Songs about the City of Sverdlovsk (1940s—1960s) in the Context of the Formation of the Image of Place

Abstract

This article examines the lyrics of songs about Sverdlovsk created in the second half of the 1940s—1960s, to analyze the formation and consolidation of the image of the city in the context of the literature about Sverdlovsk of this period. By the 1940s, a stable image of Sverdlovsk had developed in literature as a major center of industrialization, a socialist city with an original history born “from the will of the Urals, labor and energy” (V. Mayakovsky). In the 1940s, the image of the city finally took shape — the “pantry”, “arsenal”, “fortress” — in a word, the “pillar” of the state. In 1948, three songs about the city were written in different stylistic registers by N. Kushtum, K. Murzidi, and E. Ruzhansky. All of them conveyed the “state” point of view emphasizing the formation of the audience’s sense of pride in their place of residence and in the population labor contribution to the development of the country. Nevertheless, being created as intended for the masses, these songs never became mass. One of the reasons for this, apparently, was that the inhabitants of Sverdlovsk had a different idea of their city — the former Ekaterinburg, the center of the region with a specific way of life. This image was formed, among other things, by literary texts about Sverdlovsk. In the 1960s, in the songs of O. Gadzhikasimov / B. Karamyshev and G. Varshavsky / E. Rodygin, the tone changes to lyrical, embodied in plot models of “returning to the city of youth” and “walking around the city”. The eclectic imagery of the first song deprived its content of the necessary universality. Sverdlovsk Waltz is emphatically “simple”, but at the same time innovative in content. The song is based on the everyday positive experience of the listener. The text contains important “Sverdlovsk” signs, demonstrating that the song was written by a resident of this city. The song lacks drama and irony, and the authors emphasize the hidden poetry of unostentatious city life. The image of the world materialized in the songs of the “Thaw” period, turned out to be effective, because the authors refused to create the image of a city with well-known and non-specific features of the “support” of the state, which their listeners should be proud of. The imaginary transformation of the city into a place that can, thanks to the resources at its disposal, provide a person with psychological comfort — the feeling of satisfaction from belonging to the city, the creation of a common emotional and value background that unites the townspeople, turned out to be more attractive.