (1938) and Radiant Path (Svetlyi put') (1940), both starring Liubov' Orlova, and he soon found a rival in the young Ivan Pyr'ev, who directed the popular musicals Rich Bride (Bogataia nevesta) (1938), Tractor Drivers (Traktoristy) (1939) and Swineherd and the Shepherd (Svinarka i pastukh) (1940). These films seem today to be cliches of socialist realism, in which kolkhozniks and shock workers find true love and happiness, but they resonated deeply with their intended audiences. Music of all kinds continued to be performed, recorded and played on the radio, and if the socialist marches of Aleksandrov and Dunaevskii received the lion's share of official attention, crooners and jazz singers were still commonly available. In fact, one ofthe most popular entertainments ofthe era were vast outdoor masquerades and dance parties, such as those arranged in Moscow's Gorky Park, where carefree thousands danced the night away. Here, as well as in dance halls throughout the land, jazz and the cruel romance held sway. The music played on, as long as nobody uttered the word 'jazz'.
Perhaps the most democratic shift in cultural organisation was the state's willingness to sponsor amateur arts to a degree that rivalled the professional. Falling under the broad rubric of samodeiatel'nost', roughly translated as amateur, but meaning 'self-actuating', amateur arts organisations bloomed throughout the Soviet Union. Devoted to all forms of activities and hobbies, clubs provided space, equipment and instruction to the working masses. Although 'Organise Cultured Leisure' was the pervasive if unappealing slogan of cultural authorities, the slogan should not obscure the fact that the movement allowed simple Soviet citizens tremendous opportunity to enjoy themselves, to socialise and to share their accomplishments with friends. Most commonly, amateur arts groups were devoted to singing and dancing, with a repertory that included dollops of officially approved Soviet marches and large shares of the folk music that only a few years before had been the target of proletarian critics. In the Slavic, Transcaucasian and Central Asian ethnic republics, the revival (often artificial) of folkmusic and dance was used to demonstrate the deep roots of Soviet nationalities policy. The amateur arts movement allowed common citizens to participate in Soviet cultural life. Oddly the movement, whose folk aesthetics were in utter contradiction to socialist realism, thrived most during the years when the state promoted socialist realism most avidly.[39]
The repressions of the immediate pre-war years undermined the world of culture. Popular song and amateur arts seemed to thrive, but the movie business was producing fewer and fewer films every year, artists were confined to narrow ranges of expression and the literary world lost many of the great writers who had made the first decade of Soviet literature so rich. Arts administrators maintained their jobs by parroting the most recent party line, and in doing so destroyed the careers of talented peers. Artistic unions formed to defend the interests of artists now existed to control them. Soviet culture suffered from a deep split between artists, administrators and audiences.
Similar rifts within Soviet society left the country unprepared for the war that began in June 1941. The army, whose command structure had been destroyed in the purges of 1938, could not resist German attacks; the state found it impossible to organise retreat or resistance in the early months ofthe war. The party central leadership seemed incapable of response. Yet Soviet artists responded immediately and powerfully to the German invasion, creating songs, posters, newspaper and radio reports and later stories and movies that gave Soviet citizens an outlet for their fury and despair. The ability to adapt to war footing far faster than the army, party or state suggests that Soviet cultural organisations were much stronger than would have seemed
possible.[40]
The most difficult years for many Soviet artists were the two between the signing of the Soviet-German Non-aggression Pact in August 1939 and the German invasion. The tremendous pressure on cultural organs to provide ideological support for the never-ending purges, for the growing cult of Stalin and for the forced incorporation of territories into the Soviet Union challenged even loyal minions. Three years of bloody purges left them unsure of whom to praise and wary of paying tribute to any policy line that could, within the space of several days, be declared anathema. The sudden flip-flop into friendship with Hitler's Germany was even more traumatic. Many younger journalists, songwriters and artists had learned their craft by castigating the Nazi scourge.
38
Boris Schwarz,
39
Frank Miller,
40
Richard Stites (ed.),