Suchergebnisse

The article examines artistic exchanges between the USSR and Finland from the viewpoint of the Finnish left. After WWII, Finland was in a difficult geopolitical position; although not occupied by the USSR, it received little support from the West and so remained an independent capitalist democracy, with little foreign leverage. The Soviet influence was felt in many areas, and throughout the Cold War, Finland received many more world-class Soviet artists than any other Western country. This was in part a consequence of Finland's proximity to the USSR, but the Finnish Communist Party, a major domestic political force, also played a role. Immediately after the war, organizations associated with the Finnish Communist Party enjoyed a virtual monopoly over such exchanges, but this began to change in the mid-1950s. Around that time, the USSR began to allow Finnish artists to train and perform at its world-class arenas, and many of those Finnish students had links with the political left. Based on interviews and supported by archival material from Finland and Russia, the article explores the role of the Finnish left in these artistic exchanges. ; peerReviewed

Book review: Marina Frolova-Walker, Stalin's Music Prize : Soviet Culture and Politics. ; nonPeerReviewed

[Introduction] East-West artistic connections during the Cold War were a complex range of phenomena including the circulation of works of art, travelling by art professionals, the exchange of practices and the adoption of art currents from the other side of the Iron Curtain. The Cold War has also been said to have influenced the arts and artistic processes in a number of ways. Yet, art has always shunned political borders, wavering between the guidance of individual and governmental patrons, and borderless expression. This chapter discusses an attempt at an extensive exchange of exhibitions between the Soviet Union and the United States around the late 1950s that involved New York's Museum of Modern Art, the Pushkin Art Museum from Moscow and many other leading art institutions. It illustrates the prospects of fine art in expanding the horizons of people, while at the same time it manifests the strict limitations that political players on both sides managed to impose on the arts. [Continues, please see the article] ; peerReviewed

Research on Cold War has often been considered to a separate research paradigm and has thus been given the same of Cold War Studies. There are journals, research centers and institutions in the western countries many of which were born already during the Cold War. The Cold War was a western paradigm that was partly adopted in the socialist countries during the Cold War, but mainly as a concept outside scholarly research. Cold War studies used to be very political by nature, concentrating on international politics, high-level diplomacy and military affairs. But since the end of the Cold War, drastic changes have taken place in the field. Culture and social approaches that were hardly even in the margins within the Cold War studies have quickly transformed the whole field. One of the important factors for this was the opening of borders and access to primary sources that had remained closed for most researchers throughout the Cold War. This change is well reflected in the articles of this volume. ; nonPeerReviewed

The radio journalist James Wood has described the high power shortwave transmitter as the weapon of the Cold War.1 There is a reason for this: both superpowers sought constantly throughout the Cold War to expand their transmitting power to reach even the most distant places and provide ever more language services to nations they wished to influence. Radio broadcasting became the way to contact foreign populations and convey the message of the foreign government. Yet, while messages never went through in such a mechanistic way, radio broadcasting emerged as an extremely important part of Cold War strategy for both warring parties. However, while there have been numerous studies about western Cold War broadcasting to the Soviet Union, there are practically no studies that would tackle the issue of Soviet international broadcasting. [Continues, please see the article] ; peerReviewed

This article discusses the abortive U.S. government effort to organize Soviet émigrés after World War II. After years of a lack of interest on the part of both the United States and the Soviet Union, Soviet émigrés and émigré politics came to the fore with the onset of the Cold War. The U.S. government sought to use émigrés in political and psychological warfare against the Soviet bloc. The many studies that have looked at Cold War-era psychological warfare have largely ignored U.S. plans to enlist Soviet émigrés on the West's behalf. Attempts to create a political forum for anti-Bolshevik Soviet émigrés were broader than have been understood thus far, revealing important information about the postwar emigration from the Soviet Union, the émigrés' role in the Cold War in general, and the development of U.S. Cold War strategies in relation to the émigrés.

This article discusses the abortive U.S. government effort to organize Soviet emigres after World War II. After years of a lack of interest on the part of both the United States and the Soviet Union, Soviet emigres and emigre politics came to the fore with the onset of the Cold War. The U.S. government sought to use emigres in political and psychological warfare against the Soviet bloc. The many studies that have looked at Cold War-era psychological warfare have largely ignored U.S. plans to enlist Soviet emigres on the West's behalf. Attempts to create a political forum for anti-Bolshevik Soviet emigres were broader than have been understood thus far, revealing important information about the postwar emigration from the Soviet Union, the emigres' role in the Cold War in general, and the development of U.S. Cold War strategies in relation to the emigres. Adapted from the source document.

Venäläisiin arkistolähteisiin pohjaavassa väitöstutkimuksessaan Simo Mikkonen käsittelee Neuvostoliiton poliittisen eliitin ja taiteilijoiden keskinäisiä suhteita 1930-luvulla. Ajanjakso muistetaan Stalinin valtaannoususta ja joukkoterrorista. Taiteiden osalta on puhuttu taiteellisen vapauden alistamisesta poliittisiin päämääriin puolueen pakkokeinojen ja vainon avulla. Mikkonen osoittaa käsityksen osin virheelliseksi: yhtään eturivin säveltäjää ei terrorin aikana lähetetty vankileireille, teloituksista puhumattakaan. Säveltäjistä neuvostoeliittiä Säveltäjien asema muuttui merkittävästi 1930-luvun aikana. Säveltäjien työ ammattimaistui, he nousivat osaksi eliittiä ja heidän elintasonsa koheni. Parannuksilla oli kuitenkin hintansa. Kommunistinen puolue asetti musiikille useita vaatimuksia, kuten ymmärrettävyys. Lisäksi teosten aiheiden tuli mukautua vallitsevaan politiikkaan. Näiden rajoitusten välineenä on pidetty 1932 perustettua Neuvostosäveltäjien liittoa, jonka viralliseksi ohjenuoraksi asetettiin sosialistinen realismi. Säveltäjäliitosta ei kuitenkaan tullut kirjailijaliiton tapaista puolueen käsikassaraa, vaan säveltäjien etujärjestö, jota he käyttivät etevästi taloudellisten etujen järjestämiseen ja asemansa parantamiseen. - Vaikka säveltäjäliiton kokouksissa käsiteltiin myös ideologisia ja poliittisia teemoja, tämä ei tapahtunut puolueen suoran valvonnan alaisuudessa. Säveltäjät jopa vaikuttivat puolueen näkemyksiin musiikista ja siihen, miten puolueen hämäriä ohjeita ja musiikin sosialistista realismia tulkittiin, Mikkonen havaitsi. Byrokraatit vainojen uhrina Vuosi 1936 muistetaan säveltäjä Dimitri Shostakovitshia vastaan käynnistetystä hyökkäyksestä. Shostakovitshin on väitetty joutuneen täydelliseen epäsuosioon, jopa kuolemanvaaraan ennen kuin hänen viides sinfoniansa esitettiin marraskuussa 1937. Mikkonen osoittaa, että Pravdan käynnistämä hyökkäys oli osa laajempaa tapahtumaketjua, jossa Shostakovitsh ei edes ollut pääkohteena. Häntä ei missään vaiheessa hylätty, saati vangittu. Pravdan artikkelit liittyivät valtaeliitin sisäiseen kamppailuun, jossa uusi Taideasioiden komitea otti ylivallan taidehallinnossa. Samalla se pyrki alistamaan itsenäisesti toimineen säveltäjäliiton valtansa alle. Seurasi valtakamppailu, jossa säveltäjäliitto näytti olevan vaarassa muuttua vuosina 1936-38 raivonneen terrorin veriseksi näyttämöksi. - Yllättävää on, ettei yhtäkään eturivin säveltäjää teloitettu kyseisten vuosien aikana. Toisin kuin esimerkiksi pahasti kärsinyt kirjallisuus, musiikki välttyi merkittäviltä tuhoilta, Mikkonen huomasi. Säveltäjien ja hallinnon yhteenoton uhrit olivat lähes poikkeuksetta byrokraatteja. Vaikka säveltäjäliiton aiempi johto syrjäytettiin, säveltäjät hyötyivät muutoksesta: säveltäjäliiton jäseniksi otettiin ainoastaan aitoja säveltäjiä ja musiikkitieteilijöitä. Liiton johto ei puhdistusten jälkeen edes kuulunut puolueeseen, vaan kaikki olivat arvostettuja säveltäjiä. Modernismia, ei säveltäjiä vastaan Myös itse musiikki koki muutoksia. 1920-luvun musiikillinen monimuotoisuus ei hävinnyt, mutta siitä tuli tiukemmin muotoihin sidottua. Valtio nosti kansanmusiikin kukoistukseen avokätisellä rahoituksellaan, mutta samalla kontrolloi sitä voimakkaasti. Myös perinteistä venäläistä konserttimusiikkia painotettiin voimakkaasti länsieurooppalaisen avantgarden kustannuksella. Musiikilliset uudistukset eivät tapahtuneet yksin puolueen toimesta ja säveltäjien vastustamina. Vaikka osa säveltäjistä suuntautui musiikilliseen avant-gardeen, lähes kaikki oli koulutettu Rimski-Korsakovin viitoittamalla venäläiskansallisella tiellä. Käänne perinteeseen oli sinänsä looginen, mutta kun siihen kytkettiin modernin musiikin vastainen kampanjointi ja ulkomaisten yhteyksien vaikeuttaminen, ero 1920-lukuun vaikutti varsin huomattavalta. ; In the scholarship of Soviet history, music has too often been neglected as part of musicology rather than that of history. As a consequence, our understanding of the music as part of the Soviet society has been left rather one-sided. Soviet musical life has been studied largely by musicologists interested in specific works or composers rather than the context within which music was produced. This study discusses the relationship of art and politics in the Soviet Union during the early Stalinist phase, 1930s. It explores the ideas different groups had about the development of Soviet music, but also the development of the concept of Soviet music. In addition, the ties between composers and leading Communist Party officials are of crucial interest as it has been believed that the Party had a central role in the development of Soviet musical life in the 1930s.Although the Party first became interested and then highly involved in Soviet musical life, during early 1930s, composers and musicologists were able to organize their work without direct involvement of neither the Party nor the state organs. The Composers' Union, the art union gathering all the composers and musicologists, was established in 1932, but unlike its sister organization, the Writers' Union, it was not submitted to the Party. Rather, the Composers' Union concentrated on furthering the financial position of its members. The issues of housing, salary and copyrights were engaged by composers while the Party mostly disregarded the intensification of the control of the Soviet musical life. Although the introduction of the Committee on Artistic Affairs, the state superstructure over the whole artistic life, intensified the political ties between music and the Party politics from 1936 onwards, composers managed still preserve their own interests. Despite the conflict between the superior Committee on Artistic Affairs and the Composers' Union, composers were not overcome. Even more surprising is the fact that the years of terror (1936–1938) almost passed the Composers' Union by without victims, whereas the Writers' Union suffered heavily as almost all state and Party organs. During the 1930s Soviet music in general came to support aims of the Party and had to make concession. Simultaneously, however, composing as a profession became established and amount of full-time composers proliferated.