The Magical Chorus

CONTENTS

Title Page

Introduction

Part One: THE GATHERING STORM

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Part Two: A TIME OF CATASTROPHES

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Part Three: RENDEZVOUS WITH STALIN

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Photo Insert

Chapter Nine

Part Four: THAWS AND FREEZES

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Part Five: A TIME OF CHANGES

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Notes

A Note About the Author

A Note About the Translator

Also by Solomon Volkov

Copyright

INTRODUCTION

Culture and politics have always been indivisible, and to maintain the contrary is also making a political statement. A stark and tragic example of that connection is Russian culture in the twentieth century: perhaps for the first time in history did such a brutal experiment of politics being forced into the cultural life of such a huge country take place over such a long period, continuing through world wars, convulsive revolutions, and the most ruthless terror.

That is the subject of this book, the first of its kind in any language: while studies in particular areas of cultural-political interrelationships in Russia in the last century are proliferating, there has not been a unified presentation.

The relationship between rulers and culture is a theme that has interested me since my Soviet childhood. My first collection did not consist of the usual toy soldiers or stamps; following Joseph Stalin’s death in March 1953, I clipped newspaper photographs of the late dictator with cultural figures like the writer Maxim Gorky or actors from the Moscow Art Theater. This is how far back the psychological roots of this work go. Later, as a journalist, member of the Union of Soviet Composers and senior editor of its Sovetskaya Muzyka magazine, and interviewer of many leading cultural figures, I continually had to deal with the political aspects of Soviet culture, which at the time seemed vastly urgent to us all. As a witness, I have tried to convey that sense of urgency here.

By education and personal inclination I have always had an intense interest in music, ballet, theater, and the art market—all integral parts of Russian culture—which sometimes seems to be terra incognita for other historians, who tend to rely on their teams of researchers and so often end up making egregious errors.¹

As the reader will see, I focus on such masters as Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (and his students Igor Stravinsky