Frolova-Walker, Marina Stalin's Music Prize: Soviet Culture and Politics (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 359 symphonic style was not preserved as he would have wished, although some of his music had to carry the narration, since at that time it was not possible to synchronize it with the actors’ speech. Counterplan was a turning point in Shostakovich’s early film career, but his greatest success in the 1930s was with minimal scores for The Youth of Maxim. His contribution to Girlfriends, a film important for first giving women a central role, was underscoring the film and the use of songs, including four borrowed from elsewhere. The book appears to have been very carefully prepared, and any small slips, such as khlatura for khaltura (p. 20) may be silently corrected. It is certainly an important milestone in Shostakovich studies that will be of great interest not only to musicologists and students of film, but also to all with an interest in the vagaries of Soviet thought and practice. Promised future volumes on the composer’s later film music will be eagerly awaited. London Arnold McMillin Frolova-Walker, Marina. Stalin’s Music Prize: Soviet Culture and Politics. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT and London. 2016. xi + 369 pp. Illustrations. Tables. Appendices. Notes. Bibliography. Index. £30.00. When studying the various oppressive control mechanisms of totalitarian regimessuchastheSovietUnion,itishardtoavoidanelementofSchadenfreude — over-emphasizing the suffering of individuals and communities. However, most such regimes relied on a system of sticks and carrots; and in many ways, as Marina Frolova-Walker’s latest volume aims to reveal, it was carrots rather than sticks that helped shape the approved aesthetics and make them tolerable to those subject to them. Through eleven chapters, eight appendices (only three of which are in the book, the rest being consultable free on ), Frolova-Walker follows the story of the most coveted of Soviet awards, the Stalin Prize, specifically in music, from its announcement alongside Stalin’s 60th-birthday tributes in Pravda on 21 December 1939, through its operation from the next year onwards, to its dissolution after his death. Based on the model of the Nobel Prize (but awarded in First-, Second- and from 1947 Third-class categories) and designed to reward specific works, rather than personalities, in the arts and sciences, the Stalin Prize stood head and shoulders above other state prizes in its ‘degree of prestige’ (p. 2), reflected in its ‘significant financial bonus of 100,000 Roubles’ for a first-class award (the average salary of a manual worker at the time was 300 rubles per month — p. 12). In something resembling the present-day Oscars, the ritual process SEER, 96, 2, APRIL 2018 360 of the awards ‘shaped the annual cycle for the Soviet artistic intelligentsia: the completion of works and their premieres were often timed to fit with nomination deadlines’ (p. 2). Yet, soon after Stalin’s death not only was the prize discontinued, despite various meetings and discussions, but its very name became taboo: ‘Former laureates became winners of the “State Prize” and were encouraged to exchange their medals for replacements that lacked the now unspeakable leader’s profile’ as well at least half of the material value (pp. 3, 278). Viewing Soviet musical culture through the prism of the Stalin Prizes, this study sheds new light on the ‘multi-tiered structure of professional, state and Party bodies that controlled and managed this broad field’, and examines more closely the power-relationships within this structure. In this way FrolovaWalker ’s work complements recent archive-based scholarship on Soviet power and culture (Dobrenko, Clark) and music institutions (Tomoff, Fairclough). But her study also goes beyond the institutional level, assessing the personal agencies of familiar and less familiar cultural figures as revealed through their statements and activities within the bureaucratic game of the Stalin Prize awards. Although music and the music prizes are the main focus, the author makes occasional diversions into other disciplines and benefits from their contextual materials as revealed in the debates. In music, too, the lens widens, when needed, to include not only art music (both composers and performers) but also other aspects of Soviet musical life, from popular song composers to the Red Army choir and balalaika ensembles. After all, ‘Socialist Realism was often understood as...