Canceling the Rolling Stones with Soviet Socialist Realism, 2021. @ThadMcCotter HFN

Photo: Brilliant Soviet composers under Stalinist attack:  Left to right, 4 October 1946: Sergei Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Aram Khachaturian

@Batchelorshow

Canceling the Rolling Stones with Soviet Socialist Realism, 2021.  @ThadMcCotter HFN

https://porteakademik.itu.edu.tr/docs/librariesprovider181/Yayın-Arşivi/17.sayı/porte-akademik-17-7.pdf

Following the meetings, a humiliating public apology was published, bearing the signatures of the accused composers. Composers stated that they were “tremendously grateful” to the Central Committee and Comrade Stalin for the “severe but profoundly just criticism of the present state of Soviet music” (Slonimsky, 1994: 1065). In this letter, the composers acknowledged that they had moved away from socialist realism and confirmed that they would use their artistic mastery to reflect the lives and struggles of the Soviet people:

       "Not for the snobs should sound our music, but for our whole great people... We shall give all our strength to the new and unparalleled great flowering of Soviet musical art . . .   We give to you and to the whole Soviet people a sworn pledge that we shall direct our work along the path of socialist realism, tirelessly laboring to create, in all musical forms, models worthy of our great epoch, striving to make our music beloved by the whole great Soviet people, so that the great ideas that inspire our nation in its universally historic deeds of valor shall find living and vivid expression in our art . . .  Long live our leader and teacher, father of the nation, great Stalin! (Slonimsky, 1994: 1066)."