Authors

Ismene Brown¹;  ¹ Independent Researcher, UK

Discussion

The verdict of the new Soviet Minister of Culture, Petr Demichev, on his predecessor, Ekaterina Furtseva, in November 1974 was wholly condemnatory. Furtseva had just died in office, perhaps by suicide, but certainly facing imminent dismissal after 14 conspicuous years as the figurehead for Soviet cultural policies under Khrushchev and Brezhnev. Despite unceasing rumours that the Soviet leadership's sole woman would be sacked, her ministerial legacy was a golden age of Soviet music and dance tours that consolidated in the West a still current impression of unsurpassed artistry and excellence in its performers, instrumentalists such as Rostropovich, Oistrakh, Gilels, Richter, and the great dance troupes. The tours generated outstanding foreign prestige and hard currency for the USSR, mitigating its Cold War protagonism and economic difficulties.

Western scholars have described the golden age as a phenomenal product of the Cold War cultural exchanges, yet its mechanisms and its evaporation after Furtseva's mysterious death have not been probed. This paper argues that the phenomenon arose through far-reaching disruptions in both Soviet ideological and Western political practices, facilitated by Minister Furtseva in collaboration with two pivotal impresarios and a few key artists, a network that could elude the controls of the Soviet, American and British states. Fundamental was a shift of trading terms from state-defined cultural representation to individual distinction and supranational self-identification. Embodied within the golden age were unorthodox practices, personal initiatives and hidden loyalties too subversive of official frames to be understood or continued by Furtseva's successor.