Review: Stalin's Music Prize: Soviet Culture and Politics, by Marina Frolova-Walker

Abstract

Book Review| April 01 2017 Review: Stalin's Music Prize: Soviet Culture and Politics, by Marina Frolova-Walker Stalin's Music Prize: Soviet Culture and Politics, by Marina Frolova-Walker. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2016. xi, 369 pp. Leah Goldman Leah Goldman LEAH GOLDMAN is Visiting Assistant Professor of European History and Humanities at Reed College. She received her PhD from the University of Chicago in 2015, and her dissertation, “Art of Intransigence: Soviet Composers and Art Music Censorship, 1945–1957,” won the 2016 Tucker/Cohen Prize for Outstanding Dissertation in Soviet or Post-Soviet Politics and History, granted by the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. Her current book project investigates collaborativity in late Stalinist classical music. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Journal of the American Musicological Society (2017) 70 (1): 267–271. https://doi.org/10.1525/jams.2017.70.1.267 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Leah Goldman; Review: Stalin's Music Prize: Soviet Culture and Politics, by Marina Frolova-Walker. Journal of the American Musicological Society 1 April 2017; 70 (1): 267–271. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/jams.2017.70.1.267 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentJournal of the American Musicological Society Search When it comes to the Stalin Prize many have taken its name literally, assuming it was granted directly by Stalin to his favorites in the arts and sciences. In an engaging and meticulously researched new book, Stalin's Music Prize, Marina Frolova-Walker thoroughly debunks that notion. In detailing the work of the Stalin Prize Committee (KSP), the group of creative artists that awarded the prizes, she demonstrates that it consistently engaged in genuine debate over nominees, foregrounded aesthetics over politics, and exercised substantial autonomy in its decisions. And while the KSP's recommendations were sometimes altered by higher governing bodies, this was most often done by the rival state and Party censorship agencies—the Committee for Arts Affairs and Agitprop—rather than by Stalin himself. In other words, while Stalin's opinion certainly mattered, his hand was barely in evidence in the awards process. Frolova-Walker lays out her goals clearly. First, she seeks to... You do not currently have access to this content.