Authors

Alexander Jakobidze-Gitman¹;  ¹   Universität Witten  Universität Witten/Herdecke, Germany

Discussion

This paper proposes to define criteria for nonconformist music in mid-twentieth-century Soviet Georgia and to examine its unique dynamics, shaped by the political pressures of the Cold War, a totalitarian society, and the aesthetic forces of socialist realism.

The infamous “Zhdanov Decree” of 1948, which accused leading Soviet Russian composers of idolizing contemporary Western “decadent” music and its bourgeois ideology, was followed by local campaigns against “formalism in music” across Soviet republics. Although the Soviet Central Committee withdrew some of the charges of the Zhdanov Decree, its main tenets continued to shape music production in the Soviet republics. Even in the late 1960s, the board of the Union of Composers of the USSR maintained that contemporary classical music in the Soviet republics must have easily identifiable folklore roots. As for Georgia, until the collapse of the Soviet Union, the cultural authorities promoted works and composers that adhered to an Orientalist style modelled on 19th-century Russian music.

Nevertheless, important changes did take place. In the late Stalinist era, music disapproved by the state authorities had virtually no chance of reaching an audience. By the late 1950s, however, the state had loosened its control, and music that was not condemnded by the officials could be tested by the public, which had now become an independent actor.

This paper proposes that Georgian non-conformist composers can be divided into three groups, each of which pursued diverse strategies due to the presence of the two distinct “target audiences”—the authorities and the general public. One group moved away from the party line, seeking public success independently of the communist establishment, with the hope of later recognition from authorities (e.g., Giya Kancheli). Another group maintained surface compliance with the party line, creating works for Soviet anniversaries (such as Lenin’s birth) but incorporating modernist elements (considered “formalist” under Stalin) that ensured they would never become popular with a wider audience (e.g., Revaz Gabichvadze). A third group took a radical stance, deliberately composing pieces that could only be performed underground and could not be published at all (e.g. Natella Svanidze).