Scourged Muses? Composers in the Stalin Era, 1932-1953

Hardly any composers of the Stalin era were killed by the regime. How can this exception be explained? The planned project aims to examine the lives and works of well-known and forgotten composers in the context of Stalinist cultural policy and ideology. The research project is based on the hypothesis that the control of music by the Stalinist power apparatus and its impact on individual composers was significantly less coherent than in the case of the visual arts or literature. One possible reason for this is the specific language of music: encoded in sounds, it operates on an abstract level that is perceived in a non-visual and subjective-emotional way. This circumstance makes it more difficult to instrumentalize music than other art forms. Although the Stalinist cultural bureaucracy installed similar mechanisms of power in all areas of culture with the creation of central art associations and ideological campaigns in order to achieve comprehensive control over art production, music played a special role in Soviet cultural life. By examining the individual experiences of musicians, the project aims to provide a more nuanced perspective on the functioning of one of the great modern dictatorships.