"Squandered on Communism": Shostakovich During the Cold War
Type of Work
Article
Date
1998
Journal Title
Canadian Review of American Studies
Journal ISSN
0007-7720
Journal Volume
28
Journal Issue
3
First Page
69
Last Page
85
DOI
10.3138/CRAS-028-03-05
Abstract
Introduction: Sixteen-Inch Guns and Just Plain Music Covering the Twentieth Congress of the Soviet Communist Party in 1956, Newsweek smugly remarked that "political party conventions elsewhere do not, as a rule, concern themselves with culture. The Soviet Communist Party has a long record of jumping in—and on—culture with both feet" ("Thaw Exposed" 1956, 88). Especially with forty years of hindsight, it is a striking comment; and given the ways in which political conservatives, who so persistently denounced Soviet political intervention in the aesthetic, have today made culture a central focus of their own political program, it would be easy to take pleasure in revealing the inconsistency in their position.
Citation Information
Rabinowitz, Peter J., ""Squandered on Communism": Shostakovich During the Cold War" (1998). Hamilton Digital Commons.
https://digitalcommons.hamilton.edu/articles/93
Hamilton Areas of Study
Literature and Creative Writing