Stalin’s Music Prize: Soviet Culture and Politics

Ten years ago, tasked with reviewing Marina Frolova-Walker’s first book Russian Music and Nationalism: From Glinka to Stalin (Yale University Press, 2007), I praised the author for dismantling long-standing myths and questioning the activities of some of the sacred cows of Russian music history, and for writing about the topics that “annoyed” her in a most enlightening and gripping way. After reading Frolova-Walker’s latest book, Stalin’s Music Prize: Soviet Culture and Politics, I was thrilled to see that the author is still busting myths, charting the hitherto unexplored areas of Soviet music history, and narrating a fascinating and often hilarious story of the rise-and-fall of Stalin’s prize for artistic achievements. Frolova-Walker provides brilliant insight into the inner workings of the Soviet institutional and cultural system, and the power play that affected the process of rewarding artists whose work was meant to stand for the best that Soviet culture had to offer.

Epilogue

With a final contextualizing chapter, Philip V. Bohlman interprets Herder’s 1769 sea journey as a metaphor for the writings on music and nationalism, and for his sweeping influence on the history of ideas that we attribute to modernity. Dramatically leaving his post as pastor and director of religious life for the German community of Riga, Herder embarked on a sea journey that would provide him with the new experiences that would shape his approaches to anthropology, education, philosophy, religion, the universal history of humanity, and music. The 1769 sea journey, captured in the notes of an extensive journal Herder never published, acted as an ethnomusicological epiphany that would establish the encounter with folk songs lying ahead as the foundations for understanding world music.