Opera censorship in 1936
The reformation in Soviet culture during 1936 caused controversy and contradictions, as the government castigated the creativity and innovation that it once supported. The primary victims of this artistic purge included poet Demyan Bedny and avant-garde composer Dmitri Shostakovitch, as their personal lives and creative work suffered because of the Soviets’ lack of tolerance of progressive art and it’s influence.
Los Angeles Times, Nov. 16, 1936
Chicago Tribune, Nov. 16, 1936
The anti-religious writings of Bedny, a Party member, upset Soviet leaders, despite their previous distance from the Church. The Bolsheviks proved to be humorless hypocrites by banning Bedny’s comic opera, “The Titans”, based on a story by Victor Krylov. A vicious review, “The Falsification of National Past“, published in the popular Prvada, scorned Bedny for his vulgar portrayal of the iconic Russian baptism, which shamelessly mocked the heroes and glorified the villains in the tale of Russian mythology. The art committee of the Council of People’s Commissars ordered the withdrawal of the opera from the Kamerny Theater based on allegations of it’s perversion of Russia’ history, and gross misrepresentation of the historic tale of Prince Vladimir’s conversion to orthodoxy. Though Bedny scoffs at religion in his folk epic, the Soviet state’s defense of religion is ironic since it formally separated from the Church in 1918, which destroyed the clergy’s class standing and brazenly robbed the Church of its property.
Lady Macbeth of Mysensk
Similarly, Shostakovitch became familiar with the wrath of Prvada criticism when his second opera, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, was denounced for its foreign influences and primitive characteristics, the existence of which disturbed Soviet leaders. In the article “Chaos Instead of Music”, the opera was generalized as a leftist distortion that is a danger to Soviet music because the innovations of the petty-bourgeoisie would lead to the eventual break with “real” art, science, and literature. Shostakovitch’s satire includes elements of jazz and a scandalous plot, troubling conservatives- including Stalin, who walked out of the performance. Though Stalin’s disapproval spurred the Prvada article, the government leaders overall were discomforted by the cacophony, modernism, and coarse content of the opera, wishing such “savagery be abolished from every corner of Soviet life”.
1945- New York Times
As other radical artists were executed, put in labor camps, or committed suicide, appeasement was the only way for Bedny and Shostakovitch to avoid further detriment. Though Bedny lost his membership to both the Communist Party and the Union of Soviet Writers, he regained Stalin’s favor with a 1945 poem that payed tribute to Soviet victory. While Shostakovitch fluctuated between creative rebellion and politically submissive phases during his career, he was much more conventional after the suppression of 1936. During a “cultural conference for peace” in New York, 1949, the composer praised the U.S.S.R. in return for Stalin lifting the ban on his music.
Shostakovitch moved onto more conservative compositions, like Symphony No. 5 Composed in 1937
The work of both Bedny and Shostakovitch was choked by censorship and hindered by political limitations, stagnating Russia’s development and presence in the contemporary age of culture. While these restrictions were justified by purifying and preserving Russia’s standard for art, the intervention in culture conveys the government’s continual fear of criticism and liberal expression.
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