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Censorship has a long history. Already in church music dating back to the 18th century, which was created to complement worship, it is possible to find evidence of music control. If religious habits were changed, such as in England during the Reformation or in revolutionary France, music that was contrary to the new order disappeared and was no longer played. In a society dominated by a monarch or a strong totalitarian organization, the supreme person also determines which pieces of music will be played and which will not. For example, Karl Heinrich Graun’s operas became very popular in the 18th century as they were sponsored and often co-authored by King Frederick the Great of Prussia himself. However, the above authorities cannot be called a censor who follows a modification of a composition, an ideological and moral tendency, a political belief, and the race of the author of the composition. While the creation of music was encouraged by the monarch or patron, censorship was small. The change began with the era of romanticism, but most powers were given to censorship in the 20th century when totalitarian regimes began to control all aspects of national life. Because of their convictions, composers could even end up in jail or be assassinated, and their compositions were banned. Censorship was systematically applied to music in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). This essay is devoted to the topic of censorship of classical music of the 20th century under this regime.
Music life in the USSR after the revolution in 1917 was very active and progressive, contemporary music was played in concerts and opera houses. Alongside the revolution in society, there was also a revolution in art. The period of complete creativity began, and in the 1920s Russia produced the most daring compositions of that time. A great example is Arseny Avraamov’s ‘Symphony of Factory Sirens’. Contemporary music organizations were established in both St. Petersburg and Moscow. Russian classical music composers were able to get acquainted with the latest trends in the Western world, such as jazz and new composing techniques, as P. Hindemith, A. Berg, D. Milhaud, and others visited the Soviet Union in the 1920s.
To counteract the avant-garde associations, the Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians (RAPM) was formed in 1923 to create music that, first and foremost, targets the masses and meets the requirements of revolutionary ideology. The main task of this organization is to cultivate vocal music and to create a new genre – a mass song with a topical theme. The association struggled with any manifestation of innovation and claimed that there was no need for composer education to create music for the nation. Initially in literature, later in music, the concept of socialist realism emerges, which the leader of the Soviet Communist Party and cultural ideologist Andrei Zhdanov sets as the standard and goal in the works of Soviet artists. RAPM gradually became the most influential proletarian art promoter. There was a change in the music life – it was believed that the work of composers like Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and Frederic Chopin had become redundant and even detrimental to the upbringing of the Bolshevik listener. It was considered sufficient to produce only mass songs for soldiers, sailors, and laborers, and the avant-garde was banned and declared anti-state. A massive wave of emigration began, with S. Rachmaninov, S. Prokofiev, A. Benois, A. Glazunov, V. Horowitz, J. Heifetz, G. Piatigorsky, and others.
In 1929, Stalin seized all the power in his hands. The new regime was a mechanism based on the cult of the Leader’s personality, the control of the media, and many secret agents. The regime’s ideology of censorship, like RAPM, was based on a collective vocal performance (a mass song) and an attack on the avant-garde – music had to reflect the collective feelings and the wisdom and power of the new proletarian policy, while the avant-garde was intended for a small audience and was therefore declared out of the law.
In the twenties, when capitalism prevailed, classical music composers had to compete with the mass culture spread by the new media. Composers whose existence over the centuries depended on the generosity of the church, the aristocracy, and the rich middle class, were suddenly deprived of secure financial support in the 20th century, and for some composers, the new totalitarian regime was beneficial, so not all the composers were against this regime.
After the collectivization and famine, Stalin promised new amenities in the early 30s to reassure citizens. Artists were instructed to express that life was getting better, and to encourage them to work in this direction, composers were granted healthcare and apartments in Moscow.
The next confrontation between the ruling regime and music dates back to 1936 when the newspaper ‘Pravda’ published an article ‘Muddle Instead of Music: On the Opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District’ about Dmitri Shostakovich’s opera, and in this article, Shostakovich was severely humiliated. This article was initiated by Stalin and it launched censorship attacks on all branches of the arts. The main editor of ‘Pravda’ was asked why Shostakovich was attacked: “We had to begin with somebody, Shostakovich was the most famous, and a blow against him would create immediate repercussions and would make his imitators in music and elsewhere sit up and take notice. We knew that he could stand the shock”. This attack mainly served as a general attempt at a new style of cultural control. Over-independent artists had to be belittled and intimidated, redirected with the threat of censorship, prison, and death. A part of Soviet citizens was publicly exposed and tried as enemies of the Soviet people, others were arrested and killed in secret, others found themselves in concentration camps, and others simply disappeared. Sergei Prokofiev, for example, was deprived of his passport in 1938 and could no longer leave the USSR. The presence of government spies was noticeable with clicks during phone calls and suspicious men in restaurants. This led to a special form of speech that had a dual meaning – direct and hidden. Shostakovich was a master of this style of speech, which he also used in music.
After the Second World War, the Soviet Union again experienced increased intervention by the Communist Party in culture and science. Since the campaign against Shostakovich in 1936, art has not received as much attention in official documents and mass media as in 1946, when a total elimination of the influence of Western culture was demanded. The attacks on cultural workers were officially published in party documents, for example, regarding the opera ‘The Great Friendship’ by V. Muradeli or in articles in the newspaper ‘Pravda’, like ‘Failed Opera’ about the opera ‘From All Our Hearts’ by G. Zhukovsky.
In 1948, a list of composers whose music was accused of formalism was published. Remarkably, this list was compiled by composers. The list included names such as D. Shostakovich, S. Prokofiev, N. Myaskovsky, A. Khachaturian, G. Popov, D. Kabalevsky, V. Shebalin, and Y. Shaporin, and they became victims of various types of attacks.
After J. Stalin’s death in 1953, there were some signs of liberalization in the USSR, but censorship still continued to be effective for many years to come.
In 1958, the Central Committee published an article ‘On the Correction of Errors in the Evaluation of ‘The Great Friendship’, ‘Bogdan Khmelnitsky’ and ‘From All My Heart’’, which acknowledged that composers on the list of 1948 were falsely named as representatives of anti-state formalism.
In the 1960s and 1970s attempts were made to rehabilitate Stalinism, and this time writers such as A. Solzhenitsyn and J. Brodsky suffered more than music-related artists.
The late 1980s – reorganization and openness, leading to the collapse of the USSR and the liberalization of art, and the disappearance of previous prohibitions. This period was also marked by the denial of the musical past, as the compositions featuring symbols of the previous regime were not played. Such a reaction at that time seemed natural.
A big part of the list of Soviet composers’ pieces was ‘forgotten’ – the one part deservedly, because the music gives an impression to the listener that the composer had written the work forcibly or to gain material wealth and a prominent position in the music community, the other part undeservedly, because the music clearly has symbols that are in stark contrast to the regime’s ideology. By ignoring such a musical past, we could lose many examples of high-quality music that could refresh the concert life.
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