A Requiem for the USSR: From Atheism to Secularity

Oksana Nesterenko

doi:10.17132/2377-231x.1173

Abstract

This article examines performance and reception of music of sacred tradition in the Soviet Union in the 1970s-80s, with the focus on two works composed in the genre of Catholic Requiem Mass, Alfred Schnittke’s Requiem (1975) and Vyacheslav Artyomov’s Requiem (1988). The article recounts the history of Soviet atheism that, as a result of state’s failure to eradicate religion, evolved into a form of secular modernity, and outlines the music culture in which Schnittke and Artyomov lived. The official reception of the two requiems, which changed dramatically within twelve years, illustrates the state’s changing attitude to religion from atheist, where religion is denounced, to secular, where religion is acceptable, but not officially imposed by the state.

Highlights

Follow this and additional works at: https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/yjmr Part of the European History Commons, Musicology Commons, and the Other Religion Commons
The event was held during the “week of consciousness,” announced in the widely read Moscow magazine Ogonek as a part of a broader project of memorialization of the victims of Stalinist repression across the USSR that included performances of the canonic Requiems by Verdi and Mozart.[2]
Before the music began, acclaimed poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko (1932–2017) introduced Artyomov’s work. He described a stunning example of Stalinist crimes: in the mid-1930s the bodies of political prisoners who had been shot—“once outstanding revolutionaries, the . . . blossom of the [Soviet] army, the blossom of the [Soviet] intelligentsia and just workers”—were damped in a ravine in the center of Moscow and covered with mud; their fate was concealed from both their families and the public. He went on to say that true art “dares to cure the pain of the people by means of pain,” suggesting that Artyomov’s Requiem, dedicated to the victims of Stalinism, was going to do just that.[7]

Summary

A Requiem for the USSR

Why are we seeking religion today, as if it were a lifeline? Because religion is the establishment of the spiritual and ethical principles, the basis of morality; and morality is the shortest path to the spirit. As will be discussed later, despite state atheism, Western classical sacred music, including requiems on canonic texts, had entered the concert halls of major cities in the USSR by the mid-1980s Before this 1988 premiere these works, most commonly by foreign composers, were presented as. A crucial turning point in Soviet atheism occurred in April 1988, when the general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, Mikhail Gorbachev, officially met with the Synod of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church At this meeting, Gorbachev called on the church to play a role in the moral regeneration of Soviet society, “where universal norms and customs can help our common cause,” marking the return of religion to public life.[44] This acceptance of religion at the highest official level had a direct impact on the performance of sacred music, including the premiere of Artyomov’s Requiem. He altered the traditional form in order to increase the dramatic effect, replacing the final movement, “Lux aeterna,” with a reprise of the opening “Requiem” and adding an expressive “Credo,” which is not a part of the traditional requiem mass

Requiem