Source: Weekly News Bulletin, published by the Press Section of the Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries, vol. v no. 3-4 (January 28, 1929): front cover.

Music.

The picture above shows Moscow's experimental "Persymphans" ("First Symphonic Ensemble") circa 1929. Note the inward-facing arrangement in which the violins and violas sit with their backs to the audience. Formed in February 1922, this much-publicized group dispensed with a traditional conductor. Instead it took collective decisions regarding tempos, dynamics, balance, and other interpretive factors. In Marxist terms, its workers controlled their (cultural) production directly.

The Persymphans performed works by such foreign composers as Ravel and Debussy. It also played new pieces by such up-and-coming Soviets as the young Dmitri Shostakovich. (Click on link for .ram video clip of Shostakovich).

Its radical concept had considerable international appeal and inspired several similar orchestras in the West. Domestically it became fairly popular with the Moscow public. However it was open to the criticism that its classical repertoire was elitist and bourgeois even though those performing it were organized in a proletarian fashion. It also played less well than many orchestras with conductors.

The general problem of what to do with artistic inheritances was one of the great cultural dilemmas facing the Bolsheviks in the 1920s. Classical music has a rich tradition in Russo-European history, including strong associations with court rituals and/or with organized religion. During the NEP era, the ideological question of whether to reject its prerevolutionary past or to embrace it was particularly acute. One partial solution involved the "discovery" that some famous composers had had proletarian sensibilities. This was easiest to assert with Tchaikovsky, Borodin, and several other well-known Russians. However it was also done with non-Russian Europeans.

Lenin, for example, once said after hearing a Beethoven piano sonata that: "one is proud of one's humanity when listening to what a human genius has been able to create." A. V. Lunacharskii, the Commissar of Education during the NEP era, built this casual remark into a manifesto on the 100th anniversary of Beethoven's death in 1927:

Above all music is adopted to be the language of the revolution, for revolution as was said by the poet [Aleksandr] Blok is in its very essence musical. It is dissolving...world-wide dissonance into harmony, into that which is acceptable to humanity, something definite about which can be said: there, it is attained....

History [gave] humanity at the beginning of the 19th Century a great order--to reveal all storms of democracy organized for struggle. And humanity answered: "I have such an instrument. There is Ludwig von Beethoven." And it played [through] him...a gigantic prelude to the coming revolutionary music, when the Great French Revolution [was] replaced by the Great Russian--and with it also the World--Revolution. This is why Beethoven is akin to us.

Source: "Beethoven" (Address by the People's Commissar of Education at the meeting of the working youth in Moscow) in Weekly News Bulletin vol. iv no. 11-12 (March 25, 1927): 7-8.

The Persymphans duly marked the centenary with a Beethoven symphony cycle. Other orchestras around the USSR followed suit with Beethoven performances. Municipal and conservatory libraries opened Beethoven-era exhibitions. A broad, well-organized newspaper campaign asserted the ideological relevance of it all to the literate NEP-era public.

Of course, the Bolsheviks preferred new works by genuinely proletarian composers. However even 19th-century Germans could have their virtues. One of them was the notion that Soviet appropriation and appreciation of Beethoven proved the legitimacy of the October Revolution:

Eugene Braudo, Pravda (March 27, 1927): For the generation of the 20s and 30s of the last century, Beethoven was entirely too powerful. Only now, in the epoch of gigantic social changes, has the heroic voice of Beethoven received its due valuation. In commemorating him we emphasize how much he has to say to us in these days: --the great musician and singer of heroism and civil achievements.

Source: "Beethoven Festivals In The USSR" in Weekly News Bulletin vol. iv no. 15-16 (April 22, 1927): 4.

The Cultural Revolution began to hit classical music around mid-1927 and was initiated from above. In the beginning, it concerned itself mainly with control over musical organizations. Its first stage was an attempt to resolve divisions and differences between performance organizations. Most of these were placed under the guidance of the arts administration organ "Glavisskustvo" (the "Chief Art Department"). Glavisskustvo worked to eliminate elitism: by exposing culturally illiterate workers and peasants to top-flight orchestras and performers; by strongly encouraging the development of Soviet compositions; and by encouraging mass participation in music performance. On the high side of musical culture, the better orchestras (including the Persymphans) and top performers began to do concerts outside the big central halls. They played at factories, in Army barracks, etc. The expanding Soviet radio net also began to feature both live and recorded classical broadcasts. At the mass level, smaller cities,factories, Army units, trade-union clubs, and so on were either encouraged or ordered to form choirs, orchestras, and other performance groups of their own. Meanwhile, censorship and play lists were tightened. This helped to control the ideological implications of the music and to maximize its "instructive" value.

The lack of approved classical pieces to play hampered mass musical acculturation in the 1920s. However, it was overcome on occasion with suprising results. Consider for example what happened in the Ukrainian city of Dnepropetrovsk (formerly Ekaterinoslav). Construction there of the Dnepropetrovsk Dam and of factories brought in tens of thousands of new workers and administrators. In 1925 the local committee of the Metallurgists' Trade Union organized the active members of a number of shop-floor choral groups into a single 250-voice regional organization. At first it performed a capella around the construction area. It sang mainly revolutionary/Civil War songs and Ukrainian folk melodies. By 1926 it was working with a newly founded orchestra on a composition by its choir-master. Its suitably proletarian theme was the Bolshevik Revolution and its consolidation. The success of this collaboration inspired the foundation of a workers' opera. Its first two performances were Tchaikovsky's "Queen of Spades" and Gounoud's "Faust." By the spring of 1927 Dnepropetrovsk's musicians were jointly tackling Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Their imperfect but enthusiastic performance (which required a conductor) was billed as a tribute to the 10-year anniversary of the October Revolution. It was ballyhooed in the press as a demonstration of the ever-increasing cultural sensibilities of Soviet men and women.

Source: "The Ninth Symphony of Beethoven in the Interpretation of the Worker-Metallists (Musical and Choir Association in Dnepropetrovsk)," in Weekly News Bulletin vol. iv no. 50-51 (April 22, 1927): 4-6.