Tomoff, Kiril Virtuosi Abroad: Soviet Music and Imperial Competition during the Early Cold War, 1945–1958 (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 529 focusing on films with a strong documentary element, she identifies three distinct periods (the 1950s and 1960s, the 1970s and 1980s and the transition and post-transition era), which epitomize the shift in how 1956 events have been perceived and portrayed by Hungarian filmmakers. In the next chapter, Jeremy Hicks examines the way the Soviet regime chose to use the Soviet wartime newsreel of Holocaust atrocities and the extent to which the Soviet silent footage can achieve true testimonial power if certain narrative and commentary elements introduced by the Soviet propaganda machine are removed. Finally, in the last chapter, Sanja Bahun compares the animation practices of the Zagreb school with those of the Czech filmmaker, Jan Svankmajer, in showing how the relative freedom that animation had in the Soviet block allowed filmmakers to move beyond the dichotomy of conformity versus subversion and, instead, put forward ‘a call for an understanding of these ideologically overdetermined flows as being premised on a considered engagement with the prospective and the potential, rather than being defined by the actual’ (p. 205). As summarized above, the volume is an eclectic compilation of hitherto unaddressed aspects of Eastern European Communist cinematography. Although these investigations are neither representative of all countries in the region, and do not represent the entire period that the title of the volume claims, these works do contribute to the reconceptualization and, ultimately, expansion of our understanding of the multifaceted nature of the cinema of the region; a cinema that is rich and as yet insufficiently explored. UCL SSEES V. Ceban Tomoff, Kiril. Virtuosi Abroad: Soviet Music and Imperial Competition during the Early Cold War, 1945–1958. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY and London, 2015. xi + 262 pp. Table. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $45.00. Unlike Kiril Tomoff’s pioneering A Creative Union: The Professional Organization of Soviet Composers, 1939–1953 (Ithaca, NY, 2006), his latest work takes on a relatively familiar story: the Cold War cultural face-off between two ‘imperial projects, the U.S. and the Soviets’ (p. 3). The book would perhaps have been equally pioneering, had it corresponded to the elements on the cover jacket: the combination of the title with a photo of Van Cliburn at the piano alongside conductor Kirill Kondrashin, depicting the American pianist’s triumph at the first Tchaikovsky Piano Competition, which leads the reader to expect a book on actual musical competitions during the Cold War. In fact, with only two out of six chapters dealing with such competitions, Tomoff has a different story to tell. In line with familiar accounts of the Cold War, he uses SEER, 94, 3, july 2016 530 a wealth of archival material and several case studies to retell the story of how the Soviets ended up losing the ‘war’ despite winning several of the battles. The mould that shapes Tomoff’s conclusions and arguments is competition (as in striving for superiority, rather than contest as such) versus integration: ‘to reveal how — in competition after competition — Soviet short-term success hid from view a more decisive integration into a global order dominated by the United States’ (p. 3). It is difficult to miss the thrust of this argument, since it is repeated throughout the book, sometimes in the space of a few pages. Although Tomoff claims to use the lens of classical music, his work does not offer much insight into Soviet musical works as such, relying as it does mainly on musical/cultural personalities, institutions and their representatives. Indeed the author seems mainly inclined to explore the Soviets’ combats with and eventual succumbing to the economic and legal systems of the West. Such is the case with the first chapter, where the legal battles surrounding the 20th Century-Fox 1948 anti-Soviet film, The Iron Curtain, are discussed. An abundance of archival materials regarding foreign representatives of the Soviet Union is offered to support the conclusion that the film forced the Soviets to jump into the Western legal system (p. 39). The time-frame of the book is in reality rather narrower than the subtitle suggests. Apart from the first chapter, the study seldom moves outside the boundaries of the 1950s, fortunately without assigning, as is so...