Paradigms of Contemporary Music in Twenty-First-Century Russia

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lidia Ader
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Contemporary Music ◽  
New Music ◽  
First Century ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
State Support ◽  
The West ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Historical Factors

This chapter offers an account of the circumstances in which contemporary composers have had to operate since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the attendant diminution in state support for the arts which had been provided under the Communist regime. In addition to assessing the implications of these changes in practical terms, it also analyses the cultural, social, and historical factors which have caused new music to remain at the margins of general awareness. The second part of the chapter surveys the ways in which the principal stylistic tendencies evident in Russian new music today evince a lingering ambivalence in attitudes towards the West.

Fleeing the Soviet Union, Dancing on the West Coast

Experiment ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 297-316
Author(s):  
Lorin Johnson ◽  
Donald Bradburn
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
High Power ◽  
West Coast ◽  
Southern California ◽  
The West ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
First Time

In the 1970s and 1980s, Los Angeles audiences saw Soviet defectors Mikhail Baryshnikov, Alexander Godunov, Natalia Makarova, and Rudolf Nureyev in the prime of their careers at the Hollywood Bowl, The Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and the Greek Theater. Dance photographer Donald Dale Bradburn, a local Southern California dancer describes his behind-the-scenes access to these dancers in this interview. Perfectly positioned as Dance Magazine’s Southern California correspondent, Bradburn offers a candid appraisal of the Southern California appeal for such high-power Russian artists as well as their impact on the arts of Los Angeles. An intimate view of Russian dancers practicing their craft on Los Angeles stages, Bradburn’s interview is illustrated by fourteen of his photographs, published for the first time in this issue of Experiment.

scholarly journals From Social Justice to Metaphor: The Whitening of Othello in the Russian Imagination

2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (38) ◽  
pp. 75-89
Author(s):  
Natalia Khomenko
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
First Century ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
The West ◽  
Racial Conflict ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
White Face ◽  
Cultural Fantasy

Othello was the most often-staged Shakespeare play on early Soviet stages, to a large extent because of its ideological utility. Interpreted with close attention to racial conflict, this play came to symbolize, for Soviet theatres and audiences, the destructive racism of the West in contrast with Soviet egalitarianism. In the first decades of the twenty-first century, however, it is not unusual for Russian theatres to stage Othello as a white character, thus eliminating the theme of race from the productions. To make sense of the change in the Russian tradition of staging Othello, this article traces the interpretations and metatheatrical uses of this character from the early Soviet period to the present day. I argue that the Soviet tradition of staging Othello in blackface effectively prevented the use of the play for exploring the racial tensions within the Soviet Union itself, and gradually transformed the protagonist’s blackness into a generalized metaphor of oppression. As post-collapse Russia embraced whiteness as a category, Othello’s blackness became a prop that was entirely decoupled from race and made available for appropriation by ethnically Slavic actors and characters. The case of Russia demonstrates that staging Othello in blackface, even when the initial stated goals are those of racial equality, can serve a cultural fantasy of blackness as a versatile and disposable mask placed over a white face.

Sonic Overload

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter J. Schmelz
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Information Overload ◽  
First Century ◽  
Cultural Life ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
History Of ◽  
Primary Materials ◽  
Film And Literature

Sonic Overload presents a musically centered cultural history of the late Soviet Union. It focuses on polystylism in music as a response to the information overload swamping listeners in the Soviet Union during its final decades. The central themes are collage, popular music, kitsch, and eschatology. The book traces the ways in which leading composers Alfred Schnittke and Valentin Silvestrov initially embraced and assimilated popular sources before ultimately rejecting them. Polystylism first responded to the utopian impulses of Soviet doctrine with utopian impulses to encompass all musical styles, from “high” to “low.” But these initial all-embracing aspirations were soon followed by retreats to alternate utopias founded on carefully selecting satisfactory borrowings, as familiar hierarchies of culture, taste, and class reasserted themselves. Looking at polystylism in the late USSR tells us about past and present, near and far, as it probes the musical roots of the overloaded, distracted present. Sonic Overload is intended for musicologists and Soviet, Russian, and Ukrainian specialists in history, the arts, film, and literature, but it also targets a wider scholarly audience, including readers interested in twentieth- and twenty-first century music; modernism and postmodernism; quotation and collage; the intersections of “high” and “low” cultures; and politics and the arts. Based on archival research, oral historical interviews, and other overlooked primary materials, as well as close listening and thorough examination of scores and recordings, Sonic Overload presents a multilayered and comprehensive portrait of late-Soviet polystylism and cultural life, and of the music of Silvestrov and Schnittke.

Changing Patterns of Power in Cold War Politics: The Mysterious Case of Vladimír Komárek

2001 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Igor Lukes
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
The West ◽  
New Approach ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Changing Patterns ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Willingness To Cooperate

The story of the arrest and imprisonment of Vladimír Komárek sheds valuable light on relations between Czechoslovakia and the United States in the 1950s and 1960s. Komárek, who had worked as an intelligence officer against the Czechoslovak Communist regime in the 1950s, was a U.S. citizen traveling to the Soviet Union on business when he was dramatically captured by the Czechoslovak authorities. Pressure from the U.S. government and private individuals, as well as conflicts between the Czechoslovak secret service and other, more liberal, elements in the Czechoslovak government, ultimately led to Komárek's release. Czechoslovakia's eventual willingness to cooperate in the Komárek case signaled a new approach to relations with the West, an approach that would have significant consequences during the Prague Spring of 1968.

Century of Ukraine's diplomatic service

2017 ◽  
pp. 77-94
Author(s):  
Yuriy Makar
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
State Committee ◽  
The West ◽  
Sovereign State ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
National University ◽  
Central Council ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Twentieth

On December 22, 2017 the Ukrainian Diplomatic Service marked the 100thanniversary of its establishment and development. In dedication to such a momentous event, the Department of International Relations of Yuriy Fedkovych Chernivtsi National University has published a book of IR Dept’s ardent activity since its establishment. It includes information both in Ukrainian and English on the backbone of the collective and their versatile activities, achievements and prospects for the future. The author delves into retracing the course of the history of Ukrainian Diplomacy formation and development. The author highlights the roots of its formation, reconsidering a long way of its development that coincided with the formation of basic elements of Ukrainian statehood that came into existence as a result of the war of national liberation – the Ukrainian Central Rada (the Central Council of Ukraine). Later, the Ukrainian or so-called State the Hetmanate was under study. The Directorat (Directory) of Ukraine, being a provisional collegiate revolutionary state committee of the Ukrainian People’s Republic, was given a thorough study. Of particular interest for the research are diplomatic activities of the West Ukrainian People`s Republic. Noteworthy, the author emphasizes on the Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic’s foreign policy, forced by the Bolshevist Russia. A further important implication is both the challenges of the Ukrainian statehood establishing and Ukraine’s functioning as a state, first and foremost, stemmed from the immaturity and conscience-unawareness of the Ukrainian society, that, ultimately, has led to the fact, that throughout the twentieth century Ukraine as a statehood, being incorporated into the Soviet Union, could hardly be recognized as a sovereign state. Our research suggests that since the beginning of the Ukrainian Diplomacy establishment and its further evolution, it used to be unprecedentedly fabricated and forged. On a wider level, the research is devoted to centennial fight of Ukraine against Russian violence and aggression since the WWI, when in 1917 the Russian Bolsheviks, headed by Lenin, started real Russian war against Ukraine. Apropos, in the about-a-year-negotiation run, Ukraine, eventually, failed to become sovereign. Remarkably, Ukraine finally gained its independence just in late twentieth century. Nowadays, Russia still regards Ukraine as a part of its own strategic orbit,waging out a carrot-and-stick battle. Keywords: The Ukrainian People’s Republic, the State of Ukraine, the Hetmanate, the Direcorat (Directory) of Ukraine, the West Ukrainian People`s Republic, the Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic, Ukraine, the Bolshevist Russia, the Russian Federation, Ukrainian diplomacy

Explosive Change in China and the Soviet Union: Implications for the West

1989 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 95-111
Author(s):  
Amos A. Jordan ◽  
Richard L. Grant
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
The West ◽  
The Soviet Union
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