“The fest of the forward culture”. Ludwig van Beethoven’s anniversary in the “Land of Soviets”

Abstract

The problem field of the study. The celebration of the anniversary of a historical personality gives a meaningful assessment of this person in a particular period from the point of dominant ideological paradigm, indicates his place in a particular socio-cultural space and his significance in the artistic context. This is proved by the celebration of the 200th anniversary of the birth of L. van Beethoven in the Federal Republic of Germany. In the seventies of the 20th century, at the turn of the decade, the reputation of the classical composer as a “sacred figure of spiritual culture” became a factor that escalated the social conflict of generations in his homeland, a vivid manifestation of which were the fateful events of 1968. As a result, the reputation of the “The Great Deaf”, which had been built up over centuries, underwent a radical revision, as indicated by the general “critical pathos” of the anniversary celebration. The celebration of the 200th anniversary of the birth of L. Van Beethoven in the Soviet Union turned out to be completely different in terms of socio-political and artistic directions. Thus, the purpose of the study is to identify the mechanisms of ideological inversion in relation to the great German composer and his work, as well as the peculiarities of the organization of the country’s cultural and artistic life in connection with the anniversary. These issues are still of current interest because: – firstly, referring to the events that happened fifty years ago, we can note the transformation in the perception of the composer’s personality in the socio-cultural space; – secondly, it becomes possible to objectively, without ideological inversion, evaluate the artistic life of the USSR in general and Ukraine in particular (then the UkSSR); – thirdly, the analysis of the jubilee events of that time clearly highlights the fundamental tendencies of modern policy pursued by our state in the field of culture. Results for discussion. The Soviet Union formed an institutionalized image of L. van Beethoven, which was widely replicated by all possible scientific and artistic means in the culture of the 70s of the 20th century. As a result, the image of a mythologized character with a set of fundamentally mandatory, immutable, easily recognizable features that successfully distinguish him from other representatives of the artistic pantheon, was firmly implanted in the minds of the so-called “ordinary citizens” of the USSR: genius, “The Great Deaf” and favorite composer of Lenin. Thus, throughout practically the entire historical period of the USSR, according to the musical preferences of the “leader of the world proletariat”, the personality of L. van Beethoven and his work underwent an ideological inversion, the starting point of which was 1927 – the centenary of the death of the German composer. At that time, the priority goal was to demonstrate that “own” is different from “bourgeois” by marking the centenary of the death of the great German composer. The fact is that this oppositional paradigm of the 1920s formed a universal algorithm of “jubilee celebrations”, according to which a proper program of events (officially, ideologically and artistically approved) was designed and implemented throughout the existence of the Soviet Union. Thus, the 200th anniversary of L. van Beethoven in the Soviet Union at that time acquired all the hallmarks of a national holiday, manifested in governmental celebrations with mass media propaganda and appropriate repertoire in all cultural and artistic institutions in Moscow, Leningrad and Kiev and other cities of the country. A specially created commission headed by D. Shostakovich – the Hero of Socialist Labor, laureate of the Lenin Prize – supervised all the work on organizing the celebrations. On his behalf, the official newspaper of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union “Pravda” on December 16 published a programmatic article “Bequeathed to the Ages” on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the birth of L. van Beethoven. The text was a concentration of propaganda clichés that fully reproduced the ideologically inverted image of the “The Great Deaf”. Thus, the celebration was carried out in the confronting opposition to bourgeois ideology, reflected in the socio-political discourse. Conclusions. As a result, the personality of L. van Beethoven underwent those transformational processes of ideological mythologization. This is evidenced by all the propaganda rhetoric associated with the anniversary celebrations, as well as the content of artistic life in the USSR, which was provided with the necessary budgetary funds. The state cultural policy of that time, focused on the broad (popular) masses, by its nature contradicts today’s trends in meeting the individual spiritual needs of a a personality.