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Why did the Stalin era, a period characterized by bureaucratic control and the reign of Socialist Realism in the arts, witness such an extraordinary upsurge of musical creativity and the prominence of musicians in the cultural elite? This is one of the questions that Kiril Tomoff seeks to answer in Creative Union, the first book about any of the professional unions that dominated Soviet cultural life at the time. Drawing on hitherto untapped archives, he shows how the Union of Soviet Composers established control over the music profession and negotiated the relationship between composers and the Communist Party leadership. Central to Tomoff's argument is the institutional authority and prestige that the musical profession accrued and deployed within Soviet society, enabling musicians to withstand the postwar disciplinary campaigns that were so crippling in other artistic and literary spheres. Most accounts of Soviet musical life focus on famous individuals or the campaign against Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth and Zhdanov's postwar attack on musical formalism. Tomoff's approach, while not downplaying these notorious events, shows that the Union was able to develop and direct a musical profession that enjoyed enormous social prestige. The Union's leadership was able to use its expertise to determine the criteria of musical value with a degree of independence. Tomoff's book reveals the complex and mutable interaction of creative intelligentsia and political elite in a period hitherto characterized as one of totalitarian control.
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Reviews
"Impressive.... Tomoff has given us both detail and a broad new way of thinking about the mechanisms of Soviet ideological control. It undermines many of the broad, standardized approaches to Soviet culture and provides a nuanced appreciation of the opportunities and constraints that shaped Soviet music during the years when Stalin was alive. It is a text that should be read by anyone interested i
European History Quarterly
"Tomoff's book is precisely the kind that historians of Soviet musical culture most need right now: a repository of solid documented facts, interpreted with a light touch that strives only to outline general observations from the evidence he presents.... It is invaluable to have such a wealth of concrete detail at one's fingertips at long last."
Music and Letters
"Tomoff deftly challenges the mythology of the martyred Soviet artist. His thoroughly researched study explores not only the institutional structures and bureaucratic processes of the Composers' Union but also the personal and professional networks within it that protected members and preserved artistic values. Tomoff ably balances high politics and personal relationships to show how Soviet compos
Russian Review