Performing Russia: Folk Revival and Russian Identity (Basees Routledgecurzon Series on Russian and East European Studies, 7)

Performing Russia

Stage performance of Russian folk music and dance has symbolized not only Russian folk culture, but Russianness itself for roughly 150 years. Performing Russia is the first book to investigate how and why intellectuals, entrepreneurs, and government policymakers have invented and reinvented Russian folk performance. Drawing upon extensive interviews with leaders, participants, officials, and villagers in nine cities and five provincial areas, Laura Olson explores Russian folk music as a negotiated site of national, local and personal identity. The book pays particular attention to the 1970s and 80s, when the anti-establishment folk revival movement became extremely popular among students and intellectuals; and the post Soviet period, when the increased availability of private funds for folklore activities and national preoccupation with self-definition have contributed to the flourishing of folk performance. Olson explores the contemporary movement’s links with nationalist, Cossack revival, and other political groups, as well as with aesthetic trends in the performing arts, such as avant-garde, pop, and world music. The book will be of great interest to both specialists and general readers interested in Russian Culture.

Laura J. Olson is Assistant Professor of Russian at the University of Colorado, Boulder. She has been researching and performing Slavic folk music since 1987.

BASEES/RoutledgeCurzon Series on Russian and East European Studies Series editor: Richard Sakwa Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Kent Editorial Committee: George Blazyca, Centre for Contemporary European Studies, University of Paisley Terry Cox, Department of Government, University of Strathclyde Rosalind Marsh, Department of European Studies and Modern Languages, University of Bath David Moon, Department of History, University of Strathclyde Hilary Pilkington, Centre for Russian and East European Studies, University of Birmingham Stephen White, Department of Politics, University of Glasgow This series is published on behalf of BASEES (the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies). The series comprises original, highquality, research-level work by both new and established scholars on all aspects of Russian, Soviet, post-Soviet and East European Studies in humanities and social science subjects. 1

Ukraine’s Foreign and Security Policy, 1991–2000 Roman Wolczuk

2

Political Parties in the Russian Regions Derek S. Hutcheson

3

Local Communities and Post-Communist Transformation Edited by Simon Smith

4

Repression and Resistance in Communist Europe J.C. Sharman

5

Political Elites and the New Russia Anton Steen

6

Dostoevsky and The Idea of Russianness Sarah Hudspith

7

Performing Russia – Folk Revival and Russian Identity Laura J. Olson

Performing Russia Folk Revival and Russian Identity Laura J. Olson

First published 2004 by RoutledgeCurzon 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by RoutledgeCurzon 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004. RoutledgeCurzon is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group © 2004 Laura J. Olson All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data ISBN 0-203-31757-2 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-38757-0 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0–415–32614–1 (Print Edition)

Contents

Illustrations Acknowledgements Introduction 1

vi vii 1

The Invention and Re-invention of Folk Music in PreRevolutionary Russia

16

A Unified National Style: Folklore Performance in the Soviet Context

35

3

The Origins of the Russian Folk Revival Movement

68

4

Revival and Identity after Socialism

106

5

Power and Ritual: Russian Nationalism and Representations of the Folk, Orthodoxy, Imperial Russia and the Cossackry

138

2

6

Performing Masculinity: Cossack Myth and Reality in PostSoviet Revival Movements 160

7

The Village Revives

8

Making Memory: How Urban Intellectuals Reinvent Russian Village Traditions 204

9

Conclusion: Folklore and Popular Culture

221

Appendix: List of Interviews, by interviewee and by location Notes Index

236 241 274

176

Illustrations Figures 0.1 2.1 2.2 3.1 3.2 3.3 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 5.1 5.2 5.3 6.1 6.2 7.1 7.2 7.3 8.2 8.1

Soloist and State Academic Ossipov Balalaika Orchestra, Moscow, 16 January 1999 Folk chorus, celebrations of the 200th anniversary of Pushkin’s birth, Moscow, 6 June 1999 Piatnitsky Choir Dancers and Orchestra, U.S.television production ca. 1983 Pokrovsky Ensemble performs ‘Tsar Maksimilian’, Moscow, 12 December 1998 Andrei Kabanov and Ataman Aleksandr Degtirev at ‘Singing Rus’ Festival, Vorob’evka, 10 September 1998 Pokrovsky Ensemble performs in Engel’s, Saratov oblast, 20 July 1978 Stanitsa Ensemble, ‘Folklore Spring’ Festival, Moscow, 20 April 1999 Iulia Fatiushina, ‘Foklore Spring’ Festival, Moscow, 20 April 1999 Ivan Kabanov and Izmailovskaia Sloboda Ensemble, Moscow, 28 Ocotober 1998 Ivan Kabanov and Izmailovskaia Sloboda Ensemble, Moscow, 28 Ocotober 1998 “Little Spindle” Ensemble, ‘Ëlka’ Christmas concert, Moscow, 30 December 1998 ‘Singing Rus’ Festival, opening ceremony procession, Vorob’evka, 10 September 1998 ‘Singing Rus’ Festival, closing ceremony fireworks, Vorob’evka, 13 September 1998 Men from Bolotnoe and Krasnoiarsk sing after a group fistfight: local priest looks on, Bolotnoe, May 1999 Zabava Ensemble with Cossack swordplay, Vladykino, 6 January 1999 Cossack teachers at summer camp perform at a celebration, Volgograd oblast (1995 video) Members of local singing ensemble sing for visitors; Elena Bogina records, Kochemary, 29 October 1998 Members of a local singing ensemble, Ermolovo, undated photograph Members of a local singing ensemble for visitors, Elena Bogina (right) listens, Liubovnikovo, 17 October 1998 Members of Zabava lead local children in dance, Vladykino, 6 January 1999 Local young man in mummer’s costume, Vladykino, 6 January 1999

3 51 56 68 79 94 113 115 126 127 130 140 150 154 167 173 180 188 197 214 215

Acknowledgements

I wish to express gratitude first to the many people who aided my research and travels in Russia. The Kabanov family, Natal’ia and Katia Giliarovy, the Glumovy, Kozlovy, and Karimovy families, Viacheslav Asanov, the Minyonok family, and the late Dmitri Pokrovsky, all offered immense support, hospitality and guidance and were the source of innumerable connections. I am beholden also to Ol’ga and Galina Bologovy, Elena Bogina, Dmitrii Zakharov, Julia and Tania Smirnovy, Ol’ga Nikitenko, Elena Loktionova, Valerii Zhuk, Marina Mironova, Petr Dudin, Vladimir Povetkin, Natal’ia Popova, the Bessonovy family, Elena Boronina, Sergei Starostin, Aleksei Shilin, Natasha Zhuravel’, Marina Novitskaia, Zinaida Gubareva, Valentina Kubrakova, and the Ivanovy family. The Moscow Linguistics Institute sponsored me as a scholar, and my unofficial scholarly ‘home’ was the Moscow Conservatory; the Union of Folklore Ensembles also provided support and materials. The American Council of Teachers of Russian offered critical administrative help and funding in Moscow. My research was also funded by the National Council for East European and Eurasian Research, the Social Science Research Council, and the University of Colorado, Boulder. I received essential and very competent assistance from the Interlibrary Loan department of University of Colorado Libraries. Barbara Engel gave me the idea to write this book and offered invaluable advice and comments at many stages of researching and writing. Mark Leiderman’s and Eric Naiman’s comments and ideas on chapters and drafts were particularly inspiring. I much appreciate the labors of those American colleagues who commented on chapters and/or papers; they include Donna Buchanan, Rimgaila Salys, Natalie Kononenko, Elizabeth Kostova, Michael Finke, Julie Lancaster, and Thorn Roby. Martin Daughtry, Laurel Isbister, and Arthur Joyce provided suggestions regarding methodological questions. I thank my colleagues at CU-Boulder for taking on extra teaching and administrative duties during my absences and while I was writing intensively. Warm thanks go to student assistants Greg Wuthrich, April Veen, and Svetlana Nevostrueva. My gratitude goes to this book’s anonymous

viii

Acknowledgements

reviewers for Routledge-Curzon for their insightful comments and suggestions, to copy editor Jonathan Dore for his well-reasoned challenges to my arguments, and to editor Peter Sowden for ushering the book through to completion competently and efficiently. For access to, and permission to use, field recordings and other unpublished materials I thank Natal’ia Giliarova, Andrei Kabanov, and Viacheslav Shchurov. Every effort has been made to trace the rightholders of copyright material included in this book and to provide an appropriate acknowledgement. Any rightholder whose work is not appropriately acknowledged should please contact the author and the publishers so that such acknowledgement might be made in any future edition of the book. Unless otherwise noted, all translations from the Russian are mine. Research leading up to this project was supported by a Henry Hart Rice Foreign Residence Fellowship from Yale University and a Fulbright Research Grant to Bulgaria. My deep gratitude goes to members of the Yale Slavic Chorus, particularly Elizabeth Johnson Kostova, Vlasta Maric, and Denise Bowles-Johnson, and of Rozmarin, particularly Regina D’Amico, Barbara Andrews, and Susan Lucibelli, all of whom helped to stimulate my passion for Slavic folk music. Countless thanks are due to Jean and Carl Olson, who helped to plant and cultivate the seeds of my love for folk music, and to Michael Henry, who generously offered support during the final stages of the project.

Introduction

On a cold evening in January, 1999, I found myself trying to avoid patches of ice as I tramped through the dark streets of Saratov, the provincial capital in southern Russia. I was accompanying two 16-year-old girls and a 12-yearold boy as they went Christmas caroling. The girls wore traditional rural attire from the early twentieth century: hand-woven wool winter coats, embroidered at the openings, and flowered wool headscarves. The boy was dressed for a traditional Christmas masquerade in a mask made out of animal skins and cloth. I wore a down parka and carried a digital tape recorder. We looked for houses and apartments that showed signs of the occupant’s presence and knocked loudly on the door. As soon as someone opened, the teenagers burst into a traditional caroling song and a series of rhymes encouraging the householders to give generously. They held out a pillowcase for any offerings. Since the tradition of caroling had long been extinct in most rural areas (although its roots are in agrarian rather than urban tradition) the young people knew they had to educate those whose doorbells they rang. When one old woman asked what to give, Ksenia, the self-appointed leader of our group, told her, ‘Give anything you have, cookies, candies, anything. Earlier, in ancient Russia, there existed this ritual of caroling.’ The old woman said she had not prepared anything and did not have anything to give. Ksenia cheerfully told her, ‘Happy holiday to you, then!’ Those who gave treats were rewarded with a rhymed blessing: ‘Let God give to those who live in this house! May you have many chicks and piglets. May your rye grow thickly.…‘ At the time, I did not perceive the irony in our use of this formula: it was just part of caroling. In fact, I was focused on learning the words of the rhyme so I could chant along. But now, on revisiting the scene in the light of memory, I see how profoundly out of place this bright invocation was, as it resounded through the dim halls of urban apartment buildings. These city folk did not believe in the magic of caroling, which traditionally was thought to bring good luck to those who are not stingy with the carolers. And not only did the apartment dwellers not have chicks and pigs, but what they really needed was a promptly paid salary, a return of their recently-

2

Introduction

devalued life savings, and stable prices in the stores, all of which had become a fleeting fantasy after the sudden and severe economic crisis of August 1998. This irony may have been perceived by those who slammed the door in our faces, and certainly by the one woman who yelled sharply through the closed door, ‘You found some time to carol! We don’t need carolers!’ To these Ksenia addressed a traditional rhyming curse: ‘May there be devils in your courtyard! May there be worms in your garden plot! May your little children become sick with night blindness!’ Ksenia and the others had learned these songs and rhymes at rehearsals of the folk ensemble of which they were members. (CD track 1) The teenagers did not seem discouraged by the lukewarm reception: they reasoned that this was just the beginning of ‘restoring’ this tradition (this was their third year of caroling in town), and it would catch on after a while. The director of their ensemble was not so idealistic; she later told me the ritual would probably never catch on, but it ‘didn’t hurt to do it.’ Personally, I was exhilarated: this was revival in action. It was not just a show, but a sincere attempt to bring back a lost tradition. And clearly, it was spurred by the children’s own initiative. It was not a program that someone had organized for them, but a grassroots movement. As one of the young women told me, explaining her involvement in the ensemble, ‘this is ours, it is something Russian…In my opinion, we should preserve all this, because who knows where we’re headed with our culture?’1 Eight days later, back in Moscow, I attended a concert that was also supposed to show and help to revive ‘something Russian.’ Called ‘Russia’s Children Sing,’ it was a showcase of the best children’s Russian folk-singing ensembles and soloists from all over the country. Most of the participating groups and soloists had won awards at previous contests. Here the winners had the chance to perform in an opulent setting, the Tchaikovsky concert hall, and be accompanied by a prestigious folk orchestra, the Ossipov Orchestra (Figure 0.1; CD track 2). Since I had attended an earlier Moscow contest of children’s folk ensembles, I thought I knew what to expect, but I was disappointed nonetheless. Most of the children behaved on stage not like children, but like miniature copies of professional singers. They had mannered gestures and voices, and were coifed, outfitted and schooled as if for a beauty pageant (indeed, most were girls). The ‘folk’ costumes were ornate and flashy, many with shiny gold ornamentation. The orchestra’s presence and the hall’s plush setting helped to intensify the atmosphere of professionalism. It was obvious this selfconscious, poised style was the goal for both the young people and their teachers: this was considered to be the highest echelon of folk performance. Clearly, they were being groomed to enter the sphere of mass-produced popular culture. If they succeeded in rising to the top, these children could make brilliant careers, like professional folk-pop singer Nadezhda Kadysheva, whose concerts regularly attract huge audiences and whose face,

Introduction 3

Fig 1: Soloist and Ossipov Balalaika Orchestra framed by a Russian-style headdress, adorned chocolate bars and boxes of cosmetic soap during a marketing blitz in 1998. Folk music had not always been framed in this way. The notion that accompanied soloists should sing – with emotions and gestures – a series of songs unrelated to each other in content dates back to the eighteenth century when opera and ballet, imported into Russia from Western Europe, were supplemented by intermission acts called divertissements. These acts became a self-standing genre of entertainment – what is known today in Russia as estrada, or stage show. In the nineteenth century, performers introduced Russian folk songs as an appropriate form to be sung on stage in venues ranging from the restaurants and bars frequented by the emerging merchant class, to the clubs and theaters of the elites. Thus, folk music became a viable commodity. Despite its century-long tradition, the version of Russian folk music offered by the children’s concert was diametrically opposed to what I considered to be truly ‘folk.’ Here, even though direct evidence of commercialism was absent, I was dismayed to find its seeds in the glitzy dress and overacting. Furthermore, I readily perceived the irony inherent in the use of refined voices, music, and costumes, in a setting and configuration usually employed for the performance of classical music – to represent what was supposed to be the culture of peasants. Each of these cases exemplifies a different way of ‘performing Russia,’ representing Russianness through performance of folk music and dance. As instances of the interaction between urban and rural culture in Russia, these

4

Introduction

scenes are emblematic of the many intriguing issues that the performance of contemporary folk music raises for cultural historians. Among them are such questions as the intersection between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture; the relation between the people (narod) and the intelligentsia in Russia; and the constructed quality of memory and tradition in relation to post-Soviet Russia’s re-examination of its cultural identity. This book is an attempt to address these questions by studying the historical and contemporary contexts in which Russian folk music has been produced. Although the two examples above might at first glance seem like different phenomena, they are part of the same cultural dynamic. Despite my own personal preference for the first mode and my distaste for the second, both constitute conscious uses of rural culture by urban dwellers for the purposes of cultivating a sense of national identity. Both reflect the same irony: in the late twentieth century, urban young people are representing themselves as ‘the folk,’ the Russian peasant of centuries past. Their performances suggest the Russian intelligentsia’s appropriation of the culture of their historical Other – the Russian peasant. Although the term ‘appropriation’ may sound pejorative, I mean it to serve only a descriptive function here. Just like plaster casts of Roman sculptures that appear as decoration in American public places, the utilization of Russian folk music in urban settings today constitutes a borrowing of an art object. If the plaster sculptures are often used to advertise or increase the cultural capital of the possessors, so Russian folk music is used to advertise Russianness, to inject a feeling of ‘something Russian’ into present-day culture. It is clear that in the context of post-Soviet Russia, names, objects, images, and music with a ‘folk’ quality do increase one’s cultural capital. In Chapter 5 I give several examples of how folk culture has become cachet in the Russia of the late 1990s. In a particularly striking trend, some elementary schools, including private schools attended by the children of ‘New Russians’ (nouveau-riche Russian businesspeople), are now featuring classes in folk arts. Special teachers are hired to teach folk singing, dancing, and crafts – during school hours, not just as after-school hobbies as was previously the case. Children learn to improve their pronunciation and spelling by working on folk proverbs, which formerly were the oral lore of uneducated people. These children, and thousand of others across the country, are learning to perform Russia. But does this use of folklore constitute appropriation? My application of this term to the contemporary Russian context is problematic because of how Russians see themselves. Even though approximately 73 percent of Russians live in cities as opposed to rural areas, the majority of them experience regular connection with the rural world.2 Because migration patterns throughout the twentieth century have emphasized out-migration from the villages to cities, many Russians city-dwellers have been recent transplants. Since the second half of the nineteenth century there has existed a tradition whereby many urban Russians make yearly summer visits to a dacha – or to

Introduction 5 the homes of parents or grandparents who have remained in villages.3 They rent houses and/or garden plots in villages near their city homes in order to escape from the urban atmosphere (including its heat and pollution) and to grow needed vegetables, often staying for months. If for two months out of the year one’s urban family uses an outhouse, collects water from a well, and eats home-grown vegetables, then one’s cultural identity is affected by that experience. One is less likely to think of oneself as living a life separate from – or substantially different from – that of farmers. Indeed, throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, there has been much confluence between city and village culture. Villagers have assimilated urban fashions and traditions, while city-dwellers have retained – with adaptations – beliefs, habits, and customs from rural traditions.4 The link between village and city is borne out by the usage of the word for ‘folk.’ Today’s Russians – especially those not in positions of power or wealth – are apt to speak and think of themselves as part of the narod, the people, the folk. As Nancy Ries has shown, the term narod conveys for Russians a mythic conception of Russianness. It encompasses both a national identity and a class identity: ‘narod implies “the people” as distinct from those who have power, or…those with wealth.’ Narod often means ‘the victimized people,’ and implies that they are ‘faithful, devout, brave, simple, modest, honest, innocent, solid, strong, self-sufficient, all-enduring, long-suffering, and much deserving.’ While intellectual Russians might not seem likely to include themselves in this idea of narod, in fact as part of conversation they might ‘identify themselves with it in a number of contexts.’5 Yet it has been my experience in conversing with academic Russians who work directly with folklore that they are supremely conscious that they are not ‘the folk.’ To them, ‘the folk’ are undereducated farm workers, those who most closely resemble the primitive peasants that Romantic ideologists had in mind when they used the term. There is a palpable tension, then, between these two notions: the folk is both ‘us’ – the nation, the people – and also ‘not-us,’ – the primitive, uncivilized rural-dwelling lower classes. The tension is present in the very meaning of the term ‘folklore.’ As German Romantics defined the concept of Volkskunde, the ‘folk’ (das Volk) were peasants whose verbal and musical art would help to define the nation’s essence. They were considered to be a homogeneous mass, undifferentiated by individual, regional or ethnic differences. Thus, their culture reflected the national spirit; by contrast, the artistic production of the higher classes ‘carried the stamp of individuals and thus was not part of Volkskunde.’6 Because the folk were assumed to live apart from the influences of industrialized civilization, it was thought that they could show how people had lived in ancient times.7 By thus defining and naming ‘the folk,’ and collecting and studying their oral and material artistic production, German intellectuals created an Other that was, nevertheless, conceived as an essential part of themselves, and provided a means of viewing and defining themselves. Folklore was defined by the elites as that which was not theirs, and appropri-

6

Introduction

ated as that which must be their own because it defined their Volksgeist, or national character. In Russia, during the past two centuries, folklore artifacts have similarly been treated as tokens of ethnic and national identity. Indeed, since the late nineteenth century the appropriation of folk culture by mainstream culture has played an enormous role in shaping Russian cultural identity. In this context to buy milk from the farmer next door is not the same as to perform Russian folklore: the first is an everyday act of consumption, while the second is a conscious act of representation. The nature of folklore is such that people rarely label their own aesthetic production as folklore. In this sense folklore is not folklore until someone else ‘hears’ it – that is, labels it as such. Any use of folklore by those who call it folklore constitutes a search for authenticity and/or for national origins. As recent cultural critics have argued, notions of collective identity, essence, and authenticity are cultural constructs, invented for particular political reasons. Assertions of genuineness are ‘always subverted by the need to stage authenticity in opposition to external, often dominating alternatives.’8 It is this process of inventing authenticities and national symbols – and asserting them as natural – that forms the focus of this book. Thus, this is not a study of Russian folklore as such, but of folklorism. I define folklore along with many contemporary American folklorists as the grassroots expressive practices of any group of people who share at least one common factor. Instead of limiting the ‘the folk’ to uneducated rural people only, this definition recognizes that educated urban dwellers also often have rich folklore traditions – for example, urban myths, tavern jokes, funeral customs, and wart cures.9 By contrast, folklorism is the conscious use of folklore in popular, elite or officially sponsored culture. When the folklore of rural people is performed on stage in venues organized by cultural producers, it has become folklorism. Paradoxically, this is the case even if the performers are themselves rural dwellers. Folklore becomes folklorism as soon as it is consciously manipulated, scripted, organized, institutionalized, published or marketed. If the participants in a ritual are conscious of their performance as folklore – as something precious, authentic, and worth preserving – then it is folklorism.10 Any attempt to revive an ancient tradition, then, results not in the literal reanimation of an extinct form of social intercourse, but in its metamorphosis. This study does employ the word ‘revival’ because it is used by revivalists themselves and is a commonly known term. Yet in fact, the designation is a misnomer because traditions are not revived, but constructed anew. Traditions that have been reconstructed by revivalists are secondgeneration folklore – that is, folklorism. However, as the German theoretician of folklorism Hermann Bausinger has pointed out, just because something is second-generation folklore does not mean it is inferior. Folkloristic phenomena can, like folklore, serve the function of increasing group consciousness and consolidating group identi-

Introduction 7 ties. True, their main function is often that of entertainment; but, in Bausinger’s words, ‘many customs have long had the character of entertainment.’ To criticize folklorism as commercial, fake, and second-rate and to praise ‘real folklore’ as archaic, authentic, and pure reveals the elitism of the author of the criticism. In any art-culture system, all the aesthetic categories exist not a priori but in relation to one another, and definitions are fluid: folklore can easily become folklorism.11 Indeed, ‘whoever plays ‘real folk culture’ off against folklorism’ by fetishizing the former and denigrating the latter ‘thereby closes the circle in which folk culture is forced to mutate into folklorism.’12As we will see in this study, during the past 150 years Russian folk revivalists have engaged in this process of denigrating certain folkloric forms while asserting the authenticity of others. Their involved self-justifications aside, however, the Russian folklore revival movement in the 1980s and 1990s has developed its own spontaneous, authentic traditions that should be regarded – but not fetishized – as true folklore. Not only does folklore often become folklorism, but folklorism may come full circle and become folklore.

A Search for Origins As an intellectual who researches and performs folk music and dance, I am subject to the cultural predicament described above, in which constructions of the folk are taken as natural, folklorism is misconstrued as folklore, and certain forms are fetishized while others are decried. My differing reactions to the two events described at the beginning of this chapter display this problem: in the first case I felt I had stumbled upon ‘authenticity,’ whereas in the second I was put off by ‘kitsch.’ Contemporary anthropological theory demands that my narrative not only look outside myself at the actions and words of others, but also self-reflexively to consider my own participation in a (both real and implicit) dialogue.13 I entered into this cultural dynamic in 1986, when I came to Yale University to do my doctoral work in Slavic Language and Literatures. That year my life was profoundly changed when I joined the Yale Slavic Chorus, a group of 20 women who performed arranged Slavic folk songs in campus churches. I fell in love with the open, strong voices, close harmonies and interesting rhythms of this music, which sounded so unusual to my Western ear. I marveled at the complexity of the musical constructions we sang. Who had created such amazing material? I wondered whether the picturesque stories we told during concerts – of women singing together throughout their lives, during childbirth and at each others’ funerals – were true. And how did this folk music compare with the American folk music I had grown up with, which consisted of songs popularized by such folk revivalists as Pete Seeger and Judy Collins, and the four-part-harmony barbershop stylesongs that my mother learned in her local Sweet Adelines chorus. What I had

8

Introduction

loved most about that folk music was its sing-along quality: in my family’s informal context, one learned the basic melody and a harmony, and then we would improvise an arrangement. I had loved the feeling of being musically surrounded by voices singing different renderings of the same song. I did not find out where Slavic folk music came from until 1989, when I took a year’s leave of absence from graduate school to explore the contexts of folk music in Bosnia, Bulgaria, and Russia with two recent Yale graduates (Elizabeth Johnson and Vlasta Maric) who had previously conducted the Slavic Chorus. They approached me with the suggestion to travel to Eastern Europe to ‘find out what people really sing in villages.’ They, too, wondered about the sources of the music we had been presenting to audiences as ‘Slavic folk music.’ We began our research by traveling to Bosnian villages with the middle-aged father of an acquaintance of ours, who had family in those places. I was struck by how difficult it was to find people who had kept rural singing traditions alive. Most villagers insisted they did not sing folk music, but when pressed, would sing in their own local style songs they had learned long ago from the radio. When we finally managed to find some villagers whose local village singing traditions pre-dated exposure to radio, it turned out that they had belonged for decades to an award-winning amateur performing group or KUD, Kulturno-umetni‹ko društvo. Their music-making had been organized and shaped by a musical director who had told them to add certain attention-getting musical ornaments in order to win prizes at festivals. The experiences of that year shattered many of my romantic illusions about Slavic folk music’s mystical connections with the agricultural lifestyle of peasants. It became clear to me that, in the form in which we had received it, this music had been carefully cultivated, shaped, and arranged in order to increase its attractiveness. Who was the intended audience of this scrupulously managed music: local, urban, Western? What was the purpose for its shaping in a particular way? Could one still say that it was a spontaneously produced music-making practice? My focus shifted. Instead of centering on the origins of the music, I became more interested in the ways that Eastern European folk music had been molded, and for what purposes. I became aware that ‘revival movements’ spearheaded by identifiable individuals had brought Slavic folk music into popular view – and had made it accessible and attractive to foreigners. These movements consisted of educated people who tried to ‘bring back’ ancient traditions of the rural populations by teaching, performing, and popularizing them. Usually such movements had underlying ideological goals connected with shaping the culture of the nation. Throughout the twentieth century, folk revival movements in many European countries and America both reflected the values and goals of the urban intellectuals, and had a profound effect on urban and rural popular cultures. If the American folk music revival movement happened in the 1950s because post-war youth culture ‘intersected’ a tradition of folklore scholar-

Introduction 9 ship and performance, the Russian folk revival came about somewhat differently.14 It began in the 1960s and 70s as a reaction against the propagandistic ‘fakelore’ of Stalin’s era. At that time both writers and scholars approached peasant culture as an important source of sincerity and authenticity. Seeking a genuine source of folk material, a few Moscow musicologists founded ensembles that traveled to remote areas and collected their own repertoires directly from village musicians. One of these ensemble leaders was Dmitri Pokrovsky, who rose to celebrity status in the early 1980s as an underground performer of authentic Russian folk culture. While American folk performers made their mark on the young people’s music scene with commercial recordings and concerts, these early Russian folk revivalists performed at small venues such as institutes and museums. Only a few recordings were made, and these did not receive wide promotion. Despite the lack of public advertisement of the movement, by the mid1980s there were thousands of similar ensembles throughout the Soviet Union. These amateur groups, composed of students and professionals, distinguished themselves from the officially sponsored ‘folk choirs’ that had come to dominate the Soviet understanding of folk music. Many did their own fieldwork, going on trips to villages to collect and learn songs ‘from the source.’ During the post-Soviet period, the goals of revivalists shifted somewhat. Sincerity and authenticity were no longer principal concerns. Instead, awakening a sense of national identity became a goal of many producers of Russian folk music, even if this meant that the music and dance was performed differently from the way it had been in villages. Only recently have studies of European and American folk music and dance revival movements begun to assess their complex interactions with cultural and historical processes. Previous accounts of such movements – some by revivalists themselves – have emphasized the transparency of the need for revival. According to these representations, revival is warranted because industrialization has created a situation in which the rural-dwelling guardians of the nation’s ancient traditions are dying without transmitting their knowledge to younger generations (the ‘death of the folk song’ argument, examined in Chapter 1). From this point of view revivalists are those who have the foresight to predict this potential loss and to stop it. As Georgina Boyes has written with regard to English revival, some histories of revival give the impression ‘of disinterested chance investigations and publications leading to the discovery and re-introduction of a valuable, but somewhat unexpected national treasure.’15 Indeed, my first experiences with revivalists in Russia left me similarly awed by the ‘national treasures,’ and uninformed about the reasons for revival’s existence, its assumptions and principles. In fact, in many cases during my fieldwork in Eastern Europe I identified with revivalists, wished to befriend them and help them in their endeavors. My identification with the goals of revival has meant that I have had to work hard to recognize my own biases. As shown in my reaction to the Saratov Christmas caroling

10

Introduction

depicted above, I have had to distinguish between my initial reactions and the later analyses to which I would subject my research. But this bias is not simply a liability. In fact, my own revivalist tendencies have allowed me to immerse myself more deeply into the world about which I am writing, and to understand the points of view of some revivalists. My dual stance of involvement and intellectual distance has permitted me to become a passionate observer of East European folk revival’s complicated entanglement with various state-sponsored and alternative ideologies during the transition to post-Communism.

Methods and Politics of Studying Folk Revival I began studying the Russian folk revival movement in 1990, just before the collapse of the Soviet Union. It was during my short visit to Moscow that year that Dmitri Pokrovsky arranged for me to watch his work with the professional choir that bore his name. He also introduced me to other revivalists working alongside him in the crusade to bring ‘authentic’ Russian folk music to audiences. Pokrovsky died in 1996, and I regretted not having had more time to observe and interview him. But I had already established relationships with other revivalists in Moscow whose work appealed to me even more than Pokrovsky’s: I admired the more homespun, non-professional character of these professors and researchers. I continued to keep in touch with and to arrange projects with these revivalists during trips to Russia in the summers of 1995 and 1996. When I decided to make an intense study of the Russian revival movement, I chose to do so by immersing myself in it. For me Russian folk revival was a living movement, led by folk music scholars, teachers, producers and performers. During seven months in 1998–99 I apprenticed myself to a few such leaders: I followed them as they conducted classes and workshops, I attended rehearsals, took private lessons, and joined them on field expeditions to villages. I supplemented this experiential knowledge of revivalists’ methods and practices with interviews, during which I inquired about the history of their involvement with folk music, their motivations, methods, and philosophies. I attended many performances of folk music ensembles – ranging from children’s revivalist ensembles to adult professionals, and including groups that can best be described as alternative rock-folk fusion and pop-folk fusion. Finally, I undertook a study of the depiction of folk music revival in various published media: periodicals (both specialized and generalized), books, CDs, cassettes, LPs, and videos.16 In situating myself as an apprentice, as someone who wished to apply the methods of revival to my own work with singers and musicians in the US, I attempted to maintain an attitude of respect for the people whose work I was studying. In recent years, ethnographic practice has come under criticism for asserting the primacy of the researcher’s Western discourse over non-Western modes of thought. In order to minimize the hegemonic effects

Introduction 11 of interviewing, I used a hermeneutic approach, with open-ended questions and ‘reflective’ responses in which the interviewer checks her interpretation of answers with the informant, thus allowing the informant to react to and possibly refine the interpretation.17 In this study I have endeavored to present my informants as individuals with distinct perspectives, and to situate myself within the narrative by indicating the means I have used to come by the knowledge I am presenting.18 Locating my own position within the narrative has proved important especially because of the global politics implicated in its writing. My status as a foreigner was easy for me to overlook, especially during fieldwork with urban scholars of Russian folklore. Because I am a professor in a university, the scholars who made up the bulk of the leadership of the folk revival movement treated me like an equal. But in other situations my hosts highlighted my nationality. Village revivalists often treated me like a special guest – they proudly arranged feasts in honor of my visit. In one village I was asked to give a speech and to sing a Russian folk song before an outdoor crowd of 300 festival attendants; in another I was interviewed for a television show. To rural revivalists and producers, I was a person who could draw more attention to their revivalist activities. If they felt Russian young people’s love for American culture enticed them away from Russian culture, then here was a possible antidote: an American who was fascinated with Russian folk culture. The situation was different when I dealt with Russian nationalists, Cossacks, and proponents of Orthodoxy. My American nationality and my lack of Christian faith sometimes formed a perceived barrier between these people and myself. I often feared that I would be verbally attacked for representing a reprehensible force in the world; this feeling was exacerbated during my spring visit in 1999, which coincided with the US bombing of Serbia. Russia has traditionally held Serbia as a close ally because of cultural, religious, and linguistic affinities; Russians refers to Serbs as ‘Brother Slavs.’ During this period, the Russian media focused on the damage caused by NATO bombs, but rarely showed the images of fleeing Albanians that dominated the US media. Even before these events, I had been verbally harangued by nationalists, Cossacks, and Orthodox believers who saw the worldwide exportation of American popular culture as detrimental to Russian society. On one occasion, as I was leaving a wedding in a Cossack village in Volgograd oblast with a Moscow musicologist and the local director of the Palace of Culture, a drunk man in a small car motioned to our van to pull over. He apparently wished to confront me as an American, and angrily asked the loaded question, ‘Why is everything so bad here and so good there?’ After some discussion he drove away without incident, but the event showed me that many blamed the US for Russia’s difficult economic position. Both of these events had occurred shortly after Russia’s financial crisis of August 1998, when the banks froze all assets, prices rose astronomically, and many

12 Introduction paychecks were further delayed than usual, or simply not paid. Many people were angry and/or afraid of what the future might bring.

Performance, Culture, and Identity Such times of political, social, and economic upheaval often result in shifting values and cultural changes. But transformations of this kind are not simple or linear. During the post-Soviet period, individuals and communities continually renegotiate allegiances and meanings.19 Attempting to resurrect folk traditions has been one of the ways that some Russians have dealt with the uncertainty of the post-Communist transition, when ideologies crumbled, geographical borders were re-drawn, and national identity was questioned. Pre-Revolutionary history has taken on new importance as a source of meaning for Russians.20 In this context, it is important to keep in mind that cultural acts – such as music performance or the exhibition of cultural symbols in public places – are not simply reflections of the selfconceptions and ideological goals of the performers. Besides embodying the participants’ goals, performance also helps to constitute identities and social groups. It is a medium in which cultural identity can be not only expressed but enacted.21 By focusing on the active, ‘performative’ aspects of performance in this study, I hope to invoke a conception of identity that is complex and multifaceted. While earlier studies of ethnic and national groups have tended to view them as ‘internally homogeneous, historically continuous entities, objectively defined by their cultural, linguistic and racial distinctiveness,’ more recent scholarly work has called these notions into question. Scholars have recognized that identity is not given, immutable, and bounded, but constructed, fluid, and heterogeneous. People see themselves as belonging to multiple groups defined according to such characteristics as gender, relative age within a group, social status, place of residence, occupation, and religion – as well as broader categories such as nationality and ethnic origin. All of these categories are not rigid but are given meaning by a particular historical and cultural situation. Further, different contexts may elicit different conceptions of identity, and various group allegiances may intersect in numerous ways.22 If identity is largely subjective and multi-dimensional, then how are we to refer to any notion of identity? Such references are bound to be oversimplifications. Yet it is important to recognize the substantial force that identity can have in motivating history.23 How Russians define themselves and view themselves in relation to other groups may have a significant impact on the trajectory of the nation’s future. But it is important, when writing about cultural identity, not to fall into the trap of treating such a category as encompassing individuals entirely. Narratives about groups always have the tendency to generalize, to smooth over differences. Recognizing this pitfall

Introduction 13 and gesturing at the complexity of any given group identity is part of my goal as a cultural critic. With this aim in mind I have included in this study not only anti-establishment revival movements, but also state-sponsored folk performances of the Soviet period and their inheritors in the post-Soviet period, and the everyday music and dance of city and village dwellers. Since the current folk revival movement began in the 1960s as a reaction against the hypocrisy of the Stalin era, it would be tempting to validate the work of these anti-Soviet revivalists, while condemning the falsified representations of folk culture that the Soviet system promoted. But to do so would be to oversimplify, and to ignore the important role that state-sponsored revival of folk music and dance has played in the creation of a viable art form. Similarly, it would be easy to focus my study only on organized folk music performed on stage. But that would mean to disregard the important contexts in which spontaneously produced music and dance function to reinforce groups and identities. Since this study is primarily about folklorism, I have not addressed folklore or even folk music and dance as a whole – that would be another book entirely. Rather, in order to suggest an additional dimension, I have chosen to illustrate the ways in which official culture has become more like spontaneous folklore – that is, to show the rough edges of the planned and organized folklore, the ways that it spills over into grassroots communal activity; and to illustrate how activities that have been scripted become unpredictable and reflective of characteristics and identities their planners did not intend. Western scholars long subscribed to a rather monolithic view of the Soviet art world, in which the Party wielded power and artists were made to conform to prescribed ways of representation. In this model, Soviet manipulations of folk music and dance would be seen as repressive, forceful implementations of might upon a relatively passive citizenry. That model must be viewed as partially accurate. But the Soviet system produced many individual performers and producers who either interpreted folk music differently from the requisite norm, or freely pursued government-prescribed artistic formulas, yet imbued them with their own energetic and creative spirit. Indeed, recently, under the influence of Foucault and other poststructuralist thinkers, scholars have begun to question one-sided representations of the workings of power. In order to understand how power may be enabling as well as limiting, it is important to see it not only in the relation of the ruling elite to its subjects, but in the multiple and everyday interactions of people and the myriad ways in which individuals construct their identities in the context of a society.24 Further, the Soviet culture system was not the only one that influenced and controlled the production of folk art. As James Clifford has argued, all cultural systems direct how we are to collect, display, and view cultural artifacts. Such art systems are historical: what is considered high art at one time may have purely practical or informational value at another. To take an

14

Introduction

example from American culture, Shaker crafts are now seen as valuable in part because Shaker society no longer exists. Furniture pieces once used as household implements have not only been viewed as ethnographic and historical representations of Shaker society; they were also exhibited as fine art in the Whitney Museum in 1986.25 Similarly, the Russian elite music and dance world has displayed folk music and dance in different ways at different times. Within every art system – whether in contemporary Russia, in the Soviet period, in contemporary America or elsewhere – the categories of ‘the beautiful, the cultural, and the authentic’ are conditioned by multiple factors and are constantly in flux.26 Thus, even within the context of a seemingly monolithic system such as the Soviet one, definitions of the above categories have been influenced by notions of social and economic class, Western culture and Western views of Soviet culture, the pre-Revolutionary aesthetic system, and many other factors. Given the importance of historical contexts of contemporary revival movements, I present here both a history and a snapshot of the current situation. A thorough history of Russian folk music and dance and of appropriations of folk culture in elite culture has not yet been written, and I have not attempted to provide it: I hope that this study may spur others to do so. Yet since it is essential to perceive changes against a historical background, my first three chapters investigate past revivalist practices that established a tradition of evoking Russianness through the performance of Russian folk music and dance. My methodology here is distinct from the experiential, qualitative anthropological research described above. In the historical sections the required breadth has necessitated that I rely upon the research of other scholars; where possible, I have tried to bring distinct voices together in dialogue to show the ways that interpreters have viewed the past according to their own beliefs and agendas. Revival movements construct traditions and attempt to establish continuities with an imagined past; my investigation aims to disrupt this smooth narrative of origins by both uncovering the reasons for such historicizing, and discovering alternative sources for present-day practices.27 Since this study is about depictions of Russianness in musical form, I offer audio illustrations of some of the musical practices and performances about which I write. Russian folk music (like most grassroots music practice) does not lend itself easily to Western musical notation. Contemporary scholars and revivalists use notation as an analytical tool, but do not consider this a complete descriptive picture of the original material. Transcriptions can be useful in order to compare and contrast melodies, engage in detailed discussions of polyphony, scrutinize ornaments, and so on. But since my main focus in this book is on the way these sounds are situated in people’s lives, transcriptions are at best superfluous to my purpose. Many of the recordings I offer here capture much more than music: since these are not studio productions but live events, listeners can hear interactions among performers and between performers and audience. I have

Introduction 15 referred to the examples in the text and readers can obtain a CD by following the instructions at the website: www.colorado.edu/germslav/ Department/r-olson.htm. Examples published elsewhere are listed in the Discography. Chapter 1 briefly describes the various types of Russian folk music and dance and the ways that elite art and folk art intertwined in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. I argue that late-nineteenth-century revivalism in music and other arts did not so much restore life to dying folk arts as it created a separate tradition, which became known as folk art. Chapter 2 examines the multiple ways that Soviet government policies manipulated folk music performance from 1917 through the 1960s. I focus upon the interaction of the amateur and professional spheres, the folk chorus aesthetic, and the important role of the folk choir and orchestra in defining the nature of folk culture in the public imagination. Chapter 3 shows how the contemporary folk revival movement emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s out of opposition to both government policies on folk culture and the scholarly pursuit of early-twentieth-century approaches to folklore, and how it developed into a national phenomenon during the 1980s. Chapters 4–8 address the contemporary post-Soviet period. Chapter 4 explores the revival movement’s changes during post-Soviet years, and maps out the art-culture system that defines the spectrum of folk revival practice today. Chapter 5 discusses how folk performance is used in the post-Soviet context for political aims, to cultivate associations with Russian national identity. While many of the cultural producers who plan these events do not identify themselves as nationalists, their work reveals a cultural nationalism that goes unquestioned by the consumers of these constellations of images. Chapter 6 focuses on the ways that the folk revival movement has worked hand in hand with the Cossack revival movement, one of the most interesting and powerful such movements in Russia today. Because Cossacks are associated with a strong masculine image, revivalists have cultivated their culture as an antidote to the emasculation of Russian culture. Chapters 7 and 8 approach the question of folk revival in a village context. In the 1980s and 1990s urban-based folk revivalists continually worked with villages to replenish their repertoires and their knowledge of folk culture, and to lend support to the preservation of folklore in villages. Chapter 7 shows that villagers often responded positively to such incursions, embracing the validation of their cultures by revivalists seeking to undo decades of degradation; in one case the zeal and unconventional resources of a village revivalist exceeded those of his urban counterparts. Chapter 8 focuses upon the divergent expectations that urban intellectuals and village dwellers bring to the sites of their intersection. Today’s revivalists often engage in propagandistic, planned exhibitions of the folklore they wish to promote; nonetheless, the communities in which such productions are displayed evince the spontaneity and willfulness characteristic of grassroots folkloric practices.

1

The Invention and Re-invention of Folk Music in PreRevolutionary Russia

Contemporary audiences often accept performances of Russian folk music and dance as representations of ancient rural traditions. However, many aspects of folk performance were drawn directly from nineteenth century productions that musicians consciously constructed to appeal to the tastes of elite and/or middle-class audiences and to further Slavophile and populist agendas. Musical producers not only sought to engender ‘Russian character’ through their performances, but aimed to define and evoke ‘authenticity’ through their manipulation of potent symbols of untouched folk nature. Their actions had direct effects upon the ways that folk music is viewed and constructed today. For example, the ‘folk orchestra’ – a nearly ubiquitous phenomenon in performances of Russian folk music – was not part of village music-making practice, but was the brainchild of a late-nineteenth-century petty landowner, Vasilii Andreev, who learned to play – and worked on ‘perfecting’ – the balalaika, a folk lute which had appeared in Russian villages in the seventeenth century. Andreev had the instrument’s body enlarged and neck shortened, and added fixed frets, which changed the instrument’s timbre, increased its resonance and made it able to play chromatic scales with secure intonation; later he had balalaikas made in different sizes in order to play different parts.1 Starting in 1887 he formed an ensemble of 7–8 balalaika players on four different sizes of instruments (piccolo, alto, standard, and bass), which played in St Petersburg halls and later toured Russia. The concept became popular, and similar groups of instrumental musicians began to form and to play at city fairs.2 In the mid-1890s, Andreev added other folk instruments, including the domra (a folk lute) and the gusli (a psaltery), to the ensemble, in order to increase its musical possibilities and make it more attractive to listeners.3 The domra was similar in form to the balalaika, but was more ancient, probably dating back 1000 years on Russian territory; it had been used in ensembles that accompanied the skomorokhs (professional performers), but had apparently died out in the seventeenth century. The story of the ‘discovery’ of the domra illustrates the importance of a stamp of authenticity for revivalists like Andreev: in 1895 a very old, unknown instrument

The Invention and Re-invention of Folk Music 17 was found in a hut in Viatka province by one of Andreev’s students. Andreev took the instrument to a scholar, A. S. Famitsyn, who had just published a study of the domra. In that work, Famitsyn had stated that the domra no longer existed, and that there remained no image of it. Despite this lack of basic information, Famitsyn identified the instrument as a domra, and Andreev ordered a series of new instruments modeled on it.4 Later authors disputed the authenticity of the instrument.5 Iurii Boiko wrote in 1984 that Andreev had invented the domra simply because he was seeking ‘new shades of timbre for his orchestra, under the obvious influence of the mandolin.’ Indeed, ‘the domras were created based upon the mandolin.’ One of the most characteristic and widely copied features of the Russian folk orchestra – its rendering of the song’s melody in the form of a sustained tremolo on one string (usually played using a plectrum on a group of domras, but also on gusli and balalaikas) – is in fact not a Russian manner of playing at all. According to Boiko it was borrowed by Andreev from the Neapolitan mandolin orchestra.6 In addition to the domra and gusli, two kinds of folk flute, the svireli and the brelka, were appended: the new orchestra now had its wind section, and could render classical orchestral compositions; later ‘brass’ (in the form of rozhki, wooden horns) and percussion (using a mix of Russian and Western instruments, such as timpani and tambourines) sections were added.7 As the ‘Great Russian Orchestra’ it had great success for several years playing compositions and arrangements of folk tunes by Andreev and professional musicians with whom he consulted, as well as ‘Russian classics’ by composers like Glinka and Tchaikovsky. Singers such as the famous bass soloist Fyodor Shaliapin and quartets of professionals were often featured as special guests at the orchestra’s concerts, and the renowned Russian dancers from the ballet troupe of the Mariinsky Theater performed with them occasionally. The seeds of the Soviet folk choruses with their choral, instrumental, and dance troupes were sown. Andreev promoted his constructed notion of Russian folk music by organizing orchestras of folk instruments in schools and the army – hoping that the tradition would spread and take root as soldiers, having learned to play the balalaika in the army, brought the instrument home to their villages.8 Andreev gave a speech before each concert, and also wrote a letter to the editor of a newspaper explaining his goal of ‘resurrecting these instruments’ in order to ‘give the people a musical instrument which corresponds to their way of life and character, and at the same time satisfies the demands of contemporary musical culture as much as possible.’9 Of course, Russian rural practice had its own instrumental traditions, which Andreev did not so much resurrect as change. The Andreev principle of organization – where specific instruments were assigned specific functions, and were modified so that they could better perform those functions in the ensemble – was borrowed from Western classical music, and was unknown in Russian village music-making. In ancient Russian villages,

18

The Invention and Re-invention of Folk Music

instruments had been used as part of ritual music-making to accompany dancing and/or singing, and by professional entertainers, the skomorokhs, to accompany their humoristic theatrical spectacles. By the nineteenth century, villagers used instruments both within and outside of ritual contexts. In any of these situations, when players formed ensembles they combined instruments spontaneously, according to what was at hand. Instruments could play the melody heterophonically, like the voices in a folk chorus, or their functions could be delineated as to melody, rhythm, or harmony – but any instrument could be called on to perform any of these functions.10 As Boiko pointed out, ‘in distinction to the Andreev orchestras, the differentiation of function in a Russian folk instrumental ensemble is not at all dependent upon the differentiation of the types of instruments.’11 Because playing in the orchestra required specialized training, Andreev created a network of schools to produce the musicians to staff such orchestras. As a result, the gulf between rural folk musicians and trained folk musicians, and in general between rural folk music and folk music produced for the stage, increased. The Soviets intensified this situation, in part by mass-producing instruments that were better suited to playing in the orchestral style, and by broadening the educational network.12 The effects of the revisions that Andreev made in Russian folk instrumental practice were so widespread that they changed the nature of folk ensemble playing not only in Russia but internationally. During Andreev’s lifetime, musicians formed Russian-style folk orchestras and ensembles not only in Russia, but abroad, for example in the US and France. Andreev hoped that the success of his orchestra abroad would improve public opinion toward Russia and also increase the export of balalaikas.13 During the Soviet period, not the instruments themselves but the method of standardizing and combining instruments was imported to Eastern Europe and Central Asia, where native instruments were brought together to form ensembles – even in cultures where no tradition of ensemble playing existed. Andreev’s modifications to folk playing changed what Russian, Western and Asian audiences identified as folk music. As Boiko pointed out, the Andreev-style orchestras’ promotion of folk music affirmed ‘the false impression of their art as “folk” music.’ Audiences, including many Russian ones, had no idea that the music they were hearing was not what self-taught musicians in Russian villages played. Russian newspaper reviews regularly hailed Andreev’s performances as saving Russian folk music from extinction. One reviewer wrote that while the accordion and the ‘factory romance’ were crowding out Russian music in the countryside, St Petersburg was preserving it through Andreev’s concerts: ‘Our Petersburg was more countrified than the countryside itself. Here the folk song and poetry have been preserved. One only had to see the general ecstasy in the hall during the performance of Russian songs by the Andreev orchestra, to be convinced how warmly the heart responds to them.’14 Of course, the songs, instruments, and manner of playing were not preserved but were constructed specifically to convey to

The Invention and Re-invention of Folk Music 19 audiences used to classical music what one critic called a ‘pure Russian character.’15 Andreev’s work was part of a widespread burgeoning of interest and activity in Russian folk music revival during the period 1860–1917. Although Andreev’s approach was new, musicians had been incorporating Russian folk music into the art of the gentry since the reign of Catherine the Great; it was at that time that many of the conventions of ‘folk’ singing and playing in an art context were established. Choruses of serfs kept by landowners on their estates began to sing not only Italian songs but what were called Russian folk songs; later, in the nineteenth century, some of these choruses became professional and traveled all over Russia. In home theaters, nobles had their serfs put on scenes imitating Russian village holidays; sometimes the nobles themselves composed the scripts.16 Comic opera imported from France and Italy introduced folk life to the art theater, and Russian composers wrote operas that imitated Russian folk speech and songs.17 The divertissements between acts of operas initiated a tradition of ‘folk’ music performance on stage. Initially, divertissements consisted of arias from operas, but at the end of the eighteenth century performers began to include Russian folk songs and songs composed in the folk manner as well as romances. These songs consisted of melodies sung solo by trained singers (sometimes of serf origin), accompanied by guitar or piano. The manner of singing was frequently very sweet and sentimental, according to the fashion of the time; the singers tried to convey emotion and drama through their renditions of the songs. Not only solos, but duets and trios (accompanied by instruments) and choruses became fashionable acts. Often, the songs performed at divertissements grew popular, and were sung by people of all social strata.18 So-called ‘Gypsy’ singers and choruses performed Russian songs and romances to great acclaim. These were Romani musicians who made their careers based upon Russians’ fascination for the stereotype of the passionate, bold, mysterious and independent ‘Gypsies.’ Although the manner of singing of the Romani choruses and singers was more intensely emotional than that of the Russian ones, it is probable that the Russian stage-singers and choruses developed at least partially under the influence of the Romani style, and vice versa.19 The tradition of Romani musicians interpreting Russian folk songs and romances became an important part of Russian music-making, and remains so to this day. In essence, the Russian concept of estrada (the stage) formed at this time. The notion of presenting various songs on stage as individual ‘numbers,’ unconnected by a story line or any other factor, was new. The term ‘number’ in this case derives from the structure of opera in the eighteenth century, which comprised a succession of several distinct musical movements, many of which could also be performed separately in a different context. The term then came to be used in divertissements and later, the estrada.20

20

The Invention and Re-invention of Folk Music

Furthermore, the notions of folk songs sung solo or in duets or trios by professional singers with instrumental accompaniment, and the necessity of performing the songs in an overtly emotional manner, became standard during this period, and remain so to the present.

Russian Village Music-Making While performers and critics represented the music sung and played on stage as Russian folk music, Russian village music-making practice was quite different. The oldest known pre-Christian folk music was sung in the context of agrarian calendar and life-cycle rituals, presumably by both commoners and elites.21 Although this music has been classified as drama, since it was accompanied by theatrical gestures, work, or dance movements, it was never performed in a stage setting but by groups in which there was no delineation between spectator and participant. Its purpose was to bring about a magical result: an increase in harvest, the fertility of a bride, the worship of ancestors. Such holiday songs included winter carols, fortune telling songs, Shrovetide songs, calls to summon springtime, Easter carols, songs for St George’s day and Whitsunday, summer solstice and harvest songs. Work songs accompanied agricultural work and (later) barge-hauling, log rafting, and crafts. Dance songs were associated with particular holidays and included circle dances, game dances, and dances with play-acting. Life cycle songs included christening songs, lullabies, many different kinds of wedding songs, and funeral laments.22 The style of singing was a cappella group polyphony, in which the text was most important while the relatively simple melody served as a means of conveying it.23 Texts were characterized by syllabic verse (in which the number of syllables per line and their division by a caesura are the dominant structuring features) with a declamatory musical style: one syllable corresponded to each note. Musical structure varied tremendously from region to region – musical dialects and micro-regions were often as small as a village or cluster of villages – yet in general terms the main style was unison singing with episodic splitting of the voices (in some areas a drone was used); the melody’s range was typically as narrow as a fourth. Remnants of this type of singing have been found in the repertoires of village ensembles throughout the nineteenth century and up to the present day. From these performances it is evident that the manner of singing is not ‘emotional’ in the melodramatic style of stage performance; instead, singers convey meaning through musical techniques such as ornamentation, variation, rests, and repetition. During the period of Muscovite rule, from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries, other kinds of secular traditional singing not directly related to the agrarian calendar or to life-cycle rituals emerged, including what scholars have termed the categories of epic and lyric. Epic songs – including epics or byliny, historical songs, ballads, and religious verses or dukhovnye stikhi – relayed legends or historical stories, while the texts of

The Invention and Re-invention of Folk Music 21 lyric songs, ranging from simple one-voiced pieces to polyphonic songs and the complex, melismatic drawn-out song or protiazhnaia, expressed the feelings of a protagonist or expounded on a lyric subject. During this period the poetic line acquired accents in fixed places corresponding to the strong beats of the musical meter; the melodies had wider ranges and became more highly developed, with an elaborate musical structure and much splitting of the voices.24 In these songs the music often eclipsed the text in importance.25 Both the ritual and non-ritual musical styles are distinct from the homophonic Western style that characterized eighteenth-century Russia’s urban musical practice, in which solo singing was accompanied by instruments and choral singing was based upon the harmonic kant style that had come to Russian cities from Ukraine.26 In this style one part (usually the treble) leads and other voices (or accompaniment) follow in parallel fashion, creating harmonies that follow a functional progression according to the rules of Western classical harmony (such as tonic–dominant–tonic). By contrast, in Russian folk singing all the voices sing in a mixture of polyphony and heterophony, each singer improvising melodies (counter-melodies or podgoloski) that are variants of the same tune.27 Although chords may be formed in the process, singers do not harmonize according to Western classical norms, and sing notes ‘outside of the [standard] chords.’28 The voices weave in and out, sometimes forming chords, sometimes moving in parallel intervals – including thirds, fourths, fifths, sixths, and octaves – often beginning and ending in unison.29 In the practice of Russian village polyphony that musicologists have observed since the late nineteenth century, typically each singer performs a specific function within the group. Especially in non-dance tunes, a leader (zapevala) introduces the song with a short solo line, at least one singer sings a higher counter-melody (podgolosok), and a body of singers generally sing in the lower and middle ranges of the song. Singers cease singing and return to the song at will. Each singer possesses a ‘vocabulary’ of melodic phrases or notes that s/he sings, but s/he may combine these differently in response to conditions such as who else is singing and what they are singing, what the singers are doing while singing, and so on.30 In drawn-out songs (protiazhnye pesni) the elaborate variation of the melody and text can produce an extremely complex texture: entire melodic phrases may be built upon the singing of a single syllable; meaningless syllables (such as akh, okh, ekh, da, ai, or da) are added in the middle of words to extend a melisma; a sung vowel is changed in midstream (say, from o to e); frequently the singers ‘move’ from one beat to the next at different times and articulate words at different times.31 This polyphonic singing style, which began developing in the fifteenth century, was not fully ‘discovered’ by scholars until the late nineteenth century, although it characterized vocal music-making in many areas of rural Russia.32 One likely reason was that early collectors were more predisposed to look for songs that fit the city style they presumably knew best.33

22

The Invention and Re-invention of Folk Music

The first collections, made in the 1770s–90s by Vasilii Trutovskii, Mikhail Chulkov, and Nikolai Lvov and Ivan Prach, were compilations of wellknown urban and rural songs. When music was offered, the authors gave only single melodic lines, and added bass lines with three and four-part harmony – following urban practice. This music, a reconciliation of native Russian music with the Western musical system, was the kind of Russian ‘folk’ music that was performed at divertissements.34 Despite their disregard of village musical practice, these early collections reflected an actual trend of mutual influence of urban and village musicmaking. Starting in the eighteenth century a confluence took place when nobles, merchants, and serfs attended fairs held on the estates of noblemen for business and pleasure, and enjoyed the rural and urban-style music and dancing offered there.35 This trend intensified in mid-to late-nineteenthcentury Russia, when peasant migration from villages to towns for work (permanent or seasonal), increased ease of transportation, and traveling fairs and craftspeople all brought people from various environments into contact with one another. Other factors that helped to transform village practice were increased access to education, the publication of song texts in cheap lubok (‘popular print’) versions, and the growing popularity and accessibility of the accordion.36 Resulting changes in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries included the importation of an urban lyric genre – the romance – into village singing. Romances imitated written poetry in their poetic form: they used syllabotonic meters such as iambs and trochees, and rhymed line endings. In many cases the texts were folklorized poems by known or anonymous authors. In the nineteenth century the cruel romance, with especially torrid textual content (often involving infidelity, betrayal, murder, and/or suicide), became popular in cities and villages.37 The melodies had a wide range and were based on Western tonality; in the cities, they were sung solo with instruments that played a progression of harmonic chords. Rural communities changed these songs to fit the norms of their local tradition: they transformed the melodic structure and rhythm and sang them a capella, polyphonically.38 Another genre, the chastushka, a short rhyming verse form that reflected current popular topics, sung by individual singers to balalaika or accordion accompaniment, grew up in the nineteenth century in areas where city and country met, such as on the outskirts of large cities, and became a distinct feature of village music-making.39 Yet by the nineteenth century intellectuals no longer viewed this music that was the result of city–village confluence as folk music. Whereas eighteenth-century collectors did not distinguish or separate rural from urban music (thus all popular music counted as ‘folk’), for nineteenth-century collectors ‘folk’ music referred exclusively to that of rural dwellers. This Romantic-influenced view remained prevalent throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in Russia; it was only during the latter half of the

The Invention and Re-invention of Folk Music 23 twentieth century that some Russian scholars, influenced by new Western theories about folk culture, began to define it more broadly.40

Nineteenth-Century Views of the Folk Enlightenment and Romantic (German Idealist) conceptions of common people profoundly changed the ways that Russian elites pictured themselves in relation to the peasants, and established many of the assumptions that would influence folklore study for the next two centuries. Elites began to formulate mythological versions of the peasant as a way of defining themselves and their nation.41 Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s ideas about the natural goodness of people living in a ‘state of nature’ spawned interest in rural and lower-class people, especially among liberals who wished to draw attention to social and economic inequality.42 Johann Gottfried Herder wrote that the culture – and particularly the unconscious, ‘infantile’ music – of those who were closer to the soil was the truest expression of a nation.43 Starting in the early 1700s, Herder implored his contemporaries to collect German folklore in order to preserve ‘the voice of your fathers.’ He himself published his own collections of folk poems, and others did likewise. This was the beginning of folklore collecting in Europe.44 Following German Idealist thought, the Russian Slavophiles’ views on the peasant launched an extended period of intense study of the verbal and musical culture of the Russian peasant. The collections of folk songs made by Slavophiles and their collaborators emphasized for the first time the authenticity of their rural origin. Unlike previous collectors, Petr Kireevsky excluded city-style music and ‘imitations of folk style’ from his collections of folk songs. He expressed a consciousness of the inherent value of the rural texts, especially due to the likelihood of their imminent disappearance.45 Kireevsky wrote in 1838: ‘Experience has shown us that it is necessary to hurry with the collecting of these priceless remnants of olden times, which we can observe disappearing from the memory of the folk with the changes in its mores and customs.’46 It was a similar assumption of folklore’s imminent disappearance that motivated late-nineteenth century revivalists like Andreev to ‘preserve’ folk music by reconstructing it. As Robert Rothstein has pointed out, while it is true that a number of aspects of music-making were changing in nineteenth-century Russia, this did not mean that the folk song was dying, as scholars of folk culture feared throughout the nineteenth century.47 In fact, the exaggerated cry of folklore’s imminent disappearance became a commonplace in all kinds of writing and thinking about rural culture – and in the popular imagination – not only in the nineteenth century, but in the twentieth as well. It is one of the most basic assumptions underlying revivalist thinking and practice in Russia.48 However, while the pace and the quality of change may vary at different times, all culture always undergoes change. As Richard Handler and Jocelyn Linnekin have written, ‘Western common sense…presumes that

24

The Invention and Re-invention of Folk Music

an unchanging core of ideas and customs is always handed down to us from the past’; yet the result of this assumption, the notion of ‘tradition’ as an unchanging heritage, is misleading. ‘ “ [T]raditional” and “new” are interpretive rather than descriptive terms: since all cultures change ceaselessly, there can only be what is new, although what is new can take on symbolic value as “traditional”.’49 Concern about the supposed ‘death of the folk song’ in Russia in the latter half of the nineteenth century was linked with the increasing contact between urban and rural spheres. Folklorists and observers lamented such changes in terms that made clear the culprit was the city and the victim was the village. They characterized the city as an arena where Western fashion replaced native Russian practice, or as a place of debauchery that perverted the village. One critic in 1895 ‘lumped together the replacement of old songs by new ones, the weakening of parental authority and of religiousness, the development of fashion in clothing, and the new freedom in relations between the sexes.’50 A similar aversion to lower-class urban musical practice and its association with Westernization and lax morals persisted in the Soviet period and in some branches of the late twentieth-century revival movement.

Late Nineteenth-Century Folklorism: Folk Motifs in High Culture In the 1830s Mikhail Glinka, a composer who worked within Italian and French classical traditions, utilized elements of Russian folk music – along with many other compositional techniques, such as oriental idioms – to create what came to be known as a ‘national’ musical style. Both Tchaikovsky and the circle of composers known as ‘The Five,’ or the ‘Mighty Handful’ (‘moguchaia kuchka,’ comprising) regarded Glinka as their precursor. As Robert Ridenour has argued, Mily Balakirev ‘modeled his own compositions after Glinka’s example and fostered the same approach among his students as the only legitimately ‘Russian’ way to write music.’51 Balakirev’s circle, consisting of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, César Cui, Modest Musorgsky, and Aleksander Borodin, pursued a style based upon Russia’s ‘reality’ – that is, the music of the common people – and widely employed folk motifs and Russian historical subjects.52 Both Balakirev and Rimsky-Korsakov collected folk songs themselves for source material that would add authenticity to their works.53 However, the resulting ‘so-called Russian style … was not linked directly to the tradition of Russia’s native folk music but to Glinka’s personal methods of composing’ and other influences.54 The development of a national style in music in the 1860–70s reflected the rise of national schools in many of the arts during this period. The loss of the Crimean War in the 1850s and the social and legal reforms of the 1860s led to a time of ‘broad cultural self-definition.’ The questions, ‘What

The Invention and Re-invention of Folk Music 25 is Russia and What will Russia be?’ intensely occupied Russian intellectuals. Cathy Frierson described it as a ‘ “transitional epoch,” which demanded that fundamental elements of Russian culture be identified as a prelude to action.’55 Some of the art movements were more oriented toward Slavophile views, while others shared some of the views of the radical Populists who crusaded to better the plight of the Russian peasant and went ‘to the people’ in 1874, traveling to rural areas to cultivate active fellow socialists among the peasants. 56 Many of the arts exemplified features of both ideologies.57 Artists with Slavophile leanings favored historicism as a means to evoke national character: they passionately researched Russian and Slavic native folk art in their search for past forms that could stand for ‘Russianness’ in the present. What artists chose from the past was often seemingly arbitrary, but in fact laden with ideological significance. The sixteenth century was the favored time period for historicist borrowing in the performing arts, as in architecture – following Slavophile arguments for the purity and essential value of Russian culture prior to its exposure to the West.58 Folk motifs were used to evoke ‘the entire historical legacy of Russia before westernization.’59 In opera and play productions, the desire for ‘archeological exoticism’ led playwrights, composers, costumers and set designers to pay great attention to historical accuracy. In order to design the costumes and sets for productions of Alexander Serov’s opera Rogneda in 1865 and 1867, for example, artists and archaeologists studied medieval manuscripts and frescos, and found actual peasant costumes for the peasant characters.60 However, as Alison Hilton writes, the use of folk material in the arts constituted a conscious, almost academic ‘quot[ing].’ ‘The forms were valuable not in themselves but because they served to make genre and historical scenes “national”.’ In constructing this generic, symbolic representation of Russianness, artists paid little attention to the local specificity of the motifs they borrowed. As with Andreev’s orchestra, the desired result was a ‘pure Russian character.’ The same was true of the works of the Mighty Handful, who, following Glinka, took folklore as largely ‘an element of “content,” not “style”.’61 When the composers used elements such as folk songs and instruments evoking the Russian past they did not always preserve historical accuracy but instead intended to impart an aura of ‘antiquity and of national character – of “authenticity,” in short.’62 In one of the first appearances of ‘unadulterated’ folk song in opera, Rimsky-Korsakov took for his 1871 opera [Pskovitianka] [The Maid of Pskov] a folk song from Balakirev’s recently published collection, complete with the harmony that Balakirev notated ‘in the field.’ The song is used in a scene in which a Pskov citizen mockingly sings farewell while gathering around him those loyal to the cause of resisting Ivan the Terrible. This use of folk song was lauded by composers of the time because it did not use the melody just for ‘local color,’ conveying an individual character’s state of mind, but conveyed the feelings of a ‘whole

26

The Invention and Re-invention of Folk Music

people.’ Richard Taruskin notes: ‘it was Pskovitianka that really put the use of folk song on the operatic map, as embodiment of ‘the people’ in action.’ Subsequent operas imitated Rimsky-Korsakov’s use of folk songs for large choral scenes accompanied by action.63 Yet despite the use of harmony notated ‘in the field’ this ‘realist’ style had little to do with the kind of folk music peasants actually sang and played. In point of fact in his 1866 collection Balakirev notated folk songs only from performance by individuals, not groups (which would have produced the polyphonic texture). He indicated a second voice in only a few cases, and each piece in the collection is harmonized and ‘presented in the form of an exquisite little art song.’64 Russian polyphonic village singing – with its multiple, independent podgoloski – was not notated or theorized until the late 1870s, when Iurii Mel’gunov collected songs from groups of peasants. The degree to which Mel’gunov’s work was revolutionary may be seen in the reaction of his contemporaries: Rimsky-Korsakov called the collection ‘barbarous’ and said that in his compositions he had already used ‘and very artistically, mind you, those so-called podgoloski he is supposed to have discovered.’ Taruskin points out that Rimsky’s ‘podgoloski’ in fact followed ‘conservatory rules of voice leading’ – that was what he meant by ‘very artistically.’65 One kuchka-allied critic admitted that Mel’gunov might be right, but called the result ‘ugly’ nonetheless. For the Mighty Handful and its followers – as for previous collectors and composers – the singing style of peasants was far from aesthetically desirable. Mel’gunov’s work reflected the late-nineteenth-century interest in scientific matters: educated Russians increasingly turned the new methods of ‘objectivity, empiricism, and realism’ toward their study of the peasant.66 The burgeoning fields of sociology and ethnography helped to destroy the rural idyll by studying the economic and physical factors that caused change in the village. Whereas previous folklore studies had viewed peasants as an undifferentiated mass, in the mid-nineteenth century folklorists and musicologists began to pay attention to characteristics of the individual performer – initially as a means of establishing scientific authenticity, but increasingly in the 1860s with the goal of understanding the changing character of folk culture and its relation to everyday life. The Moscow Society of Lovers of Natural Science, Anthropology and Ethnography and the Russian Geographical Society, based in St Petersburg, organized expeditions with the goal of undertaking ethnographic study of the entire country.67 In musicology, it became accepted practice for collectors to write down songs they themselves had gone to villages to obtain, rather than writing songs they chanced to hear in the city; and after Mel’gunov the standard for folk-song collecting came to consist of the transcription of all of the independent, improvised podgoloski of a song.68 Around the turn of the century visual artists, musicians, and choreographers began to take a different approach to folk art in revival movements and modernist compositions.69 The World of Art circle grew out of the

The Invention and Re-invention of Folk Music 27 work of the Wanderers and the kustar’ (small-scale home industry) craft revival: art colonies on private estates at Abramtsevo and Talashkino engaged in the restoration and study of Russian folk art and its application in monuments and productions such as churches, bathhouses, illustrated books, plays and operas. Their workshops produced carved furniture, embroidery and other textile arts aimed at elite consumers. Alison Hilton writes: ‘the artists were more interested in exploiting the myriad possibilities of folk ornament than in discovering its underlying formal principles,’ and artisans tended to mix styles from different areas of Russia and different time periods, and to borrow design from other media.70 Whereas the kuchka and other artists had used folk themes and motifs as elements of content adapted to fit within their own pre-existing aesthetic, artists now began to create a style based upon folk art. In painting, Vasilii Kandinskii, Natal’ia Goncharova, and others researched folk art but did not undertake preservation or revival of it; instead, they evolved new, abstract artistic techniques from the folk designs.71 Serge Diaghilev, Igor Stravinsky, and World of Art members focused upon ballet as the ‘synthetic ideal’ to which they aspired: in ballet, without spoken or sung text to engage the rational mind, vivid impressions would be conveyed to the viewer through ‘the movement of bodies and by the sets, costumes, and lighting’ and music, creating their own coherence.72 The Ballets Russes, which gave seasons in Paris from 1909–14, produced many ballets incorporating Slavic folk themes: the neonationalist Russian artists emphasized aspects of Russian art that were striking to Western audiences.73 Stravinsky went on to create several vocal and instrumental works in which he transformed the syllabic patterns of ritual folk songs into complex rhythmic structures that have been called his ‘distinctive contribution to modern music.’74 Unlike his predecessors, Stravinsky did not contain folk music within an art music format; instead, using a ‘mosaic’ technique in which he endlessly transformed melodic fragments from source tunes, Russian folk music became for him ‘an instrument of self-emancipation from the constricting traditions of Russian art music.’75 By the time he wrote the Rite of Spring, Stravinsky did not display his folk sources on the surface of the composition as a mark of authenticity, as did the Mighty Handful. Instead, as a true modernist, Stravinsky merged folk and art music, transcending both sources.76

Late Nineteenth-Century Folk Choruses The new studies of folklore had another result besides modernist art. They gave impetus to a revival of Russian folk music that took shape in the spheres of popular culture as well as refined art. Along with Vasilii Andreev’s newly invented Russian folk orchestra, these groups drew increasingly large and diverse crowds both in Russia and abroad. They had dual goals: both to entertain, and to promote Russian folk music. Unlike the kind

28

The Invention and Re-invention of Folk Music

of Russian revival that wove folk elements into newly authored architectural, musical, and art compositions, the choruses and orchestras mostly sang and played what was called ‘folk songs’ or ‘folk music.’ Such songs were not authored compositions but presumably had formed part of oral tradition (that is, music that was passed on from generation to generation). Thus, these revivalists laid claim to authenticity in a different way than did the composers; they could maintain they were ‘resurrecting’ Russian music. However, they freely changed and adapted the forms of folk music they employed (including modifying instruments, musical structure, and costumes). The material they presented in concerts was extremely varied, gathered from multiple sources, including both rural and urban folk songs, composed folk-style songs, and romances. The degree to which this material was presented as representing ‘Russian music’ – that is, music that reflected the Russian national spirit – varied from group to group. Some had mainly entertainment in mind, while others saw themselves as promoters of ancient folk traditions. These late nineteenth-century choruses took their cue from the early nineteenth-century folk choruses that sang on estates, at fairs, and as part of divertissements. Now, with the advent of manufacturing and the growth of urban areas where people came to trade, the burgeoning restaurants and bars hired folk choruses to furnish an evening’s amusement. Thus, several of the folk choruses created during the late nineteenth century were mostly interested in getting a ‘regular gig.’ But out of this genre formed according to the tastes of bar patrons rose groups involved in more serious promotion of Russian folk music.77 Most famous were the choruses run by AgrenevSlavianskii, Evgeniia Lineva, and Mitrofan Piatnitskii, and the orchestra created by Andreev. The Agrenev-Slavianskii chorus and others like it served as models for the Soviet folk chorus.78 Dmitri Agrenev-Slavianskii trained as an opera singer with the Bolshoi Theater and in Italy, but his voice was too small to make a career in opera, so he became a ‘folk singer’ performing solo with balalaikas. After getting involved in the Slavic Congress (part of the Slavic movement for freedom and self-rule for all Slavic countries) in 1867, Agrenev formed a chorus of Slavic singers and toured Slavic countries with a repertoire of Russian, Czech, Bulgarian, Serbian, and other Slavic songs. The concerts were political in that they propagandized the aims of the Slavic Congress; the pseudonym Slavianskii symbolized Agrenev’s dedication to the Slavic cause.79 In 1870, he formed a Russian chorus which initially toured the United States; later it grew to 100 members and performed all over Russia, including the Caucasus and Siberia. The chorus gave many concerts for lower-class audiences, at provincial clubs, factories, schools, and hospitals; in St Petersburg, it performed to an audience of 10,000 people at the Tavricheskii gardens.80 In the mid 1870s Agrenev increased the chorus’s size to 150 members, and in the mid-1880s they completed a two-year tour of Europe.

The Invention and Re-invention of Folk Music 29 The chorus, which consisted of adult men and women as well as boys, had great success both in Russia and abroad, and was responsible for increased interest in Russian folk songs. After concerts, Agrenev typically received from audience members requests for written copies of the chorus’s songs.81 The repertoire of the chorus included Russian byliny (epic songs), laments, folk songs about girlhood, weddings, and parting, barge-hauler songs, chastushki (sung limericks), joking songs, and other Slavic folk songs. Many of these have become standards of the Russian folk song repertoire internationally: ‘Ei ukhnem,’ ‘Kalinka,’ ‘Vdol’ po Piterskoi,’ and others. Most of the songs were arranged by Agrenev’s wife, Ol’ga AgrenevaSlavianskaia, in a style that reflected Western harmonic arrangement rather than Russian folk polyphony.82 The performance manner was similar to that of professional classical choruses, with clean intonation, strictly controlled tempo, and varied dynamics – the chorus was well known for its effective use of piano and pianissimo.83 Agrenev died in 1908, but the chorus continued to perform, under the direction of his daughter, until 1922.84 In the early 1870s Tchaikovsky criticized Agrenev’s choice of repertoire for including ‘city-square romances having nothing to do with folk songs’ and ‘pieces with piquant, slang texts.’ Tchaikovsky also lamented the poor quality of the arrangements, which distorted the true character of the original songs; he said they were a cartoon version of the Russian folk song.85 Despite what some saw as the ‘vulgar’ nature of certain of Agrenev’s repertoire choices and the ‘dilettante’ nature of the arrangements, critics acknowledged that the chorus did succeed in promoting Russian songs, and particularly in raising awareness of Russian music in Western Europe.86 In fact, most of the reviews of the chorus in Russian and foreign newspapers throughout the 1870s and 1880s were positive, and emphasized the chorus’s expression of the true ‘Russian spirit.’87 In 1896 Maxim Gorky, lauding it for bringing the spirit of ancient Russia to the stage, wrote that the Slavianskii kapella ‘restor[ed] the seventeenth century with its boyar costumes and resurrect[ed] the old Russian folk song.’88 Whether or in what way the Agrenev-Slavianskii chorus in fact engaged in ‘restoration’ and ‘resurrection’ is certainly debatable, and was debated during the Soviet period and after. Writing in the 1950s, the Soviet critic Kuznetsov mostly follows Tchaikovsky’s lead and criticizes the chorus for cheapening the Russian folk song with the addition of vulgar songs and poor arrangements. However, he applauds the chorus’s costumes and its addition of gestures and acting to the performance of songs. Agrenev had not liked the typical costume of Russian folk choruses, that is, as he called it, rough ‘kaftans, hemp sarafany and lapti [birch-bark sandals].’ He brought in a historian, a folklorist, and an artist to design costumes modeled after the dress of seventeenth-century boyars, whose robes were exotic-looking and richly decorated. The women wore the highly ornamented sarafany of boyars’ daughters, with cylindrical hats festooned with pearls and transparent veils. Later, the chorus varied its costumes according to the material

30

The Invention and Re-invention of Folk Music

sung: it would appear in peasant dress for some songs, in seventeenthcentury robes for others, and in the rags of the barge-haulers for its rendition of ‘Dubinushka.’89 With the costume changes came dramatic rendition of the songs’ texts: either some of the singers would mime the actions depicted in the song, or the entire group would be involved in the action of a scene. The stage was decorated and furnished to help render the physical context of the scene, and dance was used for expressive purposes. Agrenev called this ‘the expression of the song in picture form’ [zhivopisno-kartinnoe vyrazhenie pesni], and he considered it an important part of stage performance. For Kuznetsov, who articulated the Soviet official viewpoint of the 1950s, such innovations meant Agrenev’s performances more closely reflected true Russian village singing practice – especially in contrast to those of some other choruses of the late nineteenth century, which were stiffly academic. He argued that although Agrenev might have skimped on ‘authenticity’ in other ways, he captured the spirit of the Russian song and allowed all members of Russian society to appreciate it.90 In 1965 Feodosii Rubtsov, whose criticism of the Soviet folk chorus lay at the foundations of the contemporary folk music revival movement, took direct issue with Kuznetsov’s assumption. He wrote that in village singing practice the expression of a song is not accomplished through gesture that reflects the song’s content. [In lyrical songs] the authentic folk tradition does not admit any ‘representation.’ These songs are ‘played’ only with the voice, which during the performance deepens and develops the musical content though the counter-melodies [podgoloski]…In other song genres, their ‘representation in actions’ occurs only relative [to other aspects]. For example, wedding songs are not staged, instead the actions are accompanied by the songs…In other words, it is not the content of wedding songs that finds its expression in actions, but the opposite: actions which are done according to folk tradition dictate and determine the content of the songs which accompany different moments of the so-called wedding play.91 Lamenting the fact that people have often ascribed to folk-song traditions practices that actually belong to the estrada, Rubtsov criticized the use of ‘acting-out songs’ in the practice of the Soviet folk chorus: the songs ‘are not sung in the authentic folk manner, but, as a rule, are staged – often crudely, showing not folk-life, but some kind of parody of the latter.’92 Writing in 1965, Rubtsov implied what Nadezhda Zhulanova (a member of the folklore revival movement) would say outright in 1999: ‘the origins of the kind of stylization of the folk song which we see in…contemporary folk choruses and ensembles of song and dance, can be found in the ‘pseudo-

The Invention and Re-invention of Folk Music 31 folk’ trends in pre-Revolutionary concert estrada, the typical model of which was…the chorus of D. Agrenev-Slavianskii.’93 All of the participants in this dialogue evince a central characteristic of revivalists: the attempt to define authenticity in order to ‘distinguish the revived practice from other musics and to draw attention to its supposed ‘time depth.’94 Kuznetsov cited Tchaikovsky as an authority on authenticity in the folk song, while Rubtsov traced the lack of authenticity (pseudo-folk nature) of the Soviet estrada back to the Agrenev-Slavianskii chorus. Meanwhile, Agrenev-Slavianskii reached back further in history for his definitions of authenticity, by having his chorus don seventeenth-century robes and mime songs. Tchaikovsky located authenticity in the culture of the countryside (where, it was presumed, folk-life had not changed for centuries and thus reflected ancient practices), not of lower-class town-dwellers, who lived under the ‘vulgar’ influence of modern industrialization. In opposition to the Soviet chorus, the revivalists of the Soviet and postSoviet eras trace their origins not to the Slavianskii chorus but to the work of a folklorist/musicologist at the Moscow University Musical-Ethnographic Commission, Evgeniia Lineva, who revolutionized the collection of folk songs in 1896: she was the first to use an Edison cylinder machine for Russian folk-song collecting in the field.95 Subsequent revivalists have argued that her work allowed the tradition to be fully discovered, appreciated, and disseminated. In the 1880s special group expeditions were organized by the Geographical Society’s newly founded Song Commission and by Moscow University’s Musical-Ethnographic Commission of the Society of Lovers of Natural Science, Anthropology and Ethnography. Later, while the St Petersburg Song Commission was still transcribing songs by ear, the Moscow group began to use the phonograph introduced by Lineva.96 Lineva was herself an opera singer who had had a successful career both in Russia and abroad; her family were populists and revolutionaries, and she was influenced by populist ideas. She spent the greater part of her career (30 years) on the study and promotion of Russian folk singing, and collected over a thousand songs.97 Living in America from 1892–6, Lineva formed a Russian chorus composed of fifty singers, each dressed in a different peasant costume, that sang daily at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. One of their programs utilized scenery, dialogue, gesture, and singing to enact a Russian traditional peasant wedding.98 This kind of theatricalization differed from that practiced by the Agrenev chorus because it situated the songs within a ritual context. The singers did not act out the texts of the songs but rather acted out the ritual of which the songs were a part.99 Hoping to ‘restore the ancient Russian folk song and bring it into general usage in all classes of society,’ Lineva organized and directed folk choirs at factories in St Petersburg and Moscow, and gave speeches encouraging the widespread organization of folk choruses in villages and towns.100 The choir she formed and directed at the Musical-Ethnographic Commission gave its

32

The Invention and Re-invention of Folk Music

own concerts in Russia and abroad, and also participated in ethnographic concerts that she organized. In 1906 Lineva created the first folk-music department at the newly founded Popular [Narodnyi] Conservatory, aimed at educating workers in music.1012 It was the first time that the study of folk music had been placed on a par with the study of other musical subjects.102 Like Lineva, Mitrofan Piatnitskii combined an initial interest in classical music with collection, study, recording, and performance of folk songs, but he was not primarily a scholar, and did not include pedagogy in his methods.103 Piatnitskii studied to be an opera singer, but also sang local village songs from Voronezh province, where he grew up. He had a career singing Voronezh songs in the village manner on stages at Moscow fairs, where he was quite popular. Because of his knowledge, in 1903 he became a member of the Moscow University Musical-Ethnographic Commission; during the next decade, he published collections of his own songs and of songs he recorded on wax cylinders as he traveled throughout various provinces of Russia. In 1911 Piatnitskii gathered village singers from three provinces to form a chorus that was well-received by Moscow’s elite; it initially performed infrequently (ten times between 1911 and 1914). In order to preserve the choir’s ‘standards’ Piatnitskii forbade the choir and its individual members to accept jobs as entertainers in restaurants and nightclubs; instead, all members continued to do agricultural work during the warm months.104 Piatnitskii did not want his chorus to be like the numerous other professional folk entertainers, whose renditions of folk singing were more influenced by the demands of the stage than dictated by the rules of tradition they had learned in their home villages. Unlike Agrenev-Slavianskii’s chorus, Piatnitskii’s group performed in village costumes traditionally worn by the peasantry in their own regions.105 Initially, the chorus sang without any particular staging or thematic presentation. Soon, however, under the guidance of a musicologist, V. Paskhalov, the group did incorporate the technique of acting out songs, as Agrenev-Slavianskii’s Kapella had done. The songs were divided into ‘kartiny’ [pictures] showing a particular theme: one of these, ‘An Evening Beyond the Outskirts of the Village’ [Vecher za okolitsei], still in the repertoire of the chorus today, used stage decorations showing a meadow beyond which was visible the far-away village; another featured a village wedding and was set in a peasant hut.106 Kuznetsov, the Soviet critic, points out that this technique helped viewers imagine the context in which the songs would be sung. 107 It is not clear how the acting out of songs changed the manner in which the Piatnitskii singers presented themselves on stage or interpreted the songs they sang. Apparently, however, the music producers of the time saw acting out as a necessary supplement to choral folk singing – probably because of the operatic tradition and the work of the Agrenev-Slavianskii chorus. It likely eased the difficult task of ‘translating’ the symbolic language of ritual into a form that could be understood by urban-dwelling audiences. In any

The Invention and Re-invention of Folk Music 33 case, the Piatnitskii chorus experience makes it clear that theatricalization of folk song performance was here to stay. It continued to develop and became standard during the Soviet period and beyond.

Conclusion The approach and style of the Agrenev-Slavianskii chorus and the Andreev Orchestra were models for the Soviet-era folk chorus and orchestra – even though the Soviets were not uncritical of some aspects of these early ensembles. The rules of the folk music estrada formed a tradition that the Soviets accepted as Russian tradition. From our vantage point, this continuity between nineteenth and twentieth centuries may seem remarkable, but to contemporaries it probably was not. The Slavianskii chorus performed until 1922; Andreev’s students led his orchestra after his death in 1918. Clearly, audiences appreciated the way they performed.108 Whether the Soviets fulfilled the dreams of the nineteenth-century revivalists or distorted their work is open to interpretation. The music produced by Agrenev and Andreev and others had already become clichéd by the time the Soviets came to power, but the mass-production, uniformity, and low standards wrought by Soviet policies meant the further entrenchment of the cliché. In fact cliché often exists alongside revivalism, and it may often be the form of revival that most people are familiar with. The Early Music movement of the 1970s and 1980s in the US and Europe similarly shifted away from an exclusive focus on authenticity and toward ‘an accepted current in the musical mainstream,’109 complete with ‘personality cults and fan magazines.’110 Folk music revival developed similarly in Russia. Lineva gave a different spin to the concept of revivalism, and the inheritor of her work was the late twentieth-century folk revival movement, which opposed Soviet folk-music practice. Lineva did counter ‘aspects of the contemporary cultural mainstream’ in promoting her own view of authenticity, and like many leading revivalists researched and taught the notion of tradition she wished to promote. While musically the Piatnitskii chorus’s early performances incorporated many of Lineva’s principles of folk polyphony, in terms of performance style the chorus reflected the theatrical presentations of Agrenev-Slavianskii. Unlike any of these revivalist groups, the Piatnitskii chorus was not composed of urban intellectuals who consciously learned to sing in the folk style, but of peasants who had originally learned to sing in family and community singing contexts. Thus, the chorus belonged more to the tradition of grassroots ensembles of village-bred musicians than it did to the professional choruses.111 However, despite the fact that the participants were originally rural dwellers, their music clearly was folklorism, not folklore. Of all the groups in the arena of Russian folk music in the early twentieth century, none has been more hotly debated and interpreted among both offi-

34

The Invention and Re-invention of Folk Music

cial Soviet circles and revivalists than the Piatnitskii chorus. This was likely due to the group’s continued existence beyond the revolutionary period and its promotion by Soviet official culture in the 1930s, when several of the core aspects of the group’s practice changed. While the Soviets claimed the Piatnitskii chorus as their own, late twentieth-century revivalists argued that the Soviets changed and distorted the essential nature of the choir, which was originally much more akin to their notion of authenticity and revivalism. This debate, the issues underlying it, and the complex context surrounding it form the subject of the next chapter.

2

A Unified National Style: Folklore Performance in the Soviet Context

Soviet Views of Folklore and Rural People Russia’s late-nineteenth-century radicals, the populists, cultivated utopian views of the peasant majority as ‘the key to Russia’s future’; the twentiethcentury Bolsheviks took a different stance entirely. Following in Marx’s footsteps, Lenin dismissed the Russian institution of the peasant commune and wrote of peasants as competitive ‘isolated producers’ living in an essentially capitalist economy, who were prone to bigotry, superstition, subservience to authority, and abuse of women.1 Yet he also argued that in the competitive economy that flourished in the countryside, ‘not less than half’ of the peasants belonged to the ‘rural proletariat.’2 Due to this tension the Bolsheviks undertook a two-pronged position toward the peasantry, both treating them as recalcitrant and also trying to instigate a class war among them. Starting in the 1920s the Bolsheviks increasingly emphasized the Party’s proletarian identity, and promoted ‘working-class upward mobility.’ Until the completion of collectivization, the possibility for advancement was not extended to peasants.3 This meant that politically, the urban proletariat was favored while the peasantry was treated as a backward category that needed to be overcome in order for society to move forward. Such a view of peasants was consistent with the Soviet policy toward nationalities, as Yuri Slezkine has shown. Marx’s view of socialism precluded nationality as a viable category, but Stalin stepped forward in the mid-1920s with a project of ‘Socialism in One Country,’ under which socialism would be developed among the peoples of the Soviet Union, without international scope. Because the Bolsheviks believed the formerly oppressed nationalities deserved a right to self-determination they decided to develop the non-Russian nationalities. During the period of the New Economic Policy (NEP) the Soviets made use of folklorists, linguists, and ethnographers to help identify and promote 192 ethnicities and nationalities. These scholars adapted alphabets, wrote dictionaries, established canons of literature, music, folk culture, and art; in short, they gave each ethnicity a coherent, distinct identity. Members of non-Russian nationalities were promoted to leadership roles in party, government, judicial, trade union, and

36

A Unified National Style

educational institutions, and their rural populations were to be ‘proletarianized.’ According to this theory the Russians had previously been the oppressor under the Russian Empire and did not deserve such rights or opportunities. The Russians were considered the ‘developed [and] dominant’ nationality – thus, the ‘irrelevant’ nationality comprising everyone besides the identified nationalities.4 Soviet theorists planned to embrace temporarily the ‘backwardness’ represented by ‘peasants, traders, women, all non-Russian peoples in general, and various “primitive tribes” in particular,’ proposing that once these people had developed sufficiently, their backwardness would become unnecessary.5 This tolerance toward backwardness did not extend to the Russian peasant, who was ‘tolerated but not celebrated, used but not welcomed’ because leaders assumed the very category was backward and that there was no way the peasant could develop ‘as a peasant.’ In short, ‘ethnicity-based affirmative action in the national territories was an exact replica of class-based affirmative action in Russia. A Russian could benefit from being a proletarian; a non-Russian could benefit from being a nonRussian.’6 Of course, this policy enormously affected the ways that Russian folklore was viewed, studied, and performed. Initially after the revolution scholars energized the field of folklore, arguing that verbal lore was ‘the living voice of the contemporary peasantry,’ and that the study of folklore by artists offered a chance to bring creative work ‘closer to the people.’7 Especially in the early 1920s, scholars actively undertook group expeditions and published comprehensive, multi-disciplinary studies that showed a broad range of distinctive practices – including material culture, lore, and musicmaking – of Russians and other nationalities. But folklorists also came under attack because they often worked with – and therefore were associated with – rural teachers and intellectuals, a group that was the target of criticism by Communists since it was assumed they came from families of prosperous peasants and/or were involved in rival political organizations.8 The government recognized that folklorists could educate rural teachers and cultural workers, and in this way gain greater influence on local populations – which was potentially important since leaders possessed very few reliable ways of reaching the peasant population. Political pressures helped to ensure that when folklorists went on expeditions into the countryside, they functioned not only as collectors but as propagandists of the new Soviet viewpoint, which centered on a critique of the Tsarist regime. However, prejudice against the Russian peasantry was so strong as to prevent the Soviet administration from taking full advantage of the folklorists’ potential intermediary role.9 During the latter half of the 1920s, Russian folklore activities were curtailed while increasing energy was poured into the collection, study, and performance of the folklore of non-Russian peoples. The activities of folklorists and other professionals working in the Russian countryside were

A Unified National Style 37 increasingly criticized by the proletarian literary and musical organizations – the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers (RAPP in its Russian acronym) and the Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians (RAPM) – formed after the revolution, which tried to create a new, specifically ‘proletarian’ culture, distinct from the culture of the former ruling classes. The proposed culture would have nothing in common with lower-class urban popular culture, considered ‘vulgar,’ or with rural culture, seen as a throwback to former social relations (and therefore as potentially harmful to its consumers and producers).10 To be sure, proletarian cultural organizers put folklore to use for specific purposes: for example, they used folkloric satirical stories about clergy to denigrate religion.11 And as previously, folklorists went into the Russian villages to collect and study folklore and other village folk arts. Yet members of the radical proletarian organizations increasingly criticized these publications, and managed to stifle publishing of folklore studies and performance of Russian folklore from 1925 through the early 1930s. In 1928, with the end of the NEP, the toleration of backwards ‘survivals’ ceased, and the policy toward the rural populations of all nationalities toughened. Now each nationality was exhorted to search for and eradicate its own bourgeois elements, and the government began intensively to employ the notion of a ‘kulak’ (rich peasant) as a weapon against backwardness, in Russian as well as other national populations.12 But the kulak concept fomented a ‘more or less phony class war’ that had ‘genuine divisive effects.’13 Although there were indeed richer and poorer peasants, the differences were subtle and varied from region to region, and it was often not true that the richer peasants exploited the poorer ones.14 The ultimate purpose was to collectivize as many households as possible by setting peasant against peasant.15 When in 1930 Stalin declared outright that the kulaks as a class were to be ‘liquidated,’ ‘Communists and Komsomols descended on the countryside en masse to get rid of the kulaks, collectivize the village, close the churches, and generally kick the backward peasantry into the socialist twentieth century.’16 The situation changed dramatically after 1934, when Stalin proclaimed that the country had ‘ “divested itself of everything backward and medieval” and become an industrialized society based on a solid socialist foundation.’17 The reality was far from the truth. Sheila Fitzpatrick writes about the ‘Potemkin village’ created by the Soviet mass culture machine, a deceptive façade of happy and prosperous rural life to cover up the reality of the ‘hungry, drab, depopulated, and demoralized’ Russian village of the 1930s.18 According to official rhetoric, socialism had been achieved and class no longer existed as a legitimate category. However, one remnant of the presocialism days was allowed to remain – nationality.19 Socialism now included the ‘brotherhood of the peoples,’ the idea that all (except the Russians) were equal. The Soviets invested enormous time and energy into the production of national consciousness among the citizenry. It was not a

38

A Unified National Style

Soviet national consciousness – the relations between the various peoples in the Soviet Union were spoken of as ‘internationalism’ – but the consciousness of the distinctiveness of one’s own ethnic group, or narod. This was a watershed time for Russian nationality: rather than being a neutral background to set off the other nationalities, Russian nationality emerged as an ethnic group in itself. 20 In fact, Russian now stepped forward as the dominant nationality – more ‘equal’ than all the rest. For the first time the Russian language was instituted as a second language in all non-Russian schools, a patriotic version of Russian history began to be taught in schools, patriotic Russian historical novels, operas and films became popular, and nineteenth-century Russian authors were celebrated. The change seems to have been initiated partly because the country was not reproducing enough labor to fulfill the demands of increasing industrialization. Stalin sought a return to family values, including patriotism, as an antidote to a falling birth rate and a rise in juvenile delinquency. Another reason for the change was the threat of fascism in Europe and the possibility of war. 21 Indeed, during the war and the post-war years, the promotion of Russian nationality intensified. It became a commonplace that the Russian people’s inherent patriotism, courage, optimism, and strength allowed them to defeat the Fascists during World War II.22 This change enormously affected the study, performance, and use of Russian folklore. Whereas prior to 1934 folklorists received little popular attention for their work on Russian material – and in the late 1920s and early 1930s had difficulty publishing their work – after 1934 songbooks and folk-tale collections were widely popularized and articles about folklore were published in newspapers and major literary journals.23 Folk music as entertainment and as amateur activity had been allowed prior to 1928, but was banned or criticized from 1928 to 1934. After this watershed year, however, the leadership actively encouraged folk choirs and orchestras.24 Rural life, rural culture, rural people, and national ‘traditions’ became important topics that were no longer to be ignored or belittled.

A New Definition of the Folk and Folklore Rural culture made its mark in a big way during the Stalin period, in films and novels, in architecture, on the Soviet crest, and in paintings and sculptures: images of rural happiness, collectivity and abundance emphasized the optimism of a glorious new era of productivity for Soviet agriculture. In the new myth, the Soviet peasant was generous, hardworking, honest, morally upstanding, intelligent, cultured, and contented. Why this emphasis on the rural dweller and agriculture in Stalin-era culture? Most of the population of the Soviet Union was rural and engaged in agriculture. Stalin’s collectivization policy aimed to manage these village dwellers and their agricultural products in an orderly and predictable fashion, like the industrial system. Collectivization ostensibly accomplished

A Unified National Style 39 this by making 25 million individual farms into 200,000 collective ones.25 The image of the enlightened peasant in socialist-realist culture helped to create a myth that could provide a model for rural dwellers, and a hope for urban people.26 In this myth, rural people would be nearly indistinguishable from urban workers; in fact, they would work, live, and build socialism side by side, as in Vera Mukhina’s 1937 sculpture The Worker and the Collective Farm Girl. This myth predicted a glowing future for the society in general: if even the rural dwellers (formerly known to be backward) were model citizens, then the progress of the society must indeed be great. As positive images of the Russian peasant and Russian folk culture were propagated in order to cultivate patriotism, the very conception of ‘folk’ (used as a modifier, narodnyi in Russian) changed. Since official policy dictated that the peasants of the Soviet Union had now been transformed into agricultural workers, and that all workers, industrial and agricultural, were equally valuable, it followed that the term ‘narodnyi’ now referred to all the people, and would be best translated as ‘people’s’ or ‘popular’ rather than ‘folk.’ Thus, in the 1930s the term ‘narodnaia muzyka’ ceased officially to mean folk music, and now meant the music of the people, that is, ‘any kind of broad-based popular music.’27 The definition of folklore changed after 1934 as well. Pre-Revolutionary scholars had defined folklore as the oral lore of illiterate rural dwellers; after the Revolution, RAPP and RAPM had discouraged folklore because it was a source of ‘survivals’ of pre-Revolutionary bourgeois thinking.28 Starting about 1932 when those organizations were dissolved, cultural leaders began to define folklore as the orally transmitted lore of the working masses, and to acknowledge that because of its close association with the masses and because it was orally transmitted (and therefore remembered), folklore had a potentially great role to play in disseminating party doctrine. Maxim Gorky’s remarks at the First Congress of Soviet Writers in 1934 linking folklore with literature and the doctrine of socialist realism were enormously influential. Just as socialist realism would be grounded in reality yet would provide heroic models for others to emulate, so folklore provided heroes who were both ordinary people and also possessed extraordinary strengths. Gorky bewildered the writers at the congress by exhorting them to model their works after folklore.29 After this speech there was a tremendous increase in the attention paid to folklore in the fields of literature and the performing arts. It marked the beginning of a redefinition of folklore, authenticity in folklore, and the functions of folklore. In fact, these remarks shaped all of Soviet culture and set up folklore as a crucial reference point. As Ursula Justus has argued, Gorky’s redefinition of folklore as realist literature and the corresponding linking of folklore and literature established a lineage for the new socialist culture: rather than a policy forced upon the masses from above, socialist realism was supposedly a return to true origins. A new canon was established for all of the arts. Folklore was to serve as the central touchstone for socialist realism, followed by the art of

40

A Unified National Style

ancient Greece, the Italian Renaissance, and the Russian realist school of the nineteenth century.30 The socialist realist requirement ‘that writers “learn from the classics,” putting the techniques of nineteenth-century Russian realism at the service of the proletariat and the party’ was underpinned by the Marxist view that the high culture of the landowners during feudalism and capitalism was ‘created on the basis of the exploitation of the labor’ of the proletariat, and that therefore it now properly belonged to the masses.31 Socialism would supposedly recoup this culture for the new classless society. Scholars now viewed folklore, too, through the prism of the nineteenth-century realism that supposedly descended from it. This meant that the work of folklorists was situated within academic literature departments and overseen by the Writers’ Union, dividing folkloristics from ethnography and musicology and essentially wiping out the ‘sociological’ study of folklore and its attempts to place folklore within the context of village culture and society.32 It also meant that folklore was most valuable as a source for the creation of compositions in the sphere of high culture. This definition had major repercussions in the ways in which folk art was produced and constructed from the 1930s to the 1980s and beyond; I explore this aspect in the following section, ‘High Culture’. Finally, the linking of folklore with realism meant that it was supposed to be ‘realistic’ in the sense dictated by the definition of socialist realism. Gorky said that folklore was by nature simple, clear, optimistic, accessible, national, and came from the masses; the new socialist realist art would be measured against these characteristics.33 But as folklorists well knew, preRevolutionary folkloric texts were often cryptic and complex, lamented difficult personal or societal situations, and were based upon a world-view that placed great importance upon supernatural processes and beings. If folklore was to be a tool to increase patriotism and to draw on the new notion of a ‘popular’ culture, it needed to be edited and reconstructed in order to suit the context of a socialist society. The new interpretation of folklore emphasized the struggle of the peasants and workers prior to the revolution and their current status as members of modern Soviet society. As during the 1920s, songs and stories which criticized aspects of preRevolutionary Russia were desirable, but after Gorky’s remarks it was not enough that folklore should criticize what had been; it also had to extol the current reality, including the Revolution, mechanization, and party leadership. Folklorists began to search for such songs, stories, and epics. They found some in relatively new genres such as chastushki. Most genres of folklore, however, did not reflect new Soviet life as the authorities wanted it depicted. Unacceptable types of folklore included genres deemed part of bourgeois society, such as cruel romances and criminal songs; genres that reflected a pagan or superstitious world-view, such as ritual folklore, erotic folklore, and incantations; and folklore reflecting a Christian world-view, such as Christian ritual songs and spiritual songs.34

A Unified National Style 41 Although official policy dictated that more attention would now be placed upon the folklore of workers rather than peasants, in practice this did not happen.35 Certain urban songs did suit socialist ideological goals: the songs of protest of the late nineteenth century and chastushki. However, much of urban folklore – the songs of bars and cabarets, criminals’ songs and lore, jokes, myths and stories of the workplace and the street – included content that was considered decadent, irreverent, or politically dangerous by the Soviets. Because large parts of these genres of folklore were not to be included, then, rural folklore had to be reinvented. However, the invention of folklore was problematic. In the decade before the Revolution, folklorists had debated the role of individuals in creating folklore. Moscow folklorists had proposed that studying ‘the creative role of the bearer of folklore’ would help to understand changes introduced into a folklore tradition, while St Petersburg folklorists persisted in seeing folklore as the expression of national groups.36 But both schools had agreed that individual performers were ‘bearers’ of tradition, who of their own volition introduced changes into traditional texts and melodies. They did not actually create whole texts or invent traditions. After 1934 Soviet policy-makers dramatically changed that interpretation. Since Gorky had defined folklore as the creative expression of the toiling masses and equated it with literary creation, individuals could now create it. After all, if the new creators were from the masses, then folklore was ‘theirs,’ and by the same logic anything they created was potentially ‘folklore’ (the term used was ‘people’s creation,’ narodnoe tvorchestvo). There was a problem with encouraging illiterate rural folks to write new, politically conscious folklore texts or songs: they often lacked the necessary expertise, or knowledge of Soviet ideology. In order to expand opportunities for the creation of folklore, authorities encouraged both professionals and amateurs to create new songs and texts in the folk style. The origin of the creator did not matter: even if a composer or writer was a member of the intelligentsia, she or he still could create in a style that would be acceptable to the masses. Professional composers would ‘add voices’ to (i.e. harmonize) folk melodies, would use folk texts for new compositions, or would make up text, melody, and accompaniment ‘in the folk style.’ The few amateur composers in villages and small towns simply set new texts to old melodies. Scholars also took on new roles as ideological re-educators of folk performers. They were sent to work one-to-one with rural tellers and singers of folktales and epic songs to help them create new texts glorifying aspects of the government or leaders. Radios were installed in the homes of folk tellers, newspaper subscriptions were set up for them, and they were accompanied on tours to Moscow and Leningrad. The results were epic folksongs lauding technological progress, party heroes and enemies, and the military might of the Russian people. The scenarios of many such song texts were the ‘Potemkin village,’ the prosperous and happy collective farm. These songs were published in collections of songs and folk poetry, in ‘thick journals,’ and in newspapers.37

42

A Unified National Style

If pre-Revolutionary scholars had valued authenticity in folklore, defining it as the orally created and transmitted art of specifically identifiable individuals whose work represented a traditional local style characterized by variants in vocabulary, poetics, and stylization, that was now changed. In fact, in the period leading up to World War II, the idea of authenticity was not often addressed in published writings about folklore, because the boundaries of what was being considered folklore were widening: more and more newly composed material was being held up as prime examples of folklore. It was no longer truly oral since, as Miller points out, the new songs and texts were researched in advance and either written down or specifically worked on by their composers over a certain period of time.38 In fact, the epic songs created during the Stalin era have been dubbed ‘fakelore’ or ‘pseudofolklore’ because they were made deliberately for political ends and because in many cases they were not even the expressions of the people to whom they were ascribed. The editor of a collection of songs by one bylina singer stated that he helped the composer, a woman in her 60s from the shore of the White Sea, ‘place certain events in their correct historical sequence.’ He eliminated ‘abstractions which have no relation to the basic theme…superfluous repetitions and…descriptions which at certain points were too long and drawn out,’ and took out ‘the peculiarities of the White Sea dialect.’39 This folklorist’s attempt to make the folklore he ‘collected’ ostensibly more aesthetically appealing, more true to ‘reality,’ and more readily accessible to anyone speaking standard literary Russian, as well as the work he did to make the folklore ideologically correct, characterized the approach to folklore during the entire Soviet period (both during and after Stalin) in general. The Soviet brand of folklore became bleached of its particularity and its local flavor, and lost its connection to the natural and spiritual worlds (including both Christian and pagan supernatural foundations). Miller writes: ‘the goal of Soviet folkloristics from the time of Stalin’s death through the 1980s remained essentially what it was in the 1930s: the promotion of works by folk performers and collectives that express the joy and optimism of Soviet life and loyalty to the country, Lenin, and the Communist party.’40 The ultimate goal of official cultural policy was eventually to diminish the role played by the folklore of the past. That goal was largely successful not only due to the authorities’ demands for and promotion of new folk material, but also because new cultural and social policies changed the very functions of folklore. In the society envisioned and created by Soviet leaders, folklore’s official functions revolved around glorifying a state-sponsored ideology. Most of its former functions were obsolete: connection with the natural world was no longer needed since the world was now said to be ruled by rational, scientific models and nature was harnessed by engineering to serve human goals. Tractors, not wood-nymphs or sacred springs, were to be celebrated. New holidays were created to encourage celebration, but these

A Unified National Style 43 existed to support the new ideology. Some of them marked political events (e.g. the First of May and October Revolution Day); others were created specifically to replace religious or agricultural holidays (e.g. New Year’s and Harvest Holiday). In the new versions of old holidays, religious and superstitious rituals were discarded or converted into secular ones, and new content was provided to link the holiday to the building of Socialism. Folklore was no longer really folklore. Instead of being a spontaneous grassroots expressive activity, folklore now provided content for artistic activity in the fields of singing, instrument playing, dancing, and crafts. To the extent that it was actively practiced, it was primarily as a hobby or a profession. In short, folklore had become folklorism. Of course, when we imagine the transition between the old and new uses of folklore in the Russian countryside, it is important to keep in mind that the functions of folklore are always changing. It is not the case that ancient, pagan folklore flourished during the Tsarist era and that this living tradition was suddenly eradicated and replaced by something new and wholly artificial in the Soviet era. As we saw in Chapter 1, since the mid-nineteenth century intellectuals interested in the expressions of rural people had both insisted that folklore was dying out and devised means of saving it, inevitably transforming it in the process. Furthermore, as it turned out, during the Soviet period people’s beliefs and habits were not eradicated, but adapted to new circumstances and belief systems. Old traditions continued to be practiced alongside the new traditions, and people fashioned new grassroots versions of official traditions that allowed for the expression of community cohesiveness, family structure, spirituality, and so on. Thus, one may speak not only of ‘folklorism’ in the Soviet period, but also of truly authentic folklore – the spontaneous expressive practices of groups of people – such as the tattoos and songs of Soviet prisoners, the witty or bawdy chastushki of middle-aged urban dwellers, and children’s rhymes. The interweaving of old and new traditions in some of these practices reflected a kind of ‘double belief’ similar to the fusion of Russian Orthodoxy and pagan practices that characterized popular religion prior to the revolution.41 I will now look more closely at the official management of folklore in the 1930s through 1960s, and the ways that people responded to such treatment. In the following discussions, although I will be speaking mainly of what I have defined as ‘folklorism,’ I will continue to use the term used by the sources themselves – that is, ‘folklore’ (most often expressed during this period as narodnoe tvorchestvo).

High Culture Informing all of the policies directed toward the management of folklore in the 1930s through 1980s was the relation between folklore and high culture, outlined in Gorky’s 1934 speech. Realist traditions were favored as models for the new socialist realism; but in music, since its inherent abstraction

44

A Unified National Style

meant that ‘realism’ was not possible in the way it was in painting or literature, heavy emphasis was placed instead both upon the folk music collected by, and the folk-inspired compositions written by, late-nineteenth century members of the Russian ‘national school.’ Even though this was really part of the Romantic movement in Russian music, it was suitable because it reflected the beginnings of a critical approach to the Tsarist political system; the music was apparently straightforward and would be accessible to the uneducated majority of the population; and it suited the requirement that the arts be ‘national.’42 Romantic West European classical music – such as Beethoven, Brahms, or Mendelssohn – also served as a model. The academic establishment and other cultural institutions actively promoted the legacy of the Russian national composers: their music was widely played on radio and in concerts, huge festivals were held on anniversaries of the composers’ births, and the conservatories in Moscow and Leningrad were re-named after Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov, respectively.43 In fact both in the supposedly ‘proletarian’ policies set by RAPM in the 1920s and the formulations of the Composers’ Unions from the mid-1930s on, classical music formed the model to which all performers and composers should aspire, and a standard of cultural competence which the masses should be made to acquire.44 This was true in dance as well, where the dances popular in villages were officially discouraged or forbidden as ‘second-rate junk’ while approved lists recommended simple gymnastic exercises set to ‘folk dances’ written by nineteenth-century classical composers.45 Thus, the reigning hierarchy of musical styles was roughly the same as it had been in the late nineteenth century. This was a paradox. To follow in the steps of Tchaikovsky or Borodin meant essentially to imitate those masters, which could lead to a creative dead end that did not enhance the development of Soviet music. More fundamentally, the past was tacitly being held up as a goal for a society which wanted to create itself anew. Attempts to create modernist styles in all of the arts, despite a brief flowering in the 1920s, were branded as bourgeois and decadent from the 1930s through the end of Stalin’s reign. By contrast, art of the past recalled the golden age of Russian culture, a time when Russia participated fully in the culture of the West. But to hold pre-Revolutionary high culture as a model for the new Soviet culture was not only a paradox: it was a problem. How could elite culture be made more accessible and attractive to the new mass audiences who were supposed to be consuming it? When workers were encouraged to express their opinions about Soviet culture in the 1920s, they criticized many classical operas and ballets as boring and obsolete. But they did like music and theater that were based upon folk themes or had easily understandable plots. They appreciated melodies that one could sing after leaving the theater.46 Socialist realism solved the problem of how to accommodate the tastes of the millions by creating a new culture that ‘synthesized the “classical heritage” with the average tastes of the masses.’47

A Unified National Style 45 As Evgeny Dobrenko has argued through analysis of the film Volga Volga (1938), in such a synthesis of the classical and folk styles the folk musicians would learn ‘how’ to play – so that the song sounds fuller, more cultured – and the classical musicians would learn ‘what’ to play. The final version of this synthesis would be a symphonic arrangement of a folk song that ‘raises The Song to the status of High Culture, transforms it into a super-genre. The Song acquires that triumphant, powerful sound that marks it as a sacred text.’48 It was precisely this ‘encounter and cultural compromise’ of the two poles of elite and mass culture that characterized the culture of the Soviet Union from the 1930s to the 1980s. Official Soviet culture was not simply imposed from above. The Soviet educational system as well as the system of distribution of art created new consumers and producers of art by exposing them to a canon of works and a means of interpreting those works. Thus, socialist realism ‘ “hauled up” the masses from one side and art from the other side and drove them closer to each other.’ The result was a culture that was largely based upon the taste of the masses: ‘the disaster of mediocre taste.’49 This was a modified, castrated version of high culture. It was the culture of ‘crêpe-de-chine, ballet and Chopin’ – the markers by which society could judge one’s upward mobility.50 And the possibility for advancement was granted only by the education system: ‘in order to create The Song, “one has to study”.’51 This was especially true in the field of music, where literacy and competence had formerly been the provenance of only a dedicated few and classical training took years to complete. Soviet musicologists were aware of this and wrote frequently (especially in the 1920s and 1930s) about the necessity to educate the public in the basics of music – Western classical music. They wrote equally frequently about the necessity to compose music that was simple enough for ordinary people to understand and appreciate.52 Through the 1920s, to the 1940s, a progression could be seen in the approach to classics. In the 1920s the classics were deemed too inaccessible by the mass audience; in the 1930s critics wrote that the masses themselves could and should create music, whether folk or classical. In the 1940s education was stressed, and by the late 1940s the emphasis was on creating Soviet classics that synthesized and dissolved the opposition of low and high art.53 The push for the masses to ‘re-appropriate’ their national heritage in the form of folk-inspired Romantic classical music in fact reflected the cultural establishment’s direct appropriation of the ideological goals of the Mighty Handful. Those nationalist composers had striven to use folk motifs in such a way that the Russian people would recognize the pieces as their own, but they set the pieces in the Western classical style so that the listeners would, in the process, receive a kind of education in European music. In this way, the composers felt they would ‘bridge the gap between the Russian masses and the Westernized cultural elite.’54 In both art music based upon folk motifs and popular folk songs and music arranged by composers, the principle was the same: the folk melody

46

A Unified National Style

served as ‘raw material’ for an artistic creation. A Soviet musicologist wrote in 1946: The task of a Soviet composer is not only to repeat a folk melody, just fitting it to contemporary musical forms … The composer may do more – [he can] reveal the ‘hidden potentials’ of the work, which was made by an ‘ingenious’ folk author ‘who hides inside himself sparks of divinity,’ as Rimsky-Korsakov put it; [he can] see and uncover that which the folk singer had as yet indistinctly guessed, vaguely felt.55 The implication was that folk music might be extremely valuable, but its value would be unseen unless a composer could ‘polish the gem’ and reveal the true beauty hidden under the rough exterior of the folk song. At this time Soviet publications on music often quoted Glinka’s phrase, reflecting essentially the same attitude: ‘Music is created by the people, and we, artists, only arrange it.’56 Although Glinka’s phrase appears to give precedence to folk music, and configures the ‘artist’ as a mere arranger, this was a typical Romantic rhetorical stance that reflected the myth of the artist as a craftsman who simply provided a channel for higher wisdom (in this case, the wisdom of the people, who themselves offer a conduit for national culture). The ubiquitous Soviet call for ‘polishing the gem’ of folk art in art music reflects essentially the same Romantic view.57 Thus, folk art’s newly elevated cultural status in the 1930s–40s came about partly because folk music was seen through the prism of the middlebrow version of high art. What rural folk music and dance might actually look and sound like, and what it might actually mean to its traditional practitioners, was not considered important by cultural policymakers. Rather, folk flavor or quality – in a novel, a musical composition, ballet, or an amateur music and dance performance – served as a marker of nationality (narodnost’) which was an obligatory characteristic for all Soviet art; and it offered a source of cultural capital to its composers, performers, and organizers.

Folklore as Hobby Starting in the mid-30s, the government heavily promoted folk culture as a hobby for people of all ages. It was part of a program spanning all the arts, called ‘amateur artistic activity’ (khudozhestvennaia samodeiatel’nost’): Soviet citizens were encouraged to get involved in the creation of art. This policy would demonstrate that each individual was fully self-actualized and active in the work of building the ideal society, and would show the prowess of the Soviet people: not only could they build a successful, industrialized socialist society, they also excelled at sports and the arts.58 The message in the government’s program, which could also be seen in films and novels of the time, was that everyone could sing, compose music, write novels and

A Unified National Style 47 poetry, act and dance. It would be a nation of cultured and cultivated ‘Renaissance’ men and women. A 1965 article on the All-Russian Review of Village Amateur Artistic Activity illustrates this point, and shows the degree to which the policy remained in place even after Stalin: ‘A combine operator is a choreographer, a milk maid is a poetess, a metal worker is the director of the show, a livestock expert is the conductor of the orchestra, a shepherd is a singer – all these have become not just isolated facts, but a portentous sign and a norm of contemporary village life.’59 From a practical point of view, amateur artistic activity would also occupy people’s leisure time in a productive fashion and involve them in group activities to enhance the feeling of belonging to a great nation-wide collective. In fact, the word used to refer to these groups was ‘collective’ (kollektiv). Finally, and most significantly from the government’s point of view, the activities were meant to re-educate the masses in communist ways of thinking, to ‘fight the capitalist “birth-marks” in people’s consciousness.’60 In order to do this, the activities had to have content that would actively teach communist ideas. This is why there was such a widespread and constant call for new songs and plays for amateur artistic activity. The most ubiquitous call was for folklore that would reflect the cheery mood of official culture. Much of pre-Revolutionary folklore was seen as too sad for contemporary use.61 It was a mass movement. By 1940, there were two million participants in artistic clubs in the USSR. The performing arts were quite popular: theater and dance groups, choruses, bands, and orchestras that played a mix of traditional folk, composed music, and arranged classics were established at factories and collective farms. Music was proclaimed the ‘most popular’ of the types of amateur artistic activity.62 It reached this status partly because of the efforts of the government, which poured considerable energy into the ‘development of musical culture.’ Concerts were favored by officials in provincial cities and villages since the amateur musical groups were the only secular competitors for the church choirs.63 And a kind of choral singing called ‘mass singing’ was singled out as the best way to attract masses to music, because it was a collective activity that could be done by any number of people simultaneously, without much special training.64 Composers and conductors were sent to factories and movie theaters to lead mass singing during breaks: they handed out printed copies of Soviet mass songs, and workers (or audience members) sang along.65 Regional and national competitions, called olympiady and smotry, encouraged such activity. Leningrad was the site of the yearly musical olympiads from 1927–37; the number of participants there was said to reach 10,000, and competitions nationwide reached 40–50,000. The mass quality of the movement was emphasized by events such as the ‘multi-national chorus and orchestra’ composed of several tens of thousands of participants at the 1932 Moscow Olympiad.66 Professional folk choirs like the Army Ensemble and the Piatnitskii Choir were held up as models to the amateur choirs, and in 1937 several of the

48

A Unified National Style

largest and best amateur choirs were professionalized.67 It was difficult for the amateur choirs to imitate professional groups – after all, they lacked the musical training, the highly schooled conductors, the time, and the resources. Instead, prior to World War II, they often had directors who had no training at all, or had formerly been church choir directors; after the war, when training became more widely available, such directors often finished the equivalent of a high school or vocational school (often a ‘culturalenlightenment school’ [kul’turno-prosvetitel’naia shkola] or a music high school [muzykal’noe uchilishche]). This person received a salary from the state for his or her work promoting amateur culture – which allowed authorities greater control over repertoire choices.68 Another means of control and standardization was the network of Houses of People’s Art, formed in 1936 on the basis of the former Houses of Amateur Art. These centers in regional and oblast capitals were charged with making available materials and training for directors of amateur clubs.69 While prior to Gorky’s remarks cultural organizers had discouraged performance of old folklore, beginning in 1934 they exhorted choruses to perform more folk music.70 The ensembles obtained new Soviet songs and approved folk songs from sheet music or from the pages of special magazines for cultural workers. The folk songs published and composed for popular use at this time were devoid of local characteristics: a 1936 book of Russian folk songs aimed specifically at ‘amateur clubs and lovers of folk song’ takes much of its material from nineteenth-century collectors who had not written down the dialectal forms of the text nor the complex polyphony with which the villagers had sung. ‘Second and third voices were added’ to a single melody in most cases.71 A review of several song books published in the 1950s with recommended repertoire for kolkhoz (collective farm) folk choirs showed that many contained no or very few folk songs; those few folk songs that were included were often arranged for several voices or for voice accompanied by piano (an instrument that was rare in villages).72 The folksinging groups who used this material obtained identical costumes from factories set up specifically to mass-produce Russian folk costumes for stage use. Often the costumes were stylized to ‘update’ them. Instruments were similarly mass-produced, and were of notoriously poor quality.73 The purchase of such costumes and instruments was funded by the sponsoring kolkhoz or town cultural budget. Such a chorus or orchestra would perform at local holiday events held in the village ‘club’ (klub) or House of Culture, the town Palace of Culture, or outdoors in the town or village square on a stage specially set up for the holiday. Children’s groups rehearsed and performed at the Palace of Pioneers. Much money was poured into the construction of these buildings starting in the late 1930s, with the aim of bringing the production of amateur culture more tightly and consistently under government control.74 The number of clubs in the RSFSR (the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic – the area corresponding to modern Russia) grew from about

A Unified National Style 49 18,000 in 1927 to 74,000 in 1940; of these, 93 percent were in villages.75 Their significance for village and small-town life can be seen in their design and the variety of activities they typically housed. For example, in 1965 one medium-sized town in Smolensk oblast described its new House of Culture as ‘a bright two-story mansion with huge windows’ and its main hall as ‘a spacious auditorium with 400 seats’; it housed weekly movies, amateur concerts, lectures from the People’s University, entertainment programs, and thematic evenings; regular debates, dance evenings, and balls; monthly ceremonial registration of newborns; and weddings.76 The club was supposed to function as the center of the new socialist cultural life, and to represent the notion of people living communally. In 1964–65 the image of the contemporary club was debated in a periodical for cultural workers, and one of the contributors called it a ‘a public domestic hearth’ [obshchestvennyi domashnii ochag] – a kind of ‘home away from home’ where one can come to ‘satisfy [one’s] spiritual needs.’77

Resistance Looking back upon this history, we might imagine that it would have been difficult for many amateur performers of their own local folklore to be enthusiastic about telling, singing, dancing, or playing something completely new, and for scholars to actively promote what many viewed as fakelore. While younger people, exposed to the new Soviet art in the context of the schools and clubs, may have easily adapted to new material, the shift must have been hard for adults to make. While evidence of direct resistance to such policies is scarce, we do know that some scholars persisted in trying to promote the old, traditional folklore that they valued. For example, two reenactments of peasant weddings – using local, traditional material – at the 1936 All Union Choral Olympiad drew quite a bit of official criticism. Despite the reproach, both of the choir directors involved continued to use unarranged traditional material in their work; one of them, Anna Rudneva, subsequently had a successful career as a Moscow musicologist, partly because of her scholarly credentials (she had graduated from the Moscow Conservatory with a degree in choral directing and music theory). The other, A. Kolotilova, the director of the Northern Russian Folk Choir, suffered professionally when critics wrote that she used local material because she lacked the musical training to use newly composed songs.78 Amateurs took a somewhat different approach. In published materials on 1930s competitions in Ivanovo province, Robin LaPasha noticed that traditional folk music remained popular with audiences despite official promotion of new material. Through ‘careful ideological “packaging”,’ many amateur village choirs were able to maintain in their active repertoires ancient folk songs. One kolkhoz choir presented a ‘montage on the themes of “Yesterday and Today” ’ in which the older members of the group sang old folk songs, while the younger members sang contemporary songs. For

50

A Unified National Style

the elders, this strategy ‘provided protection against interference with the traditional repertoire,’ and they were spared the task of learning new songs, which they may not have preferred to their old songs or may have found difficult due to their poor (musical and verbal) literacy skills. Meanwhile, the group’s younger members were spared the task of learning songs in the complex local traditional style, but increased their own visibility by drawing on the popularity of the old folk-song styles.79 It is possible to speculate that the actions of the performers formed a kind of tacit resistance – or at least enacted self-assertion in the context of a regime that aimed to remove such possibilities.80 Izalii Zemtsovskii recounted a remarkable story from the post-Stalin Thaw era, told to him by a culture worker in Pskov oblast, in which villagers simply refused to work with new material. In 1957, after the worker attempted to forbid traditional, local dances in the local club (following the orders of the village administration), ‘the people walked out of the club.’ The worker was forced to appeal to the higher authorities in the village, who subsequently recanted and allowed the older dances. Despite official policy, then, there were cases of such ‘boycotts’ of the new material. Of course, the above occurrence took place during the ‘Thaw,’ after Stalin’s death, yet as we have seen, versions of it, perhaps not so pronounced nor so publicly admitted, took place during Stalin’s reign as well.81 If, as Zemtsovskii pointed out, the worst aspect of the poor organization of the amateur artistic system was the fact that it did not take into account people’s initiative,82 then such stories show that at least some people did display enthusiasm for their ‘own’ music-making practices, and were aware of their own power to choose. Indeed, my own field research in the 1990s revealed that while many village folk choirs still enjoyed the songs promoted by the Soviet cultural system, some groups had retained old traditional repertoires throughout the Soviet period. These villagers did not view their having done so as resistance; I encountered only one village group whose participants stated flatly that they ‘did not like Soviet songs.’83 Despite such exceptional signs of resistance to official cultural policy, however, the campaign to perform folk culture on a mass scale with quasiprofessional polish was largely successful, since the mode of presentation of Russian musical folklore became more and more widespread and uniform. Whereas in the second half of the 1930s some provincial kolkhoz choirs were primarily presenting old songs and rituals,84 after World War II this increasingly became a rarity. In 1962, there were 9 professional folk choruses in the RSFSR, and hundreds of thousands of people involved in nonprofessional choirs that aspired to be like the professionals.85 The folk chorus way of presenting folklore on stage became so standard that even in the late 1990s, when the state no longer poured resources into the maintenance of the folk chorus phenomenon, the majority of amateur folk ensembles, including village and children’s ensembles, still copied several of its stylistic aspects.86 (Figure 2.1)

A Unified National Style 51

Fig 2.1: 200th Anniversary of Pushkin’s birth

Gender The Soviet presentation of folk music and dance was highly gendered. Russian village singing was traditionally done by both genders, but public singing in organized choirs has been associated with women at least since after World War I and the Civil War, when two factors contributed to a gender separation in singing. First, the young adult male and female populations were separated for long periods of time: male soldiers learned new songs and sang together with their regiment for the purpose of passing the time, maintaining spirits or keeping step while marching, while females who stayed at home in villages were more likely to retain local styles and to continue to celebrate traditional agricultural holidays. When men returned from war, the new repertoire they had learned in the army differed significantly from what their female family members were singing. The male repertoire and singing style was more ‘national’ while the female tended to be more ‘local.’87 Second, the male population declined enormously as a result of these wars.88 With a lack of men, village women were forced to sing in groups of women or by themselves. Meanwhile, instrumental music, which had always been associated more with men than with women (with some local exceptions) remained largely the province of males.89 As a result of these changes in village practice, amateur village choruses were largely made up of women, while men populated the newly forming folk orchestras. This situation coincided with Soviet policies that placed heavy emphasis on factory work as the most valuable labor in the new indus-

52

A Unified National Style

trializing state, and increasingly brought women’s work from the domestic to the productive sphere. The resulting ‘cult of (masculine) productive labor,’ combined with the ‘degradation of (feminine) domestic and reproductive pursuits’ meant that ‘Soviet society was characterized by a reverence for traditionally masculine values at the expense of conventional femininity.’90 If we add to this equation the association of women with the (debased) agricultural labor and men with the (favored) factory sphere – as depicted, in the 1930s and later, in works of art featuring female kolkhoz workers paired with male factory workers – we can see that rural women were doubly condemned.91 During the 1920s images of females in political iconography often had negative connotations: for example, in a famous Civil War-era poster by Mikhail Chermnykh, ‘The Story of the Bagel and the Baba,’ an old peasant woman refuses to give a bagel to a Red Army soldier who is on his way to fight the Poles. She represents the ‘ignorance, stupidity, blind selfinterest, and petty bourgeois greed’ of the mythological baba.92 In this context it can be argued that when, during the 1920s, RAPM tried to eradicate the folk chorus, it did so partly because of its association with village women, who were viewed as an extremely backward element in Russian rural society.93 RAPM members thought that the women’s choruses’ common repertoire of old folk songs about personal relationships would encourage a pre-Revolutionary mentality among listeners. Organizers tried to encourage the formation of amateur men’s choirs – in imitation of the Red Army and Don Cossack Choirs – because of the prestige that the male gender would have brought to folk singing, but in most of the Russian territory they were unable to find all-male village choirs.94 Starting in the mid-1930s, when folklore was ‘in favor,’ women’s village choruses were officially encouraged. These choirs won prizes at olympiads and obtained favorable reviews, despite their singing of old folk songs. In fact, as LaPasha argues, during World War II the women’s singing of old songs about home created an image of domestic stability that was useful to cultural organizers.95 Still, despite official promotion of rural women’s singing, women who maintained an old, local vocal style reported that they were often ridiculed for the way they sang (see Chapter 7). Their practices did not fit the new image of folklore, which called for arranged or composed pieces, often with accordion. This push toward the professionalization and standardization of folk music was gradually more and more successful as it attracted younger people, who adapted more easily to it. These policies that sought to transform village music into a more refined art may be seen as part of the society-wide debasement of the traditionally feminine.96

Professional Folklore Performance during the 1930s–40s It was perhaps paradoxical that the widespread Soviet program called ‘amateur artistic activity’ was part of the push toward professionalism. As a

A Unified National Style 53 reviewer of the 1948 All-Union Review of Kolkhoz Musical Amateur Activity stated, many of the performers ‘approached the level of professionals.’97 Indeed, amateurs were becoming professionals. The singers of folk epics previously sought as ‘informants’ for folklorists’ ethnographic studies now became professional writers, members of the Writers’ Union.98 Professional folk choruses, orchestras, and dance groups recruited their new members from amateur groups. Within the army, for example, the best performers from the ensembles that performed at their own smotry formed the ‘basis’ for its huge professional ensemble, the Red Army Song and Dance Ensemble of the USSR.99 Very popular on radio and in live performance was the Piatnitskii Peasant Choir. In 1936, it received a new image in accordance with the government’s policy on folk art, and instead of a choir of peasants it became a heavilypromoted professional group singing newly composed works about Soviet life. To reflect the new way the government chose to view the choir’s identity, the word ‘peasant’ was removed and the choir renamed the Piatnitskii Russian Folk/Popular [Narodnyi] Choir.100 After Piatnitskii’s death in 1927, a composer, Vladimir Zakharov, was appointed as co-leader of the chorus in 1931. Zakharov helped to change the chorus’s image: previously the members had not read music and had sung in an improvisational style; now, they were forced to learn to read music and lost their right to improvise.101 Zakharov and the assistant director, Petr Kaz’min, taught them diction and to sing on pitch and with uniform vocal quality.102 He also gradually changed the chorus’s repertoire from unarranged village traditional songs sung unaccompanied, to music composed in the folk idiom especially for the chorus. The chorus’s new repertoire included many song and dance numbers accompanied by a large folk orchestra, and to that end the group acquired separate orchestral and dance ensembles. Whereas the chorus started at a strength of between 20 and 30 people, by 1946 it consisted of 200 performers in the choral, dance, and orchestral groups, and its ‘studio,’ which prepared new cadres.103 In general, the music-making practices of the chorus were now modeled after a Western classical professional group rather than a Russian village ensemble, as it had been previously. The general goal of changes such as these was to create a new Soviet national identity that united everyone, worker and peasant, bureaucrat and intelligentsia, into an archetypal image of the ideal Soviet citizen.104 A 1946 article expresses this goal with its praise of the Piatnitskii chorus as one that no longer presented songs characteristic of particular regions of Russia (such as the Smolensk, Riazan, and Voronezh gubernii that it had previously specialized in), but of all Russia. Zakharov and Kaz’min ‘noticeably broadened and enriched the performing style of the chorus. In the never-ending variety of northern, Volga, Voronezh, Smolensk, and other songs they were able to find the pan-Russian [obshcherusskii] principle uniting all these songs, and to use that principle as the basis of all their creative work.’105 Linked to the idea of the chorus’s pan-Russian character was the notion that

54

A Unified National Style

to reflect specific local dialects would be backwards and vulgar, while to sing in standard literary Russian would make the chorus accessible to all. Similarly, the article stated that the chorus reflected the Russian national character with its ‘depth of soul, boldness, sweep, sharpness of feeling.’106 Another author wrote that the chorus’s popularity was understandable because the listeners ‘recognize themselves, their thoughts and feelings in Russian song.’107 While the Piatnitskii choir – and the other professional choirs established in the Soviet Union’s republics – represented only the folk music of a single nationality, it became a representation of a Soviet identity. In accordance with Stalinist nationalities policy, performing arts troupes propagandized the indigenous cultures of all nationalities: such a display of cultures all ‘equally’ pursuing the traditions of their own ‘people’ would show the common democratic inclinations of all the national groups, and would demonstrate the ‘friendship of the peoples’ concept. Since Russian was the most privileged nationality, in the late 1930s the formulators of state arts policy baldly pronounced its music to be the most important. In a further expression of the primacy of Russian culture, the musics of all the peoples in the Soviet Union (and of Mongolia and, later, Eastern Europe) were molded so as to be based upon the (supposedly Russian) practice of singing or playing polyphonically; this was true even of peoples whose singing traditions featured only unison or solo singing and instrument playing, such as the Kirgiz, Chubash, Iakutak, Azerbaijani, and Tatar peoples.108 To sing and play in groups was seen as more reflective of Communist ideology; solo or unison traditions were denigrated as remnants of bourgeois ideology. However, all such forced imitation of Russian tradition was in fact simple adaptation of the polyphonic traditions of Western art music, which have their roots in church music.109 In viewing the performances of the Russian professional folk choruses, one is struck by the size, the separation of duties, and the costumes: these were large choruses with separate orchestras and dance ensembles, who appeared in stylized, identical costumes, sang and played mostly arranged music, and performed choreographed dance numbers. The performances showed a marked gender separation: women sang in the chorus, men largely made up the accompanying orchestra, and while there were both male and female dancers, the males were given more flashy, athletic solos while women mostly danced in groups. I suspect that part of the choruses’ popularity had to do with the sheer vocal power of their large size (often the chorus alone consisted of more than 50 people), their professionalism (they sang, played and danced their parts ‘cleanly’ – for example, they sang with unified vocal placement, vowel matching and pitch accuracy), and their emotional expressiveness (they made liberal use of varied dynamics and theatrical production). These were the qualities that struck me when I saw live and videotaped performances of Soviet-style folk choruses in the 1990s, and they are also some of the qualities discussed in the literature about folk chorus singing. (Figure 2.2)

A Unified National Style 55 The choruses were widely promoted by the Soviet cultural network because they propagandized Soviet values, which one Soviet-era study of the state folk chorus listed as: ‘beauty,’ ‘youth,’ ‘strength,’ ‘skill,’ ‘labor,’ and ‘love of the Motherland, the Communist party, and the people.’ According to that study, the goal of the professional folk chorus was ‘the creation of a similar emotional and psychological state among the viewers, which in the final analysis leads to the birth of an optimistic, joyous mood. This promotes good work and a bright attitude towards life.’110 Thus, the choruses were to represent the Soviet Union itself – or at least its mythic image. With their size, they were a model of mass participation in culture; with their separation of duties, where everyone is an ‘expert’ at some aspect of performance, they represented professionalism; and with their uniformity and precision, they exemplified discipline. The happy expressions on the faces of the performers symbolized optimism. Their singing and dancing, like the Russian opera and ballet, featured elements rendered in precise unison by the entire group, as well as bursts of energetic solo work. These groups all represented the New Soviet Man and Woman, who would be cultured, moral, upright, and talented. Both in dance and in music, stylistic elements ‘migrated’ from number to number and from group to group, so that often even national characteristics were not preserved, or were reduced to clichés performed by troupes from each of the republics – demonstrating the ‘brotherhood of the peoples’ principle. Often, musical and dance numbers were described with thematic names such as ‘Harvest holiday’ or ‘At the Kolkhoz Farm’; the subject’s rendition was given in the form of a simple pantomime of related movements.111 In singing, the spotlight was on female soloists; in dance, it was male dancers who ‘showed off.’ In this way, the choruses represented both collectivity and individual prowess – an important combination especially in the Stalin period, when individuals were encouraged to excel beyond believable measure in the context of the Stakhanovite movement. The exaggeratedly athletic nature of the dances – especially the solo male parts – emphasized energy, strength and youth, and bravado or daring.

The Folk Orchestra and the Legacy of Classical Music The tastes of elite pre-Revolutionary audiences comprised the main source of the Soviet folk orchestra’s traditions – and its cultural capital. Because Soviet folk orchestras were modeled after Andreev’s orchestra – which copied Western orchestral practice – their repertoires did not reflect ancient traditional Russian custom, but followed pre-Revolutionary folk orchestral practice and repertoire. Thus, whereas amateur choruses could be relatively spontaneous affairs and could present music-making akin to village practice, amateur orchestras could not, since they required instruments and (most often) written music, a conductor, and space to practice and perform. Both amateur and professional folk orchestras were constantly in need of support from authorities.112

56

A Unified National Style

Fig 2.2: Dancer with Piatnitsky Choir Orchestras of Russian folk instruments were favored during the 1920s to the early 1930s push for displays of high levels of culture in the provinces, and in fact had been encouraged to include more classical music in their repertoires. For example, in the mid-1920s the repertoire of the amateur Stompelev Great Russian folk orchestra in Iaroslavl’ – which was lucky to have a professional musician as conductor – contained works by Tchaikovsky, Glinka, Bizet, Verdi, Mendelssohn, Grieg, Chopin, and several lesser-known Russian composers from the late nineteenth century. Similar groups often commonly played Beethoven, Schubert, and Mozart.113 All of these classical works were arranged for performance by an orchestra of standardized folk instruments. Probably partly because of the association of folk orchestras with classical music, they were not favored whenever official policy called for folk ‘nostalgia,’ such as the period 1934–9. As a result, during those periods folk orchestras adopted more folk songs in arrangements by nineteenth-century composers, such as ‘Dubinushka’ by Rimsky-Korsakov. Ironically, they were adapting for folk orchestra folk music that had originally been appropriated by composers and arranged for

A Unified National Style 57 classical symphonic orchestra.114 Having undergone the process of appropriation, such music had acquired greater cultural capital than the original folk songs themselves had. Perhaps as a result of the new cultural cachet accorded to the folk chorus in the late 1930s, the folk orchestra took on an entirely new role – that of accompanying the folk chorus. When the Piatnitskii Chorus added a full orchestra in 1938, it set a standard for professional and amateur folk choirs, but also moved Russian music further away from its village roots. Although in village music-making, traditions of ensemble singing accompanied by instrumental playing existed, the more common form of village singing was a cappella.115 One of the initial musical functions of the Andreev Russian folk orchestra was to render folk songs in a different form from the sung version: they were arranged to make up for the lack of singing and words by varying the melody and introducing contrasts in register, dynamics, and other aspects.116 To be sure, the Andreev orchestra had included numbers in which it accompanied singers, most often soloists. However, the idea of accompanying a chorus, introduced only in the Soviet period, was qualitatively different from Andreev’s original intention – after all, the idea behind instrumental accompaniment of singing is usually to fill in voices which are felt (because of reigning aesthetic standards) to be lacking in the vocal rendition. In terms of either Western or Russian folk aesthetics, if a chorus was singing, it could theoretically produce all the voices that were ‘needed.’ However, an orchestra’s range and its ability to create a wide variety of sounds were greater; thus, the addition of an orchestra to a choral performance would increase the ensemble’s ability to perform more complex arrangements. Complexity was valued because it reflected the aesthetic standards of Western classical music.117 In fact, there was a precedent for this kind of ensemble in Western classical music – in the opera, where choral singing is often accompanied by the orchestra. In the nineteenth century, Russian composers had brought the folk song to the stage in this form, using either composed melodies in the style of folk songs, or actual folk melodies set to music. In such operas, typically, a chorus of women dressed in colorful and ornate stylizations of folk costumes would sing (and often dance) while the orchestra played accompaniment. A folk-song scene was almost de rigeur for Russian operas composed in the latter half of the nineteenth century, when the romanticization of ‘the people’ reached its height among the intelligentsia. Thus, the new combination of folk chorus and folk orchestra drew the Soviet chorus closer to the high art of the nineteenth century and increased its cultural capital in that way, while still drawing on the nostalgia conjured up by anything associated with ‘the folk.’118

58

A Unified National Style

Professionalism and the Education System In order to create an institutionalized art form for the state, the Soviet government attempted to make the world of the arts a forum dominated by professionals with appropriate training and credentials. The push for professionalism in the arts came about with the Central Committee’s resolution of 1932, which abolished the many proletarian literary and artistic organizations and established single unions for each of the arts.119 These unions set standards to define professionalism; in music, the union deemed the ability to read Western musical notation a minimum requirement of a professional musician. 120 By that definition, most folk performers who had learned their trade by traditional means were not professionals, even if they could produce skillful renditions of a variety of folk tunes or dances. Professionalism was a corollary of the general move toward the industrialization of Soviet society: the new workers needed to be properly trained in order to advance the goals of the planned economy. There was a large-scale push toward technical education.121 Professionalization in the performing arts was also a means for the government to increase its control over amateur artistic activity, which had proved surprisingly unwieldy and chaotic in practice.122 Education was one of the ways that professionalization was enacted and also enforced. Education became a mark of success, the only way to enter the professional world. It was so crucial that opportunities for further education were offered as a prize for the winners of the amateur olympiads in the performing arts.123 In music, a professional’s qualifications were defined largely by education, and the network of educational institutions of all levels was developed intensively. A Western observer noted that the numbers of serious music students in the Soviet Union by the late 1960s were ‘staggering.’ For example, there were 2,219 children’s elementary music schools (there had been 40 in Tsarist Russia), 187 intermediate music schools (including 11-year music schools and technical music institutes), 24 college-level conservatories, and 1,000 evening music schools (the latter with enrollment of about 150,000).124 As a result of this emphasis on education, the qualifications necessary to be a musician (or dancer, artist, or writer – since this was true of all the arts) were supposedly uniform throughout the Soviet Union. One of the aims of this mass musical education with a pyramid structure was to identify exceptionally talented people at a young age and channel them into specialized elementary, intermediate, and higher education.125 The notion of ‘talent’ was based upon a student’s performance in examinations and auditions – which tested students based upon standards that had not changed since the Tsarist era. Early Soviet calls for ‘proletarization’ of the student body (spearheaded by RAPM) had not substantially altered the entrance requirements nor the skills taught in these schools. In folk music, professionalism continued to be defined throughout the Stalin period and into the Brezhnev period as new training and educational

A Unified National Style 59 programs were opened, refined, and tailored to the growing need for leaders of amateur folk ensembles, teachers of folk music, and performers in professional folk choruses and orchestras. Starting in the 1930s, most music schools at the elementary, high school, and college level offered programs of study in folk instruments, which trained musicians to perform in or conduct folk orchestras and ensembles, and to teach folk instruments in clubs and schools.126 In both dance and music, standards were borrowed from the classical academic curriculum. Those majoring in folk dance took a full curriculum from age 12 to 17 that prepared students for national dance ensembles or teaching careers.127 Since the dance style of the folk dance ensembles incorporated folk steps into a character dance matrix that was partially based upon ballet, students’ training was modeled after this character dance style.128 Future folk singers and teachers at both the high school and conservatory level had no separate program, but studied alongside academic singers. All vocal students had to learn to perform classical music as well as folk music.129 Similarly, those who wished to conduct folk choirs completed a degree in directing that prepared them for conducting academic music, and some classes were given in folk music.130 Thus, in schools throughout the country, it was assumed that folk singing was simply a branch of academic singing – a problematic assumption that took folk singing even further from its traditional roots. Yet this situation of folk singing and dance in an academic setting mirrored the status these arts were given by composers and performers at the end of the nineteenth century. As a musical style meant for consumption by elites, the classical setting of folk music and dance increased the cultural capital of the genre, which was otherwise debased by its association with uneducated peasants. The academic situation of folk music and dance changed somewhat starting in 1947, when the first cultural enlightenment schools were opened. These institutions, which were formed under the joint auspices of the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Culture, were specially designed to train workers and teachers in the areas of library work, art, music, dance, and theater for cultural institutions and trade-union clubs in villages and towns throughout the USSR. All students received instruction in political agitation as part of their training, since as future culture workers one of their main jobs would be to ‘agitate’ – that is, to teach people about Communist Party policies and platforms, and motivate them to be active in pursuing the Party’s goals. In the 1950s and 1960s the network of cultural enlightenment schools was expanded to include institutes of culture, which offered similar training at a more advanced level. The music programs of these schools were not as demanding as those of the music high schools and conservatories; rather, the students were specifically trained to work in the field of amateur music activity. For this reason, greater emphasis was placed upon folk music, and it was possible to major in folk music without obtaining full-fledged academic musical training.131 At a higher educational level, a special program for folk chorus conductors was organized at the

60

A Unified National Style

Gnesin Institute in Moscow in 1966.132 Later, the government opened other specific programs at technical-school and conservatory level for those wishing to sing in or conduct folk choruses, many of which continue to operate to this day.133 Given the establishment of these special academic programs, one might assume that there was no shortage of professionals for the staffing of folk activities, once graduates of the programs started work. It was likely true that the most desirable positions – as singers, dancers, or instrumentalists with the professional choruses – were easily filled. Such positions offered opportunities for travel (within the country and, especially in the 1980s, abroad), housing and the right to live in a city, regular opportunities to perform in large venues, and the possibility to rise up in a hierarchy that pegged rewards to well-defined marks of achievement. The ‘star system’ in the performing arts meant that certain individuals received extraordinary material rewards for their work. By contrast, positions in villages offered none of these perquisites and locals without special education often filled them. We know this thanks to articles written by folk musicologists in the 1960s (precursors to the oppositional revival movement that arose in the 1970s), which lamented the poor training of personnel hired to organize culture in villages. In a 1965 survey of Leningrad oblast houses of culture and clubs, for example, Zemtsovskii found that only 16 percent of the employees had specialized training, while the majority either possessed general high school diplomas or had not finished high school (and a few had not been to high school at all). Zemtsovskii pointed out that this low level of training was largely responsible for the fact that culture workers commonly discouraged local traditional music-making in villages, and replaced it with poor-quality stylizations.134 Zemtsovskii’s assumption was that more highly educated professionals would be better able to appreciate the high quality of local, traditional folk art, and would help promote it.135 Although Zemtsovskii’s purpose was to critique the way folk music was organized, he drew on a principle widely expounded in pro-regime literature on folk music: that such music required professional handling. Soviet musicologists commonly used the words ‘high level of culture,’ or ‘high artistic level’ to praise the folk singing of professional and amateur folk choruses.136 Writers rejected the ‘decadence’ of popular urban music (said to belong to bourgeois culture in its decline) and created an image of folk music as pure, lofty, and clean. One critic likened Soviet-era choruses and orchestras to Andreev’s late nineteenth-century folk orchestra in possessing a noble spirit that never stooped to being ‘cheap, overly free/familiar, or aiming at external effect.’ Descriptions of folk art frequently used the concept of ‘sderzhannost’,’ that is, ‘restraint’ or ‘reserve.’137 Writings about folk choruses strongly implied that the folk manner (or people’s popular taste), if freed from the control of professionals, might tend toward decadence and crassness. Given this perspective, professional folk choruses offered a means to ensure that folk music would always remain tasteful and ‘contemporary,’

A Unified National Style 61 that is, faithful to Soviet ideology. Essentially, such literature likened Soviet folk art to high art and distinguished it from kitsch by insisting that it avoided the ‘vulgarity’ of low art. But the Soviet ‘people’s creation’ was in fact kitsch in that it ‘appropriate[d] the material of folk art in a way that neuter[ed] the transforming possibilities of high art.’138 The notion that professionalism would guarantee the high moral quality of Soviet art underlay the Soviet concept of ‘patronage’ (shefstvo), which was repeatedly referred to in articles about amateur artistic activity from the 1930s to the 1980s. Professionals were meant to have patronage over amateurs; the city was meant to have patronage over the village. In practical terms, professional composers, choruses, orchestras, and the like would establish mentoring relationships with corresponding amateur ensembles. They would share music with and give advice to their amateur ‘younger brethren’139; they would arrange lectures, classes, and concerts for them, or invite them to the city for consultations.140 In more abstract terms, the notion of patronage implied a hierarchy in which villagers and amateurs were the beneficiaries of the important blessings of their educated, citydwelling, professional comrades. Ironically, ‘amateur’ village carriers of local folk traditions were implicitly told that ‘their’ traditions were ‘safe’ in the hands of professionals. A 1968 book entitled City Culture – to the Village made this clear: ‘The keeper of folklore, the desired guest of the cities and villages of the oblast, is the Ural Russian Folk Chorus, which brings the distinctive folk art of the Urals to the masses.’141 As Zemtsovskii and others have pointed out, the masses had already been creating distinctive folk art for centuries, and continued to do so. Participants in grassroots music-making practices did not need professionals to ‘keep’ their traditions for them nor to ‘bring’ them to them. In fact many village folk music groups with older participants did continue to sing the traditional music as they had previously – albeit now often under the auspices of organized clubs and for the purposes of entertaining on stage, not just for themselves. As I have said, old folk music remained quite popular, and the most requested and applauded pieces at the olympiads were part of pre-Revolutionary folklore, not the new concoctions of the Soviet system.142 Yet the majority of village dwellers were profoundly influenced by the widespread notions that a professional folk chorus was the best representative of local traditions, that villagers should emulate the professional chorus, and that old, unarranged, traditional music was inappropriate in the new modern times. But because villagers often could not read music, lacked academic musical training and access to instruments and trained directors, they were unable properly to master the music they were urged to create. The results of this situation included many village choruses that produced artistically bad imitations of professional folk choruses. One observer reported:

62

A Unified National Style They’d organize a chorus, rehearse for two weeks, and then – [send them] off to perform. And even though the club members sang off-key, with untrained voices, it was indeed loud. True, from such ‘artistic accomplishments’ the clubs very often fell apart during the second month of their existence, or served as a kind of ‘revolving door’ for hundreds of people, who visited the club out of nothing to do, looked in on the club for 3–4 rehearsals and disappeared without a trace.143

I encountered an example of such poor-quality results of the amateur artistic policy in my fieldwork in 1998: a village group of eight middle-aged and younger women (born 1946–78) had lost the ability to sing a cappella, according to the tradition of their mothers’ generation. They had been trained by their director to sing Soviet arranged songs with accordion. To me and to the Moscow musicologist accompanying me the group sounded musically very bad: several of the members sang off-key – but very loudly.144

Kitsch The performances of the Soviet folk choruses (including their orchestras and dance ensembles), like much socialist realist art, exemplify kitsch – an artistic product that imitates the methods of high art but is primarily aimed at ‘remaining accessible to a large audience.’145 Often, kitsch attempts to convert the audience to a particular point of view, and reinforces the ‘core values of a political regime or ideological system’ by treating those values as a ‘closed, harmonious entity which has to be endowed with beauty to be made more effective.’146 Instead of challenging audiences, the performances of the Soviet folk choruses offered a pat, refined view of ethnic heritage, rendered in the form of a pleasant multi-sensory experience. Their repertoire and style became clichéd because they were repeated so often and were spread by the educational system. They represented the core values of the political regime (such as optimism, professionalism, discipline, the glory of working collectively), and they called upon mythical patterns with deep roots in the culture (the folk). In fact, folk music, dance, and crafts are prone to kitschification. Critics have linked kitsch’s nostalgia for the traditional and folksy with Romanticism.147 Folk art is the ideal art on which to base kitsch, because the very concept underlying folk art – the Romantic notion of ‘the folk’ – exemplifies the illusory notion of what Milan Kundera called ‘the smiling brotherhood.’148 Because elites conceived of ‘the folk’ as a homogeneous mass of ‘simple peasants’ who were supposed to represent the national spirit, they denied or ignored the existence of real peasants, with individual personalities, differences, and flaws. In the imaginary, sentimental realm of ‘folk culture,’ everything is ‘from times of yore’ and reflects the collective life of a people endowed with wisdom, goodness, and innocence. The Romantic conception of folk culture thus does exactly what Kundera says kitsch does: ‘kitsch is

A Unified National Style 63 the absolute denial of shit, in both the literal and figurative senses of the word; kitsch excludes everything from its purview which is essentially unacceptable in human existence.’149 Kundera notes that the kitsch impulse exists in all societies, but because totalitarian society banishes all doubt, individuality, irony, and socially deviant behavior, it is difficult for its citizens to escape the ‘kitsch inquisition.’150 As a Czech dissident, Kundera denigrated kitsch as an art form that was imposed upon society; but he recognize kitsch’s universal appeal: it charms the sentimental streak in us, the part of us that wants to remember the past with nostalgia or to imagine that life is always happy and easy.151 Indeed, to say that Soviet folk art is kitsch is not to ridicule it. I believe that one of the reasons for Soviet folk art’s broad appeal and longevity is precisely its kitsch nature. Grassroots folklore is both more complex and also more spontaneous than kitsch; it is not created or promoted purposely to further ideological goals. 152 Kitsch folk art is usually altered or simplified: certain features accepted as typical of the folk art of a given culture are isolated and made more obvious; or those features may be applied for a different purpose than the one they originally played in the folk work of art. For example, in kitsch versions of folk singing, a certain vocal technique that is part of a tradition in a certain region is often over-utilized in arrangements or folk-based compositions. In Russian state chorus singing, vocal yicks and whoops in dance songs – vocal additions that in grassroots folk singing represent spontaneous outbursts of enthusiasm or encouragement – are not spontaneous but planned, and are so common that they have become hackneyed. The general sound of the chorus is also more academic (using a smoother and more refined manner of singing) than the typical sound of villagers, which is rougher and less legato. While it represents the music of peasants and is aimed at the masses, it endeavors to look or sound like high art. As in Nazi Germany, kitsch was institutionalized across all art forms in the Soviet period, especially under Stalin. Both regimes denigrated the concept of kitsch as vulgar, yet used kitsch art in a manipulative way to legitimize the political system, cultivating ‘exalted sentiments to control the feelings of ordinary people.’ Both in cultural products and in social programs, Stalin and Hitler manipulated the insecurities of the rising petty bourgeoisie, containing and controlling their aspirations for higher social status. In the Soviet context, a kind of state capitalism was instituted: the system which purported to distribute property equally actually used property as a political tool by offering it to those who demonstrated loyalty or usefulness to the regime.153 As we have seen, this principle was used to cultivate the professionalization of folk art as well as other arts. Kitsch is similarly manipulative in that it promises the lure of higher social status by offering the lower classes a kind of art that formerly belonged only to the upper classes. Folk art – people’s art – was now not the art that common people made up for themselves, but the kind of art that professionals arranged, choreographed, composed, performed, taught, and organized. It

64

A Unified National Style

was modeled after the folk art that composers and performers had created for the elites in the late nineteenth century.

Folklore ‘Revival’ in the Post-War Period If in the 1930s and during the war the performance of folk music and dance served both to cultivate the image of a New Soviet Man and Woman and to link that image with a constructed national character, then starting in the late 1940s with the growing isolationism of the Cold War cultural critics turned with renewed force to folk performing arts as a symbol of Russian nationality. In the process, the image of the professional folk ensembles was reconstructed with a slightly more lyrical quality that was interpreted as more traditional. Yet for all the rhetoric about returning to tradition, in fact folk art was becoming even more refined in accordance with the demands of high art. The changes after 1948 could be seen both in the sphere of high art and in pronouncements specifically about folk performance. There were repeated calls for Soviet composers to imitate Russian ‘folk polyphony’ and the operatic and orchestral settings of folk tunes of the Russian national school of the late nineteenth century. These calls spread to the world of folk performance: an explosion of articles exhorted choruses and instrumental ensembles to go back to the melodies and improvisation of folk roots rather than present music that was ‘mechanical’ and divorced from a folk basis. In dance, choreographers also began to speak of the necessity to adopt a ‘cantilena’ (lyrical) style and a ‘raised culture’ of dance that would emphasize its ‘poetic’ character. Both dance and music critics rejected the strident, uniform folk presentations of the 1930s. All of these critiques were part of the 1948–52 purge campaigns, designed to eradicate the liberal intellectuals’ practice of ‘kowtowing before the West.’154 The campaign began in music with a resolution issued by the Central Committee of the Communist Party, ‘On the Opera Great Friendship by Muradeli.’ Although the opera in question seemed to meet ideological demands by showing different cultures (it was set in Georgia and involved various Caucasian ethnic groups and Cossacks as well as Russians) and depicting an important historical event, the party condemned the opera for its formalism. Muradeli had not used folk material that would have characterized the various ethnic groups; instead of being melodic, the music was ‘discordant’ and based upon ‘dissonances.’ In general, the resolution berated Soviet composers for rejecting ‘polyphonic music and polyphonic singing’ and paying insufficient attention to ‘melody’ in their modernist, ‘formalist’ compositions. Finally, it specifically criticized modernistic music for violating ‘the system of many-voiced singing harmony distinctive of our people.’155 Although these formulations were addressed specifically to composers of classical music, they are relevant to this discussion because they draw

A Unified National Style 65 explicit attention to the Russian tradition of folk polyphony (mnogogolosie) as a basis for Soviet art music. The resolution uses both the term ‘polyphony’ (polifonia), referring to Western polyphony, and the native Russian term mnogogolosie, which is translated above as ‘many-voiced singing harmony’ (I find it simpler to translate it as ‘folk polyphony’). While the resolution does not explicitly exhort composers to directly apply the folk polyphonic system to their compositions, it states that their refusal to use polyphony at all is a violation of the tradition of folk polyphony which is at the foundation of ‘our’ music – that is, Russian music. This promotion of folk polyphony had a purely ideological basis – it was a plea for patriotism in the context of the new Cold War isolationist strategies. It argued music should not be based upon modernism – associated with the ‘depression,’ ‘psychopathology, sexual perversion, [and] amorality’ of the West – but upon folk music, which promoted patriotism and optimism.156 Yet while the resolution exhorted composers to use the simple melodies of the Russian people, it also called for a return to the traditions of the Russian national school in classical music. Although it appealed for polyphony based upon folk polyphony, it referred not to Russian folk polyphony itself, but the version of it that Russians – and the world – had come to know and love through the compositions of Glinka, Musorgsky, Balakirev, and the like.157 The linking of Soviet music with folk roots was not an actual promotion of folk culture but was meant to validate Russian culture and Russia’s claims to sovereign nationhood. The resolution lays bare the hidden imperialism of the Soviet project, in which the musical traditions of all the peoples in the Soviet Union were supposedly ‘enriched’ by their emulation of the (presumably Russian, but really Western) practice of singing or playing polyphonically. Articles on folk polyphony that appeared after the resolution reflected the need to remember the cultural traditions of Russians: their intent was to establish that Russian polyphony existed independently of European traditions and arose before the influx of European influences on Russian music.158 It makes no sense for Russian folk polyphony to be advanced as the premise upon which compositions of art music – even those played or sung by ‘folk’ orchestras or choruses – should be based.159 Russian folk polyphony is an improvisatory art in which each singer performs a specific function within the group. Complex, improvised, a cappella singing with the characteristics I have outlined in the previous chapter cannot be likened to composed works for accompanied chorus. But after the 1948 resolution critics in both high- and low-brow journals did clamor for the use of folk polyphony in Russian folk music, including arranged and orchestrated folk songs. One commonality was the call for more contemporary classical compositions – by professionals or amateurs – that would utilize the traditions of Russian folk singing. In 1951 an editorial analyzing an all-Union smotr of amateur performing arts emphasized that the goals of the 1948 resolution were being fulfilled: ‘Polyphonic singing has

66

A Unified National Style

become a usual event; many collectives are shifting to singing without accompaniment’; it concluded that their development in this direction was helping them to learn complex Soviet, Russian, and West European compositions.160 This editorial makes the ludicrous assertion that if folk groups could handle singing polyphonically then the logical next step – and the desired result – was to tackle Tchaikovsky. The situation in dance was analogous. After 1948 critics urged choreographers not to perform the vulgar ‘Gypsy’ dances, ‘waltzes and tap dances’ associated with the decadent West and America, but to base their ‘new Soviet national dance’ on ‘authentically national [narodnye] dances.’161 Rather than either showing unadulterated folk dances on stage or indulging in the ‘fantasy’ of the choreographer by adding showy ‘tricks’ to folk compositions (as critics said had been the fashion), a few choreographers began to compose entirely new pieces based upon regional folk dances – a method that remained a favored technique for bringing folk dance to the professional stage in the coming decades. For example, Nadezhda Nadezhdina created ‘flowing, slow dances’ for the ‘Birch Tree’ ensemble that shocked a public used to ‘stirring rhythms, fast tempos,’ and ‘fast turns and jumps.’162 Many of these pieces had poetic names such as ‘Birch Tree,’ ‘Swan,’ ‘Golden Chain,’ ‘Dance with Little Bells,’ and depicted an entire pantomimed scene – often a story involving various forms of flirtation between women and men. The dances were based upon regional folk dances and performed to music composed specially for the program.163 Yet as liberal intellectuals made clear in their writings after Stalin’s death, all the attention to polyphony and to traditionalism in dance did not in fact represent a ‘revival’ in Russian folk traditions. In music, little was composed or performed that approximated to the Russian folk polyphony system. As Feodosii Rubtsov pointed out, most folk chorus members throughout the country had not learned to sing polyphonically and were consequently afraid to sing a cappella. They found folk songs boring and shortened the verses, rather than learning to vary their singing from verse to verse.164 Instead of traditional folk songs from their own villages or regions, amateur choruses sang the works of Soviet professional and amateur composers, often the conductors of the choirs themselves. One critic wrote that the ‘musical language’ of these songs was so ‘devoid of individuality’ [obezlichen] that it was hard to tell them apart: ‘in 99 out of 100 cases the ‘lyrical genre’ is limited to the excessively sentimental [dusheshchipatel’nyi] waltz in 3/4 time’; melodies were ‘hackneyed,’ and the structure of the compositions was that of standard Western harmony, without any thought of folk polyphony. Particularly clichéd were solo and choral works accompanied by accordion. Composers avoided the local styles of their regions in favor of a generalized Soviet musical stereotype.165 The official press and government also began to criticize the folk chorus. In the late 1950s–60s folk choruses were re-evaluated in the press, the size of some of the professional folk choruses was cut,166 and in 1961 the board of

A Unified National Style 67 the Ministry of Culture issued a ruling stating that in their search for ‘superficial success’ and stage appeal (estradnost), the choruses had introduced too many songs that were musically far from the folk character.167 All of these post-1948 changes – the supposed return to folk polyphony and the adaptation of regional dances – did not in fact reflect a return to tradition but constituted part of the country’s ongoing attempt to ‘raise the cultural standard.’ Indeed, the periodical literature of the time was full of such phrases, indicating that the main point of both professional and amateur folk arts was to bring the tastes of audience and participants closer to the standards of high art (as the Soviet culture institutions had defined it – that is, excluding ‘formalist’ and ‘modernist’ works). Because critics constantly contrasted the vulgar dances of the West and of the past with the current (polyphonic, lyrical) trends in folk music and dance, we know that they considered these latter styles to be connected with Soviet high culture. Journals aimed at the directors of amateur arts clubs published multiple calls for more of the new traditional – yet refined – choral and dance compositions, for more educated specialists, and for programs that would help educate the consumers and participants of amateur arts in high culture and the political goals of the Party.168 Yet despite such calls, the government not only did not make an effort to change the mass-produced character of the folk-chorus phenomenon, it continued to support the manufacture of the folk chorus. In fact, it strengthened the structure needed to support the folk chorus phenomenon by opening more educational programs dedicated to providing trained personnel to lead and staff professional and amateur folk choruses, orchestras, and dance ensembles. After 1948, the number of folk choruses rose tremendously.169 Today, many of the folk music educational programs established during the Soviet period continue to exist, in some cases without major changes in leadership or personnel. Whether or not these are primarily oriented toward the production of cadres for the folk choruses is a matter of some debate among present-day revivalists.170 My impression of the work of the folk chorus departments, based upon my observations of some of their performances and rehearsals in 1991 and 1998–9, is that they are primarily oriented toward graduating professional singers, conductors, and teachers who will promote the approach to folk music made popular by the Soviet professional folk choruses.171 It was not until the late 1960s–early 1970s that Russian folk polyphony would be performed in the context of art music – in the context of a developing oppositional movement that promised to revolutionize the performance of folk traditions. Until then, the performance of Russian folk music and dance remained much what it had been – polished renditions of melodies set to vocal harmonies and/or instrumental accompaniment, performed in choreographed, theatricalized settings.

3

The Origins of the Russian Folk Revival Movement

Precisely because the whole strength of a folk song lies in free improvisation, a learned performance of a folk song – even by the best artists – can never compare with that of true folk performers. Evgeniia Lineva, 1904

Fig 3.1: Pokrovsky ensemble performs “Tsar Maksimilian”

The Origins of the Russian Folk Revival Movement

69

In 1986, a group called the Pokrovsky Ensemble gave a performance of Russian folk music in a classroom at Harvard University. The audience was made up largely of professors, graduate students, and undergraduates of the Slavic Department. I was a graduate student at the performance, visiting from Yale University. As befitted the academic setting, the performance was accompanied by short lectures on various aspects of Russian folk singing. For instance, the ensemble’s leader, Dmitri Pokrovsky, told the audience that a bylina (epic song) was sometimes sung chorally instead of by a solo singer, and might last several hours; that with the choral rendition, the words would be so stretched out that one might sing a single word for several measures. The audience members had heard of the existence of byliny, and might even have read a text about the heroic exploits of Dobrynia Nikitich, but probably none had ever heard a bylina sung. I certainly had not, and it seems to me now, looking back, that I had never considered the possibility that they could be sung. Byliny were just texts in books assigned for courses in ancient Russian literature. When the five men in the group of ten singers performed the song, I was enthralled. It had something of the character of a sea chantey, but the musical texture was unfamiliar and exciting. The manner of performance was also unusual. The singers in simple linen peasant shirts appeared to be fully immersed in their musical communication with one another and with the audience. They swayed slightly and used arm gestures to punctuate certain beats or words. Everything about their bearing seemed completely natural, not forced or showy. For me and for many Americans who went to concerts of the Pokrovsky Ensemble during its tours, this was our first brush with old Russian folk traditions. We might have seen professional choruses on television or at restaurants for tourists in Moscow or Leningrad, but this was different. This was not just entertainment and these were not just songs. Pokrovsky was talking about ancient traditions that were still living, about the ways that singing imitated bird sounds or reflected geography. We did not know that we were witnessing not just the performance of folk music but the heyday of an important cultural movement in Russia. The movement consisted of groups like the Pokrovsky Ensemble in nearly every major city in Russia, often headed by folklorists or musicologists and affiliated with institutions of higher learning or cultural organizations. In order to study and promote Russian folk culture, they led expeditions to villages, sponsored concerts and holiday festivals in the open air, organized classes and whole schools of folk culture for students of all ages, published pamphlets, books, cassettes, and videos. By the late 1990s, between one and three million people were involved in activities surrounding authentic folklore in Russia.1 How did this small explosion of interest in the roots of Russian culture come about? What were the origins of this vibrant, if somewhat small and select young people’s movement?

70

The Origins of the Russian Folk Revival Movement

The Khrushchev Era and Village Prose Perhaps the most important impetus to revival was the end of the Stalin era and the beginning of the Khrushchev era. As Tamara Livingston has argued, most musical revival movements take place ‘in opposition to aspects of the contemporary cultural mainstream.’2 The American folk revival movement of the post-war years was heavily involved with labor and leftist movements; only in the 1960s did it gain a more mainstream, commercial character. The Russian movement started as a reaction against Stalinist culture, but was never affiliated with any specific political agenda. Rather, during the Thaw period of the late 1950s and 1960s, when it became possible to discuss some of the mistakes of the Stalin era, intellectuals sought new sources of value. Some turned to the West as a reaction against the isolationism of the Stalin era. Urban young people became increasingly interested in jazz and rock music, foreign films, and Western clothing styles. Some intellectuals turned to Russian peasant culture as an important source of sincerity and authenticity in Russian culture, since it was presumed to have remained untouched by the hypocrisy and doublespeak that characterized Soviet public life under Stalin. Rural culture seemed like a possible place of refuge from a system that had become obsessed with industrialization at any cost. This time saw the birth of a new literary movement called ‘village prose,’ which was characterized by ‘the revival of Russian national and religious sentiment, a search for national values, a concern for the environment, and a nostalgia generated by the loss of traditional rural life.’3 The mythological system set up in this movement echoed that of the pastoral, with its contrast between city and country life and implicit criticism of the former. In works such as Solzhenitsyn’s short story ‘Matryona’s House’ (1963), writers envisioned village dwellers, particularly elders, as conveyors of true values such as kindness, modesty, and simplicity, and held them up as sources of redemption for an urbanized society concerned with greed and care for appearances. Writers represented in great detail village life, including superstitious beliefs, folklore, and local dialects – often with a large measure of romanticization. Many authors based their narratives on their remembrances of childhood in the village; the recollections are cast in the glow of nostalgia, while collectivization and World War II represent the only bitter notes in the picture. Memory played a large part: ‘the focus in Village Prose is on the radiance not of the future, but of the past’ – and that past was represented by a place, the village.4 The Russian folk music revival movement was characterized by a similar nostalgia and a foregrounding of the chronotope of the pre-Revolutionary village: it represented the living past and a source of values for the present. For both movements, it was important to re-imagine the rural sphere: in effect, these intellectuals protested the Potemkin village of Soviet propaganda and countered that image with one they felt represented the genuine

The Origins of the Russian Folk Revival Movement

71

Russia. If the Soviet village was a place of change and modernization, the village of the revivalists’ and village prose writers’ imaginations was a locus of cyclical time, ancestors, and childhood.5 While the prose writers conveyed this symbolic rural place in the form of memoiristic, essayistic, and fictional narratives, the revivalists did what earlier generations of populists had done: they went to the village and attempted to bring it back to the city. They dressed in ornate ancestral costumes bought from peasants, performed songs and dances they had learned from peasants, and recounted stories of their travels and what they had learned among the village dwellers. Like the village prose writers, they became mediators between the village and the city, cultural intermediaries who could translate village life into something understandable and desirable, as well as exotic and complex. The critical accounts of collectivization put forward in village prose works coincided with what the revivalists saw before their eyes as they traveled to ravaged villages.6 It is likely that some in the folk music revival movement were inspired, or their burgeoning ideas informed, by the writings of the village prose writers.7 Prior to Gorbachev, there was very little scholarly information available about the state of affairs in villages. One either had to travel there or read the literary village prose accounts in order to understand the magnitude of the effects of Soviet policies on the integrity of village life.8 In a few cases, the movements worked together: for example, when the Pokrovsky Ensemble appeared in a 1982 film based upon Valentin Rasputin’s quintessential village prose novel Farewell to Matyora, the revivalists’ restoration of ancient Russian traditions was used to illustrate the rich heritage that would be lost when the entire village was flooded in order to make a hydroelectric station.9 In the film, dressed as Russian villagers, the ensemble sang a village dance song and danced with wild abandon on a summer holiday, contrasting sharply with the mournful events depicted soon after. The film’s sharp message regarding the ecological and cultural value of the Russian village reflected a common concern for both village prose writers and folk revivalists.10 Nationalism was another foundation shared by the two movements: the village prose movement was led by some writers who were outspoken in their nationalistic views, and similar views were often expressed by members of the revival movement.11

Young People’s Musical Culture Another movement in Russian culture during this period, the ‘bard’ or guitar poetry movement, represented the extent to which Russian culture was being revived during the post-Stalin era. Both the bard movement and the folklore revival movement drew crowds of young people to unofficial gatherings (tusovki), sometimes shared between the two groups. ‘Bards’ were poets who sang their own poetry to their own accompaniment on guitar, performed at various unofficial venues in cities, and circulated their work by magnitizdat, that is, through unofficial publication on homemade recordings.

72

The Origins of the Russian Folk Revival Movement

Although some of the poets were professional writers, the bard movement was by and large an amateur movement, similar to the folk revival movement. The music was not folkloric but occasionally drew from folk sources such as urban and criminal songs; many of the songs actually did constitute folklore in the sense that they were memorized and played by ordinary citizens, and became an important part of oral culture. Indeed, the bard movement was so similar in character to the American folk revival movement of the 1960s and 70s that many Americans think first of Russian bard music when they think of Russian folk music. In the songs of the bards, the texts were primary and the music secondary in importance: the music was characterized by its underscored lack of professionalism, and the casual, even mediocre guitar technique and untrained voice served to distinguish it from the professionalized music cultivated by the Soviet official amateur arts sphere.12 Although the folklore revival movement was primarily a musical movement, it cultivated a similar culture of spontaneity and homespunness, and likewise induced like-minded young people to sing in groups in casual settings.13 While the two movements – the guitar poetry and the folk revival movements – overlapped during the 1980s with shared venues, events, and audiences, they have generally remained separate phenomena. This is not surprising, given that the bard movement is basically urban music and reflects an urban, Westernizing point of view, while folk music revival emphasizes rural culture as a source of wisdom and value for contemporary young people, and is linked with a Slavophile cast of mind.14

The Discourse of Folklore Revival Unlike the guitar poetry movement, the revival movement in Russian folk music did not begin with the work of unofficial poets. Instead, it was mostly initiated by academics in the fields of musicology and folklore. This has given the movement a somewhat academic character and less grassroots appeal. In order to sing bards’ songs, one needed only a tape recorder to learn them and a guitar to play them.15 To sing Russian village folk songs, urban youths needed to learn special ways of singing, to travel to villages, and to have the desire to pierce the ‘exotic’ traditions existing in their backyards. Academics who studied village culture possessed the necessary knowledge and experience, and could serve as guides: as a result, most of the ensembles are headed by a folklorist, musicologist, or a person with a degree in another subject who has made him or herself a specialist on folk culture. The theoretical foundations of the movement were laid during the renewal of interest in the study of folklore during the Khrushchev period, but it took a decade or more for the performance of folk music and dance to begin to reflect revivalist convictions.16 A movement gradually coalesced out

The Origins of the Russian Folk Revival Movement

73

of the isolated actions of individual musicologists and musicians. Even though the movement now has as its primary focus performance of folklore, the discourse of revivalism helped to give birth to a core ideology with which revivalists could identify themselves.17 At first writings centered on criticism of the way folklore had been produced and presented during the Stalin period and afterwards. They redefined folklore, identified important areas of research in folk music, and called for re-evaluation of governmental policies toward folklore. Later, starting in the 1980s, an abundant literature was published explaining how to collect and learn to perform folk music, form revivalist groups, and present folklore on stage. Immediately after Stalin’s death, criticism began to be heaped on the Soviet conception of folklore. Dozens of folklorists who had been involved in the production of new Soviet epics glorifying Stalin and Lenin now spoke out to criticize the way that such folklore had been created. One reviewer of a Stalinist-era history of Russian folklore called the pseudofolklore pieces ‘stillborn forgeries of folk creation that cannot be regarded as folklore.’18 In their writings, folklorists redefined the conception of folklore to exclude the creations of one person, and criticized the view that folklore was essentially a branch of literature. Instead, they now stressed collectivity of origin, anonymity, traditionality, and orality.19 Furthermore, while during the Stalin era folklorists and other scholars had regularly advertised the active and robust character of Soviet folklore, now folklorists began to assert that traditions were dying out. They saw a general lack of interest in folk traditions in the countryside; only the older generation still sang traditional songs, while ‘songs of Soviet composers and songs from foreign films had completely replaced traditional songs among the youth’ in certain regions.20 This story of folklore’s imminent disappearance was to be a major impetus for the revival movement.21

Criticism of Folk Music Performance As we have seen, this period was characterized by a ‘crisis’ in the genre of folk chorus performance. Critics began to call for the inclusion of traditional, unarranged folk music in the repertoire of the choruses; their calls were couched in stronger and more specific terms than were the government’s pronouncements on the subject. As the critic A. Koposov wrote in 1962, the job of the choruses was supposed to be ‘the propaganda of the best models of contemporary and ancient vocal, instrumental, and dance folklore.’ But what they were showing was not ‘folk creation’ but ‘their own composing’ (not narodnoe tvorchestvo but svoe sochinitel’stvo). Clearly, by mentioning authorship of folk creation, Koposov referred obliquely to the creation of ‘pseudofolklore’ during Stalin’s reign, and implied criticism of the Stalinist ‘cult of personality’: composers of works for folk choruses, in foregrounding their own compositions and not that of the nameless folk, were seeking credit for themselves. Koposov also critiqued the folk chorus

74

The Origins of the Russian Folk Revival Movement

sound for its ‘superficial “smoothness” and “decorousness” ’ – implying that the application of Western aesthetic standards to the performance of folk music was inappropriate. 22 Another musicologist, Feodosii Rubtsov, criticized the system created to manage amateur folk performance in the Soviet Union and the training offered at the cultural-enlightenment schools, where students did not even receive the equivalent of a high school education. Such workers were only qualified to ‘implant approved themes’ in folklore, while Rubtsov called for more inclusion of music from local traditions in the repertoires of the village amateur folk choirs.23 The notion that small villages might have their own ‘word’ to say on the broad scene of Russian folk culture became a rallying point for the revivalists. Such calls made a deep impression on young students of folklore at the time, who were still obliged to learn Soviet-style fakelore in schools. Dmitri Pokrovsky would later remember that in the mid1960s, it was still considered necessary for graduates of the folk-conducting department of the Gnesin Institute to sing a folk song about Lenin and Stalin at their final recital – only by then, Stalin was edited out of the song.24 Rubtsov also deconstructed the very notion of ‘amateur artistic activity’ [khudozhestvennaia samodeiatel’nost], of which a more literal translation from Russian would be ‘artistic do-it-yourself-ism.’ He pointed out that the term refers to activity that is not ‘done by oneself’ but organized by bureaucrats. Yet when kolkhoz workers sing on their own initiative – such as at work breaks or parties – no one is interested in it and it is not considered folklore.25 Rubtsov implicitly pointed out one of the paradoxes of the entire Soviet project: although much of the Soviet rhetoric glorified the leading role of the workers in building a Soviet state, in fact workers received only narrowly defined, prescribed roles. Folklore was supposed to be a grassroots artistic form in which ordinary people could express themselves creatively; but in fact, it was organized into a pedagogical and entertaining show, performed by and for ‘the people,’ but always ultimately controlled from the top.

Scholars Redefine Authenticity Rubtsov’s article laid important groundwork for revivalist discourse about Russian folk traditions. By terming the amateur artistic activity organized by Soviet government personnel ‘for show,’ and the music-making that takes place during people’s leisure time ‘authentic’ folk music, he challenged folklorists to rethink their definition of folklore. He conceded that folklorists, officials, or organizers might not like the music that people sing ‘after hours’ – it might seem to be naive or ‘bad’ art – but there is a reason why people sing it: it could have a ‘hidden meaning’ (podtekst) that made it valuable to the people who sing it. I present a summary of Rubtsov’s redefinition of authentic folk music here:26

The Origins of the Russian Folk Revival Movement

75

Table 3.1 Soviet-organized Folk Music Consists of songs created and implanted ‘from the top’ Takes place on stage and in rehearsal only Includes composed songs or older melodies set to texts with ‘contemporary content,’ often with Soviet-era stereotypes (‘kolkhoz,’ ‘agronomist,’ ‘tractor’) Is not folk music. ‘Songs never were, are, nor will be created as folk songs.’

Non-organized Folk Music Demand for particular songs comes ‘from the bottom’ Takes place spontaneously, at breaks from work, after work, at parties Includes old city songs, ‘cruel romances’ and chastushki

Is truly folk music. A folk song is ‘a song that the people remember, don’t allow to die.’ Is sung for others, at reviews and concerts Is sung ‘by oneself’ and ‘for oneself’ Is ‘for show ‘ [pokazukha]; characterized by Is ‘authentic,’ ‘sincere,’ ‘spontaneous.’ The masses themselves are not capable of ‘falsity,’ ‘vulgarity, banality’ [fal’sh; falseness; everything they do is sincere, even poshlost’]. if it is naive or artistically weak. Is the responsibility of the ‘professionals Is an invisible phenomenon: not studied and and quasi-professionals’ who lead and direct nearly unknown, and therefore not amateur artistic activity, write and arrange supported, yet is more interesting and songs, create performances. worthwhile than organized music.

As this example shows, revivalist discourse was constructed as a direct inversion of the binary oppositions that were a mainstay of Soviet culture. In this sense it was typical of the intellectual discourses of the Thaw. For example, Rubtsov’s essay echoes many of the ideas in Vladimir Pomerantsev’s 1953 article ‘On Sincerity in Literature,’ which naively suggested that while critics and famous writers were afraid to speak the truth, the masses were inherently sincere and moral – an idea which turns the Soviet promotion of the masses on its head by depoliticizing it.27 If Soviet socialist realism proclaimed that ordinary workers who obtained political consciousness through experience or education could become successful leaders, Thaw critics declared that intellectuals – leaders – should learn from the innate authenticity of the common people. Thus, ‘authentic’ folk music was defined as that which had managed to exist outside or in spite of the Soviet framework of amateur artistic activity. Rubtsov implicitly called for revival based upon the assumption that the culture-at-large had been corrupted by hypocrisy and cheapness. He and others showed that a totalitarian government system run by poorly educated people (with poor aesthetic taste) had established its own mock revival, which was in danger of obliterating that which was truly valuable. Such an

76

The Origins of the Russian Folk Revival Movement

interpretation of the situation gave strong impetus to the younger generation of folk musicians to stop the process of destruction of Russian folklore. The notions that Soviet-organized folklore was ‘for show’ and that a national heritage was being destroyed became central to revivalist discourse. The concepts of ‘authenticity,’ ‘sincerity,’ ‘purity,’ and ‘time depth’ have been linked in other folk music revival movements. Livingston writes: ‘ “Authentic” music is believed to have been passed on through the generations outside of (or in spite of) mainstream markets. The ideology of authenticity, which combines historical research with reactionary ideas against the cultural mainstream, must be carefully constructed and maintained.’28 But some strands of Soviet revival differed from this generic description: in particular, Rubtsov’s definition of authentic folk music does not link authenticity with ‘time depth’ or ‘purity.’ Rubtsov intentionally broadened the Romantic definition of folklore by recognizing that songs which had ‘folk’ status would change continuously. Folklorists needed to value and study everything that people sang, because what they sang was folk music. This view of authenticity – which was adopted by the ‘liberal’ faction of the folklore movement, but not its more conservative members – stems from the ‘sociological school’ of folklore study that was active during the first two decades of the twentieth century. Although the views were seen by their proponents as Marxist, they were in disfavor throughout most of the Stalin period.29 The sociological approach, based upon the acknowledgment that folklore is part of the culture of specific geographical regions and classes, contrasted with the Romantic view of folklore, in which only that which was sung or spoken by village dwellers prior to or apart from their contact with civilization (city culture) was valuable as folklore. It claimed that change was natural and unpredictable, not necessarily detrimental; and asserted that whatever people sang and however they told stories or pronounced incantations – and even whether they dispensed with those practices – was of interest as folklore. This approach also acknowledged the interrelated nature of cultural phenomena, known in Russian as ‘syncretism.’ Many folklorists working in the 1920s recognized that the way people made their living, their proximity to a city (as well as the culture of that city), and myriad other factors, affected the songs they sang as well as the clothes they wore, the way they built and decorated their houses, and so on. Furthermore, they said that village culture, more than urban culture, was distinguished by its interrelation of different aspects. For example, folklorists noted that in peasant rituals there was no fixed demarcation between performer and spectator: all were participants. By contrast, in city culture, performers are separate from the passive spectator. Further, in the village, no one was a specialist in one area of artistic activity. Singers did not simply sing, and tellers of tales did not simply narrate texts: they accompanied their performances with gesture,

The Origins of the Russian Folk Revival Movement

77

mimicry, and movement. Those who could sing were often good at playing an instrument or dancing. In musicology, it was important to study not just the texts and music of village singing but also the principles of performance, the dynamics of the group, the ‘rules’ upon which their improvisations were based, and so on. In order to make such multi-dimensional studies of peasant culture, in the 1920s teams of researchers in different fields of study set out to work together on specific regions.30 A noted proponent of these views and one of the ideological fathers of the folklore revival movement of the 1970s was Evgenii Gippius, a musicologist who began his work on folklore in the 1920s. In 1926–7, as part of a team of researchers in such fields as anthropology, ethnology, art, literature, linguistics, music, and theater, Gippius helped create an in-depth study of two regions in the Russian north, near the Onega and Pinega rivers. The team, from the Sociological Commission of the State Institute of the History of Art in Leningrad, set out to ‘study all aspects of the artistic life of a village.’31 Gippius wrote that because folk music is constantly changing in an ‘organic’ and ‘irrational’ process, because of its natural ‘spontaneity’ (stikhiinost’), he found it necessary to use the ‘descriptive method’ of musical study, in which one tries to ‘record [in transcription or recordings]…everything that sounds.’32 Although Gippius’s own method of study was not sociological but more formalistic, his work and those of his colleagues on this project was informed by the underlying views of the sociological school outlined above. Gippius and others were essentially prevented from pursuing this line of study during the Stalin period, since investigations of non-verbal phenomena, or of the contexts in which these phenomena were performed, were not seen as part of the study of folklore but as part of ethnography. Both folkloristics and ethnography were exhorted to perform mostly practical tasks – the former had to encourage contemporary authors of folklore texts, while the latter had to discourage religion.33 To be sure, the Soviet approach prided itself on its contemporary, realistic conception of folklore as that which is sung, played, and narrated in cities and villages nowadays. It formally rejected the Romantic view that folklore was the ancient lore of peasants. 34 However, its heavy focus on the content of folklore and its underlying assumption that folklore was best used as propaganda meant that those studying anything deemed ideologically improper, or those not paying due attention to the content of folklore, were silenced with heavy criticism. As early as 1931, Soviet scholars criticized the sociological approach to folklore.35 By 1948, soon after the shake-up in the world of music, Gippius was singled out for criticism by a Moscow organizer of amateur culture. In 1949, a three-page article in the official journal of the Union of Soviet Composers reviewed Gippius’s entire career and found him guilty of having used ‘bourgeois’ formalistic and sociological study methods. Gippius was too interested in style and not attentive enough to the ‘content’ of songs.

78

The Origins of the Russian Folk Revival Movement

Furthermore, the critic wrote that Gippius ‘recommended carrying out collection and study of songs without regard to their artistic value…Only local styles were studied, there was no attempt to determine the unified national style of the Russian folk song.’36 Indeed, in 1928 Gippius had written that his work ‘shows finally the whole uselessness of studying an abstract “unified style of the Russian song”.’37 By 1947 he adopted the ‘party line’ in order to save his life, and recanted his earlier view that a folklorist must be interested in ‘everything that sounds.’ Acknowledging that folklore must serve the purpose of mass education, he wrote that ‘not everything that is narrated and sung is folkloric (narodnoe) in its form and content.’38 Both before and after his criticism, Gippius was highly respected by the Moscow and Leningrad intelligentsia in the fields of music and folklore. He was one of the intellectual founders of the folklore revival movement during its early period, the 1960s and early 1970s: many of the young scholars who worked with or under him were profoundly influenced by his views on folklore. It was precisely Gippius’s syncretic approach and his interest in local styles rather than a ‘unified national style’ that interested these young scholars. The fact that he had been criticized by the Soviet establishment did him no harm in the eyes of the young generation of scholars in the 1960s: in fact, his reputation as someone who had more or less kept intact his scholarly views throughout the difficult years of the Stalin era probably raised him in their estimation.

The Pokrovsky Ensemble and the Beginnings of the Folklore Revival Movement Andrei Kabanov, one of the founders of the Russian folklore revival movement, recalled how he came to work with and was influenced by Gippius. Gippius had taken a break from active folklore study, and when he came again to the study of folklore at the Folklore Commission of the RSFSR (an organ of the Union of Composers) in the early 1970s, he looked for students. Kabanov was a recent graduate from the Moscow Conservatory, in his mid-twenties, and he became one of Gippius’s ‘loyal’ followers. Gippius got the younger scholar a job as a senior consultant at the Folklore Commission in Moscow. Kabanov recalled: ‘I came to him with ideas and songs and material, and went for kefir [fermented milk] for him, and went together with him to the dacha, in short, we saw each other every day.’ Such a close personal as well as working relationship was not uncommon among older and younger scholars in Soviet academia. The older scholar involved his pupil in every aspect of his work: they went on expeditions together and attempted to put together collections of material from various regions of Russia. Kabanov recalled that Gippius’s approach of working deeply in a single region, seeking to put together a typology of songs, was not widespread at the time:

The Origins of the Russian Folk Revival Movement

79

Fig 3.2: Andrei Kabanov and Aleksandr Degtirev at the 1998 festival He had the conception of local styles. Gippius yelled about this and insisted on it. It wasn’t so obvious as it seems now. In those days, there was a task set: for instance…to make a volume of ‘Wedding Songs of Russia.’ Such a thing can’t be done. The wedding is different everywhere. And to put it all in one volume means not to know what’s what. Or, take the opposite example. A volume of ‘Work Songs and Refrains [pripevki].’ But there are no work songs at all. There are only refrains, or songs that

80

The Origins of the Russian Folk Revival Movement turned into refrains…. And to go on an expedition only looking for some little refrains, and not recording the whole style, it’s like seeing only one dot on the sphere, and not understanding the sphere. Maybe you go to the next village and record another dot, but that refrain can only be understood inside that sphere, you don’t see what role the refrain plays in the system in which there’s also the wedding song, the chastushka, etc.39

The significance of studying local styles was enormous, practically revolutionary in the context of Soviet folklore study, and it became one of the foundations of the revival movement. Of course, it flew in the face of the Soviet view that there was a unified national style. Furthermore, it was essentially antithetical to the notion of the Soviet folk chorus, which sang composed songs in literary Russian. And finally, it was antithetical to the Soviet project itself: while Gippius was interested in identifying the cultures of tiny places – villages not even on maps – the Soviet government wiped out such places by resettling villagers in large villages connected to huge collective farms. The study of local styles provided the essential material on which the revival movement was based: if it were not for this analytical work, the revivalists would have had nothing to revive. When, through the work of teachers like Gippius, future folklorists and musicologists were exposed to the existence of an extraordinary richness in local cultures, they were fascinated and inspired. In the course of his investigation of local traditions, Gippius had studied the hidden rules or laws by which folk songs are sung in a specific way. Later, other musicologists, notably Anna Rudneva (an influential researcher and professor at Moscow Conservatory), also took specific interest in how village singing collectives (kollektivy) sang.40 This preliminary work brought new attention to traditions of village folk singing; it suggested that folk music was as challenging and valuable as classical music. These researchers showed that the polyphony of village singing was extremely complicated and difficult to reproduce, since each member of a village ensemble improvised a distinct part that behaved as an independent melody, and each melody differed from, yet was dependent upon, that which other members of the ensemble were singing. Furthermore, each melody or part would vary each time the group sang the song. The musicologists theorized that there was a system of collective singing in place, the rules of which were extremely difficult for outsiders to understand.41 All of this was noted by the young scholars of the time, many of whom had taken classes with these theorists at the Moscow Conservatory or the Gnesin Institute. Thus, it is probably not coincidence that 29-year-old musician Dmitri Pokrovsky came to Gippius and Kabanov at the Folklore Commission in 1973 with a plea for folk song material – with the intent to sing it. At that time, very few people thought to sing the music that was being collected. Kabanov himself did not think of it: he was concerned with

The Origins of the Russian Folk Revival Movement

81

the complexity of a melody, the genre, the musical structure of a song. He remembered: ‘This music that was recorded by us [in villages] was intended for composers, so that they could get some kind of melodies out of it, pitches, and then they’d compose real music: “Now listen to this music, done by Soviet composers.” [The music we recorded] was meant for composers to rework so that choruses could sing it, folk choruses, – but the way it sounded itself wasn’t taken into account.’42 In fact, there were already people singing the music straight from the folklorists’ transcriptions – without its having been arranged first – but only a very few. As Natalia Giliarova put it, most of the young musicologists who collected this music did not think they could sing it, because they were not singers. They had been taught that in order to participate in a given musical activity, one needed professional training.43 One person who was trained, Viacheslav Shchurov, a choral conducting major at Moscow Conservatory in the early 1960s, did try to sing the music he collected on folklore expeditions with a trio of male students. He recalled that in 1962, his trio was given Gippius’s seal of approval. A few years later, as a teacher at the Gnesin Institute in Moscow, he organized a group of students to sing this music.44 After this group performed on television, Rubtsov sent Shchurov a letter saying that he had re-thought his position on the folk chorus: it seemed that Russian folklore could indeed be shown on television and in concerts, but only in the form in which Shchurov had presented it. Shchurov’s work must have seemed like a breath of fresh air. When one listens now to the 1968 recording of Shchurov’s ensemble, one sees the difference from the folk chorus style: the music is understated, without abundant vocal ‘tricks’ such as yicks or hollers, and without the sweetness characteristic of the folk chorus. However, the vocal quality is similar to that used by the folk chorus; and overall one has the impression of classically-trained students singing village folk songs from written music (even though these are their own transcriptions). The parts are sung very cleanly; ornaments are neat and perfect, like mordents written on paper. The singers do not generally improvise their parts. Most of the songs sound pretty; some employ dynamic shapes such as a crescendo in the middle of the song and a diminuendo at the end. Kabanov was not impressed with it at the time: ‘They’d sing like academic singers – a different tune, but some kind of solfeggio was present nonetheless. Clean, clean singing, maybe loud, but average.’ Indeed, Shchurov himself would later write that he and his singers used a ‘softened, academicized vocal manner.’45 Kabanov must have expected similar results when he was approached by Pokrovsky, a balalaika player who had graduated from the Gnesin Institute, where Shchurov worked, and was now employed there as a balalaika teacher. Pokrovsky and his ensemble had regular work performing folk and jazz music for tourists in the Golden Room of the restaurant of the Hotel Rossiia. The ensemble included his wife at the time, Tamara Smyslova, a former soloist of the professional Omsk Folk Chorus; three accordionists;

82

The Origins of the Russian Folk Revival Movement

and a classically trained trumpet player.46 When Pokrovsky announced that they intended to learn to sing the songs as the musicologists had transcribed them from their recordings, Kabanov thought to himself, ‘it’s nonsense, nothing will come of it.’ Nevertheless, Kabanov gave Pokrovsky two songs, which he had notated from his own recordings: one was a bylina from the Tereg Cossacks, ‘Ne po moriu’ (Not by sea); the other was Kabanov’s ‘arrangement’ of different versions of the Don Cossack song ‘Svetit mesiats rano s vechera’ (The moon shines early in the evening). Many would agree that Pokrovsky’s reappearance at the Folklore Commission with the group of six singers a month later marked the beginning of the folklore movement in Russia. Kabanov remembers: And then a month or so later, he came. It was something tremendous. I remember it now. I remember where they were standing, and how it was. That is, I was sitting [here], and Gippius was there, and Leonid Pereverzev, a specialist in American music…So, imagine, one, two, three, four young men, [Pokrovsky,] and Tamara…. We had heard several [folk groups] – the Gnesin Institute, Shchurov’s ensemble…‘Solovka.’ They didn’t fire up any particular impressions at all…. And suddenly these – to this day I remember that the sound itself amazed me. It was – it came tumbling down – it was incredibly powerful. It was probably loud, but the loudness wasn’t it, although it was loud…. [It had] the effect of a huge chunk of emotions tumbling down, suddenly, without stopping, on the listener…. This was hysterical, aggressive, but one’s own, completely engrossing, like as if – you should impress people [with your singing], but instead you say, ‘why should I impress them? I exist.’ Strange feeling. Kabanov’s comments show that Pokrovsky was able to convey a feeling of authenticity. ‘Impressing people’ was what the Soviet folk choruses did; Pokrovsky’s group did not participate in that showiness. They seemed to manage to avoid two pitfalls: being understated and academic, like Shchurov’s group, and being loud and showy in a swaggering way, like the folk chorus. Pokrovsky’s group presented themselves as they were – saying ‘here I am,’ like people communicating with other people. According to Kabanov and many others in the folklore revival movement, without this ‘hysterical, aggressive’ yet ‘completely engrossing’ sound of the Pokrovsky Ensemble, there might not have been a mass youth folklore movement. The sound carried people away, infected people. Kabanov recalled: ‘It didn’t just carry me away, it carried everyone away. After a concert, for 30, 40 minutes, we’d feel like we had taken drugs.’47 Not only was the sound new; Pokrovsky had also figured out how to make the village songs come alive, to turn notes from a page into living music. Kabanov observed:

The Origins of the Russian Folk Revival Movement

83

[They sang] my song, that I recorded. And suddenly it sounds like I’ve never heard it before. I didn’t hear it that way from the old men [in the village where I recorded it]. For me it was valuable as a melody, as a genre. As a local style. But living, as something that stirs me up, I couldn’t understand how it could be like that…. It was immediately obvious that he was doing some kind of improvisation. You had the impression that it was all yours, and here you have four young men, and Pokrovsky and Tamara …and it’s like you have six people, all composers. And most importantly, it was my song, after all, I had heard it 10 times, and transcribed it, and knew it well.48 This comment implicitly reflects on the stereotype that had existed throughout the Stalin period and later, that groups which sang only ancient folk songs would come across as a ‘museum.’49 Pokrovsky’s key role in the youth folklore movement was that he showed that ancient folk music did not have to be a relic, passively presented in the form of dry, dusty, uninteresting examples of ‘how our forefathers lived’; emotionally speaking, it could be more ‘alive’ than newly composed music. Where did Pokrovsky get his ideas about this amazing sound? Whence the idea to sing this complex, polyphonic folk music that hardly anyone had ever heard, in this engaging and outlandish fashion? As Pokrovsky’s former wife Tamara Smyslova described it, there were two important influences in Pokrovsky’s choice to sing Russian village music. First, he had had contact with villages: starting in the late 1960s, he had gone on expeditions with his mother, who was an ethnographer – a researcher and teacher of folk art. Like Pokrovsky, many of those in the folklore revival movement said that they became interested in folk music during fieldwork expeditions, which were obligatory parts of training in music, linguistics, and literature in the Soviet Union from the post-World War II period onward. Many students on such expeditions had never been in a village before; here they became acquainted with the daily life, culture, lore and music of Russian villages, which differed so greatly from urban culture. Second, Pokrovsky and other leaders of the youth folklore movement received exposure to Russian village singing, instrumental music, dance, and ritual through concerts of village folk performers held in Moscow and other major cities with active centers of folklore study. The concerts were organized by folklorists and musicologists, who would bring to the city groups that they had worked with in the field. At the concerts, these folklorists would typically provide commentary on the music and rituals presented. Starting in 1966, a series of concerts was held at the Moscow House of Composers, and attracted a large audience: by the second concert the audience was overflowing, sitting on the stage. Viacheslav Shchurov, one of the organizers of the concerts, remembered the impression of freshness and genuineness made by the villagers on the jaded Muscovites. A young female

84

The Origins of the Russian Folk Revival Movement

artist friend of his said, leaving the theater, ‘Finally they’ve shown us Moscow invalids [distrofiki] some real people!’50 Many of the young people in the audience were hearing ‘true’ folklore, rather than the state’s stylized versions, for the first time. Smyslova remembered that her folklore teacher from music high school invited her to one of these concerts, and she brought Pokrovsky along. Afterwards, he was ‘fired up,’ and became excited about introducing authentic instruments and vocal styles to his group’s repertoire.51 This music was made even more accessible by the work of musicologists like Shchurov. Based upon the popularity of the concerts, Shchurov began to put out records featuring just one or two villages each.52 To have accessible collections of the folk traditions of single villages meant that amateur folk music lovers could study and come to know these traditions in great detail. Further, collections of notated songs from expeditions had started to be published, whereas previously, ‘there were almost no collections of folk songs.’ The pre-Revolutionary and Soviet-era collections of Lineva, Gippius, Rudneva, Rubtsov and a few others were the only ones that showed how people really sang in the villages, including the regional distinctions in their renditions. Shchurov remembered: ‘That is why the impression of the richness and variety of style and traditions of Russian singing appeared only in the 1950s, when we started to go on expeditions. Suddenly a previously undetected, unknown layer was discovered…. Suddenly there was an ocean of new information about that which previously people did not even know existed.’53 Pokrovsky himself wrote about the reasons for the formation of his ensemble in more theoretical terms, which refer back to Gippius and his syncretic studies of folk culture. When Pokrovsky made his memorable appearance in front of the Folklore Commission of the Union of Composers of the Russian Federation in 1973, his apparent intention was not only to receive approbation for a new performing ensemble, but also to propose acting as an experimental ensemble that could help the Commission (of which Gippius was a part) to learn about the rules of folk singing. The Commission accepted this proposal and ‘adopted’ the ensemble, giving them unofficial sponsorship.54 In a 1980 article Pokrovsky described the group as an experiment that was still ongoing. The group would learn songs from transcriptions made by musicologists, then travel to villages and sing the songs with the people from whom the material was originally collected. Through their interactions with village groups, the experimenters would try to discover the essential rules for singing particular local styles of village polyphony, and the functions of the various musical parts within the collective. The group would aim to discover ‘on what level does the feeling of style arise, on what level does the feeling of the work arise, on what level are the works recognized or not recognized?’55 They worked together with Kabanov as a theorist who would analyze the style and structure of the material,

The Origins of the Russian Folk Revival Movement

85

while the group would try to put his theories about the structure of the songs into practice. This kind of work was entirely new. Although in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries groups such as Lineva’s and Piatnitsky’s had sung village-style, polyphonic, unarranged choral music, and Lineva had even worked with urban performers in her chorus, now urban intellectuals were going to villages specifically to learn how to sing from peasants. To be sure, musicologists had sung on their expeditions, but it was not the same as specifically studying and learning in the presence of villagers. Giliarova, director of the folk ensemble of the Moscow Conservatory, made the distinction (my question is in italics): ‘I remember in 1970 we went [on an expedition] along those roads in Riazan’ oblast…and we sang those songs for ourselves. But we sang like theorists sang – [that is,] not at all.’ Badly? ‘Of course, badly. We sang for ourselves, because we were musicians and we liked to sing it. But it wasn’t singing.’ Giliarova’s comment reflected some of the assumptions expressed in Lineva’s comment that forms the epigraph to this chapter. In Lineva’s pronouncement, it is impossible to sing like folk performers; they will always be ‘better.’ Pokrovsky showed that even if that were true, it still did not mean that performance of folk music could not be aesthetically interesting. According to Giliarova, her group and many others like it would not have started had it not been for the Pokrovsky Ensemble.56 She and others in the movement recounted numerous stories of shy, polite urban young people learning to sing – that is, literally and figuratively ‘finding their voices’ – in villages. Many of the ensembles in the revival movement utilized Pokrovsky’s basic approach of learning how to sing from villagers. Later, looking back on his work, Pokrovsky called it ‘populism’; indeed, it had a lot in common with the populist movements of the late nineteenth century.57 In this case, the populism consisted not only in ‘going to the peasants,’ but in bringing the music back to share with other intellectuals in the cities. Pokrovsky was the first to view this kind of work as experimental scholarship: previously, no performing group had presented themselves as a laboratory which could help to reveal truths about folk culture. In 1998, Kabanov was still carrying on this tradition by holding ‘laboratories’ in which urban young people would sing alongside village dwellers.58 Pokrovsky wrote in 1980 that the premise for this experiment was that the ‘rules’ which govern participation in any folklore presentation are unwritten and not consciously known. One cannot ask singers why they sing a certain way, or participants in a wedding why they say or do a certain thing. Pokrovsky proposed that, given such a state of affairs, it might be important to study folklore ‘from inside.’ Of course, he wrote, such study is not easy because there is no ‘school’ from which one can learn, and furthermore, anytime an outsider tries to enter a folkloric situation (such as a wedding) his or her presence changes that very situation. Thus, an entire ensemble separate from the village group but learning from and imitating them, would

86

The Origins of the Russian Folk Revival Movement

be able to model the ‘most important laws of folklore presentation,’ to ‘produce the processes and situations which come up in authentic ensembles.’59 In their visits to village ensembles, this experimental group could use their novice status as a way of learning about the music. They would substitute one of their singers for one of a village group’s, sing the song, and ask the group for their reaction. Or they would simply sing the song themselves, ‘as transcribed,’ and ask for the group’s reaction. As Pokrovsky described it, songs learned in this way were often not recognized by the people from whom they were originally collected: when one ‘keeps all the elements of the tradition, that is, when one keeps the melody, the texture, and the rhythm, but takes away the micro-form – the transitional processes between the stable…sounds – then the work is practically not recognized by the folk performers, they see it as belonging to another culture, it loses aesthetic value for them. Even more, to their ear the work sounds very strongly distorted.’60 Pokrovsky’s statement suggests the existence of a large gulf in understanding between village and urban dwellers. To learn a song from notes on paper – no matter how exactly and carefully – was not the same as learning it by doing. To the villagers, music sung from notes was not ‘their music.’ But Smyslova remembered several instances when in fact the villagers did give good advice to their urban ‘students.’ ‘For example, Pokrovsky would ask that I, as a dishkant [descant], would sing instead of their dishkant…. And I remember, when I was in one small village [in a Don Cossack region], khutor’ Iamenskii, the babushka told me, ‘You [should] weave more, weave. Why are you standing still with your voice? Wag it, weave it more.’ And I started to weave, to wander around more with my voice, and I felt that it became easier for the others who were singing with me, and for me, too, of course.’61 Of course the metaphorical, nebulous direction ‘to weave’ (in the sense of zigzag) must have had enormous ideological implications for the former folk chorus soloist, since it involved improvisation while her whole musical education had discouraged spontaneity. As students or apprentices of village singers, this experimental ensemble could do research into the means by which members of a village community learn to sing. It had long been unclear to researchers how Russian folk singers mastered the tradition. It was known that there was no tradition of specific training in singing (such as apprenticeship). There were several known cases when people just ‘started singing,’ with full knowledge of the tradition, in middle age. In general, researchers wondered why the ‘best’ singing collectives, those that sang the most ancient and the most complex repertoires, were largely made up of middle-aged people. Studying the singing traditions of the Don Cossacks, Pokrovsky and Kabanov came up with a theory that the very polyphonic structure of the music itself was ‘educational.’ Less experienced singers would sing along with more experienced singers and learn as they sang. The least experienced members of the

The Origins of the Russian Folk Revival Movement

87

collective could fulfill the singing function of the ‘bass,’ which was fairly straightforward, did not move much, was characterized by ostinato (persistent repetition of a musical phrase) and unison singing. Meanwhile, the ‘masters’ in the group would fulfill one of several functions: they would act as a musical leader, starting the song and singing ‘bass’ but improvising in a masterful way and never repeating the same line twice; or they might be a dishkant, expressing him or herself creatively in a ‘solo’ part above all the other voices; or a ‘dispatcher,’ who moves around and improvises in the realm of the ‘bass’ and ‘tenor,’ and who knits the group together aesthetically.62 One of the methods of analysis utilized by Pokrovsky’s experimental group was an invention that had recently started to be used by musicologists studying choral folk singing – what they called the ‘multi-track recording’. They used several audio cassette recorders simultaneously, each one recording a different member (or two members) of a village singing collective, capturing each individual part in all its variations (they described the technique as ‘multi-track recording’ – ‘mnogokanal’naia zapis’ – although it did not involve separate tracks on a single tape as that term implies).63 Musicologists would transport village singing groups from various parts of Russia to Moscow and Leningrad, and would record the singers at their institutions; or, when the technology, personnel and transportation existed, they would bring the recorders to the performers. Using the recordings, they would painstakingly transcribe each part into Western musical notation. It was transcriptions of this detailed nature that Pokrovsky’s group obtained from Kabanov; they also had their own group recorded on multiple tracks so that their work could be more accurately analyzed.64 (CD tracks 3–5) This gesture of recording themselves might suggest that the Pokrovsky Ensemble singers viewed themselves as taking on the status of folk informants. Indeed, the group went on to teach other newly forming folk music revival groups all over the Soviet Union. However, as Pokrovsky has said, this work in disseminating the craft of authentic Russian folk singing concentrated on creating ‘singing folklorists,’ not in creating imitations of the Pokrovsky singers.65 In their turn, the Pokrovsky Ensemble members were not, strictly speaking, imitating the villagers they learned from, but were trying to discover the secrets of local traditions. As they learned a given song, the Moscow singers did not try to become the person whose part they learned; rather, they tried, as an ensemble, to recreate how the song would sound if they could imbibe the hidden rules of the tradition themselves. They aimed to create a performance of a given song that would theoretically satisfy the villagers from whom it was ‘borrowed.’ The subtlety of this approach partly explains the broad success of the Pokrovsky Ensemble: they satisfied intellectual audiences’ expectations of complexity and freshness because were always creating, always original, always ‘themselves.’ To be sure, for some folklorists and musicologists, being ‘oneself’ in the performance of folk music is wrongheaded because it involves adapting rural

88

The Origins of the Russian Folk Revival Movement

music to the aesthetic tastes of urban audiences. Judgment of the Pokrovsky Ensemble’s approach forms one of the bases of the folklore movement’s main ideological split; I discuss this point in Chapter 4.

Artistic Dissidence For the first five or six years of its existence, the ensemble was underground; and for three or four of those years, the KGB actually prohibited their performances, while at the same time a KGB agent was organizing underground concerts for the group, and was getting large audiences to attend.66 This bizarre twist emphasizes the extent to which dissidence was an essential component of the Soviet system under Brezhnev. While the group was not ‘dissident’ per se, its activities were not officially sanctioned; such was the status of many artists who did not fit into Soviet mainstream culture in that period. Pokrovsky has said that he did not know why the group was not officially allowed to perform: ‘People are always asking me now why we were prohibited, and I can never give them an honest answer. I have to make things up. I say, “It’s because we sang songs that weren’t about the Soviet Union or Communism, and people couldn’t understand the words,” and so on. But I really don’t know why. It just happened.’67 Although the group’s underground status may have come about as a result of chance occurrences, in fact there were good reasons why the official system could not support their activities. Smyslova’s depiction of their concerts in the late 1970s helps to explain both in what ways the group was dissident and in what ways this unofficial status worked to their advantage. They had a dedicated audience, intrigued by that which was forbidden, and their underground status offered them a lot of artistic freedom. For example, Pokrovsky had studied religious music on his own, and introduced spiritual music to the group’s repertoire. ‘We had concerts at the Znamenskii Cathedral near the Hotel Rossiia…which at that time was a concert hall; we gave a concert there every month. And there were legends circulating around Moscow, at the end of the 70s, that some underground ensemble gets together at the cathedral and sings spiritual music.’ Because of the long-standing Soviet persecution of religious expression, the publication of spiritual material was not allowed, not to mention its performance in public. The audience at the underground concerts was loyal and would attend regularly, which permitted Pokrovsky to experiment with different concert programs and methods of presenting folklore. Smyslova’s description of their early concerts is worth quoting in full (with my questions in italics): We showed folk songs, folk theater, songs from various oblasts of Russia, and a spiritual program, and a program of drawn-out songs [protiazhnye pesni]. Drawn-out songs had to be in their own program, since [Pokrovsky] dreamed of singing drawn-out songs from beginning

The Origins of the Russian Folk Revival Movement

89

to end. He’d say, why should we only sing five verses, or only three because it’s too long. Look at the text, why is it that people used to sing it all? And in this program we sang songs from the beginning to the end. How many songs did you sing in such a concert? I’d have to look. But as a rule, not too many. We had to educate the audience…. He’d speak about the songs, where we collected them and from whom, but the content of the song is hard to tell. He’d say, you listen to what the precentor [zapevala – the singer whose solo opening phrase begins a song] sings. Mostly, he sings the whole content, and then it is developed [raspevaetsia]. They sing on additional vowels, a o e i, it’s generally singing on vowels. And the drawn-out song has a lot of this inner development [raspeta vnutri]. He’d say, the content isn’t that important. But as a rule, the precentor will tell you it. For that reason, the audience would sit there and listen to what the precentor said. Did the audience react well to what you sang? Well, we had our own audience, we had prepared them for that. And Pokrovsky never tried to entertain. I see that nowadays, everyone tries to make the public laugh, to entertain them. But he always made their minds work, so that they’d exert themselves. And I think that when a person starts to understand that which he couldn’t understand earlier, which was unattainable for him, there’s a joy in that, and a person starts to feel differently about himself. …[Pokrovsky] was a scholar, so he didn’t have texts learned by rote, written especially for the concert; he improvised the whole time. He’d constantly study new data, his research would show here. And I really loved to listen to his commentary on the songs. Because I always discovered more and more new ideas of his.68 Smyslova’s description suggests that from the beginning, one of the main enterprises of the ensemble was to educate – an important task since the music they were presenting was at first totally unknown to the urban intellectual audiences. Making the concerts into a lecture-demonstration was a means of assuring that they had an audience who would listen appreciatively to their experimental performances; and it was also a means of telling the audience how to listen and why this was important. After all, the kind of folklore Soviet audiences had previously been exposed to was couched in slick, entertaining performances of upbeat dances, patriotic marches and lyrical romances. Anyone could understand it: there were no unfamiliar dialects, no mysteries, no traditions with unspoken complex rules or ancient ritual beliefs. The Pokrovsky version of folklore could have been monotonous or even boring, since it was so unfamiliar and since part of the

90

The Origins of the Russian Folk Revival Movement

tradition often involves the rendition of long texts that might be incomprehensible to urban dwellers. In practice, however, it was not monotonous since the performances underlined and exaggerated certain interesting aspects of the traditions presented; and Pokrovsky’s lectures, which presented theories about the music’s style and the underlying reasons why the tradition evolved the way it did, placed the material into aesthetic, intellectual, historical, and ethnic contexts. Pokrovsky emphasized the relationship between geography and musical style, and drew links between ancient Russian pagan traditions and those of other Slavic peoples.69 In fact, this new presentation of Russian folklore was not only exotic and unfamiliar to audiences, it was also implicitly critical of the notion of folklore that had been propagated by the Soviet system. All by itself, the Pokrovsky Ensemble was redefining the notion of the narod, the Soviet system’s sacred cow. Within the Soviet cultural system, only the Party, and academic institutions with the (blessing of the Party), not individual artists could redefine whole intellectual categories. Yet the image of folklore shown by the Pokrovsky Ensemble was complex, polyphonic, mysterious, exotic, and characterized by excess – far from the symbolic expression of health, labor, optimism and order that the folk choruses represented. The identity that the Pokrovsky Ensemble presented was not that of the New Soviet Man and Woman: these singers created their own identities on stage, emphasizing improvisation, acting on one’s free will (volia), and unconstrained sexuality, not uniformity and asexuality.70 The situation was ironic. An urban intellectual, Pokrovsky, was educating audiences composed of other urban intellectuals – people reared on classical West European arts, who had listened to Beethoven, read Voltaire, and been to the ballet – and who also valued jazz and rock. As Pierre Bourdieu points out, it is precisely intellectuals who have obtained a specific kind of cultural competence through their education, who are able and likely to aestheticize, to consider ‘as form rather than function, not only the works designated for such apprehension, i.e. legitimate works of art, but everything in the world, including cultural objects which are not yet consecrated – such as, at one time, primitive arts, or, nowadays, popular photography or kitsch – and natural objects.’71 In essence, Pokrovsky was consecrating a new object as art. His lectures helped the new audiences appreciate these cultural artifacts in relation to an artistic tradition. With his comments on the structure of the music, the importance of the text versus the melodies, and the like, Pokrovsky called attention to these new works of art as form rather than function. Thus, urban intellectuals began to appreciate folk performance not as something qualitatively different from classical performing arts, but as something just as complex and interesting as composed, modernist music – and as possessing its own equally important aesthetic rules. In short, the aesthetic model presented by the Pokrovsky Ensemble had more in common with modernism than it did with the realism demanded by the Soviet artistic system. In the early twentieth century, visual and performing

The Origins of the Russian Folk Revival Movement

91

artists had turned to ethnographic material as a source for their modernist productions in an attempt to counter the bourgeois cultivation of a ‘stable and “correct” sense of self.’ The culture of the lower classes, associated with the carnivalesque spirit that incorporated spontaneity, crudity, ‘inversion, grotesque body symbolism, festive ambivalence, and transgression,’ lent authenticity to modernist artistic expressions that embodied aesthetic and social protest.72 In an analogous artistic protest, Pokrovsky’s carnivalesque presentation of Russian folk culture opposed the middle-class values of the Soviet art system. Not surprisingly, this version of folk art did not please everyone. Both officials and others in the world of folklore performance found it distasteful, while many young people found it exciting. Shchurov, one of the Pokrovsky Ensemble’s most vocal critics, disapproved of the group’s distortion of Russian traditions. Since Pokrovsky used material that Shchurov himself had seen performed in villages, he readily perceived the difference between how he thought village performers sang or danced, and how the Pokrovsky Ensemble interpreted it. He described several examples: Well, Aleksandr Medvedev and I went [on a folklore expedition] to the River Viveda. And we were present at a competition of chastushka singers in the [village] club. And there the chastushka singers come out one facing the other and start to make fun of each other…and they had high voices, very shrill, and they were having a really good time and were quite mischievous. And Medvedev showed the recording to Pokrovsky. And he made a concert number out of it, which they kept in the repertoire until recently. Two chastushka singers come out with such high, screechy voices, and start to exclaim so fast that you can’t understand a word: ‘de-de-de-de-de-de-da’! [demonstrates]. This device was taken to the absurd, to idiocy. It turns out that people in the audience laugh, but they don’t laugh at the fact that people are making fun of each other, they laugh at the unusual form of a chastushka number…. [Pokrovsky wanted] to show how strange village people are, how strangely they sing. And with that to surprise and shock the city spectator.73 In this and other performances, Pokrovsky made words unintelligible (he also did this with the folk play Tsar’ Maksimilian, for example) in order to increase the exoticism of the performance and, as Shchurov pointed out, to arouse a feeling of alienation or defamiliarization [ostranenie] in the listener. Many times Pokrovsky claimed he made such changes in order to ‘restore’ ancient traditions. That was true of a popular choral number from the village of Foshchevatovo in Belgorod oblast, where Shchurov had done extensive fieldwork.

92

The Origins of the Russian Folk Revival Movement In that village they sing with two choruses, it’s a special form where one [chorus] says, we’ll sing the words [rasskazyvat’], and you sing the chorus, lioli lioli [lioliokat’], and it comes out as a kind of canon. Among the folk, in real life, they sing together and support each other during the singing of the song. But Pokrovsky presented it so that they throw themselves at each other, they kind of fight with each other, like roosters. These go, and then those go, and they jump at each other. But it’s just a concert device, it looks funny and amusing from the audience, but it has nothing to do with truth. It’s again just a stage device to interest and surprise the audience. So it doesn’t have the character of a competition? No. Maybe he simply understood it that way? No…he thought it was like that at one time. That originally it had this form, and he connected it with some traditions in the Balkans, and said that it represented ancient Slavic forms that were now lost, and here he is apparently restoring it and showing it.74

Pokrovsky was interested in uncovering ancient forms, and used contemporary musical and dance performances as a basis for understanding – and imagining – underlying structures. The scholarly basis for this was Pokrovsky’s association in the 1980s with ethnolinguist Nikita Tolstoi, who engaged in ‘reconstruction’ of ancient Slavic culture using folklore, linguistics, and ethnography. Pokrovsky’s attention to the Poles’e region of Belarus and western Russia, for example, was inspired by Tolstoi’s belief that this was an ‘archaic zone’ where one could find evidence of a ‘stable system’ of traditional culture.75 Yet Shchurov and some of the other musicologists I consulted believed that Pokrovsky’s theories had no scientific basis. As a modernist, Pokrovsky allowed himself to experiment, distort, and exaggerate in order to shock a middle-class public reared on middle-brow renditions of classics. Clearly, the allure of the primitive was important for Pokrovsky, and his educated audiences were hooked: they adored the notion that the songs performed on stage were not just ‘numbers,’ songs in a concert, but evidence of the carnival nature of their own cultural roots. An important part of that carnival quality was the implicit sexuality in the Pokrovsky Ensemble’s performances. Many revivalists disliked the manner in which Pokrovsky sexualized the south-Russian dance numbers, and told me that I should not imitate them in my own performances of these songs. For example, Anzhelika Glumova and I watched a video in which the Pokrovsky singers appeared in a concert together with the middle-aged and older members of an ensemble from a village in Belgorod oblast. She

The Origins of the Russian Folk Revival Movement

93

pointed out that when the villagers danced, they moved their arms, legs and spine, but kept their hips straight. The Pokrovsky singers, on the other hand, waggled their hips from side to side and moved so energetically that the women’s breasts shook.76 Speaking of a similar dance song, Kabanov told me that Pokrovsky ‘drives [his singers] into hysteria,’ while Shchurov said ‘he would bring them to thundering rhythms, and they would start to rant and rage on stage…And this would remind one of the dances of a religious sect, they’d drive themselves to a fury, and try to make the audience that way, too, to whip up some kind of crazy tempo with violent rhythms – but that destroys the nature of the folk song.’ With the projection of emotionality, raw sexuality, and a kind of ritualized altered state, Pokrovsky woke up his spiritually sleeping audiences and offered them glimpses of traditions that represented a more primitive version of modern Homo Sovieticus. Zhanna Kabanova agreed that the Pokrovsky Ensemble distorted Russian tradition, but she argued that the distortion was a fortuitous one. The sexuality of the Pokrovsky singers was what drew her – and many others – to Russian folklore in 1980, at age 17. I saw Dmitri Viktorovich [Pokrovsky] and I was dumbfounded, you understand, inside me everything started boiling. Such men [muzhiki] were standing there on the stage, they were so good-looking in those songs, through those songs they showed all their virtues – I had never seen such an energetic mix. There were girls there in whom I admired absolutely everything. You understand? It was such ecstasy. People told me, come on, kid, calm down, your sexual maturation is ahead of schedule, it’ll pass. Yes, it did pass. But I simply remember that if it weren’t for that shock, I wouldn’t have gone into folk singing. He [Pokrovsky], with his open sexuality – yes, one can say that, they were excessively open – he opposed the folk chorus, which was completely sexless, which is absolutely nothing. That is, they all could have been prostitutes in [the folk] chorus, but they so hid it, you understand, behind the folk song, it was so cheesy (nastol’ko mnogo sliunei bylo u nikh), Laura, and false, that I didn’t want to be like them. It was better to be open. To be bright like [the Pokrovsky singers], you understand? Free. I identified with Kabanova’s assessment of the Pokrovsky Ensemble – I, too, had been attracted to several of the performers when I first saw their performance. But I was surprised that she deemed the Soviet folk chorus sexless, because one of its typical traits is the staging of flirtation. In the ‘acting out’ of folk songs, female performers make exaggerated flirtatious gestures to males on stage or the audience; men show off their masculinity through their dancing prowess. For Kabanova, the extremely artificial, staged nature of such gestures robbed them of sexual attractiveness, while the life energy of the Pokrovsky performers created the impression of ‘open sexuality.’

94

The Origins of the Russian Folk Revival Movement

Fig 3.3: Pokrovsky Ensemble in 1978. Pokrovsky(L), Smyslova (R). Apparently it was an approach to sexuality which many young people craved as much as their elders disdained it. In this sense, the Pokrovsky Ensemble and those who were inspired by it mirrored the approach of modernist artists and ethnographers to the ‘primitive’ world: they tapped the world of village culture as a source of wisdom about the body. If Freud argued that civilization protects humans from uncontrolled sexual impulses, many Europeans believed that the corollary was also true: that ‘uncivilized’ people (the lower classes and members of primitive societies) were exempt from the repression of sexuality. Some fantasized that civilized people could overcome their own alienation from their bodies through contact with such cultures. Marianna Torgovnick writes: ‘What the postmodern West seems to want most from the primitive [is] a model of alternative social organization in which psychological integrity is a birthright, rooted in one’s body and sexuality, and in which a full range of ambivalences and doubts can be confronted and defused through the culture’s rituals, customs, and play.’ Margaret Mead, for example, used her study of sexuality in Samoa to comment on the restrictive middle-class attitudes towards sexuality in the United States.77 The young, educated Russians who flocked to Pokrovsky’s performances may likewise have sought a release from the prudishness of the middle-class culture of the Stalin era. Pokrovsky’s redefinition of folk art may also be seen in the context of the contemporary move in the Western art world to change the way ‘primitive

The Origins of the Russian Folk Revival Movement

95

art’ is exhibited in museums. As Torgovnick has written, whereas previously collections amassed as the spoils of colonialism were housed in ethnographic settings in museums of natural history ‘en masse,’ ‘displayed in a semblance of context, as functional pieces,’ exhibits of primitive art today ‘resemble jewelry stores,’ showing objects in glass cases against solid color backgrounds, isolated by dramatic spotlights. ‘The displays aestheticize the objects and present them as the valuable, jewel-like things they have become.’78 While Pokrovsky’s presentation aestheticized folk culture and offered village works of musical art as ‘jewel-like things’ that were valuable because of their aesthetic form and their reference to universal human values, he also retained the ethnographic focus, always framing the pieces as belonging to a local, regional, and Slavic tradition. This ethnographic framing gave a kind of legitimacy to the experimental project of recovering folk art as high art. Certainly, Pokrovsky saw his goal as the restoring of folk art to its proper recognition – in concerts and workshops, scholarly and philanthropic work. He mounted a campaign to make the Soviet government treat village craftspeople as professional artists, and lobbied on behalf of at least one folk singer, Efim Sopelkin, attempting to procure a government salary for him. But as Torgovnick shows, attempts to bring primitive art into a higher realm are not as revolutionary as their authors often believe. Although ‘ “elevation” of primitive works into art is often implicitly seen as the aesthetic equivalent of decolonization, as bringing Others into the “mainstream”,’ still, such promotion of low to high ‘in a sense reproduces, in the aesthetic realm, the dynamics of colonialism, since Western standards control the flow of the ‘mainstream’ and can bestow or withhold the label “art”.’79 Indeed, the raising of ethnographic material to the level of high art was only one of Pokrovsky’s projects. He also did innovative work in the sphere of experimental artistic performance – the cream of the high art world – both at home and abroad. Shchurov reported that when Pokrovsky was just starting out he had told him he wanted to create ‘folk-rock’ since it was popular in the West. To Shchurov this was a betrayal of Russian culture, but Pokrovsky was interested in the connections between musical genres; and he was also interested in making a living, which the group did by creating a version of Russian folk music that would intrigue foreign (particularly Western European and American) audiences. They completed numerous tours abroad in the 1980s and early 1990s, performing in university towns and large cities all over the US, participating in festivals such as the Christmas Revels and a joint Soviet-American music festival with the composer Rodion Shchedrin in Boston in 1988, and conducting workshops with several American folk groups. The group explored the connections between folk and rock, folk and jazz, folk and classical, folk and avant-garde music. Indeed, the loud, ‘aggressive’ voice characteristic of the group, as well as its bold use of improvisation, could be likened to some of the aesthetic principles of rock and jazz, while

96

The Origins of the Russian Folk Revival Movement

the defamiliarization that characterized their concerts linked them with the avant-garde. The ensemble collaborated with the American new-age jazz musician Paul Winter during a concert tour in 1989 and recorded a disc on which every track begins with an a cappella Russian folk song performed by the Pokrovsky Ensemble and ends with the Winter group’s improvisation inspired by the folk song. To this listener, the disc was disappointing because Winter did not sufficiently allow musical interplay to emerge between the two musical improvisational modes – the Pokrovskys’ folk and the Winter Consort’s jazz. Subsequent attempts at fusing Russian folk and jazz music by other groups in the 1990s were musically more successful (see Conclusion, pages 225-8). In other projects, the Pokrovsky Ensemble explored the ways in which their village vocal techniques could be used in folk-based classical pieces by composers such as Shchedrin, Dmitri Shostakovich, Sergei Prokofiev, Musorgsky, and Igor Stravinsky. Contemporary composers Alfred Schnittke, Vladimir Martynov and others approached them with new material. In all of these projects, the aim was defamiliarization, since these pieces were traditionally sung in academic voice. The coup de grace was their research on and performance and recording of a new interpretation of Stravinsky’s modernist composition based upon Russian folk vocal material, Svadebka (‘The Wedding’, 1923, better known in the West by its French title, Les Noces).80 The Soviet line on Stravinsky was that he did not take folklore seriously, and used it only to ‘spice up’ his pieces and ‘shock’ the bourgeois public with the ‘wild exoticism’ of his national culture.81 Pokrovsky countered that cliché by showing in concerts, an academic paper and an unfinished dissertation, that in this composition Stravinsky – without using a single quotation from a song – used ‘folkloric thinking’ based upon the traditions of the southwest Russian wedding. In a sense the modernist Stravinsky was the perfect alter ego to the modernist Pokrovsky, both of whom wished to shock the bourgeois public. As Maria Nefedova, currently co-leader of the ensemble, pointed out, the Pokrovsky interpretation of Svadebka was revolutionary: ‘with The Wedding’ [Pokrovsky] broke through a wall that always existed between folklore…and the ‘higher’ genres – opera, academic music.’82 The group also became involved in several unconventional theater projects: from 1980–82, Pokrovsky and the singers worked with the (subsequently exiled) theater director Iurii Liubimov on an innovative new ‘folk’ production of Aleksandr Pushkin’s play Boris Godunov at the Taganka Theater. The ensemble forged such strong connections with Liubimov that it remained under the sponsorship of the renowned theater after Pokrovsky’s death in 1996.83 The impressive accomplishments of the group in artistic experimentation were an integral part of its appeal to audiences and to would-be folk singers. But despite Pokrovsky’s zeal for dissemination of his methods and material, the ensemble’s descendants by and large operated in a different artistic

The Origins of the Russian Folk Revival Movement

97

realm. While they took from the Pokrovsky Ensemble an eclectic folk repertoire and new methods of learning and singing Russian folk music, almost none of them possessed the artistic breadth, or the electric energy, of their teachers.

Dissemination Livingston wrote that ‘revivals almost always have a strong pedagogical component in order to pass on the tradition in a controlled manner.’ The Pokrovsky Ensemble engaged in pedagogy in a number of ways: as we have seen, it made its concerts into an opportunity for educating audiences. Yet if consecration of a new art form was the Pokrovsky Ensemble’s mission, it understood well that this task could not be accomplished through concerts alone. The oppositional and folk-spirit oriented philosophy of the group dictated that people try this kind of singing for themselves. And people clamored for it: after concerts, audience members who had gotten ‘fired up’ about the music would ask how they could learn to sing it in this manner. As a result, in 1979 Pokrovsky and others from his ensemble formed a ‘Pokrovsky Ensemble Studio’ and registered it as an official club at a House of Culture in Moscow; the official status meant that the studio’s leaders received a small salary for their work. During the 1980s the group had several such studios at whatever Houses of Culture were available: at the Society of the Blind, the Dukat Tobacco Factory, the Red Textile Workers, and the Saliut Factory in Moscow. Every week, 20 to 30 young people ranging in age from 18 to 30 would come to sing, dance, and join a new social circle. When the studios were established, Pokrovsky started to announce them in the ensemble’s concerts, inviting anyone in the audience to attend.84 As Kabanov describes it, the studios were not run like a class or club in folk singing: instead, they were open to anyone, no matter how well or badly they sang. People came one time or many times, as they pleased, and no one kept track of attendance. ‘It was fooling around [balovstvo] – not really, but it wasn’t serious…. This was a kind of experiment – maybe it’ll work, maybe not. No one controlled us or yelled at us.’85 The casual attitude and the notion that anyone could sing were new in the Soviet context. Among the officially-sponsored choirs, even the amateur ones reflected the professionalism of the utopian Soviet society in that they had professional directors, followed a schedule, and had a regular roster of participants. By contrast, in the eyes of the studio leaders, the studio’s approach represented an attitude more typical of folk culture itself: everyone was a participant. Kabanov would later flesh out and implement more intensively this theory that anyone could sing, no matter their given talent. In 1998, he reflected that he was ‘still checking this [thesis] every day’ by having people without a musical ‘ear’ participate in group singing. This experimental, anti-professional attitude reflected the burgeoning movement’s oppositional character, and more

98

The Origins of the Russian Folk Revival Movement

generally exemplified the intelligentsia’s predilection for formal experimentation and rejection of accepted conventions. Like the ensemble itself, which had become a professional group, the studios performed and went on expeditions – except that these amateurs performed for free, and went on expeditions during their leisure time. Out of the Moscow studios came several future members of the professional ensemble, and many of the future leaders and participants in the folklore movement. The Pokrovsky Ensemble also worked on disseminating their music and approach outside of Moscow. After existing as an unofficial performing group for five or six years, the group received a contract with RosKontsert, the Russian Concert Agency, in 1978. This meant that the group would travel and perform all over the country, often in out-of-the-way places. Pokrovsky recalled, ‘We’d have an official performance and no one would come. But the next day, we’d arrange a performance for students in a conservatory or university or college. Students knew about us already. We had discussions, and we started to use the time that we spent in towns to teach students how to work with folksingers. We had expeditions with local students; we started to create groups like our group.’86 Pokrovsky’s comments indicate the extent to which their music required an educated audience. Working people neither knew of nor appreciated their work, but many students did. As I have indicated, the group’s oppositional profile, as well as its intense sound and energetic demeanor, helped it to attract young audiences. But the audiences’ high degree of erudition was also a key factor. This profile was to change in the 1990s, when the revival movement gained more recognition and geographical coverage. At that time, with the increased popularity of things Russian, children of working-class parents began to participate in the activities of local Russian folk-revival ensembles as well, alongside their classmates from middle-class-intellectual homes. In the early years, however, the teachings of the Pokrovsky Ensemble studios were targeted specifically at young members of the intelligentsia. It was as if Pokrovsky sought to make the intellectual less intellectual: less timid, more gregarious, more willing to work and express with his or her hands and body. In sharing his ‘method,’ Pokrovsky would not simply share songs and show how to get material from local villages; he and other leaders of the studios would try to ‘bring the sound out’ of the participants. The notion of bringing out a person’s sound is inherent in the Russian technical term for vocal placement or production, zvukoizvlechenie (literally, ‘the pulling-out of sound’); but the members of the newly forming revival movement used a transitive expression, which implied acting on someone through a process: vynimat’ zvuk iz kogo-to or to bring, take, or pull the sound out of someone.87 In the practice of the ensemble and the studio Pokrovsky did much experimenting with ways in which a person could be made to sing ‘like outdoors.’

The Origins of the Russian Folk Revival Movement

99

The group managed this to the extent that they performed in stadiums without amplification.88 Pokrovsky accepted into the group people who did not know they could sing, including one young woman with a university degree in languages and literature who ‘spoke in a whisper.’89 The process of bringing out the voice involved the same technique as is generally taught for academic or stage singing, but with greater force. The power of the sound was said to reside in the lower abdomen; singers were encouraged to use the muscles in such a way that they could feel a slight engagement of their sexual organs.90 When I visited a rehearsal in Moscow in 1990, Pokrovsky told the women that the technique of such singing was like throwing up, and he demonstrated the physical movement of vomiting. He made one woman get down on her hands and knees and walk around like a cat or dog while singing, in order to feel the force needed to produce the visceral sound.91 Kabanov and many others in the revival movement carried on Pokrovsky’s tradition, so that I heard from more than one leader of a Moscow ensemble fond memories of the time they discovered their voice: ‘Remember when Kabanov brought the sound out of me?’ It was presumed that the voice that was being brought out was a person’s natural voice, the expression of his or her true individuality. Thus, although one of the group’s oft-repeated phrases was ‘sing like in the village,’ it was clear that urban young people were not being asked to sound like 50- or 60-year-old villagers. Instead, they were being asked to produce an emotional, exciting sound, one that stirred them and audiences. According to Kabanov, this was like a theatrical mask; they were fooling themselves when they told themselves that they were imitating local traditions. ‘That was [Pokrovsky’s] fantasy – and thank God it was his fantasy, because you don’t need to copy anything from the old folks, no one would have followed that. Nowadays, children will listen to a little of that just out of curiosity, but they love more to listen to Zhanna [Kabanov’s wife, a teacher of folk singing at an elementary school and at the Gnesin Institute], because they see her, hear her, and that’s it.’ Kabanov referred to a principle that he himself held dear, and which represents a continuation of his work with the Pokrovsky Ensemble: namely, that strict imitation of village traditions is never productive. Urban dwellers cannot become villagers and should not try to do so. ‘One must work with one’s own content,’ Kabanov would say repeatedly in explaining his philosophy to me. This philosophical issue pointing to identity and its implications, and the moral question of how to conduct folk performance, proved to be another point of controversy in the movement. Purist and liberal factions developed. Those who followed the lead of the Pokrovsky Ensemble took a liberal approach to folk culture: they believed that they could perform material from many regional traditions, that nearly any material was fair game as long as it was interesting to audiences, and that exposing audiences to elements of ancient pagan and Christian traditions was worthwhile in and of itself. Meanwhile, the purists tended to specialize in one regional tradition,

100

The Origins of the Russian Folk Revival Movement

mastering it as well as possible; they believed that certain material (particularly material with hints of eroticism, or songs that originated in written traditions, such as romances) was not valuable and should not be shown on stage; thought that entertainment was not a worthy goal; and finally, attempted to educate audiences rather than simply to expose them to Russian folk material. I explore the philosophical differences between these two basic types in Chapter 4. What follows is a discussion of the concepts that were important to the founding members of the movement, and today are held in common by almost all revivalists.

Syncretism and Collectivism [sobornost’] Two central concepts for the folklore revival movement were syncretism, the view that all folk phenomena are inextricably related; and collectivism (sobornost’ – a central concept in Slavophilism), the notion that Russian rural culture is collective in nature, and that folk traditions necessarily reflect that social structure. The Russian folk revival movement is itself syncretic in that it is more than a revival of Russian folk-music traditions. Revivalist performing groups that only sing and play instruments are very few; limitation to music alone is characteristic of some of the professional groups (e.g. the Moscow group Rusichi). The majority of the amateur groups involve themselves in many aspects of village traditions, such as costume (including weaving and embroidery), everyday life, cooking, childcare, healing (including incantations and herbalism), craft making, holiday rituals, folk theater, dance, and tale telling. Their performances reflect many of these interests. As Smyslova described, the Pokrovsky Ensemble’s early concerts represented many aspects of village life: for example, the group researched and performed folk theater pieces such as The Boat, Kostroma, and Tsar Maximilian. On their field expeditions, they learned how to dance in the local manner; subsequently, in their performances, they always danced those songs that were originally accompanied by dancing (dance songs, pliasovye). Unlike the Russian folk choruses, they did not employ a choreographer to re-arrange steps from village traditions into a harmonious stage piece;92 the steps and movements were not done uniformly and in unison; and they did not employ a separate group of dancers to do the dances. Just as in a village, everyone in the ensemble danced and sang or played instruments; all dance movements were improvised according to the local style. Furthermore, the group learned about local holidays and ancient pagan and Christian practices and beliefs, and Pokrovsky talked about these in his lectures, linking them with the song traditions. Often the group acted out rituals in their concerts (for example, Christmas rituals or wedding scenes). They also incorporated into concerts verbal texts (fairy tales or humorous tales) told in dialect. This approach was continued by the other ensembles formed according to

The Origins of the Russian Folk Revival Movement

101

the Pokrovsky model. In 1998–9, I was repeatedly told by ensemble leaders that true folk performers do not ‘specialize’ in one aspect of the tradition. If a man is a master singer, chances are he can dance well, play a clay flute, tell stories, whittle toy figurines, and weave birch-bark sandals. If the master is a woman, in addition to singing, dancing, and telling stories, she might be able to play pan pipes [kugikly], calm a crying baby with an incantation, find the right herbs to heal a cough, knit wool socks, and weave rugs. For that reason, many of the youth ensembles are run in such a way that everyone learns to do many aspects of the folk arts, with a gender division. For instance, in the Moscow children’s Veretëntse (Little spindle) folklore school, the boys become proficient in sword fighting, folk theater declamation, and playing folk horns [rozhki] while the girls learn to play pan pipes and make costumes, and become acquainted with folk methods of child care. The urban children learn in rehearsals and classes what rural children of their gender might have learned, in previous years, through exposure to adults’ activities. In the ensemble, children of both genders learn to sing and dance, but they focus on different traditions in their same-sex classes: the boys immerse themselves in Cossack men’s singing while the girls learn the songs that make up a wedding cycle.93 As the director of this school, Elena Krasnopevtseva, pointed out in a 1990 article, learning several aspects of a tradition helps students to understand it more deeply and to become more proficient in those aspects. That is, as students learn the basic rhythmic structure of the folk song in a particular locale, they also find that similar structures are present in dance, in instrument playing, and in the patterns of woven belts, embroidery, or wood-carving. ‘Assimilation of a new, more difficult (in terms of material) type of practice is supported by the fact that the child already knows the hidden general structures of the new material.’ Eventually, because of their broad and deep experience of the tradition, students are able to become masters in specific areas. ‘Because folklore is a syncretic culture, its instruction has an orientation from the whole to the parts’; students must start with a sense of the whole in order to begin to focus on the details. This philosophy of training goes against the grain of standard methods of music education in Russia, which train technical skills separately from performance.94 In the syncretic approach, performance and technical skills are never separate, but skill grows out of participation in performance. Krasnopevtseva’s article linked syncretism with collectivism, showing that the two are inseparable parts of folklore and also of the educational process: in learning folklore, ‘the orientation [from the whole to the parts] is realizable only through learning in groups [ansamblevoe obuchenie], both in instrument playing and in singing. In learning through this oral method one must first and foremost pay attention to the general emotional character of creating together, and only later give attention to the details.’95 She underlined not only the group character of Russian folklore, but the emotional content of group activity.

102

The Origins of the Russian Folk Revival Movement

This orientation towards group creative activity lay at the foundations of the folk music revival movement. Although Krasnopevtseva did not use the term sobornost’ (collectivism), other revivalists do refer to it specifically.96 Slavophiles argued that by nature Russians live collectively; they benefit from identifying with the group rather than considering their interests separately from those of the group.97 This concept was applied to Russian village music-making as well; in the early twentieth century Lineva wrote: A folk choir…consists of singers who pour out into the improvisation their own feeling, who each strive to display their own personality, but at the same time care about the beauty of the whole performance. Even the best folk singers do not like to sing alone. ‘You can’t sing alone,’ I often heard, ‘it’s better in an artel.’ This expression ‘to sing in an artel’ is very characteristic of the folk style of singing. In a singing artel every member is both a performer and a composer…. If the ideal of a disciplined chorus is the submission of the whole to the personality of the conductor, then a folk chorus represents, on the other hand, the free merging of many personalities into one whole…. A folk chorus sings not ‘like one person’ but like many people, inspired by their common feeling of love for the song, pouring out into it their grief and joy.98 Lineva’s pronouncement negotiates a paradox: every singer expresses his or her individual personality, yet each one gives his or her attention, love, and care to the whole. This idea became a leitmotiv of the folk revival movement in the late twentieth century, and formed another contrast to the way Soviet folk choruses performed. If, in the Soviet folk chorus, the push toward professionalism tended to promote certain individuals as soloists, then these revivalist singing groups eschewed solos, soloists, and all kinds of specializations and hierarchies in favor of group singing in which everyone participates. If Soviet-style folk singing in choruses involved submitting to the direction of the conductor, then revivalist groups sang without a conductor, and often without obvious leadership. In fact, the revivalists eschewed even the terminology of the Soviet folk choruses: their groups were not ‘choruses’ but ‘groups’ or ‘ensembles.’99 The Pokrovsky Ensemble’s group structure did not necessarily reflect the notion of collectivism, since it had a clear leader.100 However, in the musical context, the leadership shifted; the group was not conducted by Pokrovsky and not every song was led by him (often the precentor, the zapevala, fulfills the function of a musical leader, and Pokrovsky was not always the precentor). Also in terms of music, the group initiated an important ritual that helped to create a musical semblance of sobornost’. The group began every rehearsal by singing a single pitch in unison (often on the vowel ‘e’) while standing in a circle. This was very different than the scales and exercises used in Western-oriented singing groups to warm up the voice. Kabanov remembers: ‘I thought it was nonsense, anyone can sing one note,

The Origins of the Russian Folk Revival Movement

103

but exercises, scales, that’s something! But ‘eeeeeeeh’ [demonstrates], what’s in holding that? But there’s so much there to work on!’ As Kabanov analyzes it, the use of unison and the attention to breath were probably two of Pokrovsky’s greatest contributions to folk singing practice. Together, these two practices created a group that was emotionally knitted together: ‘In unison there is a whole world. There are overtones, there is coordination of yourself with the ensemble, you feel another person, you adjust, you’re always in dialogue. There’s protection: you protect and you are protected with the use of that circle. And there’s a play of vowels, there’s attention to breathing, he’d say, “breathe with your abdomen, the lower the better, breathe out”.’101 Probably the kind of emotional closeness Kabanov talked of here was another reason for the Pokrovsky Ensemble’s success in performing. Group members who felt themselves ‘protected’ in this way were likely able to take risks, to expose themselves on stage, to be emotionally open to the audience. According to Kabanov, however, it was not the unison technique alone that caused the feeling of protectedness. It was in the nature of folk performance and the folk song for the individual to feel protected in the context of the collective. In sobornost’, one does not feel the group as a hindrance to one’s freedom; rather, one feels that one’s relation to the collective provides the safety that allows the expression of individuality. Such a sense of collectivity was a goal, if not a reality, to many of the groups in the folklore revival movement in the 1980s and 1990s. Many used the Pokrovsky technique of beginning every practice by singing a single tone in unison. Whether or not sobornost’ was created through this ritual, the existence of common rituals (such as the unison singing) throughout the movement helped to link the individual performing groups into a coherent ‘movement’ with its own traditions. Indeed, as I will argue, although this movement was intended to ‘preserve’ Russian folklore, in reality one of its most important features consists in its creation of a culture and a folklore of Russian folk revival.

Regional Roots and Genetic Memory Besides local village singing traditions, Pokrovsky was interested in ‘roots’ – regional heritage. The Pokrovsky Ensemble concerts were designed to get people thinking about their ethnographic heritage in a different way than they had previously. Apparently, this campaign was successful: Pokrovsky partly attributed the group’s popularity to the fact that they gave audiences a sense of national identity based upon an ethnographically defined regional identity. Before, what was supported and what was put on the stage as serious culture was something that looked or sounded Russian, but was really just a Russian variant of Western culture…By contrast, we were showing something that was born in Russia; something that had roots in

104

The Origins of the Russian Folk Revival Movement Russia. And most important – we didn’t sing Russian folk songs. We sang Smolensk songs, Belgorod songs, Don Cossack songs. The intelligentsia wouldn’t have accepted us if we had presented Russian music merely as ‘Russian.’ We – and our audiences – were very far from being nationalists.102

In other words, the audiences were by and large composed of urban artistic intelligentsia who tended to be politically liberal. He implied that although these people were not nationalists, they were hungry for a sense of identity that was ‘truly’ Russian, not having its roots in Western culture. The Russian folk choruses had offered a version of Western culture; but the new revivalist ensembles were giving a glimpse of Russia’s cultural roots, which were regional in nature. For Pokrovsky it was not enough to know if one was Russian or Ukrainian; he wanted to know where one’s ‘people’ were from. Only then could one know one’s roots. Pokrovsky would say that he himself had Cossack roots and attributed his interest and aptitude for Cossack music to this fact. Smyslova’s mother had been from the Don River region, so she also said this was why she felt an affinity for Don Cossack traditions. Smyslova remembered that in the late 1970s they took two new women into the ensemble, one studying to be an actress and the other a literature and language student. It turned out that the actress was from Minsk (the capital of Belarus), and Pokrovsky wanted her to sing Western Russian songs. He said, ‘we need to look for our common Slavic roots at the border with Belarus.’ So they went as an ensemble to this area to study this style (unfortunately, in 1986 the area received heavy doses of radiation from the Chernobyl’ accident, but not until the group had collected sufficient material to include in their repertoire). As for the literature student who spoke ‘in a whisper,’ Pokrovsky tried to find ‘her’ tradition. ‘It turned out that her father was from Belgorod oblast, and when she went for the first time to Belgorod oblast, never having been in a village, and just went as if to her…unknown relatives, where her father is from – it turned out that she had a colossal voice.’103 The implication was that if one could ascertain one’s regional roots, one would naturally feel ‘at home’ in the indigenous traditions from that area – and might find one’s true voice. This notion of regional ‘roots’ probably had its origins, again, in opposition. Pokrovsky’s comment above makes clear that he meant to define Russian culture against the mainstream Soviet-inherited definition of it. Whereas Soviet nationalism implied a closed notion of tradition that was inscribed inside a master narrative of the nation’s role on the world stage, for Pokrovsky tradition was ‘open’ – it was a potential that was realized when an individual discovered his or her ethnographic roots. This notion of an open tradition with a regional basis was connected with the basic aesthetic style of the ensemble: for Pokrovsky, to distort a given tradition by exaggerating its most aesthetically complex or brilliant aspects guaranteed that that

The Origins of the Russian Folk Revival Movement

105

tradition would be recognized as a viable art form in the world of high art. To look at it another way, the polyphonic, mysterious, excessive presentation of folk art guaranteed the material’s (and the group’s) artistic fertility – and hence preservation of the tradition. Further, to set different local or regional traditions side by side in concerts meant that all such traditions were seen as equal in value, and equally aesthetically appealing. Although Pokrovsky sought the ‘true nature’ of Russian or Slavic identity by searching for Slavic roots near the border of Belarus, the group’s performances of regional styles comprised an attempt to question and redefine Russianness and Slavicness. The result was not a monolithic notion of a region or a nation but a modernist pastiche. Following Pokrovsky, most groups in the folklore revival movement held local or regional identity to be a central concept; many revivalists attributed their interest or affinity toward a given tradition to their family roots. Yet unlike the Pokrovsky ensemble, many of these groups adopted the ‘museum’ approach and tried to master a single regional tradition (or a few traditions) hoping that close study would produce a closer copy. They had adopted the notion of regionalist roots without espousing Pokrovsky’s playful aesthetic style. In fact this approach to regionalism was often coupled with the kind of nationalism that Pokrovsky decried. Many of these purist regionalists adhere to a mythic notion of ‘genetic memory’, according to which every Russian possesses unconscious knowledge of folk traditions that can (and should) be awakened through exposure to folklore. Whereas Pokrovsky understood tradition as ‘that which must be distorted in order to be preserved’, this essentially Romantic nationalist view conceives of Russian treadition as a fixed object of study. This stance is exemplified by the work of Moscow ensemble Cossack Circle, which only performs music of Cossacks, and does so in an extremely ‘authentic’ manner-presenting tradition as relic.104 In 1988 the ensemble’s leader, Volodia Skuntsev, elucidated the ideological goals of ensembles like his: ‘We need to wake up the genetic memory of our compatriots any way we can, to pester them, even surprise them with “memories”. It’s impossible that our people would agree to the substitution of our culture, with its deep, thousand-year old roots, for someone else’s defiantly garish unceremonious,... in short, foreign culture. But that disastrous process of substitution is ongoing’.105 Here Skuntsev repeats a commonplace in the mythology of Russian nationalism and Slavophilism: that Russian culture is at risk of disapperaring because of invading foreign cultures, but that Russians will not allow this to happen, because their culture lies deep in their collective memory. Such a view became popular in the Russian nationalist revival of the glasnost era; the emphasis on Russia’s renewal through folk culture became a cornerstone for folk revivalists during the post-Soviet era.

4

Revival and Identity after Socialism

During the 1970s and early 1980s the folklore revival movement opposed the government-sponsored version of folklore and remained loosely organized and free-wheeling; in the late 1980s and 1990s that situation changed. With glasnost, preservation of the national heritage became something of a buzzword, and revivalists succeeding in winning some governmental and popular attention to their concerns. By the late 1990s not only oppositional revivalists, but nearly everyone in the folk performance field, used the language of revival. Yet it is debatable whether the popular performance of folk music and dance became more oriented toward preservation. In some respects it remained a cliché that had changed little since the Soviet era. As one critic observed, ‘Communist kitsch has found a solid niche in Russian popular culture.’1 Meanwhile, revivalist leaders needed to search for a new identity for their ‘youth folklore movement’ in the new economic and political system. Would the movement still be oppositional, and if so, whom or what would revivalists oppose? How would revivalists – concerned with preserving a precious aspect of the Russian past – deal with the onslaught of products, images, and ideas from the West during the transition to a market economy? Although many embraced new sources of funding and were willing to cater to the demands of a broader audience, others maintained a purist approach and shied away from any semblance of showiness. The result was a split between two camps within the movement.

Folk Performance in Post-Soviet Mainstream Culture The legacy of Soviet culture was heavily prominent in post-Soviet culture, especially in the mid- to late-1990s. Audiences seemed nostalgic for Sovietstyle kitsch; burlesques of Soviet symbols belonged only to ‘a few subcultures.’2 In the minds of many Russians, folk performance was still associated with the professional folk singers who had made successful solo careers within the Soviet system, such as Ludmilla Zykina and Nadezhda Babkina (and her ensemble, Russian Song – Russkaia pesnia), and professional folk music and dance ensembles like the State Academic Kuban

Revival and Identity after Socialism

107

Cossack Choir, the State Academic Piatnitsky Russian Folk Choir, and the State Academic Moiseev Ensemble of Folk Dance. With the addition of the new-generation pop-folk star Nadezhda Kadysheva (and her group, Golden Ring – Zolotoe kol’tso), these singers and groups dominated mainstream folk during the post-Socialist period, and took advantage of expanded opportunities for self-marketing. The new market consisted of private sources of funding, both Russian and foreign. Performers listed private companies and radio stations as sponsors for their concert tours. For example, Kadysheva’s 1998 concert season was partly sponsored by a cosmetics company: a box of perfumed soap with her picture was offered as a souvenir for concert-goers. Kadysheva received awards and acclaim both in Russia and abroad; she claims that hers is the only group to have performed in all the Disneylands in the world.3 The style of some of these mainstream performances has become more heavily influenced by Western pop performers. While Zykina remained mostly within the Soviet folk style she helped make famous, Babkina added an electronic pop beat and bass accompaniment to many of her folk songs, producing a genre dubbed ‘folk show’; her 1995 album Cossack Nadia was entirely in the estrada manner. Kadysheva’s 1998 performances resembled those of American pop star Madonna in their use of solo and ensemble dancing and evocative stage decorations. Costumes consisted of exaggerated, updated, colorful, shiny, and heavily decorated versions of folk dress; the band was a mixture of pop and folk instruments. At one point in the concert I attended, the balalaika player hopped around the stage like a rock guitar player. Most striking was the running commentary by the band leader, Aleksandr Kostiuk, Kadysheva’s husband. Throughout the concert, he pumped up the audience to a frenzy by appealing for expressions of appreciation: his repeated cries of ‘Nadezhda Kadysheva for the first time in the Kremlin!’ were met with wild applause and catcalls, and during the concert Kadysheva received several dozen bouquets from audience members.4 There was something ritualistic about this star worship. Obviously the audience of well-dressed middle-aged people and children did not attend the concert simply to hear folk music. They would not have been satisfied had they wandered into the staid, educational performances of most revivalist groups – nor would Kadysheva’s sponsors have poured as much money into them. Instead, sponsors and audience were drawn to the pop star as much for her beauty, outrageous costumes, energy, and celebrity as for her catchy arrangements of well-known Russian folk songs. The professional singers cultivate a different aesthetic than do the amateur revival groups, yet they situate themselves as revivalists who preserve and promote Russian folk music. While all three singers mentioned above belong to the world of pop music, they hold degrees in Russian folk singing from the Gnesin Academy, an institution whose stated goals since the 1960s have included the preservation of authentic Russian folk music and dance. The singers’ professional activities reflected this ethic: in 1989

108

Revival and Identity after Socialism

Babkina took advantage of increased support for folk-oriented activities to establish a school of folk arts with the same name as her ensemble. In 2001 she built the Moscow State Musical Theater of Folklore ‘Russian Song’ whose stated purpose is to showcase the folk musics of all the peoples of Russia and to teach folklore to children; she hoped ‘the seeds of Russianness that I try to plant in their consciousness will sooner or later bear fruit.’5 Zykina taught at the Gnesin Academy and was on the board of directors of many government and private organizations dedicated to cultural preservation.6 Kadysheva’s group bore the name National Theater of Folk [narodnyi] Music and Song, which suggests a serious orientation to folk music, although in an interview she did admit that her group is not a ‘folklore ensemble.’7 Because these mainstream performers market themselves as preservationists, and because some of their methods indicate genuine desire to support what they view as Russian folk culture, I argue that in the post-Soviet context they constitute a parallel strand of folk revival. While the Pokrovsky Ensemble’s impetus gave birth to a grassroots movement that garnered appeal among the artistic intelligentsia, the Soviet cultural sphere – with its emphasis on star-worship and professionalism – formed a genre of folk performance characterized by tremendous popular allure, solid ties with pop music and estrada, and use of commercial performing venues and recording and broadcast opportunities. I will refer to this kind of folk performance as ‘mainstream’ or ‘popular entertainment-oriented’ folk performance and the other as the ‘oppositional’ folk revivalist strain or (as they call themselves) the ‘youth folklore movement.’ Unlike the mainstream, the oppositional movement typically lacks resources and remains limited in scope – ordinarily the audiences are composed of people who are themselves involved in folk performance. Yet increasingly in the 1990s and new millennium, oppositional revivalists are beginning to learn how to attract private business sponsorship. It is clear that in the post-Soviet period the ability to procure such funding is linked to one’s ability to accumulate cultural capital by evoking Russianness – that is, by ‘performing Russia.’ The funding and cultural capital situations in postSoviet Russia are beautifully illustrated by the parallel stories of two documentary television programs that ran regularly in the 1990s. One series of documentaries about authentic Russian village folk practices, called World Village, began in 1991 and was taken off the air in 1997 because it did not fit the optimistic, entertaining profile – with a heavy Russian theme – that the studio bosses wanted. The director of the series, Moscow Conservatory-educated Sergei Starostin, tried to show ‘live episodes from the lives’ of villagers with as little commentary as possible, which sometimes made the programs a bit challenging to understand, though they were very artistically done.8 By contrast, the light-hearted, celebratory program called Play, Accordion! featured a showy approach to folk music as it presented short

Revival and Identity after Socialism

109

segments of interviews with master accordion players or village ensembles, examples of their playing and singing, and mass musical gatherings set outdoors against a picturesque rural backdrop. Moscow Institute of Culture-educated Genadii Zavolokin produced the weekly show from 1986 until his tragic death in a car accident in 2001, and it had (and still has) a devoted audience, especially among pensioners and village-dwellers.9 Explaining the popularity of Play, Accordion and the lesser popularity experienced by World Village, Starostin said: ‘We couldn’t exploit a symbol. Zavolokin exploits a symbol’ – the accordion, a ‘national symbol’ of folk culture. ‘[But] we worked on a local level: if I talked about the wedding, I didn’t talk about the wedding in Russia in general, I talked about it in a particular village in Riazan oblast.’10 According to Starostin, folk revivalists working in the sphere of popular culture simplistically ‘exploit symbols’ of Russianness, while the oppositional revivalists avoid the use of broad symbols by staying close to the specifics of a particular local tradition. But not all oppositional revivalists stay close to a specific tradition, and it is perhaps difficult to avoid ‘exploiting a symbol.’ Starostin’s program itself, though it did situate details of folk culture in particular geographical locations, still mythologized folk culture by emphasizing that a unique treasure is preserved by the wise village dwellers who are its guardians (see Chapter 8 for more discussion of current uses of television documentaries). Ultimately, both the popular-culture and the highbrow versions of folk revival cultivate and manipulate cultural symbols. The kind of myth-making espoused by oppositional folk performers is not ‘better’ than that of the popular-entertainment oriented ones; in fact, as Bausinger has argued, modern popular culture may be in some sense more authentic because it fulfills some of the important functions of folklore, such as the consolidation of groups and identities. Folklorism that narrowly clings to authenticity by treating ancient traditions as sacred relics paradoxically can cause folklore to lose some of its genuine social functions and become a conscious, sentimentalized presentation.11 In post-Soviet Russia, this is true of both mainstream and oppositional folkloristic groups. Starostin said he learned a lesson from his experiences with the television documentary: if folklore was to be shown to a mass audience, it had to be easy to understand. What Zavolokin showed on his documentary and what Kadysheva shows on stage at her concerts is easily digestible, familiar, and upbeat, pleasing alike to children, the over-50s, and young people raised on MTV videos. Clearly, in order to appeal to a broader spectrum of the public and to attract necessary revenues, folk revivalists have had to learn either to be like their more showy counterparts, or to work alongside them.

A Festival of Folklore Collectives of Russia As oppositional revivalists increasingly began to work together with mainstream folk performers, their performance manner changed. The Pokrovsky

110 Revival and Identity after Socialism Ensemble had held its concerts alone or together with performers of ‘high art’ genres such as poetry and jazz, and presented an artistically ‘open,’ modernistic take on folklore; but in the 1990s both oppositional and mainstream groups endeavored to depict ‘Russianness.’ The oppositional groups eschewed the folk-pop and folk-kitsch styles pursued by mainstream groups, yet fought among themselves about the correct way to present Russianness on stage – a goal that precludes the kind of artistic experimentation characteristic of modernism. In this new context in which mainstream and oppositional groups were vying for cultural capital, they mutually influenced each other’s performance style. Mainstream groups looked less uniform and emulated some of the methods of the oppositional groups, while many of the latter discarded the academic ‘concert-lecture’ approach and aimed to entertain and entice audiences. The nationally broadcast opening and closing performances of the Fourth Annual Moscow ‘Folklore Spring’ Festival, which took place 20–24 April 1999, showed the resulting spectrum of folk performance styles. The festival was sponsored by Gazprom, the gas company that in 1998 produced 94 percent of Russia’s gas and sat on a quarter of the world’s proven gas reserves; the state owned 40 percent of its stock.12 Other sponsors included Gazprom’s financial offshoot, Gazprom Bank, a group of companies under the name Aktseptnyi Dom, three radio stations – Radio Rossii, Ekho Moskvy, and Radio Retro – and the state television company, Telekanal Rossiia. The festival was organized by faculty from the Gnesin Russian Academy of Music in Moscow, and featured performing ensembles from all over Russia, including 5 professional choirs and dance ensembles, 30 student and amateur groups, and 11 groups sponsored by Gazprom. The Gnesin Academy played a very interesting mediatory role in the organization of this event, evidence of the event’s broad ideological spectrum and wooing of commercial sources. For decades, some professors at the academy have served in dual capacities as teachers of the mainstream folk style and as active members of the oppositional folk revival movement. In this situation, they worked alongside the event’s corporate sponsors and media consultants to produce slick performances that were well-publicized and broadcast through television and radio to a mainstream audience. Meanwhile, they invited most of the best oppositional-style groups to perform and teach workshops at the festival. The organizers claim that they support all kinds of folklore performance; yet the festival favored a ‘showy’ approach in its televised opening and closing concerts, while simultaneously enacting the message that flashy groups needed to learn from their academic colleagues. The performances at the festival encompassed most of the differing philosophies in the folk revival movement today, and provided a setting for dialogue between leaders of the movement – dialogues that were enacted in their performances and verbalized during workshops and in conversations off stage, in corridors and cafeterias.

Revival and Identity after Socialism

111

An initial performance both established the festival’s revivalist philosophy and set the tone of ideological and commercial kitsch. In front of the closed curtain bearing the insignias of the festival’s sponsors, a male actor dressed in peasant garb came on stage to the sounds of Russian Orthodox church bells and a Russian folk orchestra. As colored lights played on the curtain behind him, the actor pronounced a melodramatic speech in archaic poetic language, praising the strength and importance to Russia of the folk song, and describing how the folk song had been vilified – recalling the ‘Death of the Folk Song’ argument and the Soviet-era commonplace that the Tsarist government did not preserve folklore.13 This kitsch used all possible means to approximate high art without actually challenging the audience to think for itself in the way that high art aims to do. The MCs who followed the peasant actor made clear that the festival’s tone was to be optimistic and inclusive: if there was an unnamed foe of folklore, it existed outside the confines of this event. They stated that the Russian people did, in fact, value their priceless heritage, and were keeping it alive to this day: Male MC:…probably from our very childhood, as soon as we start to comprehend the world, even up until now, we immediately fall into, are immersed into the incredible world of songs, folk tales, byliny, everything that is called by the beautiful, majestic word folk epic…it’s habitual as air…but in reality it’s penetrated with great spirituality. Female MC: Because it shows up in everything…first and foremost in the reverent attitude of our people to the surrounding nature, to the universe, to God. This speech directly recalled Soviet clichés about folklore (but with a postSoviet twist in the mention of God). The notion that folklore is ‘habitual as air’ did not betoken a broad definition of folklore but rather a romantic notion common in Soviet and late-nineteenth-century pronouncements that Russians are innately more ‘folkloric’ than other nationalities, and have always loved and cherished their folklore despite adverse conditions.14 This myth of the continuation of folk tradition despite obstacles is an important one in post-Soviet Russian culture, and can be seen in the inclusion of folk song and dance performance in everything from commercials to political events. The post-Soviet version also differed from the Soviet cliché in reinforcing a trademark rather than an official State ideology. When the MCs proclaimed that this festival was intrinsically related to the ‘revival of the nation, the revival of its economy, the revival of the national consciousness,’ the insignias of Gazprom and other sponsors prominently displayed on the stage served to complete the association of priceless heritage with future prosperity. Indeed, Gazprom’s sponsorship of the festival clearly grew out of

112

Revival and Identity after Socialism

its desire to cultivate its image as ‘Russia’s “last treasure” and springboard for Russia’s future rise.’15 In a sense, Gazprom performed a role similar to that of the Communist Party during the Soviet period: it bestowed support and conferred meaning on all proceedings. Yet here the ‘Party’ was a private business that wished to advertise its name and associate itself with Russian values in order to increase its cultural capital. Yet of course, this commercialization of folklore went unstated; in fact the rhetoric of the actor and the MCs exemplified what Bausinger has identified as the essential stance of folklorism: to pretend that the ‘real issue’ is tradition, denying ‘the connection between culture and industry.’16 Meanwhile, in reality revivalists – the organizers of and participants in this event – are in post-Soviet Russia completely dependent upon this realm of commercialism and technology for their livelihoods and for the means to accomplish their goals of preservation and education.17 The organizers of the festival presented folklore in a way they knew would be expected and appreciated by the mainstream audiences Gazprom wished to reach – which was by and large the one that was made ubiquitous in the Soviet period. Yet even if the style of many of the presentations reflected the Soviet approach, there were clear signs of the cultural changes that happened during and after glasnost. The first two musical numbers emphasized the roles of Orthodoxy and avant-garde culture in the new post-Soviet era. The Gnesin Academy Folk Choir performed a Russian Orthodox hymn urging ‘Holy Russia’ to ‘preserve the Orthodox faith.’ The students’ singing of a religious song did not have so much a religious as a nationalist character, which could be seen in their folk costumes, the song’s reference to ‘Holy Russia,’ and the fact that the song was a later (nineteenth century) composition, composed specifically to encourage patriotic sentiment.18 After the hymn, the Gnesin students presented a rarely performed modernist vocal piece by Igor Stravinsky, based upon folk music: Podbliudnyia (literally, ‘Saucers,’ but better known in English as Four Russian Peasant Songs, 1917). By performing this piece (and in folk rather than classical voice placement), the Gnesin Academy showed its updated, non-Soviet take on folklore and its place in Russian music – in essence, they defined themselves as oppositional revivalists, following in the footsteps of the Pokrovsky Ensemble, which had also performed Podbliudnyia19 Displaying its academic, ethnographic orientation, the concert featured the performances of some respected oppositional revivalists. Ensemble Volia (Freedom) of the Voronezh Conservatory was especially striking as it sang a drawn-out song (protiazhnaia) and dance song from the villages where it does fieldwork. The participants’ singing, gestures, dancing, and costumes were nearly indistinguishable from those one would hear and see from elders in the source villages. Even at this writing two years later, when I watch their performance on the videotape I made in 1998 I am moved by the strength of their voices, the complicated polyphony they created, the ease of their spontaneous gestures, and the understated joy they expressed in their

Revival and Identity after Socialism

113

performance. These performers have not simply copied the songs and dances they study; they have assimilated them and made them, in some sense, their own. (CD track 6) An even greater degree of what Andrei Kabanov calls ‘radiance’ (izluchenie) was evident in the performance of Stanitsa, the professional Cossack ensemble of Volgograd, composed of professional singers and former and current students at the Volgograd branch of the Samara State Academy of Culture and the Arts. Besides its urban members, the ensemble also includes a ‘master’ singer, a young man who grew up in Cossack village tradition and learned to sing from his relatives. Stanitsa’s six female and eight male singers performed two musically difficult Cossack drawn-out songs; the manner of performance reflected the serious subject matter of the texts, yet the performers expressed their individual feelings through posture, and hand and arm gestures. The overall impression was one of simultaneous dignity and warmth. The ensemble won the audience’s loyalty with a romance in waltz time, widely known in Russia as ‘I believed, I believed’ (‘Verila, verila’), during which the group’s leader, Ol’ga Nikitenko, constantly appealed to the audience with arm gestures to join in singing the refrain. By the middle of the song the audience was singing audibly; they burst into applause when one of the female members of the ensemble, dressed in a simple calico cotton skirt and blouse – traditional Cossack costume from the late nineteenth century – began Fig 4.1: Ensemble Stanitsa

114

Revival and Identity after Socialism

waltzing with the slick-looking male MC wearing a satiny shirt and pleated trousers. (Figure 4.1; CD track 7) Yet such spontaneity formed a stark contrast with the performance of students and graduates from the Petrozavodsk Music School, who presented arranged, choreographed folk songs accompanied by a small folk instrument ensemble (composed of six male players), in the style of the Soviet folk chorus. The eight women singers wore nearly identical costumes, featuring brilliant colors and simplified decorations, sang with a unified, bright sound, and danced with well-rehearsed and synchronized movements. During one song with a text about a girl noticing a good-looking boy fishing at the local pond, the performers acted out a similar story: some of the girls pretended to gossip while some of the male instrumentalists strode towards the girls, trying to attract their attention. At one point the two accordionists alternated playing the melody at two different speeds, in a kind of instrumental ‘duel.’ The girls ‘preferred’ the faster rendition and flocked to that accordionist. The song text was repeated from the beginning, and the music picked up tempo and changed from straight three-part harmony to a more complicated vocal arrangement. The girls waggled their heads and shoulders as they danced. During one dance segment they performed complicated formations and steps with upper body in a classic pose from the vocabulary of Soviet folk dance: arms akimbo, fists placed forward on the hips so that the shoulders and elbows come forward.20 Their final bows – they bowed twice, striking different poses each time – were graceful and in perfect synchronization. The girls’ footwork and their coordination and synchronization were impressive: they were singing at full voice while dancing (although the more difficult dance sequences were reserved for instrumental interludes). The audience appeared to find their performance rousing: during their final bows and stage exit, the spectators clapped in unison for a few beats, as if to call them back for an encore. Similarly synchronized, choreographed performances, with clean singing of arranged songs, were given by the Folk Chorus of the Gnesin College and two ensembles from the Moscow State Shnittke Institute and College. The performances of the Moscow State University of Culture and the Ippolitovo-Ivanovo State Musical-Pedagogical Institute and College showed that these two schools aimed to be less synchronized, arranged, and choreographed than their counterparts; but even so, I noticed that their gestures were obviously ‘learned,’ and did not seem natural. In an apparent attempt to present village culture as whole – instead of simply performing entertaining songs as was the Soviet model – the University of Culture linked its songs together thematically with skits performed in village dialect and with copious, exaggerated gesturing. I found this kind of connecting unconvincing because, as in the performance of the Petrozavodsk ensemble, the thematic links were tenuous and it was clear that the performers were pretending, not expressing their own feelings.

Revival and Identity after Socialism

115

The festival opening ended with a dramatic number in which a young female solo singer, Iuliia Fatiushina, performed a composed, sentimental song about Russian churches as a symbol of national strength. Her appearance in the concert was a publicity stunt: earlier in the evening the audience had been told that thanks were due to the festival’s sponsors, Gazprom and Gazprom Bank, because they not only paid for transportation of many of the ensembles to Moscow for the festival, but ‘care about talented children.’ Gazprom had paid for Fatiushina to attend the Gnesin Academy, and

Fig 4.2: Iula Fatiushina Gazprom’s German business partner, Wintershall, had helped produce Fatiushina’s CD in Hamburg. (Figure 4.2 above) Fatiushina wore a heavy red brocade sarafan decorated at the bodice with dark gold lamé brocade and at knee-height with gold sequins. Her kokoshnik was also garnished with gold braid, sequins, and pearl beads, and had a huge gold lamé ‘halo.’ The song – performed to the same pre-recorded accompaniment that had formed the background to the actor’s speech at the beginning of the program – told of seeing a church without a cross, asked such questions as ‘How are we going to live?’ ‘What do we have left?’ and expressed sadness and pessimism: ‘My heart aches. I have no strength left.’ But the refrain was optimistic: ‘It has not disappeared, it has not become depleted / The strength given to our native land; / They have not died out, they have not burned down, / The Russian churches covered in road dust.’ Fatiushina used studied, dramatic gestures to intensify the song’s emotional impact: she slowly raised and lowered her right hand, holding a lace hand-

116

Revival and Identity after Socialism

kerchief with a sewn-on loop around her middle finger. At moments she appeared to stare off into the distance to signify the song’s spiritual meaning, at others she dropped her head toward her chest to indicate sadness. A few of the lines of the song were spoken to intensify their dramatic effect. At the end, Fatiushina repeated the song’s refrain several times as, lit by a spotlight, she walked up the pitch-dark aisle into the audience, while television and private video cameras swung around to catch view of her. After the song was over and Fatiushina had received polite applause, the stage lights came back on again for the MCs’ final speech; they were standing in front of a new stage backdrop depicting a Russian church. The festival was dedicated to the revival of the folk song, but what Fatiushina was singing was neither folk music, nor was it about folk music. Her costume obviously descended from the Russian folk costume, but was a modern, flashy rendition. The accompaniment, played on folk instruments according to the Andreev orchestra tradition, was pre-recorded. In combining a folk flavor with estrada style, Fatiushina was well on the way to a career like that of Nadezhda Babkina or Nadezhda Kadysheva. Although I had expected diversity in the program, I wondered how revivalists who supposedly opposed the Soviet folk choir phenomenon could participate in a festival that packaged folklore in such a way. At a conference preceding the festival, Natal’ia Erokhina, the festival’s artistic director, defended the choice when an audience member complained that heavily stylized, professional performances were included in the festival. She answered: ‘I agree, but we had to invite [them]. We invited them not as students but as professionals. This mosaic exists, we can’t deny it. We can’t say what is better.’21 Indeed, the festival itself never indicated what was ‘better,’ but it did appear to indicate what was more important by beginning and ending the festival with heavily staged, dramatic presentations. The wide differences in approaches to folk performance within the festival went unexplained by the production’s MCs, who uniformly announced and complimented the performers. Nor did the glossy printed program illuminate contrasts in styles of performance: the descriptions of most of the ensembles emphasized their faithfulness to Russian tradition. Furthermore, the festival’s spatial organization enacted the subtexts that there are two separate worlds of folk revival, and that the academic, oppositional-oriented ensembles need to teach the stage-oriented (stsenicheskii) ensembles how to present folklore on stage. All of the oppositional groups held their workshops and concerts at the academic buildings of the Gnesin Academy and the Central Writers’ House, while the collectives sponsored by Gazprom and the professional choirs held performances in the conference halls of Gazprom’s corporate headquarters in Moscow. Only one of the Gazprom ensembles was invited to give a workshop; presumably the festival’s organizers – who thereby showed their allegiance with the oppositional strand of revival – felt that the stsenicheskii style was not worth teaching.

Revival and Identity after Socialism

117

’Folk’: A Problem of Terminology That the festival’s packaging glossed over differences in performers’ philosophies and styles while its structure manifested those differences is reflected in a terminology problem. In 1998–9 I noted a contrast between the words used to describe performers’ goals and their manner of presenting folk material. Even if ensembles present folk performance bleached of individuality and local color, they still proclaim they are ‘preserving the original traditions’ of their region or of Russia.22 This phenomenon arose because the oppositional folklore movement heavily influenced the way that folklore is talked about and portrayed. Folk groups use Soviet-era rhetoric about folk preservation, but have also adopted new ideas and terminology from the oppositional revivalists. In Soviet parlance and in post-Soviet official language the adjective narodnyi does not distinguish between ‘people’s,’ ‘national,’ and ‘folk’ artistic creations.23 However, in the terminology of the oppositional revivalists, which is increasingly being adopted in the common parlance of the intelligentsia, narodnaia muzyka’ now refers to the kind of music that the state folk choirs and estrada soloists perform, while the term folk’lornyi is used to refer to village folk music. As one revivalist described the situation: ‘During recent years…in order to somehow distinguish themselves from the [mainstream groups], the collectives who perform folk music have started to call themselves ‘folklore’ [groups] (folk’lornyi)…. But this does not take care of the situation with names: even the collectives of the Piatnitsky-Andreev [mainstream] type have started to call themselves ‘folklore,’ due to which the situation has become definitively confused.’24 For example, the adjective ‘folklore’ was used by many of the mainstream groups that sang at the Moscow festival, as well as in the name of the festival itself. Still, the oppositional revivalists now almost always use narodnyi in a derogatory way, and have invented additional slang terms to differentiate themselves from the ensembles concerned with popular entertainment. They also use the adjective stsenicheskii (stage-oriented) to refer to groups like the Petrozavodsk school or Iuliia Fatiushina; when talking among themselves they use even stronger, slang derogatory expressions to refer to the souvenir version of Russian folk culture, such as the Russian word for ‘cranberry’ (indicating something fake); ‘a la Russe,’ (fake Russian style); samovar, sarafan, balalaika, or lozhki-povarëshki (spoons and ladles). This kind of slang is part of the spontaneous folklore of the folk revival movement, and contributes to the building of group cohesiveness and an oppositional identity. While the youth folklore movement makes fun of mainstream-style performance, the popular-entertainment groups have been emulating the oppositional groups in fairly substantive ways.

118

Revival and Identity after Socialism

The Mainstream in the Post-Soviet Era: What Folk Chorus Students are Taught Most of the folk choruses who performed at the 1999 Moscow ‘Folklore Spring’ Festival sang with the standard folk chorus sound and approach, and were linked with the Gnesin institute in that their leaders were trained there. Even the geographically remote Petrozavodsk ensemble shows how a certain sound and approach have become standard throughout Russia: the ensemble is affiliated with the Rautio Petrozavodsk Musical School’s folk chorus directing program, founded in 1978 by a former Gnesin student, L. Solov’eva.25 The sound with which members of Russian folk choruses and professional soloists sing is not produced naturally, but learned. The country’s music and culture schools are run on the assumption that singers must be able to sing all types of folk music and composed music. At Gnesin, folk singing students are given the equivalent of academic musical training, but with a specialization in folk styles. They learn to distinguish and demonstrate the various regional styles of Russian folk singing; to vocally demonstrate the written musical parts in a song to each section in a chorus (bass, tenor, alto, and soprano); and to smooth over the breaks in their ranges (between chest and head voice), making a uniform sound at any range. As Giliarova told me, the technique which these schools teach produces a ‘white sound’ that is lacking in individual timbre and personality.26 Ekaterina Dorokhova, who studied at Gnesin but in the Department of Music Theory, called it ‘that awful sound.’27 Kabanova attributed this faceless sound to the way students are taught at Gnesin: ‘because one choir-master or leader directs the choir, and the choir meets four times per week for 1 1/2 hours, therefore the choir acquires a psychological dependency on the choir-master. The choir itself isn’t conscious that it has started to sing with the voice of that director.’ (CD tracks 8–9) Gnesin also teaches its students that the meaning of the song resides in its text. One could see this principle in the Petrozavodsk ensemble’s performance. I was explicitly told by a Gnesin professor, the head judge for a Moscow competition of children’s folk ensembles, that acting out the song’s text is the ‘ideal’ in the presentation of folk music nowadays.28 However, acting out a song’s text is a fairly primitive stage technique. The Gnesin standard ignores significant developments in combining folk music and theater. For example, the Pokrovsky Ensemble and many of its followers used folk theater liberally in their concerts, and exaggerated some of its elements to produce striking renditions of folk theater classics.29 Folk theater almost never acts out the literal meaning of a song, but uses thematically-linked songs for specific purposes in the course of its play-acting. Andrei Kotov’s Sirin Choir, an offshoot of the Pokrovsky Ensemble that specializes in ancient Russian religious and spiritual folk music, studied the methods of avant-garde Polish theater director Jerzy Grotovskii and participated in

Revival and Identity after Socialism

119

cutting-edge theater combining ancient Russian chanting and village singing styles.30 Although such high-art work might be seen as inappropriate for the Gnesin graduates who are trained to delight mainstream audiences all over the country, there may be signs of imminent change: starting in the late 1990s Kotov was hired by Gnesin to teach students some of the techniques he has gathered, and he gave a workshop on body–voice integration and rhythmic improvisation at the festival. While it largely represented a continuation of the Soviet approach to folklore, the Petrozavodsk ensemble showed the influence of the oppositional movement in a few ways. Its vocal group consisted of only 8 women, following the practice of oppositional revivalists who choose to approximate the smaller size of spontaneously formed village singing collectives. Furthermore, the women in the Petrozavodsk group took a more syncretic approach than that of the Soviet chorus by both dancing and singing. Stylistically, however, the Petrozavodsk group’s dance movements were based upon Soviet clichés, were entirely synchronized and showed little individual deviation. In this, too, they were not typical of all student groups: whereas previously dancers trained in classical dance taught standardized moves to folk choruses,31 now some student choruses are working with choreographers like Alexei Shilin, a trained theater director who has traveled to many rural areas of Russia and collected videotaped examples of folk dance and movement. 32 In fact, this new conceptualization of folk dance as the integration of movements, posture, and gesture (a combination for which Russians use the term plastika) rather than the learning of set steps (indicated by the term ‘choreography’) has changed radically the way folk dance is seen and taught. One of the initiators for such a change was Evgeniia Rudneva, a professional ballerina and the daughter of the musicologist Anna Rudneva, who worked with the Pokrovsky Ensemble in the 1980s to stage their dances.33 Whereas the Pokrovsky Ensemble avoided all synchronization, the pieces which Shilin choreographs for Gnesin use some of the typical features of folk chorus performance – synchronization, blocking, and set steps. Still, the movements he teaches are based on the natural motions typical of village dancing rather than on ballet or character dance; and within Shilin’s schema, there is room for individual interpretation. Moscow musicologist Dorokhova saw many changes in the way the folk choruses are presenting folk music today: ‘except for the State choruses, in the student ensembles – for instance, in Gnesin – there is no such thing as the folk chorus in its pure form anymore.’ To be sure, the student ensembles still sing with ‘that awful sound,’ and Dorokhova predicted that they will continue to do so ‘until the leaders from the older generation leave.’ However, the student choruses have changed much in the areas of repertoire, movement, and costume. Whereas previously Soviet choruses used arranged or composed versions of folk tunes and promoted a pan-Russian view of folklore, now many are performing unarranged songs that were collected in

120

Revival and Identity after Socialism

villages, and telling audiences about regional distinctions in folklore. (CD track 10) Finally, the student folk choruses no longer dress like the typical Sovietera standard. Instead of ‘those clichéd kokoshniki,’ students now tend to wear costumes that resemble traditional village garb from the early part of the twentieth century.34 Some still wear factory-made costumes meant for professional or amateur choruses, but others have found hand-made clothing from villages, and still others make their own costumes based upon traditional designs. Each student wears his or her own costume representing a different regional or local style. The effect is of more individuality, spontaneity and diversity on stage, qualities that are seen as a welcome change by many revivalists.

The Fracturing of the Oppositional Revival Movement in the 1990s While all the oppositional groups favor a non-standard sound, non-standard costumes, unadulterated traditional music from Russian villages, and dance that approximates the unchoreographed movement of Russian villagers, not all agree on what kind of sound or costumes should be adopted, and what kind of music or movements are appropriate. The situation was different in the early 1980s, when most of the groups were inspired by the Pokrovsky Ensemble and were generally united in their opposition to a monolithic state-sponsored presentation of folklore. By the mid-1980s and 1990s several strong leaders of the movement had emerged, each of whom had evolved their own philosophies and ways of performing folklore. The youth folklore movement today may be divided into two main camps: liberals who generally follow the approach of the Pokrovsky Ensemble, and purists who disdain what they call the stsenicheskii method of presenting folklore. This grouping roughly corresponds to the ongoing ‘Westernizers’ vs. ‘Slavophiles’ debate in Russian culture. These categories are not absolute: it is not unusual to find an ensemble that follows some aspects of the Pokrovsky style but approaches tradition as an ancient relic (such as the Saratov group whose work I examine in Chapter 8). Still, these categories work as a rough guide; and they characterize a split in the movement that the participants themselves brought about during the academic workshops that took place as part of the Moscow ‘Folklore Spring’ Festival in 1999. The sections below examine the current trends in the movement, focusing upon how these groups define and portray authenticity in folklore, how they view spontaneity and self-expression, the roles and myths of the village, the place of sexuality in folklore and folk performance, and approaches to stage aesthetics.

Revival and Identity after Socialism

121

Authenticity If in the 1960s Rubtsov helped to set off the oppositional revival movement with his definition of authentic folk music as that which people sing in their leisure time (as opposed to what they sang in officially organized situations), during the post-Soviet period most Russian folklorists and musicologists shied away from such a broad definition. They would not include all songs that any people sing, but only ancient songs sung by rural people – those that have ‘survived the test of time.’ This view is an essential tenet of their revivalist philosophy: if folklore is not by definition something old, there can be no need to revive it. What had happened since the 1960s? Rubtsov’s revolutionary view had not changed how Russian scholars defined folklore. The oppositional thrust of his argument that ‘the masses know best’ (that is, whatever common people sing in their leisure time is folklore) did not have lasting power in the context of a movement that was essentially nostalgic and academic; his populist view lacked appeal to a Soviet intelligentsia that was reared on the idea of the superiority of high culture. Practically speaking, for academic folklorists and musicologists to espouse Rubtsov’s idea would have meant to make themselves unnecessary: in order to maintain their hold on the cultural capital that folklore offered them, they had to preserve the idea that folklore was too old and complex for ordinary people to understand or perform without professional help. In this sense many professionally educated revivalists departed from Pokrovsky’s and Kabanov’s thesis that anyone could perform and research folklore. It was also the case that the character of officially sanctioned and leisuretime folklore had changed. During the post-World War II period people sang, played, or danced officially sanctioned Soviet folklore in official situations, while older folks enjoyed performing pre-Revolutionary songs and traditions during their leisure time. During glasnost the government encouraged middle-aged and older villagers to bring to life old traditions for official situations, but by that time the elder generation had grown up with Soviet popular culture as their ‘own’ culture. What they sang for official situations was the music of their mothers’ (pre-Revolutionary) generation, while their leisure time musical activities revolved around popular Soviet songs that they had heard repeatedly on the radio. Many of the folklore ensembles featured in the Moscow festival – not only the purists – refuse to sing these popular Soviet-era songs because they do not consider them authentic folklore. For them Soviet-era songs are different from pre-Revolutionary romances because there are no local variations to the Soviet songs; people heard them on the radio, and for the most part sing them just like they heard them. Giliarova explained, ‘everyone sings them the same way.’ Such songs are not in need of preservation, since anyone can just switch on the radio or put on a record. 35 I disagree with this view, since when I witnessed celebrations in cities and

122

Revival and Identity after Socialism

villages, the participants did not sing Soviet-era songs in the same way as they are sung on the radio. They not only sang harmonies that were not included in the radio renditions; they also sang the songs with variations of interpretation that expressed their individual personalities, their relationships with each other, and the mood of the event. Further, their choice of these songs reflected aspects of their world-view – a function of spontaneous folklore. Giliarova and the others who professed this view did not necessarily disdain Soviet-era popular culture, but they held fast to the concept of ‘oral tradition’ (i.e. not transmitted by recorded means) precisely because of the trend during the Soviet era to force folklore to be composed and mass produced. To Russian revivalists, composed and packaged folklore is fakelore. In other national revival movements as well, folklorists exclude as inauthentic any music or texts that have been technically mediated (that is, learned from a written or recorded source). Yet, as Bausinger has argued, this judgment contributes to the disintegration of folk culture by measuring it ‘only according to an image to which it can no longer conform.’ Of course folklore needs artificial, conscious reviving if one defines it as a relic. Yet technically mediated folklore can be very active and spontaneous. By excluding the popular culture of contemporary rural dwellers as ‘impure’ folklore, folk revivalists create an artificial product that they represent as ‘natural’ because it is ostensibly free from technological influence.36 The view that Soviet-era music and dance are not true folklore is the norm among Russians working in the field of folklore today (even among liberals).37 Yet purist folklorists and musicologists define authenticity even more strictly: they include as folklore only those songs that pre-date the influence of written, composed songs and texts. A debate over this question arose at the Moscow festival when a folk performing group from Perm told the audience that it regularly collects and includes cruel romances in its repertoire, since they are widely sung in villages. A man in the audience commented that if folklore ensembles were to sing romances, then in 40 years all that would be left of Russian folklore would be ‘The Apple and Pear Trees Bloomed’ (‘Rastsvetali iabloni i grushi,’ also known as ‘Katiusha’), a popular Soviet song composed in 1938.38 This man made a deliberate parallel between the pre-Revolutionary romance and the Sovietera composed song since both genres are based upon written texts. He implied that if revivalists sang songs outside of the ‘oral tradition,’ they would eventually contribute to the death of Russian folk music. Such a ban on romances – which is quite a common view among revivalists39 – hearkens back to early Soviet prohibitions against middle-class culture, and also to the predictions of late-nineteenth-century folklorists about the imminent ‘death of the folk song.’ In fact, the rejection of romances ultimately has its roots in eighteenthcentury Romantic views of folklore. At the festival, Anatolii Mekhnetsov, professor and director of the Folklore Ensemble of the Department of Folk

Revival and Identity after Socialism

123

Music at the St Petersburg State Conservatory, argued against the liberal view that folklore is grassroots communal expression, and equated folklore with high art. For him, folklore’s value does not lie in its ability to involve everyone, to express the participants’ values, or to cultivate self-expression; instead, it reflects the strength of the Russian people, and as such should be preserved in its most ancient form and researched by well-trained specialists.40 Although Mekhnetsov’s views might seem extreme, in fact the elite, educated audience at the festival expected antiquated folklore – they wanted to be shown old wedding songs, not ‘Katiusha’.41 Bausinger calls this tendency to require folklore to show us the ancient past the ‘law of requisite freezing’ and contrasts it with folklore’s natural tendency to modernize and constantly shift – when not controlled by intellectuals.42

Nationalism In the 1990s, both mainstream and oppositional folk groups talked of ‘genetic memory’ and of their desires to preserve or evoke ‘Russianness’ through their stage performances. Many adhered to the view expressed by a journalist interviewing Babkina: ‘a foreign language matrix and foreign sounds negatively impact a person’s brain and health. And in this sense, by reviving and developing the Russian song, you [Babkina] preserve the roots of our distinctive culture, you strengthen the foundations of the nation.’43 While Mekhnetsov and Babkina – whose views about authenticity were diametrically opposed – would disagree over whether her pop-based songs constituted something ‘Russian,’ still each was aiming for the same goal – to fix and supply ‘Russianness’ to a public drowning in things Western. Only a few oppositional groups that pursued a Pokrovsky-inspired liberal and playful approach to folklore succeeded in avoiding such nationalism. For example, the above-mentioned group from Perm, Songster Workshop (Pesel’naia artel), employed avant-garde theater techniques in their performances, and both collected and sang Russian cruel romances and other folklore from the 8 nationalities living in their oblast. Although they were regionalists with family roots in villages who prided themselves upon their deep understanding of Perm folklore (including dialect, handicrafts, costume, and verbal lore), they did not view tradition as ‘given’ but as something that was necessarily changing before their eyes. Because they had constant exposure to village culture as children due to spending summers with their grandparents, these members of the provincial intelligentsia did not fetishize villagers or village culture, and they felt enough at home in the traditions to use them creatively for stage performance, incorporating some of the Pokrovsky Ensemble’s and Kotov’s theatrical techniques. One might assume the source of the group’s liberal approach lay in the village roots of its members: they may not have felt the need to prove their authenticity. However, this was not generally true of groups with village roots; others took purist or mainstream approaches. Instead, I suspect that in this case as

124

Revival and Identity after Socialism

in others, the group’s liberal character came from the views and personalities of its leaders. (CD track 11) Similarly, Krasnopevtseva’s Moscow children’s group, Little Spindle, emphasized individual creativity within certain parameters: the children learned to make up their own counter-rhythms, interacting musically with the group while clapping and stamping their feet; to project vocally; and to command attention when they speak or sing. To create a carnival atmosphere on stage, the children used a variety of instruments, a folk declamation style for spoken text, and elements of folk theater, including grotesque, larger-than-life-size puppets. Although they were regionalists, focusing upon vocal and dance traditions from a handful of villages in Belgorod and Kursk oblasts, their approach to the material was relatively ‘open’: it aimed at making the children completely at home in their adopted tradition so that they could become freely creative. Along with studying ancient practices, the group also performed more recent texts, such as romances. The ensemble had performed extensively in Western Europe, the United States, and Asia, and Krasnopevtseva remarked that the children’s understanding of the folklore of their adopted villages allowed them to appreciate the folklore of other nations.44 (CD track 12) One of the defining characteristics of the liberal camp of the folklore revival movement is their facilitation of individual expression within the group. Whereas Mekhnetsov argued that he does not ‘display himself,’ that is precisely what these performers are trying to do – ‘show themselves’ on stage. They believe that the essence of the folk song’s meaning lies not in the beauty of its complex text, but in the meaning that it has for each individual performer. This approach can contribute to ‘openness’ since it implies that the tradition can be changed through its contact with urban performers.

Self-Expression While this view echoes the sociological school’s emphasis on the individual performer, its roots lie in the anti-establishment impulse that initiated the folklore revival movement in the 1970s. As two folk music scholars put it, the official Soviet approach was conceived to counter the totalitarian government’s ‘fear of personality, of anyone being one’s own person, since such persons are unpredictable and stand out from any solid, uniform, authorized, or dependable collective body.’45 The Soviet approach to the arts contained a contradiction, however, in that the state promoted both uniformity and also a ‘star’ system under which certain individuals were rewarded and promoted. In the post-Soviet period, survivals of the officially state-sponsored aesthetic were now meeting the demands of modern audiences reared on pop music and Western television and participating in folk music’s further commercialization. This new aesthetic system incorporated the ultimate star system. Would revivalists oppose or support the post-Soviet aesthetic?

Revival and Identity after Socialism

125

Faced with the demands of Western audiences, purist revivalists have become more entrenched in their opposition to individualism. Meanwhile, some liberal revivalists have taken steps toward embracing audiences’ new demands by emphasizing folklore’s spontaneity and possibilities for individual expression. Leaders such as Andrei and Zhanna Kabanov, Krasnopevtseva, Ol’ga Nikitenko, and many others follow in the footsteps of the Pokrovsky Ensemble by using spontaneity and individual self-expression to attract more viewers and participants. Their acts on stage are more lively and accessible and less academic than those of the purist revivalist groups; meanwhile, these performers avoid the pitfalls of Soviet and commercial sponsorship of the arts by shunning both organized uniformity and the showy star approach. They maintain that their emphasis on selfexpression does not entail the spotlighting of a talented few, but rather highlights the creativity and self-assuredness of all the participants. They claim they are adapting an element of village folk performance tradition, under which spontaneity, inventiveness, and naturalness were a way of life.46 To be sure, these groups do cultivate an approach to folklore that can be ‘sold,’ especially abroad in Western Europe, where many of them have been on tour – not least in order to make money. Folklore is indeed a commodity for them, and is a particularly viable one in situations in which tourists wish to ‘see’ Russian culture. Yet they maintain that they have avoided crass commercialism. This tension between putting on a good show and cultivating self-expression and authenticity of feeling may be seen in Andrei and Zhanna Kabanov’s children’s group, Izmailovskaia sloboda. Reflecting the Kabanovs’ aversion to the Soviet system and the suppression of individuality which ‘we had for 70 years,’ Kabanova commented: ‘What’s important is supporting the personality [podderzhka lichnosti], [doing things in such a way] that the personality should be visible.’ The group’s performance of chastushki – a living genre whose worth is questioned by purists – illustrates this approach. The children choose their own chastushki from published collections, borrow them from one another, or make up their own texts based on the patterns they have assimilated. Kabanov said he purposely does not give students an academic appreciation of the song they are learning; they appreciate it in their own way. Kabanov frequently repeated that, as a leader of a children’s folklore ensemble, ‘you must not work with the content of the song or of the grandmother who sang it. You must work with the content of the children.’ The same philosophy holds true for adults. As Kabanova described, the chastushka is vitally important precisely because it is a living genre with which the participants create a meaningful dialogue: ‘They fight, they declare love, they play, they simply giggle. That is, the chastushka is like a form of self-expression…. We base [our outlook] more on each child’s solo performance; for that reason, the chastushka is very important for us.’47 (CD track 13) Their use of ‘solo’ performance differs considerably from Fatiushina’s, which

126

Revival and Identity after Socialism

Fig 4.3: Ivan Kabanov Kabanova believes encourages a ‘show-off’ attitude far from the collectivity of the folk tradition. Rather, each individual creates within a collective setting, and the folklore milieu gives everyone a chance to shine. Yet often when they performed, the Kabanovs’ 10-year-old son Ivan, an extremely talented singer and dancer who had evolved his own interpretation of Cossack dancing, (justifiably) stole the spotlight. (Figures 4.3 and 4.4) As the Kabanovs proudly repeated, the children’s performance of chastushki is spontaneous since it is different every time – except when the order of verses is set in advance in order to produce a good show. Usually there is a battle of wit between girls and boys. A girl sings a funny chastushka

Revival and Identity after Socialism

127

Fig 4.4: Ivan Kabanov insulting boys (e.g. they do not know how to kiss), and a boy counters with one about girls (e.g. his girlfriend was so fat she did not fit into the car). The children interpret the chastushki in their own way: for instance, on stage at a festival performance in Voronezh oblast, the Kabanovs’ six-year-old daughter Anastasia sang a chastushka with the words ‘The boy costs 3 rubles / But the girl costs 3,000.’ A representative of the Russian Ministry of Culture who was present in the audience felt this song was in very poor taste, as it hinted at the prostitution of the girl. I wondered if he might be right. But later, after hearing Anastasia sing the song in several different contexts, I became convinced that for her, the song simply spoke about the

128

Revival and Identity after Socialism

greater value of girls than boys, and thus fit in with the teasing function of chastushki for the children. Still, Anastasia’s chastushka underlined what was for me one of the central tensions in the project of revival: how does one avoid ‘selling oneself’ as a stage performer? In fact, it is probably impossible not to do so. In Russian culture as in the West, the stage can be likened to a marketplace in which performers sell their charms and talent in order to engage audiences. It was precisely this aspect of the stage that led Mekhnetsov to tell Kabanov that children do not belong on stage at all, because to do so cultivates a ‘professional’ attitude and goal that can morally ruin a child. Yet to a large extent for all folk revivalists stage aesthetics, not ancient folk traditions, dictate what they show on stage.

The Aesthetics of the Stage Russian folklore was not meant for the proscenium stage. Music and dance were entirely participatory, and in most settings there was little or no separation of performers and audience. In Tsarist Russia the performance of Russian folk music and dance developed under the influence of the stage arts; the Soviet folk chorus was a direct descendant of this situation. How could revivalists distinguish themselves from the manner of performance of their predecessors? How could they reconcile the fact that they represent Russian folklore on stage? The Pokrovsky Ensemble solved the dilemma by embracing the aesthetics of the stage. They used exaggeration to generate performances that held the audience’s interest; introduced sharp contrasts in mood and tempo; made use of folk theater; and remained in a state of high, concentrated energy throughout the performance. The charismatic personality of Pokrovsky himself helped link the disparate parts of the program. The group also cultivated techniques that drew in the audience, such as taking a round-dance off the stage and continuing it in the theater’s corridor. In the 1990s other groups, like Dorokhova’s Russian Music, Krasnopevtseva’s Little Spindle, Kabanov’s Izmailovskaia Sloboda, and Nikitenko’s Stanitsa dispensed with the degree of exaggeration characteristic of the Pokrovsky Ensemble, but used other techniques to engage audiences – such as cultivation of individual creative expression, the use of folk theater and puppets, and involving audience members or extending the performance beyond the stage. (Figure 4.5) Many purist revivalists criticized the Pokrovsky Ensemble – and others who descended from it – as too stsenicheskii because of their use of such techniques. 48 Yet even liberal ensembles tried to avoid a stsenicheskii approach, and used the same term to disparage the folk choruses. Each faction of the movement feels it is important to distinguish itself from crass commercialism, and to assert that what it presents is free of interference from the world of business. In doing so, these performers hope to accrue cultural capital by presenting a ‘true,’ untainted Russia.

Revival and Identity after Socialism

129

Yet almost every group does perform on stage and consequently has been forced to revise folk traditions so that they can be shown to an audience sitting on one side of a rectangular elevated platform. If nothing else, the groups have had to position singers and to rework dances so that the performers face the audience most of the time. Some of the purist ensembles make only minor concessions to the stage: they do not connect with the audience and with each other through facial expression and gesture, and maintain a low energy level while performing. Furthermore, they disregard an audience’s need for variety or accessibility by including in their repertoire many songs that sound similar to an unaccustomed ear, or that belong to genres not typically performed on stage, such as wedding songs, funeral laments, or cow-calls; and by linking songs through academic lectures. In doing so they demonstrate their view that educating an audience is more important than entertaining; indeed, many of the leaders and members of such groups are professors, students or professionals in highly specialized fields. One such group is the St. Petersburg Center of Folklore and Ethnography, directed by Mekhnetsov. These students study folk culture from the point of view of both theory and practice in order to become researchers or teachers and leaders of folk ensembles or centers, and their program is reputedly the most demanding in its field in Russia. Mekhnetsov, a man of strong principles who is also known as a Russian nationalist and a proponent of Orthodox Christian values, requires students to adopt lifestyle habits that mirror those values: for instance, women are forbidden to wear jeans or pants to classes at the Center, because dresses and skirts are traditional women’s garb. Shchurov and many others in the movement think that Mekhnetsov’s stance on this and other issues is too strict. Mekhnetsov argues that his students must adhere to some of the lifestyle principles of Russian village tradition because to some extent, the members of his folk ensemble constitute transmitters of these dying traditions (in this case, from west and north Russia). While Mekhnetsov may be the strongest opponent of stage aesthetics in the folk revival movement, he is not the only one. In their idealization of the village roots of folk art, almost all revivalists make much of the supposed purity of Russian folk culture.

A Fountain of Youth: The Mythical Village In fact, this desire to appear to have escaped the influence of the modern industrialized, market-driven world is one of the driving forces underlying the project of revival. For many serious revivalists, the village is a sacred space, contact with which grants them unique status in what is commonly seen as an unstable, corrupt society. The Pokrovsky Ensemble had gone on expeditions and performed vocal ‘experiments’ in villages; in the late 1980s and 1990s, liberal revivalist groups embellished the Pokrovsky model by

130

Revival and Identity after Socialism

living in villages, inviting village folk artists to be regular members of their group, or adopting a particular village as a second ‘home.’ Liberal revivalists often justify their stsenicheskii stage comportment by this regular contact with villages. They argue that self-expression is related to a mythic village aesthetic that recalls the concept of sobornost’: according to this myth, city culture teaches one to show off at the expense of others; but village culture gives everyone a chance to do what they do well. For instance, in order to increase their assimilation of the tradition they represent on stage, Krasnopevtseva’s group Little Spindle regularly travels to their source villages, where they have friends and mentors among the village elders who still actively carry the dance and song traditions. The participants stay in the homes of their village teachers. The group also works regularly with a middle-aged couple, originally from one of these villages, who moved permanently to Moscow during adulthood. Many folk revivalists told me that such regular exposure to village culture is essential for folklore performing groups. Zhanna Kabanova said that the village not only taught her how to sing and dance, but also gave the folk song meaning for her. She compared her experience of folk singing in villages with what she was taught at the Gnesin Institute:

Fig 4.5: Ëlka children’s Christmas concert

Revival and Identity after Socialism

131

[At the Gnesin Institute] they educate the sound in you, but it’s not your sound, it’s the sound of the director, the correct sound of the director. And you’ll get the meaning [of the song] on the expedition. But they go on expeditions only for material. And that’s not exactly correct. To go for material – that’s OK, but most importantly, one should go for energy…to this day I am still receiving sustenance from the material, and bring [to others] material which I absorbed from the voice of a village folk singer…. The song clearly reminds you of the high that you got when you were with the village folk singers – because there one can be in ecstasy, when you’re all sitting around the table…there is such an ecstasy, such an unusual feeling of happiness…because for them the song was the meaning of life. And not that [matter-of-fact attitude typical of the Gnesin approach] – ‘when I went out on the stage, I went out and sang it.’ Some things are only understood with one’s soul. The folk material as such is of little significance to Kabanova; what matters is a personal transmission from village performer to urban performer. This spontaneous, authentic energy can then be conveyed by the urban revivalist to the members of his or her ensemble, and eventually to the audience. One reason why revivalists believe villagers embody such intuition and genuineness is that they adhere to the myth that all rural people are deeply connected with nature. Comparing rural and urban dwellers, Anzhelika Glumova, director of the Saratov ensemble, Fun (Zabava) said: [A villager has] a more natural way of life. The sun comes up, he too gets up with it. The sun sets, he too lies down with it. That is, he wants to drink, he dips in the well and drinks. He wants bread, he plows the field, harvests it, bakes it and eats it…. And that’s where the sound and the breath [in folk music] come from. There is no perversity, there is no dyed hair or some kind of hairdos. According to this widespread myth, rural residents are more natural than city dwellers, and city dwellers could return to a more organic state – a state they once inhabited – if they could assimilate some of the lifestyle and habits of villagers. Since the village is a glimpse into the past of our species, contact with it can literally restore lost function to the body: ‘The function of the human organism is such that if something isn’t used, it starts to atrophy. It happens naturally…. We don’t need a loud voice, you can take the telephone and say in a whisper, ‘Vanya, come over here today,’ and not yell across the river. So from generation to generation the open voice will simply disappear, disappear, disappear….’49 As I argued in Chapter 3, early twentieth-century artists and intellectuals often sought a mythic wholeness, including connection with their own bodies and sensations, through contact with ‘uncivilized’ people. This mythic search was nearly ubiquitous among revivalists who told me that through

132

Revival and Identity after Socialism

village music and dance, people could become more whole, supple, alive, and healthy. Of course, this idea hearkens back to romantic conceptions of the peasants as an undifferentiated mass living in harmony with nature. The idea’s attractiveness may be compared with the notion of a fountain of youth; in this case, the fountain may presumably be reached by taking a commuter train a few miles outside of any Russian city. It is false: as one rural doctor told me, most of the illnesses she sees are due to the repetitive, back-breaking labor that her clients engage in throughout their lives. Many other illnesses are due to poor-quality water sources and inadequate sewage disposal in rural locations. It was not only wholeness that was sought and offered by the revivalists of the youth folklore movement. It was innocence. The village was a mythic space associated with moral purity and closeness to a childlike nature. Kabanova told me: ‘Through folk art we become closer to children…[Nowadays] people suffer from the loss of some kind of naivete…and spontaneity.’ Further, such naivete was needed even more today, during the post-Soviet era, characterized by conspicuous consumption and the outright flaunting of lack of morals associated with the ‘new Russians.’ Kabanova told me her ensemble’s moral superiority to this nouveau riche class was recognized at a recent political rally at which they performed: one of the rich Cossacks told them, ‘I could buy you, but you’re special [osobye] people…. We don’t have that purity…. When you sing, you preserve the purity of perception…. People who are involved with money don’t have that.’ Such an association of village culture with childlike innocence draws on the stereotype of the pastoral, in which the city is a place of adversity, deception, and disorder, while the countryside represents integrity, purity, and natural order. According to the post-Soviet version of this myth, in the city money rules, but those who have cultivated associations with village folk culture are immune to the demands and seductiveness of money. Of course, it is not true that as people involved with folklore Kabanova and her husband are not affected by or concerned with money. In fact they are selfemployed businesspeople who sell their services as folklore teachers and researchers to several organizations in order to make ends meet in a difficult and chaotic economy.50 While all revivalists accrued cultural capital from their intimate knowledge of the mythic Russian village, they differed in the ways they approached the village. One approach, which Kabanova called ‘immersion in a style,’ attempts directly to imitate villagers’ singing and dancing. Moscow groups such as Folk Holiday (Narodnyi prazdnik), the Studios connected with the Alliance of Folk Ensembles, and the ensemble of the St Petersburg Conservatory use multi-track recordings of village singing regularly in their rehearsals. For Folk Holiday’s rehearsals, each singer is assigned (or chooses) a track, which she learns by listening on cassette tape at home. During rehearsal, the group attempts to combine these learned

Revival and Identity after Socialism

133

roles in order to produce a faithful imitation of the performance recorded in the village. The leader asks singers such questions as ‘Whose track are you singing?’ or even ‘Who are you?’, as if the members of the urban group temporarily take on the identities of the villagers. Mekhnetsov defended the technique of immersing oneself in a style by imitating tape recordings, saying that singing an ancient song amounts to returning to an earlier time in history. ‘Of course [the songs] live and change, but…every time we sing a song from a certain oblast or village…we stand in the place of those who sang us that experience.51 By contrast, in the Kabanovs’ conception (as well as that of the others in the liberal category), contact with the village is used as a means of gaining inspiration and familiarity with the village’s singing and dancing style. The Kabanovs critiqued the ‘immersion’ approach because it produced a static imitation of a single performance by elder villagers. ‘The basic thesis of the [folk revival] movement was: sing like in the village. But now [that idea] is slowing things down. Because in reality you have to sing with your own voice.’52 The groups that imitated recordings of villagers had not made the song theirs, but were reproducing someone else’s interpretation. Often, the Kabanovs said, urban people in their 20s, 30s, and 40s were imitating the voices of villagers in their 60s and 70s. Too close an imitation of an old person’s voice can yield a dark tone rather than a bright one. Kabanova advised me not to approach folk music this way in my own singing: ‘Laura, don’t drink in these sounds [on field recordings], simply let your voice out, let it be simple, but youthful [po molodezhnomu]…. Sing your vocal cords, you understand, it should all sound, resonate. That’s why the sexuality of Pokrovsky[’s ensemble] appealed to me. Because they didn’t try to imitate the grannies, they were very explosive.53 For liberal folk performers of this ilk, to be young, sexual, and expressive of one’s own personality is the epitome of folk style.

Sexuality The notion of sexuality is controversial in post-Soviet culture, and the views of folk revivalists reflect this. As one might imagine, liberal folk revivalists believe that sexuality is an important part of life that is reflected in any folk culture, while purists deny that sex has a place in folk culture, and see its evidence as results of urban culture’s effect upon the rural. For them, emphasis on sexuality contradicts the image of the ‘innocent’ village. By contrast, liberal revivalists argue city culture, with its simultaneous denial and commodification of sexuality, turns an innocent subject into something vulgar.54 Yet, regardless of these philosophical differences, I did not find any urban ensembles that presented erotic folklore on stage – despite the fact that many Russian rituals contain eroticized texts or gestures. Most revivalists persist in perpetuating the Soviet cultural mentality expressed by a remark made on television in the mid 1980s: ‘We have no sex.’55

134

Revival and Identity after Socialism

In contrast to the urban ensembles’ reluctance to sing erotic songs in public, my own experience in Russian villages suggests a rather wide acceptance and use of witty erotic folklore such as jokes and songs in casual settings with a celebratory atmosphere, or when tradition demands it. In all of these situations, it seemed that the singing of ribald songs drew the group together both because the songs were funny and expressed a taboo subject. Indeed, the expression of the taboo is one of the most important functions of folklore: the ritualistic nature of the folklore performance creates a ‘space’ in which what is normally forbidden is allowed.56 At the festival a debate arose over the place of sexuality in children’s performances. For Mekhnetsov the introduction of sexuality into folklore – as the Kabanovs did in their children’s chastushka performance – means erasing its national characteristics; purist revivalists associate national distinctiveness with a noble, dignified subject matter.57 Mekhnetsov’s point is reminiscent of both eighteenth-century classicist prohibitions against low, vulgar subjects and of the Soviet-era view; his assessment did not reflect either the Romantic position, which was more accepting of eroticism – or the real presence of eroticism in post-Soviet popular culture, both urban and rural.58 In fact, the prudish approach of revivalists today may have been intensified by the commercialization of sexuality since glasnost, which caused many conservative Russians to associate open sexuality with anarchy and a rejection of authority.59 Mekhnetsov’s approach is tantamount to the ‘decarnivalization’ that Bausinger observed in Germany: a Mardi Gras holiday – formerly celebrated with elements of burlesque and eroticism – became a ‘clean carnival’ because of the overly scholarly approach of organizers. Thinking that they were cultivating older forms, carnival clubs banned revealing forms of dress and made the holiday serious and rigid.60 In contrast to Mekhnetsov’s forbidding approach, Kabanova emphasized that the children’s interest in the opposite sex was completely normal. I heard similar debates with regard to children’s folklore groups throughout Russia. While some argued that it would be inappropriate for children’s groups to re-enact a wedding, for example, others said that even in the preindustrial era in Russian villages, children would play at weddings in order to learn the complex Russian traditional wedding ritual cycle. Similarly, some felt that children of 10 or 11 were too young to play traditional Russian kissing games, while others believed that younger children were always present when their teenage siblings played such games, and would naturally play them among themselves. Kabanov was one of the few I spoke to who said he did not care what was done traditionally, and asserted that he was finding his own approach to Russian folk tradition.61 To be sure, in Russia much progress has been made in the area of research on sexuality in folk culture – several volumes were published in the late 1990s, and liberal folklorists are actively pursuing the topic.62 Still, my own experience with Russian researchers suggests that many of them still avoid erotic topics. Most revivalists did not perform bawdy songs on stage; in fact,

Revival and Identity after Socialism

135

a song that has been called ‘the anthem of the youth folklore movement,’ ‘Porushka Parania,’ from the village of Podserednee in Belgorod oblast, was edited to produce a ‘clean’ version for the Russian stage. Originally, the dance song contained a long description of the sexual act in which the man invites the woman into his bed, and the sexual organs of the couple are described using euphemisms: ‘his white pen,’ ‘her black inkpot.’ Viacheslav Shchurov, who collected the song in the 1950s, and whose folk singing group at the Gnesin Institute included the song on their 1968 recording, said he was responsible for producing the censored version. He blamed the selfcensorship on the ‘asceticism’ which had come from Stalin: The Party control was very strict, [the attitude was] ‘you must not sing such songs to our Soviet people, it’s anti-moral,’ etc. For that reason, for concerts, we edited ourselves, you understand, [we figured], either they’ll not allow us or forbid us, so it’s better if we do it ourselves – take it out and calmly sing it. And now no one knows that there are such words [in that song]…Now all the young choruses sing it with the missing middle. Because [our version] became a standard for everyone. Shchurov recounted how not only his singing group’s version and his transcription, but the released source recording of the song was edited as well. I recorded Sopelkin (the lead singer from Podserednee) at the radio, and I told him, too, ‘you’re not going to sing those words. You’ll sing to here and then you’ll skip’ – and so it came out that way on the record too…. So it turned out that if people want to listen to the original, they listen to that distorted version. And later I came to visit Sopelkin, and he said, ‘What have you done with that song, you have crippled it. What is this?’ And I said, ‘You sang it that way, too.’ He said, ‘It can’t be!’ We took the record [he had recorded at the radio] and he said, ‘It’s true.’ He had forgotten completely (laughter). Such incidents happened.63 While Shchurov’s comments indicate that such editing would not have happened without Party dictates about sexuality, the cultural prohibition on portrayals of sexuality in Russian culture has strong roots. Despite new freedoms, neither Shchurov nor other folklorists has restored the missing verses to ‘Porushka’ by publishing them or telling other revivalists about them.64 Clearly, such erotic texts represent a taboo part of Russian village traditions, which many urbanites are not ready to confront or embrace. Rather than preserving folk culture, the revival movement has decarnivalized it by tailoring it for consumption in Soviet society, where eroticism belonged exclusively to the private sphere. This change in the tradition was certainly brought about when folklore was brought to the stage. In village traditions erotic texts were sung as part of rituals that included all present, and those present formed a community in which all the members knew each other. To

136

Revival and Identity after Socialism

bring erotic texts into a stage setting where strangers – paying customers – sit silently in the darkness observing the spectacle, changes the dynamics of the situation. The voyeuristic and commercial nature of the stage environment means that performing erotic rituals on stage would imply the sexual seduction and ‘satisfaction’ of the audience – a dynamic that is completely absent in rural community rituals. While many revivalists are averse to the collection or representation of bawdy texts, some with a more liberal approach have cultivated a subtle form of sexuality in their performances – perhaps, as I suggested in Chapter 3, seeking a mode of being that promises wholeness and connection with the corporeal sphere. Kabanova, who said she was attracted to the sexual energy of the Pokrovsky Ensemble, told me that now, as a mature woman in her late 30s, such sexual energy was not enough; it should exist in combination with ‘culture…and wisdom….’ Kabanova found the wisdom and culture she sought in village performers, like the couple from Podserednee who work with Krasnopevtseva’s children’s ensemble. The male member of the couple represented the highest example of what she and her husband called ‘radiance’: If you see him, how he dances, he simply creates. It’s something incredible. If you get a chance to see him, remember what I told you. Aleksei Vasil’evich Popov. This is a person who radiates through dance. This is sex together with culture. With wisdom. Everything’s here. It has such an incredibly strong effect, which you can only dream of. There are few such performers. And you understand that only after you have gone along a certain path, when you’ve been on expeditions here, there, and everywhere. Here Kabanova seemingly turns primitivism on its head: the village-born but urban-dwelling master of folk dance is attractive precisely because he combines the wholesome sexuality and innate wisdom of the rural sphere with the ‘culture’ of the civilized world.65 Instead, perhaps her remark uncovers the true nature of the primitive: it is always a reflection of what the Westerner desires or fears.66

Conclusion The folklore movement in the post-Soviet period has been characterized by both tenacious clinging to pre-Revolutionary ideals – including views of folklore and myths of the village – and innovative approaches, such as the cultivation of self-expression within stage performance. In response to the Soviet heritage, there has been both rejection and adherence: all folklorists reject uniformity and virtuoso approaches (although some show more tolerance for working alongside them); but they have also been reluctant to reverse the Soviet era’s prudish attitude to sexuality. Given that many of

Revival and Identity after Socialism

137

these approaches to folklore were inherited from pre-Revolutionary or Soviet sources, can one say that this movement has made an actual cultural contribution to the understanding and presentation of folklore, and if so, what is it? What are the implications of the split between camps: will the movement eventually break apart and cease to be a coherent cultural movement? Folk revival practice today has distinguished itself from pre-Revolutionary folklore performance practice, which placed heavy emphasis upon adapting village traditions for middle- and upper-class audiences, and from Soviet reapplications of these styles. Groups that are part of the youth folklore movement have moved away from adaptation of the music or instruments, and instead have invented and adapted various techniques (such as video and multi-track audio recording, living in villages, learning from village masters) to enable outsiders (city dwellers) to learn musical and movement techniques from villagers themselves. It is a populist movement in that the villagers themselves are the master artists, teachers and sources – even if their students often take the lead in their interpretations and presentations of folklore. The importance of the village has become even greater in the post-Soviet period, when many performing groups have not simply visited villages for single sessions, but have learned to work constantly or regularly with their village teachers. The movement has become more inclusive: whereas Pokrovsky maintained his group in the exclusive sphere of high art, post-Soviet groups have forged alliances with and managed to influence their former arch-enemies, the professional and amateur mainstream-style choruses and soloists. Thus folk revival has entered popular culture, and as a result more people have had access to what revivalists define as ‘authentic’ village folk music. Now not only students in Moscow and St Petersburg, but children of agricultural and blue-collar workers living in provincial cities, towns, and villages have joined oppositional ensembles. One might question whether most of these ensembles truly are oppositional: although many of the leaders of the movement located in the capital and large cities see themselves as resisting the mainstream approach, the less well-known ensembles and children’s ensembles do not generally take a confrontational position. In the folk revival scene that existed at the end of the 1990s the dominant model was tending towards rapprochement rather than opposition: mainstream and oppositional groups were learning repertoire and approaches from each other. Further, although I have categorized the youth folklore movement as being split between factions, in fact all of these groups consider themselves part of a single movement, and generally see their own differences as smaller than the difference between their approaches and the mainstream. In fact, while the leaders are split ideologically, many of the less well-known ensembles do not take strong stands on these issues. The movement’s greater inclusiveness in the post-Soviet period may lead to its longevity, but as Livingston suggests, may ‘signal the end of the revival as an oppositional, anti-establishment “movement” and its transformation into an accepted current in the musical mainstream.’67

5

Power and Ritual: Russian Nationalism and Representations of the Folk, Orthodoxy, Imperial Russia, and the Cossackry

The collapse of the Soviet Union and the transition to a new political and economic system have shaken the very core of national identity for all former citizens of the Soviet Union, including Russians. The corresponding widespread alienation and questioning have meant that many Russians are in search of touchstones that provide a sense of belonging and of historical continuity. The search for such national symbolism has inevitably led to the past. Yet for many Russians, the Russian past may be characterized as a minefield that must be negotiated with caution: both the tsarist and Soviet eras were associated with tyranny and oppression. Because of these dark associations, the post-Soviet period has seen a wide variety of approaches to history, including attempts to atone for past sins, manipulation of history, and – what during the second half of the 1990s was probably the most widespread approach – attempts to cultivate a vague image of Russia’s heritage in evocative artistic works and performances, in everyday and popular culture, and in rituals. This chapter addresses these arenas of cultural revival, focusing upon images of folk culture and their interaction with symbols of Cossack, Orthodox, and pre-Revolutionary culture. Nationalism forms a largely unarticulated backdrop to such events and symbols. I define nationalism as a discourse that occurs in the political arena as well as in the sphere of daily life and cultural practice. Nationalism as a political ideal posits consonance between the nation and its government: the rudimentary idea is, as Ernest Gellner put it, ‘one state, one culture.’1 In the pursuit of such a goal, political nationalists utilize the nation as a symbol and compete with other groups over its meanings, attempting to ‘capture the symbol’s definition and its legitimating effects.’ But nationalism may also mean the feeling that ‘draws people into responding’ to the nation as a symbol, and the ‘daily interactions and practices’ that produce such a sentiment. Theorists have called the latter aspect of nationalism ‘nationness’ or ‘national sentiment.’ All nationalizing discourse helps to create subjects through structures of power that are often invisible.2 The post-Soviet period may be described as one of nation-building or nationalizing: while the Russian nation exists both as a state in the geopolitical arena and as a territory, its cultural identity (or the identity of the

Power and Ritual 139 nation) remains to be defined. Russia is in a process of constant renegotiation and reimagination of its nationness. A few factors have made the transition to the post-Socialist era a difficult one for Russia. One is a result of the close association of Soviet and Russian identities, particularly in the post-World War II era. Because Stalin deliberately promoted symbols of Russian nationality, making Russians ‘more equal’ than other nationalities, there is now an identity paradox: ‘Russians may view themselves as the victims of the Soviet system, but it was in so many ways their system…Russians find themselves implicitly at war with themselves and their past in their current search for a national identity.’ Furthermore, the collapse of the Soviet Union has shaken the foundations of national pride based on military victories, cultural achievements, attainments in science and athletics, and a perceived leading role in international politics. In the latter half of the 1990s, many Russians grew weary of glasnost’s self-deprecation and began to search for their new identity in the post-Soviet world.3 As a result, in the arena of politics ‘the centrality of nationalist themes and symbols is now almost unquestioned.’ The term ‘Russia’ – with various competing meanings – is used prominently in the name or slogan of almost every political party, bloc, and association.4 Various groups define the nation in different ways, but given the particular history of the Russian notion of nationality, narodnost’ (which refers to a conglomeration of concepts of ethnicity, nationality, and the common people) and Soviet policies that institutionalized ethnic nationality, the post-Soviet definition of nationality is overwhelmingly an ethnocultural one.5 In post-Soviet Russia nationalists of all sorts seek both to define the limits of the nation, emphasizing the difference between ‘us’ and ‘them,’ and to articulate and demonstrate the coherence of the political community, often by claiming a distinctive ethnic past. In order to evoke such a shared past, politicians, cultural organizers, religious officials and others are turning to images associated with folk culture, the Cossackry, Orthodoxy, and pre-Revolutionary culture. The renewed interest in things Russian has become an accepted part of Russian popular culture. Russian folk culture, literary classics, and historical settings feature prominently in printed advertisements, restaurant menus, films, television commercials, concerts, and plays. The televised Moscow ‘Folklore Spring’ Festival examined in Chapter 4 showed the commodification of nationalist images: its patriotic hymns and exalted speeches recalled a mythic Slavic past associated with glory, patriotism, and tradition – all associated with the festival’s sponsor, Gazprom. That such images of Russianness were meant to stand for Russia’s national revival in the postSocialist era was underlined by the MCs who proclaimed that this festival was a sign of the ‘revival of the nation, the revival of its economy, the revival of the national consciousness.’ In the contemporary Russian context, such national symbols fall into four distinct categories, each with its own associations: the folk, the pre-

140

Power and Ritual

Fig 5.1: Singing Rus Festival Revolutionary Russian past (including symbols linked with medieval and Imperial Russia), Orthodoxy, and the Cossackry. The village, peasant, and folklore stand for a kind of Russian pre-history, a mythical time before industrialization and Westernization, when Russians were truly Russians – honest, healthy, connected to nature and to a community, possessing agricultural bounty and a dual pagan and Orthodox spirituality. Folk symbols are widely used because they are among the most generalized and malleable of the images associated with Russia, and can evoke the past without touching upon the politically volatile specifics of Russian history. Yet the choice of particular references within folk culture is often loaded with significance: for example, through one’s choice of folk-music styles one may cultivate associations with Western or Soviet pop or classical culture, with mythic ancestral Russian village traditions, or with ethnographic regional history. References to pre-Revolutionary high culture recall a great culture at its peak. Here again, the choice of authors or works is crucial: classical Russian literature and music, in the canonical list inherited from the Soviet period, are most favored because they offer a depoliticized version of the Golden era of tsarist culture, while Russian avant-garde culture of a past era (such

Power and Ritual 141 as the music of Stravinsky) shows allegiance with the oppositional glasnostera impulse to recover the repressed creations of Russian modernism. Images associated with Orthodox Christianity also symbolize Russianness, since for many centuries Orthodox religion defined Russian nationality: ‘Russian’ and ‘Orthodox’ were often used as synonyms. A myth of ‘Holy Russia’ – the notion that Russians are God’s elect – was popular among the masses since the seventeenth century and was renewed in the writings of the Slavophiles in the mid-nineteenth century.6 For tsarist elites, Orthodoxy, as Russia’s state religion, was an ‘effective condenser for unity and social harmony in late imperial Russia.’7 During the post-Soviet period Orthodoxy’s status as a state religion was basically reintroduced when in 1997 legislation was passed giving full rights only to religions registered with the government as of 1982.8 Orthodoxy has received wide acceptance as a marker of Russianness in the post-Soviet period: in fact, one could say that it replaced the Party as a ubiquitous signifier of legitimacy in nationalizing discourse. Finally, the Cossackry – in the form of images of Cossacks and of their actual presence at events and locations – serves as a reference to a particular notion of Russianness. I discuss the Cossackry’s history and associations with Russian patriotism in Chapter 6, but here it will suffice to state that the Cossack revival movement that began in the 1990s has reestablished the identification of Cossacks with national allegiance and heroic defense of the motherland. In the post-Soviet political free-for-all, politicians of all sorts have been courting the favor of Cossacks because of the perceived association of the Cossackry with military power and Russian patriotism. In the post-Soviet period, Cossacks symbolize strength, military glory, and revival of national spirit. Below I examine cases of nationalizing discourse involving images of the folk in combination with symbols of pre-Revolutionary culture, Orthodoxy, and the Cossackry. I begin with overtly political cases and move to those in the sphere of culture and ritual. In post-Soviet nationalizing discourse, often elements from these four categories are combined in a way that might seem excessive or ideologically problematic; but the nature of symbols is such that they permit multiple meanings to be present simultaneously. Seeming contradictions and ambiguities are resolved in a subconscious synthesis in the mind of the perceiving individual. In fact, the very power of symbols resides both in their condensation of diverse meanings, and the consequent possibility of various interpretations of a single sign.9 Of course, in combining symbols in this way, politicians and cultural producers are engaging in a well-known technique for organizing social groups and propagating political myths. The Soviets practiced this themselves upon the establishment of the new state. The current approach is similar, only the content is, in many cases, different. Since both revivalism and many brands of nationalism have emerged as a reaction against Soviet policies, the fact that nationalists and revivalists are repeating Soviet strategies is somewhat ironic, if not surprising.

142

Power and Ritual

Yet there is another difference: if under the Soviets nationalism was an institutionalized discourse, in the post-Soviet context many individual politicians and cultural producers are using public fora to create their own performances of nationness. Although these presentations of multiple national symbols may convey a specific meaning, they do not represent a particular political platform. The overall picture is not one of distinct voices engaging in debate upon vital issues, but neither is it of voices joining together in unison. Rather, these diverse performed creations reflect a variety of interpretations of the four symbolic categories of Russian nationness outlined above, different artistic styles of their presentation, and varied ultimate goals. While the versions of the past they evoke are different, each is engaged in denoting a mythic past, and helping to establish identity. In this sense, all the parties in Russia’s current process of nationalizing exhibit what Eliot Borenstein has called a ‘rather unexpected form of unity’ since they all ultimately speak the same language of nostalgia for ‘a long-lost, mythical past.’10

Folk Revival and Post-Soviet Politics In post-Soviet political battles nationalism is no longer restricted to the far right; political platforms in the center and the left appeal to nationalist sentiments. It is by no means a united political front: even extreme nationalists disagree over key issues. Nationalist arguments are integral to the platforms of some groups, while others appeal to patriotic and nationalist sentiment in order to maximize public support.11 This is not the place for consideration of these complex issues, but it will be helpful to distinguish between two main strands of nationalism in Russian politics today, using Anthony Smith’s distinction between polycentric and ethnocentric nationalism. While ethnocentric nationalism emphasizes Russian ethnocultural identity as the basis for the formation of a new state and presupposes a privileged position for Russians within a reconstituted empire, polycentric nationalism recognizes that Russia’s search for autonomy and individuality occurs in a world context in which there are many other nations.12 Within ethnocentric nationalism, there are radical movements such as Eurasianism, Pamiat’ and the National Salvation Front, and followers of Vladimir Zhirinovsky – all of whom adhere to a Judeo-Masonic conspiracy theory; there are also more moderate nationalists, such as Slavophiles, among whom are Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Alexander Lebed, who advocate seeking traditionally Russian forms of government and empowerment of the regions rather than the center. At the other end of the spectrum, polycentric nationalism includes civic nationalists – democrats who support a combination of Western principles of government and law with indigenous Russian traditions.13 As Katherine Smith has shown, after the fall of the Soviet Union the first of the major groups to align themselves with nationalism were the

Power and Ritual 143 Communists. Their views resemble ethnocentric nationalism but within a platform that advocates a return to the multi-ethnic USSR. By contrast, such nationalism was impossible for Yeltsin and other democrats to embrace. In fact, the past has been a difficult area for democrats, since both pre-Revolutionary and Soviet markers carried ideological ‘baggage’ that these leaders were trying to avoid. It was not until Yeltsin’s 1996 re-election campaign that his supporters realized their denial of the past had left people without something positive to believe in – but their attempts to address this issue by calling for a ‘new idea for Russia’ and by instituting holidays such as Independence Day were largely unsuccessful. Yeltsin left office without having established long-lasting symbols or commemorative traditions that would provide an identity for the new state.14 Yet we can see Yeltsin’s search for such a language as proof that even Westernizers have realized the profound importance of the past in creating a new nation. Moscow Mayor Iurii Luzhkov was one of the first democratic politicians to realize that patriotism was important in fulfilling the population’s need for historical continuity in the face of bewildering social changes. In Moscow he built a monument to Peter the Great, took over the completion of the replica of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior (destroyed under Stalin), and had architectural details representing traditional Russian styles inserted into plans for commercial structures as well as the city’s underground shopping mall at Manezh Square. At the square, Luzhkov commissioned statues of Russian fairy-tale characters and St George slaying the dragon. As Smith points out, Luzhkov was not truly interested in history (in fact, when decaying buildings were in the way of new architectural projects, he did not hesitate to disregard landmark preservation laws); rather, he ‘would have Russians embrace a vague folkloric concept of their roots.’ For Luzhkov, as well as for many politicians and cultural producers in today’s Russia, ‘the appearance of history in tidy and imposing forms was sufficient to represent Russia’s past.’15 Luzhkov, who made a bid for the presidency in 1999–2000, further associated himself with Russia’s past through the elaborate year-long celebration he produced in 1998 in honor of Moscow’s 850th birthday. The celebrations included large-scale pageantry combining diverse elements of Russian culture: folk and classical music, theater, and dance, all containing multiple references to Russian history. Yet in both his architectural and cultural projects, Luzhkov conveniently glossed over dark and controversial aspects of Russian history and ended up modeling that past as a sort of historical theme park rather than a museum. Furthermore, through his imperious management style, Luzhkov clearly sought to promote his own political career more than to aid others in preserving Moscow history. Liberal critics faulted him for cultivating a patriotism that exalted military success and tsarist administration style. The filmmaker Nikita Mikhalkov, who also ran for the presidential office, had long been associating himself with images of Russian patriotism

144 Power and Ritual through his films depicting a romanticized vision of Russian prosperity, stability, and fertility. Politically, he was well known as a monarchist and Russian nationalist. In 1997–8, through the charitable foundation he heads, the Russian Culture Fund, he sponsored such cultural events as music festivals in the Kremlin featuring concerts of Russian classical, religious, and folk music of the purist revivalist variety.16 Mikhalkov himself appeared on television in 1998 with Cossack Circle, a Moscow folklore ensemble, and during the all-male group’s dance songs Mikhalkov, in Cossack military attire, joined in the dancing. In fact, in 1998–99 the association of Mikhalkov with this particular Cossack ensemble was so well-established that folk revivalists repeatedly referred to the famous director, actor, and politician as the group’s ‘sponsor.’ The group itself was regarded very highly among revivalists and Cossacks in Russia for its ‘authentic’ performances (i.e. musically, they approached the level of singing of village masters) – so much so that many revivalist folk ensembles, including those composed of Cossacks, used the recorded songs of this group as models for their own singing. Several of the group’s members – most of whom were Moscow intellectuals – were involved in the Cossack revival movement and had even gone so far as to become Old Believers, because of the long association of that religious sect with the Cossackry. In promoting such groups, Mikhalkov, like Luzhkov, identified himself with a vision of Russia’s great culture. Yet the version of Russia’s past Mikhalkov chose to support was not the vague ‘theme park’ history that Luzhkov favored. Instead, the famous actor and politician provided consistent backing for artists in the sphere of elite art, and the folklore ensembles he sponsored were carefully selected preservationists whose main goals are to educate the public about ancient Russian village singing traditions, in accordance with the ‘genetic memory’ theory to which they subscribe. The choice of sponsored ensembles and the degree of consistent sponsorship help to suggest Mikhalkov’s association with ethnocentric nationalism. If Luzhkov wished to conjure up a vague feeling of Russianness, Mikhalkov enacted a more focused promotion of national sentiment – combined, of course, with a distinct flair for self-promotion.

‘Oh, You, Mother Russia’: Nationalism in Song Another case of a politician’s choice to associate himself with Cossack folk music represents some of the tensions inherent in multi-ethnic Russia’s turn to nationalism. Liberal oppositional revivalists Andrei and Zhanna Kabanov were asked to sing Russian and Cossack folk music at the opening congress of Kemerovo Governor Aman Tuleev’s new movement, Renaissance and Unity, just outside Moscow in early June 1999. Politically, Tuleev is a populist and a leftist, a charismatic leader who is known for acting independently of Moscow’s directives and seeking to empower the regions rather than maintaining a strong federal government.17 Obviously,

Power and Ritual 145 with the name of his new movement he was trying to suggest Russia’s revival and oneness; with the request for Russian and Cossack music, he seemed to be cultivating a specifically Russian heritage. Yet Tuleev’s embracing of Russian nationalism is problematic. Ethnically, Tuleev is of Kazakh and Tatar heritage, but has said he was raised entirely as a Russian, and considers himself a Russian. Some members of the Muslim community in Russia consider Tuleev a traitor (Kazakhs and Tatars were traditionally Muslim): in July 1999, shortly after the circulation of rumors that Tuleev had converted to Christianity, a death sentence was pronounced on the governor by an extraordinary meeting of a conservative Muslim group in Grozny.18 Tuleev clearly exhibits an identity that political scientists call ‘former Sovietness’ – a modern ‘imagined community’ in which ethnic heritage is not as important as the overarching cultural heritage, formed by ‘educational, economic, and political unification.’19 That a person of mixed parentage would seek Russian identity in the context of the Soviet Union is not surprising, given the relatively greater privileges accorded to Russians. Yet in the post-Soviet context of nationalization, such a mixed ethno-cultural identity brings to the fore the many problems associated with defining Russia and Russian nationalism. Although the Kabanovs were hesitant to talk to me about their foray into politics, saying they were told to keep the event secret, they disclosed that they were specifically asked by Tuleev’s staff to sing the slow, powerful Don Cossack song ‘Oh, You, Russia, Mother Russia, You, Our Russian Land,’ which tells the story of a brave Cossack hero, Krasnoshchekov, who went incognito as a guest to the house of the enemy, the Prussian King Frederick II, in the late eighteenth century. The king’s daughter recognized Krasnoshchekov, but he escaped.20 The song had become a staple of the repertoire of the folk music revival movement during the 1980s.21 With its introductory lines underlining Mother Russia’s military and economic sufferings and her corresponding glory, the song makes poignant reference to an important myth of Russian patriotism. The song and the myth state that Russia is both victim and victor: ‘Oh, you [Russia] have seen dire need, / Oh, you have spilled much blood, / Oh, you have amassed much glory!’ 22 This twofold myth of national identity would presumably gain new resonance – and a different twist – now in the post-Soviet era, when Russians occupy both the position of victim of the Soviet oppression but also enactor of that oppression.23 But the song has another dimension. Although it has become popular throughout Russia in the post-Soviet period because of its patriotic first lines, it does in fact express the point of view of a Cossack, and reiterates two of the essential myths of the Cossackry. The song tells how Krasnoshchekov was sent to the Prussian king by Mother Russia herself – thus recalling the Cossack myth of Russia’s dependence upon Cossack military prowess. It ends with lines emphasizing another aspect of Cossack mythology, their independence: ‘Now I, Krasnoshchekov, / Am a free Cossack.’ Of course, no contemporary group

146

Power and Ritual

would sing the song to its end (thirty couplets) – in fact, most only sing the initial patriotic lines (five couplets). That Tuleev chose this song might suggest that, like many Soviet politicians, he wished to associate himself with the Cossack revival movement. Yet Kabanov’s ensemble is not a Cossack one; if Tuleev had wished, he could have hired a Cossack revivalist or entertainment-oriented ensemble. A Cossack folk song, in this case and in many others in post-Soviet Russia, then becomes a generalized signifier chosen for its associations with Russian national sentiment rather than for its specific meanings or origins. Yet Tuleev might have been interested in certain resonances associated with the myth of the Cossackry. As a regionalist known for challenging the center, the rogue politician may have identified with the image of Cossacks as independent people. By hiring Kabanov’s non-Cossack ensemble, Tuleev could identify himself simultaneously with Russianness and with the Cossacks’ self-reliant, yet patriotic stance toward Russia, without making reference to the sometimes virulent anti-Muslim, anti-Semitic ethnocentric nationalism with which the current Cossack revival movement is associated.24 Such subtleties went unstated and probably unnoticed at the rally, at which the folklore ensemble sang several songs and led a folkloric toast to the governor. Clearly, in today’s Russia precise and coherent definitions of nationness are unnecessary. Politicians rely on Russian and Cossack folk song, dance, and costume to evoke national sentiment in their constituents, but do not generally use them to advocate a particular nationalist political position. Stories of political and/or business sponsorship of performances and ensembles were told to me by other folk performance groups (both revivalist and entertainment-oriented) in Volgograd, Saratov, Riazan, Astrakhan, and Voronezh oblasts. Gazprom is one of the largest sponsors of folklore, and has collectives in several of its locations (11 of them came to Moscow for the 1999 ‘Folklore Spring’ Festival). In some cases ensembles receive support from local businesses that are involved in dealings on the borders of legality. Even if they do not agree with the source’s ideological views or ethics, they accept such associations because they need financial support.25 One revivalist pointed out that the alliance may work both ways: the group profits from the aid of the sponsor, but the patron may be ‘educated’ through his or her participation in folklore activities.26 Since the mission of many of the revivalist ensembles is precisely to educate the public about ancient Russian traditions and mores, they assume that such associations can do more good than harm. Sometimes, however, as in the case considered below, the alliances between folk revivalists and politicians are not simply those of financial sponsorship, but rather of full ideological identification.

Power and Ritual 147

Nationalism and Regionalism Vasilii Kozlov, the head of the Culture Department of Vorob’evka, a large village in Voronezh province, has put on five national folk festivals since the early 1990s. The festival, called ‘Singing Rus, Artisanal Rus’, has become a bi-annual affair. Official sponsors of the event in 1998 included the Russian Ministry of Culture and the Russian Zemstvo Movement, headed by Elena Panina, deputy of the State Duma. Panina’s movement, formed in 1993, puts into practice some of the views of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a wellknown proponent of Slavophile ideas. Its name and part of its mission come from the zemstvo organizations established by Alexander II and his advisors in 1864. The reforms called for self-governance through assemblies and boards designed to address the needs of the rural population. Today, the political platform of the Russian Zemstvo Movement includes promotion of ancient Russian and Slavic forms of self-governance and self-organization, lessening of the power of the president and central government, and strengthening of the powers of local elected officials.27 The movement is nationalist in character, with some traits of civic nationalism; however, to a greater extent than the Westernizing civic nationalists, Panina’s organization is interested in native methods of grassroots governance.28 Panina’s speech at the Vorob’evka festival (delivered in her absence by one of her representatives) reveals some of her reasons for sponsoring the festival and helps delineate elements of the brand of nationalism her group – and the festival itself – represent. The festival carries on the noble, responsible mission to revive and preserve the traditional, distinctive [samobytnyi] culture of Russia and the ancient Voronezh region, which combines all the greatest aspects of the cultures of Russians, Ukrainians, and valiant Cossacks. It is well known that a common culture is the basis of any nation, and the preservation and transmission of culture determines the face of the nation, and reflects the unique features of the national character and the condition of the national spirit. The festival in Vorob’evka, which came to us from centuries past and was reborn, can, as never before, help the Russian people and the Slavic world – especially today, when our homeland finds itself in trouble, when national traditions are being undermined, and the mass media, especially the central ones, propagandize mediocre, pro-Western mass culture, which is foreign to the exalted Orthodox spirit of the Russian people. These are Slavophile views that picture Russia as a multi-cultural state in which Slavs and Slavic traditions predominate and take precedence, underline Russia’s inherent difference from the West, and attribute that difference to its Orthodox religious heritage. Like many ethnocentric nationalists, Panina implies that Russia’s current crisis is due in large part to the influence of Western culture and the implementation of Western economic and ideological

148

Power and Ritual

solutions to Russia’s problems. Further, by mentioning ‘the culture of Russia and the ancient Voronezh area,’ Panina underlines the dual national and regional character of the festival. After all, this is an ‘All-Russian’ festival that takes place in a village. During the Soviet period, most large festivals were ‘AllUnion’ and did not emphasize a particular ethnic heritage; the post-Soviet period has seen the creation of All-Russian festivals and exhibitions held in large cities, such as Moscow and St Petersburg. Villages traditionally hosted only local events that drew participants from the surrounding area. Panina’s disparaging comment about the central mass media in Russia augments this point: she imples the geographical location of the festival far from the center adds to its true, distinctive Russian character, while the culture of the urban center weakens Russia by encouraging emulation of the West. The festival itself embodies many of these views. In 1998 it featured about 20 revivalist folklore performing groups from urban areas (many from provincial capitals), five ‘ethnographic’ performing groups of middle-aged and older villagers, and an exhibition and demonstration of folk crafts by folk art masters. All participants presented Russian, Ukrainian, or Cossack traditions; they came from various areas of Russia, including Siberia. Participants enjoyed three days of formal and informal performances, workshops, games, parties, and outings. Although the festival’s main point – as it seemed to me at the time, and probably to many of the participants – was to bring together various folk performers and craftspeople so that they could appreciate each other’s work and share techniques or materials, in fact the festival presented important nationalizing symbols during its rituals of opening and closing. These rituals were carefully crafted by the festival’s organizer, Kozlov, who earned a diploma in theater directing from Kiev State University and had directed ensembles in Kiev and Voronezh. One of the ceremonies underlined an important ideological undercurrent of the festival: its celebration of regionalism. The opening ceremony began with a parade led by the local priest, several of the visiting officials, and Cossacks in uniform followed by the various performing groups and craftspeople, each bearing a standard with the name of their home oblast. On a stage erected in the village square, over a soundtrack of the same Cossack folk song that Tuleev chose for his political event – ‘Oh, You, Russia, Mother Russia, You, Our Russian Land’ – each performing group’s oblast was announced over a loudspeaker and a small cannon was set off, while a child dressed in a stylized, uniform version of generic folk dress carried each standard down the stairs of a platform.29 (Figure 5.1) The pomp and circumstance connected with the announcing of each oblast suggested such regional diversity was a source of pride for the festival’s organizers, and implied these groups’ primary identification was their home oblast.30 Indeed, this kind of identification was present in informal speech: as soon as we arrived participants began asking the local administrators who would be coming – ‘Is Tambov coming? Is Lipetsk coming?’ This special attention to the home region of each ensemble also

Power and Ritual 149 exemplified a new trend towards regionalism in the folk revival movement. Unlike the model set by the Pokrovsky Ensemble, most of these groups were located in a regional capital and specialized in the diverse traditions of their home oblast and, in some cases, of neighboring oblasts. Panina’s movement must have found that the festival represented the power of the provinces and privileged the periphery over the center. Still, the ceremony with the cannons suggested unity within diversity: the children bearing the standards with each oblast’s name were wearing uniform, stylized Russian folk costume, as if to imply that these groups were, after all, children of Mother Russia.31 The background soundtrack, with its repeated mention of Mother Russia, also made this point clear. This co-existence of regionalism and nationalism is one of the paradoxes of Panina’s brand of nationalism and indeed of the folk music and dance revival movement itself. While Russianness is an important concept in these movements, the regional and local is viewed as a primary source of that Russianness. Other scholars of the post-Soviet period have discovered a similar trend in current Russian attitudes toward the past. Nurit Schleifman writes: ‘The breakdown of the authoritative centralist government has enabled broad expression to be given to the need for regional identity. In large measure, that need is related to the rejection of the Soviet past.’32 The Soviet regime fostered a strong central government, tried to contain the population within large administrative units (such as large cities and collective farms), and encouraged individuals to establish their main relationship with the state rather than with family members. A reaction against these governmental methods has meant a renewal of interest in local identity, exemplified by the Vorob’evka festival and the revival of the tradition of the parish holiday (examined below). Schleifman identified the need for regional identity in struggles over economic resources and cultural monuments in a small Russian town. While some locals did favor an ‘isolationist’ policy that attempted to present the regional area as a self-sufficient unit, Schleifman concluded that most groups favored ‘a distinctive local Russianness, bearing its own historical and cultural validity, which claims recognition, respect, and status from the centre.’ Thus, in this new conception of Russianness the center is not dominant, but neither is it unnecessary: ‘despite the local aspiration for greater cultural and economic self-expression, the struggle effectively reinforces dependence on the centre.’ 33 There is something of the same dependence in the Vorob’evka festival. While the celebration’s local flavor was apparent and its promotion of regionalism palpable, Moscow’s presence seemed to loom in the background. Although Kozlov was extremely adept at finding local funding sources, and even engaged in quasi-legal business deals to finance the festival, he did receive a significant amount of funding and support from the Russian Ministry of Culture.34 Representatives from the central Ministry of Culture and the Russian Association of Artistic Crafts gave speeches at the

150

Power and Ritual

opening and closing and were present throughout the festival as honored guests. In order to secure funds and backing for the festival, Kozlov makes several trips from Vorob’evka to Moscow every year, and in order to draw up the roster of invited performing groups he consults with a Moscow musicologist. Without Moscow, the festival would likely not happen. This expectation of affirmation and support from the center hearkens back to Soviet organizational methods; indeed, many of the channels of interaction between local and central organizations have remained intact since Soviet years and are staffed by the same people as during Soviet years. The difference is that the current system allows Kozlov quite a bit of freedom in designing the festival (the Ministry of Culture does make recommendations and requirements, however), and he is able to partially fund it through local, private and sometimes unorthodox means. Moscow’s presence was not the only unifying factor at the festival. The celebration’s rituals offered images of a mythical, integrative Russianness, which prominently featured Orthodoxy. To be sure, the festival itself did not have a religious character – no Orthodox music was sung, and religious rites were confined to the beginning of the festival, in which a prayer was held at a local church and the festival was blessed by Father Vladimir. Still, Orthodoxy emerged as an important underlying conviction, or at least an essential mythos – especially at the festival’s closing ceremony. Here, many of the groups participated in a staged theatrical finale depicting a traditional Russian wedding, complete with matchmaking, engagement, bride’s lament, wedding ceremony, and, finally, the birth of a baby. The piece was framed on both ends by taped patriotic speeches delivered by an actor dressed in the garb of the ‘enlightened,’ archetypal Russian peasant, who occasionally pretended to strum a gusli, the instrument associated with ancient Russian bylina singers. In the final minutes a fountain made out of strings of lights appeared; fireworks were set off, and a painted, lit-up image of an Orthodox church, framed in sparklers rose slowly from behind the fountain while the

Fig 5.2: Fireworks formed in the shape of an Orthodox church

Power and Ritual 151 recorded soundtrack played the final chorus from Glinka’s opera A Life for the Tsar, a work that has been called ‘a brilliantly constructed monument to the sanctity of autocratic absolutism.’35 In response to this spectacle, the crowd whistled, beat upon tambourines, laughed, whooped, and hollered. (Figure 5.2) Like the opening concert of the Moscow Folklore Festival described in the previous chapter, this finale depicted a grand, mythic Slavic antiquity. It was designed to make maximum symbolic reference with every available aural and visual means; in fact, the degree of excess suggests kitsch, although slightly different from the Soviet variety. If Soviet folk kitsch depicted a robust, optimistic peasantry enjoying its celebrations and labor, the new post-Soviet nationalist kitsch focuses on the past and combines multiple national symbols in the four basic categories mentioned above: the pagan folk, the medieval and Imperial Russian past, the Cossacks, and Orthodoxy. The overall message of such pageantry is, of course, predictive: the peasant marriage and birth of the child suggest that Russia will be reborn, and the rising of the church from the fountain signifies that the cause or culmination of Russia’s rebirth will be the resurrection of its faith. The interweaving of medieval, Cossack, and folk traditions throughout implies that the projected rebirth will be based upon the foundations of Russia’s mythical and antique heritage. In its use of costumed processions, opera choruses, fireworks, and a Russian wedding play, Kozlov’s elaborate staged rite recalls the spectacles created for the coronation of Tsar Alexander III. Alexander had wished to evoke Muscovite culture in order to demonstrate the bond between tsar and people.36 Yet here there was no tsar, no coronation, nor even a presidential campaign – and the event was the culmination of a homespun village festival. But like the coronation rituals, the closing of the Vorob’evka festival was an attempt to impress with every possible means. If it did not crown a tsar, still it demonstrated the creative prowess of its singlehanded creator, Kozlov. Further, the pomp and circumstance linked the village to the center, as if to proclaim that this tiny place is not a backwater. This harnessing of folklore performance recalls Luzhkov’s ‘historical theme park’ version of revival in Moscow. What kind of nationalism is suggested here? Panina’s speech makes clear the ethnocentric, Slavophilic orientation of the political sponsors. Yet clearly, the main issue for revivalists like Kozlov is to promote native Slavic traditions, not to mobilize a population politically. Still, folk revival is political, and, like Kozlov’s festival, many revivalist activities attempt to engage the nationalist feelings of the audience and participants. All revivalist theory and practice frowns upon social, cultural, and economic ‘modernization’ while promoting its own constructed conception of tradition; the very notion of revival implies the existence of a definable tradition that needs to be preserved. As part of their work revivalists try to identify ‘roots’ – the specific national, regional, or ethnic group to which the folklore belongs.

152

Power and Ritual

And finally, revival seeks to reverse cultural trends (often associated with Westernization and modernization) that hamper the preservation of those traditions. In educating a population about folk traditions, many revivalists attempt to reacquaint the audience with its heritage. Kozlov’s festival is compatible both with revivalist practice and with the kind of nationalism that pervades Russian culture today. It provides us with an especially vivid example of how revivalist activities can be political, but I believe that all of them are to some extent. Many contemporary revivalists disclaim any nationalist views, as Pokrovsky did in Theodore Levin’s 1994 interview, believing there is something shameful in nationalism. Pokrovsky associated it with a conservative policy of the state, Nicholas I’s ‘Official Nationality’ or narodnost’. Yet under this doctrine from the 1830s, the ruler embodied the nation and brought the diverse population together under the unifying concept of narodnost’. As Nathaniel Knight states, ‘Official Nationality was the negation of ethnicity,’ since it subsumed the myth of the people into the myth of the ruler.37 By contrast, the kind of narodnost’ espoused by most revivalists (and the kind that seems to appeal to many Russians today) is similar to one that developed as a reaction by radical intellectuals to Official Nationality, and led to populism in the later part of the nineteenth century. These theorists saw the narod not as a branch of autocracy, but as its direct opposite, and argued that while the autocracy had gone so far in adopting Western ways that it lacked any national characteristics, the common people, the true narod, were the repository of narodnost’.38 In reenacting the traditions of rural peasants, contemporary folk revivalists similarly rely on the mythic narod to define Russianness: in nationalizing acts, they symbolically perform what it means (to them) to be Russian. Russian nationalism has similarly been treated as something shameful or dangerous by Western commentators on post-Soviet affairs, while nationalism in other former republics was viewed as more benign – largely because national ‘movements for social control coincided with the West’s desire to break up the Soviet Union.’ As a result, Western analysts have focused their critique on the ultra-nationalist Russian movements and have not paid attention to the ‘need for national renewal and a strengthened Russian national identity’ that characterizes much Russian nationalist sentiment.39 As Verdery and others have suggested, we should avoid the temptation to view nationalism as its proponents view it: ‘to treat nations as actually defined, for example, by culture, or descent, or history.’ Nationalism is not a social actor, not a thing in itself. Whether it is ‘good or bad, liberal or radical, or conducive to democratic politics’ is not of as much importance as to understand how the nation is constituted as a symbol, and how ‘different groups compete to control this symbol and its meanings.’40

Power and Ritual 153

Imagining the Past in Religious Ritual If in Kozlov’s festival Orthodoxy served a legitimating function for nationalizing discourse, and the dominant form of presentation was kitsch, the following case is, in a sense, its opposite. Here Orthodoxy serves as the overarching context within which nationalizing performance may be understood, and in fact this religious context serves to make both nationality and folk culture sacred rather than primarily secular. While Kozlov’s festival advertised its political loyalties and its relation to the center, this example took place far from the center and there were few traces of official political ties. Unlike the Kozlov festival kitsch mode, which offered a superficial treatment of nationalist symbols, this example links Cossack, Orthodox, and military symbols in the context of a rite that creates a richly ambiguous and multifaceted connection between local and national, present and past. Finally, unlike Kozlov’s scripted theatrical finale, this festival was ritual.41 The participants were not just reading parts, but were deeply involved. As such, this example shows how ritual – as standardized, repetitive, symbolic activity – helps to define social groups, generate political myths, channel emotion, and structure reality. Its power lies partially in its dramatic representation of symbols’ meanings. Since the participant in ritual is emotionally involved, the multiple meanings of the symbols lie in the subconscious. Part of ritual’s power resides in this ambiguity and condensation of diverse symbolic significances.42 The 1999 celebration of a parish holiday in a small town, Bolotnoe, about 100 km from Novosibirsk, is an example of a fairly common post-Soviet phenomenon: the revival of the pre-Revolutionary tradition of the parish holiday in small towns and large villages throughout Russia. In accordance with the idea of revival, the Bolotnoe parish chose to celebrate its holiday on the saint’s day (May 22) of the town’s St Nicholas church which was destroyed during the Soviet years. On the large wooden cross marking the church’s former location, a plaque written in an imitation of Old Church Slavonic relates the history of the monument and of the church it stands for: the church had been founded in 1912 but was ‘profaned and, by God’s will, destroyed in the years of militant godlessness,’ and the cross was erected on St Nicholas’ day in May, 1998. The town’s celebration of the parish holiday in 1999 began with a krestnyi khod, a procession with the icon of the patron saint through the streets of the town, from the existing church to the cross marking the destroyed church and back to the modern church. At the head of the procession, five Cossacks in olive green uniforms carried a lantern, an icon, a cross, and scarlet standards with images of the saint and of Christ; two men in street clothes carried the main icon of St Nicholas, draped in an embroidered cloth. Next came the priest in gold robes, who chanted and sprinkled holy water on the processants and on locals who watched from houses and street corners; his subordinate, also in gold robes, swung a censer. A church choir

154

Power and Ritual

Fig 5.3: Local men and visitors from Krasnoiarsk of some eight women and one man, joined by others, sang Orthodox hymns. The local participants, about a hundred people, were mostly middle-aged and young women in kerchiefs and children in folk costume and street clothes; a few middle-aged and younger men were also present. Also observing and participating were guests, with whom I came by bus: the 52year old director of the Novosibirsk Oblast Center for Folklore and Ethnography, and about 15 young adults, local participants in the Novosibirsk Center’s folklore ensembles and two folk ensembles from Krasnoiarsk. At the cross the priest, who had organized the day’s events, read from the gospels in Church Slavonic and made a speech in modern Russian, and the public lined up to kiss the icon and to be sprinkled with holy water. After the procession, the participants ate a common meal in the church, prepared and served by the church congregation; some of the guests scrutinized and kissed two local wonder-working icons, one of which gave off a special fragrance [blagoveshchaet] and the other of which was said to be crying,

Power and Ritual 155 because drops had appeared upon the face. At the request of the guests, a local old man sang folk religious verses in the church courtyard. Afterward, on a green in the town center, many of the young people from the procession engaged in folkloric games, dances, music, and ritual fighting together with other local young men and children. A group of 10 girls, ages 8–13, dressed in sarafany, participated in dance-games – which included tag games accompanied by folk songs and accordion music – with the guests and adults. Two young men, both in folk-style shirts – one wearing Cossack pants, the other in army camouflage pants – sparred on the lawn while boys between ages 3 and 10, dressed in folk costume, imitated them. The priest, now in light blue robes, organized and coached both guests and local men while they played a sparring game in which two players, squatting on their haunches, try in turn to unseat their opponent through a well-aimed punch. Towards the end of the day several of the adult and teenage men, including the Cossacks, engaged in a group brawl and afterwards sang a Cossack song in a circle with their arms around each other’s shoulders. These local young people had learned the dances, games, songs, and fighting techniques at an after-school program organized by the priest, and sponsored jointly by the local culture center (Dom narodnogo tvorchestva) and the church.43 The priest’s wife heads the folklore instruction, which includes weaving and beading for the girls, as well as songs and games for both boys and girls, while the priest organizes the classes in traditional fistfighting for the boys, and himself conducts classes in church doctrine. Although this was a ritual in which everyone who was present participated, and not a staged performance designed by a director like the Vorob’evka festival, a director – the priest – obviously had a hand in carefully crafting the event to contain many symbols that have become important in the context of post-Soviet Russia’s self-redefinition. These include Orthodox religious symbols such as the cross and the icons; the token of local identity and history in the inscription on the cross and in the choice to celebrate a local pre-revolutionary parish holiday; emblems of Russian traditional village culture – the traditional dress, singing, dancing, games, and fistfighting; and elements of Cossack culture. All of these signs speak of Russian national identity, and their combination in this one day’s event suggests that there had been an attempt at maximizing the symbolic potency of the ritual. The priest’s speech at the cross, just before the kissing of the icon, made clear the context into which all these symbols should be put: Russia is a House of God. Russia and the Russian people are a people chosen by God. And if the Russian people turns away from God, it will cease to exist…. To our great regret Russia has now become like this cross. There used to be a church [khram] here…here people prayed, here there were prayers about all mankind. There came a time when people moved away from God, forsook Christ…The church was destroyed….

156

Power and Ritual The sacred object was taken away from us because of our lawlessness. Now there is no church, but in its place, as a reminder of our falling into sin, stands this cross…the cross which is a weapon of torture and a weapon of salvation.

Clearly expressed here is the overarching meaning of the entire festival and its nationalizing discourse – that Russianness itself is sacred because the Russian people are ‘chosen.’ This sacralizing takes place on several levels in the speech, through spatial and temporal linking. The village and its church are seen to stand for all of Russia, which is pictured as sacred space (a ‘house of God’). Present and past are associated in a way that seems to abrogate history and time, emphasizing continuity and underlying patterns.44 For example, by depicting the village’s monument to the fallen church (the wooden cross) as a ‘weapon of torture and of salvation,’ the priest underlines its timeless nature, and stresses that the historical events that caused the destruction of the church (and, by extension, of Russia’s spirituality) may be viewed in a religious context as a repetition of man’s original sin. Where secular, historical time is mentioned in the inscription on the cross (it calls attention both to the pre-Revolutionary era when the church was built, and to the intervening years when the church was destroyed), the same de-historicizing process is at work. However, here as in other examples of post-Soviet nationalizing discourse, the Soviet era is treated differently from the pre-Revolutionary and post-Soviet eras. While the inscription precisely indicates the year of the church’s founding and the date of the dedication of the monument, it makes no mention of the year when the church was destroyed. With this conscious, but non-specific reference to the Soviet era – the time of lawlessness and godlessness – we can see that the intent of the ritual is to sacralize that very profane time by mentioning it in the context of an Orthodox ritual. This moment in history is brought into the ahistorical moment of religious time: it becomes a period of falling away from God, into sin. Meanwhile, because they are given numeric dates, the pre-Revolutionary and post-Soviet eras are treated as history proper, as dates to be commemorated. These are not just indications of chronological time. Rather, the two events are symbolically linked: the dates are imbued with meaning in both the religious and historical contexts. This use of ‘the synchronic mode of symbolic elevation’ recalls the historicism used in rituals of the court of the late Imperial era, when the monarchs linked their rule with the Muscovite period in order to reject the Westernized Russia of the recent past.45 In the context of similar political, religious, and Cossack revival in the post-Soviet period, historicism expresses continuity between the pre-Revolutionary era and the present, post-Soviet day, while consigning the Soviet era to a blank, featureless time of ‘falling into sin.’ If the ritual consecrated the profane Soviet period by placing it in an

Power and Ritual 157 Orthodox ritual, it simultaneously embraced what was formerly viewed as profane – the pagan folk culture. The celebration of this parish holiday combines symbols that traditionally do not belong together in this degree of intimate proximity. Secular village singing, dancing, and games were officially frowned upon by the Orthodox Church before the Revolution. Ritual fistfighting was part of the pagan folk tradition in Russia and was discouraged by the Church because of its association with drunkenness and revelry.46 Yet in this post-Soviet celebration, the priest’s wife organized folk music and dancing activities, while the priest himself served as a kind of referee and coach during the fistfighting games and the group brawl; and it was he who gathered the men together at the end of the fighting, had them stand in a circle with their arms around each other, and sing a historical Cossack song, ‘Through the Carpathian Mountains’ (‘Po goram Karpatskim’). (Figure 5.3) While it was traditional (until the mid-twentieth century) to conduct fistfights on Sundays, church or agricultural holidays, and parish holidays from the beginning of winter until early summer, a special leader, called an ataman or diad’ka, served as teacher and organizer of ritual fights – not a priest. There is some evidence that medieval monks knew how to fight and would use their skills for the defense of their monastery. However, both the church and the government took an official stance against traditional games and fights, and actively prohibited the fighting as a ‘fairly vulgar element of folk holidays.’47 Presumably, priests would not have encouraged or organized them. Nevertheless, in this ritual, as well as in the programs of the association Russian Shield (with chapters in 20 Russian cities), fistfighting is explicitly associated with Orthodox Christianity. That the Bolotnoe priest served as referee and organizer suggests that the church encourages the revival of a practice which it once actively discouraged. On the non-ecclesiastical side, the voice-over on a training video put out by Russian Shield states that it teaches and propagandizes ‘Orthodox military culture.’ ‘People ask where the Russians hit from: the hips or the shoulders? Our grandfathers answer: Russians hit from the soul.’ The organization proclaims ‘belief in God’ one of the sources of strength of the Russian fistfighter. Indeed, Russian fighters used to say prayers (or incantations invoking God’s name) for strength prior to engaging in brawls.48 To be sure, the combination of militarism and Christianity is inherent in Orthodox mythology (as it is in medieval Christian mythology in general). The representation of St George killing the dragon, which serves as Russian Shield’s coat of arms, reflects the notion that saints and martyrs die defending the faith and Orthodox Russia. The text of the song which the men sang together at the Bolotnoe holiday, ‘Through the Carpathian Mountains,’ reflects this duality as well, as it recounts the Cossack participation in World War I: ‘The damned German is attacking us / Attacking our State [derzhava], our golden cross. // But my dear dark, dark, dark-browed one / Is fighting the Germans for his faith.’ But although the mythology of

158

Power and Ritual

Orthodox Christianity itself promotes the notion of fighting for one’s faith, Orthodox doctrine does not promote the practice of ritual fistfighting. If we view this ritual in the context of modern Russian Orthodoxy, the efforts of the priest and his wife to revive Russian native traditions become more logical. As researchers have pointed out, while the Orthodox Church has practically achieved the status of a state religion in the post-Soviet era, worshippers have not flocked to it. Rather, greater numbers of Russians are finding spirituality in cults and non-Orthodox Christian sects from abroad; many of those who have come to Orthodoxy are woefully ignorant about doctrine and practice. The church must also deal with the legacy of the Soviet years, when it was forced to make concessions to the central government and KGB in order to guarantee its continued existence. As a result, today the church is seeking to redefine itself. Universalists in the church have suggested that it become open to all and more tolerant of both religious and ethnic diversity, while conservatives ‘insist on the national character of the historical church’ and ultra-conservatives preach anti-Semitism.49 The Bolotnoe priest and his wife exhibited several characteristics of the conservative manifestation of Orthodoxy: they are clearly part of the movement to make the Russian Orthodox Church more overtly national in character. However, although one might assume they were ethnocentric nationalists, they pursue a particular understanding of ethnicity in that context. For instance, they stated proudly that several of their parishioners were former Muslims who had converted to Orthodoxy; they pressed me to explain why I had not chosen to become Orthodox, and refused to accept the nationality-based logic of my explanation that I was not Orthodox because I was not Russian. To them, Orthodoxy was the truest form of Christianity, and thus everyone, regardless of nationality, should wish to join it; they did not see a contradiction between this view and the nationalist thrust of their constructed ritual. Indeed, this has become a widespread view among some nationalists: in 1993 the All-World Russian Assembly, a rightwing organization which advocates the reinstatement of the Russian Empire and which has strong ties with the Russian Orthodox Church, stated that anyone who converts to Orthodoxy automatically becomes ‘Russian.’50 Such seemingly contradictory views are common in the post-Soviet renegotiation of national identity. Besides this tension between ethnic and cultural nationalism, the St Nicholas Day holiday allows us to perceive some of the other tensions and idiosyncrasies of contemporary Orthodoxy. In the Soviet period many Russians – particularly men and young people – stayed away from Orthodoxy in order to secure a viable future for themselves in society; church-going was associated with older women and particularly with older female villagers. In the Bolotnoe holiday, despite new freedoms and restored status for the Orthodox Church, participants were still mostly women, though many were young and had brought their children. Most of the local young men who participated in the fighting arrived at the festivities after the

Power and Ritual 159 church ritual. Yet despite my expectations that villagers would be more pious than urbanites, in this case the urban young people – participants in folk ensembles in Novosibirsk and Krasnoiarsk – were extremely engaged not only in official expressions of Orthodoxy but in its mystical, magical side. It was they who drew my attention to the wonder-working icons and asserted that they truly believed in the powers of the icons to heal. In a remarkable fusion of Western technology and Orthodox magic, one man in his early 30s, an avid folk revivalist from Novosibirsk, even insisted that the healing properties of a photocopy of the icon would be just as potent as those of the original. Such deep emotional appreciation of the event surprised me. In my travels with urban young people (Muscovites) in Russian villages, I had been used to a rather dry, scientific attitude toward the folkloric culture as a repository of valuable information. But in Novosibirsk, many of those involved in folklore were Orthodox believers; they saw their belief and folklore as part of a whole. Indeed, the attitudes of the priest himself symbolized this fusion of folk and religious spirituality. Probably because of the obvious multi-level involvement of the participants, this ritual had a very different character from the superficial ‘theme park’ and kitsch styles of other nationalist discourses. Although there was certainly tension between the ethnic and cultural definitions of nationalism, and between the pre-Revolutionary doctrines and contemporary interpretations of the Orthodox Church, the ritual seemed to resolve those tensions. Indeed, one of the strengths of ritual lies in its ability to combine what seemingly does not belong together. With the emotional power of ritual, one does not question, for example, why fighting should represent Orthodox faith: the fighting itself, just like the folk singing and liturgical singing, the dancing and game playing, serve as a stimulus and channel for emotions. Clearly, we are witnessing a new era, when there is a sense that the powerful symbols of pre-Revolutionary Russia are up for grabs and may be combined in any fashion. Yet as I have shown, choices of particular symbols are not arbitrary and the designers of such events do intend to convey meaning through these events. In every case the ultimate goal is a political one: to redefine Russianness; to give a sense of identity to participants and audience members; to attract adherents by presenting something new and emotionally powerful; and to present new allegiances that will help define where the culture moves during this transitional time.

6

Performing Masculinity: Cossack Myth and Reality in Post-Soviet Revival Movements

The Cossack revival movement that began in earnest after 1991 has been called one of the most remarkable features of Russia’s transition to postSocialism;1 in large part it grew out of the Russian folk music and dance revival movement. In fact, one may say that Cossack identity survived because folk music revival created the forum for that identity’s performance. Moreover, much of the Russian folk revival movement’s distinctiveness arose from its intersection with the Cossack revival movement. In the 1990s, interest in Cossack culture, including its folk music and dance, combat methods, and equestrianship grew tremendously not only among descendants of Cossacks, but among non-Cossack Russians. Urban and village children and young people joined after-school activities or attended summer camps to learn Cossack skills, including folkways. Meanwhile, politicians in both the regions and the center curried favor with Cossacks. In post-Soviet Russia, Cossack culture continues to be associated with masculinity, strength, patriotism, pride, and independence, as well as with a visible, tangible heritage – qualities which are often seen to be lacking in Russian culture. The interaction of the Cossack and Russian folk revival movements in the 1980s and 90s has raised questions about both Russian and Cossack identity. For Russians, including many associated with patriotic and nationalistic organizations, elements of Cossack culture have come to form an integral part of Russian patriotism. Although Cossack mythology asserts Cossack loyalty to the Russian state, and most Cossacks are ethnically Russian, the various organizations in the Cossack movement have declared that Cossacks are a distinct ‘ethnos’ within Russian territory. In claiming a discrete identity, they have ‘exposed cleavages in the reified terms “Russia” and “Russians”.’2 The question of Russian identity is beyond the scope of this book, but my discussion aims to suggest some reasons why Russian and Cossack identities seem to be so uniquely and inextricably intertwined, and to shed light on the complex interactions of Cossack and Russian folk revival in the twentieth century. I begin with a historical overview.

Performing Masculinity 161

Cossacks under Soviet Power The Cossacks were originally runaway serfs and outlaws who lived on the outskirts of the Russian Empire, starting in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. They formed democratically run, military nomadic male communities in which unusually close attachments arose among the men, who were dependent upon each other for survival. Before the end of the seventeenth century, few Cossacks married; later, around the same time that the Cossacks shifted to a sedentary way of life, they began to live with women captured from the groups they fought and pillaged, and afterward they took Russian wives.3 In the eighteenth century they became subject to Russian rule, and composed a legal estate under the imperial government. They were offered certain freedoms and rights in exchange for their military service to the Tsar. After the 1917 revolution the structures underpinning the Cossacks’ existence as a corporate entity collapsed, leaving them without a defined identity. Due to demands of the new regime and the international community, Cossacks began to propagate a definition of themselves as ‘a people with a shared history and culture’ that included democratic representation; they wanted to be defined as ‘a people bordering on a distinct nationality.’4 During the Civil War, the Bolsheviks decided to take action to eliminate the Cossacks as a distinct group. The policy of decossackization took place during two months in 1919, during which the Cossack elite was destroyed, all other Cossacks were threatened into conformity, and traces of Cossack culture were obliterated. It is estimated that ten to twelve thousand were killed during those two months. Subsequently the decossackization policy was repealed because of opposition from within the party and evidence of Cossack counteraction. To be sure, individual Cossacks were persecuted for opposing the regime or for having previously evinced counterrevolutionary behavior; later, during Stalin’s purges, many were singled out simply for their association with those suspected of counterrevolutionary intent. But after 1919, the Cossacks were not systematically persecuted for being Cossacks per se. Instead, the way Cossacks were identified was changed.5 Whereas under the tsars the definition of Cossack identity had been a strictly legal matter – the results of a deal between tsar and Cossack – in the 1920s and later, Cossack identity acquired an ethno-cultural interpretation. Soviet policy treated Cossacks as a distinct group – similar to the status given to other Soviet ethnicities – with the exception that it was treated as a subethnic category: Cossacks were considered ethnically Russian but culturally Cossack.6 In this climate, expressions of Cossack cultural identity were officially encouraged along with that of other ethnicities in the USSR. In 1936, an article on the front page of Pravda asserted that ‘the Cossackry has become Soviet,’ and Stalin met with a delegation of Don Cossacks in the Bolshoi Theater for a performance of Ivan Dzerzhinsky’s opera Quiet Flows the Don. A mass celebration of the Cossackry held in Rostov culminated in the estab-

162

Performing Masculinity

lishment of Cossack cavalry divisions within the Red Army.7 The same year, both the Don and Kuban Cossack Choirs were formed. Significantly, the Kuban choir’s director was G. Kontsevich, who had formerly directed the Kuban voisko (host) choir (Voiskovyi pevcheskii khor), an official Cossack choir that had represented the Kuban voisko at holidays and church services, singing a combination of church, folk, and classical music. That choir had been founded in 1811 and discontinued in 1921. The hiring of the choir’s former director in 1936 suggested a certain degree of acceptance of Cossack cultural expression.8 These professional Cossack choirs and dance troupes were created in former Cossack areas as part of the state cultural policy under which each separate people in the USSR had its own folk ensemble(s). As was the case with the army divisions, the members of the ensembles did not have to be Cossack descendants; they were professional musicians and dancers, graduates of Soviet music and dance schools. In addition, many of the Russian state-sponsored folk choruses included Cossack folk music and dance numbers as an integral part of their repertoire, alongside the obligatory Ukrainian and Belarusian sets. In the minds of the citizens of the USSR, then, Cossacks became associated with swashbuckling sword twirlers and lithe, masculine dancers who could leap extremely high or perform innumerable prisiadki (low-squatting dances) in perfect synchronization. In dance, this situation did not reflect actual Cossack traditions so much as it borrowed from the traditions of Russian ballet that dated to the late nineteenth century. To be sure, Cossack traditional dancing did involve men’s showing off, but it was an improvisatory art in which each performer, receiving inspiration from the crowd and from the music, combined a vocabulary of movements in unpredictable ways. Rather than pointed-toe, graceful airborne leaps and splits, Don Cossack men’s dancing involved heavy, rhythmical striking or scraping of the floor with the boot’s sole or side; some said it had a kind of clumsy quality.9 In music, the Cossack professional choirs reflected the repertoire and style of performance of the professional Russian folk choruses: they sang arranged songs and were well known for their musical exactitude – while Cossack village traditions were well known for their highly developed improvisational polyphony. In the countryside, a different style of Cossack folklore performance continued to live an active life. Amateur Cossack folk choirs were formed in large and small villages. When I visited such villages in Volgograd oblast in 1998, locals still talked approvingly of the large, active village folk choirs that had existed in the 1960s and 1970s. Some were officially constituted under the state’s policy of do-it-yourself artistic activity, while others were non-official, spontaneously formed village groups. Despite the official policy of support for Cossack culture, accounts hint at a picture of incomplete state acceptance and maintenance of Cossack folk-performance activities. When the movement for Cossack revival came into full swing in 1991, the level of support for Cossack revivalist activities grew tremendously, but the sources were private organizations.

Performing Masculinity 163

Cossack Revival and Russian Folk Revival The beginning of Cossack revival has been traced to the 1970s with the popularity of Cossack folk music in the repertoires of Russian revivalist ensembles.10 While it is likely that even without this start Cossacks would have engaged in a political movement for independence during glasnost, the performance of Cossack folk traditions by folk revival groups provided a source of important symbols of Cossack culture. The Pokrovsky Ensemble’s heavy reliance on Cossack music in its repertoire – and its use of Cossack costumes and swords in concerts – was extremely significant. Pokrovsky denied, however, that his work was meant to advance the cause of Cossack revival or of other nationalistic movements: ‘In dressing up like Cossacks and singing their songs, we’re not trying to suggest that we’re part of their independence movement.’11 Despite Pokrovsky’s denial, the revival movement’s embracing of Cossack folklore – particularly the music of the Don Cossacks – has contributed to Cossack culture’s visibility and accessibility throughout Russia. When in 1998 I visited Russian cities that were not traditionally inhabited by Don Cossacks, I found ubiquitous interest in and use of Don Cossack repertoire. I was told by the leaders of several children’s ensembles that Cossack songs and fistfighting activities helped attract boys to folklore activities. The majority of adult and young adult groups, too, included some Cossack material in their repertoires. When I asked participants and leaders about the role of Cossack folklore in their communities and their ensembles, some said their personal interest in the Cossacks was due to Cossack ancestry – just as did Dmitri Pokrovsky himself.12 While it is common for members of the folklore movement to be interested in their ancestral roots, those who claimed Cossack ancestry seemed to take special pride in this fact. It was as if Cossack ancestry conferred special status on a Russian. Furthermore, Cossack music is loved and performed by many who do not have Cossack ancestors. The leaders of Stanitsa, a professional Cossack ensemble in Volgograd, are not themselves Cossacks, but are well accepted as purveyors of this culture. In order to sing Cossack music, perform Cossack dances or learn Cossack fistfighting skills one does not have to possess or claim Cossack roots. Many Russians consider Cossack culture part of Russian culture. Cossacks themselves do not insist on proving ancestry, although Cossack organizations have argued for an ethno-cultural definition of Cossacks. The declarations of many of the Cossack organizations founded in the early 1990s contain the following definition of membership: Members of the Cossackry may be Soviet and foreign citizens, descendants of Cossacks, natives of traditional Cossack oblasts and emigrés from those areas, as well as persons who are connected with the Cossackry because of their interests or practical activities, who wish to revive the original Cossack ethnic formations, its history and culture,

164

Performing Masculinity who actively support these goals, recognize the responsibilities of these bylaws, and pay dues.13

Although I have no Cossack background, after I told Cossacks in Voronezh oblast in 1998 that I was researching Russian folklore revival, I was given a document (consisting of a photocopied sheet of paper with my name written in) stating that I was an honorary Cossack.

Post-Soviet Revival and Myths of the Cossackry The attraction of the Cossackry for today’s Russians – those with and without Cossack roots – has to do with the myths surrounding Cossacks, which have become doubly attractive in the context of the upheaval of postSocialist Russia. Cossacks were known as brave and skillful warriors who evolved their own culture and economy and never participated in serfdom. Many folksongs glorify Cossack independence through the concept of volia (freedom from restraint): common phrases include ‘liudi vol’nye, Donskie kazaki,’ (unrestrained people, Don Cossacks) and ‘vol’nye oni da svobodnye’ (they are unrestrained and free).14 According to the myth, Cossacks were impervious to subjugation by foreign powers, tsars – and Soviet power. During the Soviet Civil War, many Cossack communities were known to have been pro-Tsar and anti-Soviet, and later on, it was a recognized fact that Cossacks were persecuted by the Soviet government. The popular version of their history stated that Cossacks presented important resistance to the Soviets, but were overcome, victimized and nearly destroyed. For this reason, Cossack culture may have been attractive for some Russian Soviet citizens with antiSoviet leanings. Today, Cossacks represent a persecuted ‘ethnos’ that is both Russian (because most Cossacks are ethnically Russian) and not-Russian. Cossacks are not ‘Other’ in the way that other persecuted ethnicities are; they are an integral part of Russian culture, and yet they cannot be identified with those who engaged in persecution during the Terrors of the Soviet era. Furthermore, Cossack mythology identifies Cossacks with Russian patriotism. Cossacks were known as Russia’s protectors, keeping her borderlands safe from marauding heathen enemies.15 The important official myth of Cossacks’ loyalty and ‘self-sacrificing valor’ and the tsars’ corresponding generosity with ‘land and privilege’ figured symbolically in songs, statues, regalia, banners, written documents, and rituals of both Cossack and Imperial origin. For example, Tsar Nicholas I in 1837 established a tradition (continued by all subsequent tsars) whereby the tsar gave his heir the honorary title of Most August Ataman of All Cossack Voiskos. For their part, the Cossacks treasured written charters from the various tsars granting land or privileges.16 Their songs depicted the Russian tsar calling for the Cossacks in a time of need, and rewarding them for saving Russia.17 Of course, in reality the Cossacks’ loyalty was countered by the equally important myth of their independence, and both the Cossacks and the tsar showed loyalty when it served their own aims.

Performing Masculinity 165 In the 1990s Cossack revival has reawakened the identification of Cossacks with patriotism and heroic defense of the motherland. Just as in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in the post-Soviet period Cossacks have become an important political force nationally, alternately using strategies of independence and loyalty to obtain their demands from the state. The Cossacks wanted a codified independent status from Yeltsin’s government, and manipulated his desire to retain power. They formed various Cossack organizations, each claiming to represent all Cossacks; these organizations asked the Russian government for administrative autonomy, military formations in the armed forces, and recognition of the repression of Cossacks under the Soviets. Autonomy has not been forthcoming, partly because of the lack of agreement among Cossack organizations, but Cossacks did receive from Yeltsin’s government the provision of military units, and government decrees recognizing Cossack repression in the past and their identity as a ‘specific segment of the Russian people.’18 As Yeltsin moved from democracy to authoritarianism, he increasingly turned to the Cossacks for support, and other government factions also courted them. After 1993, ‘it became evident that there was an ethnonational Cossack lobby at the highest levels of the Russian state’ – ethnically Cossack politicians who favored state sponsorship of the Cossacks.19 The reality of Cossacks today differs considerably from myth. In today’s Russia, the many splintered Cossack groups are feuding among themselves and fighting for power and land. Instead of Cossack heritage, their attention is focused upon their legal status within the state, shifting political alliances, and the possibility of obtaining land and autonomy. This is a far cry from the 1990 goals of ‘restoring the destroyed Cossack way of life through equestrian competition and folklore ensembles and choruses.’20 Furthermore, among liberal intellectuals, Cossacks have gained the reputation of antisemitic marauders who are taking advantage of the state to further their own aims. Early in the 1990s, Cossacks began to form themselves into paramilitary and vigilante units, helping to ‘ensure law and order.’ To ordinary citizens, Cossacks became known as ‘another obstacle of already difficult daily life’: they form a ubiquitous professional security presence in markets, stores, and transportation centers. Some Cossack units were ‘essentially business cooperatives or criminal gangs.’ 21 Others have been involved in initiating conflicts with minorities living in the border areas of Russia’s territory.22 Still, a significant sub-faction within the Cossack revival movement is focused not only upon material and legal gains, but upon cultural heritage. It is the activities and productions of these Cossacks that I describe and analyze below. In talking to such Cossack revivalists I became convinced that for them, as well as for the many non-Cossack Russians fascinated with Cossack culture, the appeal of the Cossackry is linked not only to the Cossacks’ complex reputation for independence and loyalty but to their association with an image of quintessential masculinity that has particularly potent resonances in the post-Soviet period.

166

Performing Masculinity

Masculinity At a festive dinner in the Moscow apartment of Andrei Kabanov, the specialist on Cossack folk singing, Ol’ga Nikitenko, leader of Stanitsa, the professional Cossack ensemble from Volgograd, told the following joke. A Cossack is lying in his yard while his wife is bustling about, mending the fence and seeing to the animals and the garden. He just lies there and lies there while she toils and labors. His neighbor peeks his head over and sees the Cossack lying in his yard and says, ‘Grisha!’ – ‘What!’ – ‘What are you doing lying in your yard while your wife is working?’ – ‘Well, what if war suddenly comes, and I’m tired!’23 An important component of Cossack myth and a reason for Cossack culture’s attractiveness in glasnost-era and post-Soviet Russia has been its association with masculinity. The values and occupations of Cossack culture revolved around military service; Cossacks were not serfs. As the joke illustrates, in the mythic form that has come down to us Cossack women kept the economy going by engaging in agriculture, but Cossack men preserved their energies for fighting; they were ‘above’ agriculture, ranking above peasants in social stature. Thus today, even if they live in rural areas with agriculturebased economies, Cossacks take offense if one uses the Russian word for ‘peasant man’ (muzhik) to refer to them; they are not muzhiki but kazaki. The image of the Cossack is of a male Cossack; as Judith Kornblatt has put it, ‘women do not make Cossacks. Cossacks are male.’ Indeed, in nineteenth and twentieth century literary depictions Cossacks often declared they were married to their sword, horse, or the steppe.24 Certain elements of traditional cultures represent the male orientation of Cossack culture and the female orientation of peasant culture. For example, male Cossacks wear the uniform identifying them as Cossacks, and the uniform’s styling shows which host they are from; since the late nineteenth century, however, for women dress has not played a role as a marker of Cossack identity.25 Conversely, the symbol of the Russian peasant has come to be female, and the styling of the female dress most clearly identifies the wearer’s regional origins. Traditional village singing also reflects this gender difference: in south Russian polyphonic singing, women lead the song and sing it in a range comfortable for them, while Don Cossack polyphonic singing is more suited to all-male groups, or a male group with only one woman, who sings the high dishkant.26 The popularity of Cossack culture among liberal ensembles in the Russia of the 1980s and 1990s is partly explained by this association of Cossack culture with masculinity. Because the Russian village is associated with old women, folk ensemble leaders find it hard to attract boys and young men to folklore activities. But if the group teaches and performs Cossack material, then boys willingly get involved. Cossack culture inculcates masculinity – just as Asian military arts are said to be beneficial to boys in American society. Both are seen as places where boys can ‘be boys’ while also learning discipline, pride, and leadership.

Performing Masculinity 167

Fig 6.1: Vadim Koval’skii twirls swords In this sense Cossack culture may function as a kind of antidote to the perceived emasculation of Russian culture under the Soviet system. Sociologists and cultural critics have shown that the centralized, hierarchical nature of Soviet society, where control was given to the top layers of society and taken away from individuals, led to the phenomenon of men feeling disempowered.27 In reality, both men and women were disempowered, but the effect was presumably greater on men, whose sphere of power was traditionally the public arena. Women’s traditional sphere, the family and the home, was still available to them as a place of self-fulfillment. In fact, in this context Cossack culture offers more than an ‘association’ with masculinity. Judith Butler has argued that gender is not a ‘stable identity or locus of agency from which various acts follow; rather, gender is an identity tenuously constituted in time, instituted in an exterior space through a stylized repetition of acts.’ (emphasis original.) She contends that by performing gender through gesture, speech, and dress, we actively create and reinforce it, at the same time constructing the cultural fiction that what we are performing is ‘natural.’28 Because Cossack folk performance is characterized by scenes of masculine ‘excess,’ it constitutes an emblematic enacting of gendered qualities in the context of ritualized performance. I am referring in particular to the often-depicted demonstrations of military prowess and

168

Performing Masculinity

fighting in Cossack stage performances – both by Cossacks and nonCossacks. For example, a mixed-age ensemble (ages 10–35), based at the Saratov Province House of Culture and Science, features Cossack elements in all of its performances, although none of its members are Cossacks and Saratov was not a Cossack territory (although it was geographically adjacent to the Don Cossack host). In its concerts the group regularly performs several Cossack dance tunes with accordion accompaniment. During one such tune, two of the group’s teenage boys pretended to ‘challenge’ each other while dancing: without raising their arms, they danced towards one another and collided with a (mild) full-body blow in the center of the stage, then retreated. In essence, their performance demonstrated that boys’ dancing is not just for entertainment; it is an emulation of the quintessential masculine occupation, warfare – and, in the social context depicted onstage, competition over girls. In another number, one of the group’s co-leaders, Vadim Koval’skii, a trained actor, stepped out and began to twirl a large sword. Koval’skii increased the speed of the rotations, changed the angle, and switched direction to show his skill; the rural audience hollered and applauded. With a titillating degree of excess, the performance highlighted the phallic implications of the sword and the performer’s prowess in controlling it. Clearly, the decision of this group – and many others like it – to feature such performances tells us much about the implications of masculinity for contemporary post-Soviet society. Male Russians, lacking models of what it would mean to perform Russian masculinity, borrow symbolic masculine behavior from Cossack culture. (Figure 6.1) To be sure, Cossacks themselves cultivate the masculine symbolism of their cultural products. In all these cases symbolic performative masculinity represents not simply gender but cultural capital: to perform masculinity is to assert one’s ascendancy within the context of the otherwise devalued genre of folk music.

Cossack Myth in Action Thus in post-Soviet Russia, the mythology of the Cossackry plays an important role in helping to dictate both how Cossacks see themselves and how others see them. Folk music and dance perpetuate these myths because they provide a ritual experience for participants. Cossack revivalist groups use the symbolic imagery of song and the collective experience of singing and moving together to create an encounter that intensely involves the whole person. Religious rituals similarly surround participants with sensory stimulation. David Kertzer writes, ‘In the intensity of ritual, people focus their attention on a limited range of symbols. The greater their emotional involvement the more the rest of the universe is obliterated, and the more the symbols embodied in the rites become authoritative.’29 Such a use of ritual experiences is evident in the summer camps created in

Performing Masculinity 169 the 1990s for boys and young men to cultivate traditional Cossack skills. They teach not only military skills but involve their attendees in performances of Cossack folk music ensembles, meetings with older local Cossacks, religious services, and visits to history museums. A 1997 video documentary about one of these camps, held in Volgograd oblast for Moscow boys who wish to become Cossacks (or, as the documentary put it, to become ‘men’30) showed the degree to which the camp organizers – as well as the documentarists – attempted to stimulate the emotions of both participants and viewers in order to inculcate a version of Cossack mythology.31 While the documentary took pains to assert that it does not contain ‘a single episode that was planned beforehand or specially prepared,’ it clearly aimed both to propagandize the Cossack youth movement (to encourage other adolescents and young men to join Cossacks ranks) and to mythologize the current Cossack revival. In the process it revealed a duality in the Cossack position vis-à-vis Russia in the post-Soviet period. While asserting the Cossacks’ historically important role as a reliable, patriotic defender of Russia (including during World War II), the video also bemoaned the horrific treatment of the Cossacks during the Soviet period. Thus, it seemed to say, while the Cossacks’ entire identity revolved around the defense of the motherland, it was precisely that motherland which attempted to decimate the Cossacks. But the video, like much post-Soviet Cossack rhetoric, took a patriotic stance that did not identify an enemy within the country it now proposed to serve.32 As the video opened, one of the camp’s participants sang the nationally known folk song ‘Oh you, broad steppe’ over visuals of the prairie landscape near the village, Golubinskaia stanitsa, where the camp was held (stanitsa identifies a large Cossack settlement). The video then alternated footage of the campers’ cultural activities with images of the boys learning sword fighting (and twirling), horsemanship, fencing, hand-to-hand combat, defense and attack techniques, use of ‘traditional’ weapons such as rifles and pistols, orienteering, and river crossing. In one segment, the young men visited the local Museum of the Glory of Combat, which featured artifacts from the battle of Stalingrad; in an emotional moment, the film showed one of the Cossacks finding his family name in the list of the soldiers killed in this battle. The video depicted the visit of the campers to the ruins of a local church (St Nicholas’s) on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the battle of Stalingrad (1942–3), for a requiem ‘for the Russian troops who were killed for their faith and their fatherland.’ There was a dual occasion: the Russian Orthodox Church had declared that same day to mark the memory of the ‘new martyrs’ [novomuchenniki] Tsar Nicholas II and his family. The video cut to footage of the schoolboy Tsarevich Alexei, who held the symbolic title of the Ataman of All Cossack Troops, in Cossack dress; the voice-over stated: ‘The same executioners who killed the family also executed the decree

170

Performing Masculinity

on decossackization. How much pain and suffering this caused only the old folks know; but everyone should know.’ As illustration of this assertion the camera panned the group of 30 adolescents standing, candles in hand, in Cossack uniform in the ruined church, as if to suggest that these boys, at least, would know; and that their inculcation into the Cossack ranks might make up for the loss of the boyish Ataman Alexei. This brief sequence illustrates the paradox of the post-Soviet Cossack position. The holiday provided occasion for a dual remembrance: both the killing of the Tsar and Cossacks by the Bolsheviks and the battle of Stalingrad, where so many Cossacks died (Stalingrad, under its present name Volgograd, is in the Don Cossack voisko). The video gave direct, but non-specific mention of Soviet persecution: the faceless voice told us ‘only the old folks know,’ and did not give facts about who executed the decree and how many suffered or were killed. The statistics, as published in the Russian press in the 1990s, suggested that more than 2 million Cossacks were repressed, over 1.5 million were killed, and more than 220,000 square miles (580,000 square kilometers) of their land was taken (Western accounts have challenged these interpretations).33 Yet the poetic phrasing of the video’s voice-over (‘only the old folks know’), together with its visuals of a ceremony in a somber ruined church lit by candles, and underscored by a soundtrack of Russian Orthodox choral music, provided viewers with an emotional climax that would not be forthcoming from stark statistics alone. The ‘knowledge’ that the video offered was like a call to action for the teenage Cossacks-in-training pictured there, and for those to whom the video was directed. Although the documentary did not call overtly for revenge or retribution, it did indirectly incite one to join the Cossacks as they ‘revive the Cossack spirit.’ The ritual and the video define the role of the new Cossacks in the new society as both victims and protectors, both the sufferers of Russia’s former tyranny and the resurrectors of the ailing nation. 34 To reconcile explicitly these two seemingly opposed notions is not necessary in Cossack mythology. As this video demonstrates, the status of victim itself seems to provide the necessary push to activate the Cossacks in their new/old role of protector and reviver. In this video and others, folk music similarly linked a past glorious heritage with a new generation’s drive to address past wrongs. One sequence in a similar video about a Cossack summer camp35 offered a particularly potent symbolic portrayal of the victim/protector/resurrector dynamic. At the camp’s closing ceremony, three male Cossacks in their 30s and 40s – teachers at the camp – sang the patriotic Cossack song about World War II, ‘Through the Carpathian Mountains,’ while the camera panned the group of boys and adolescents in uniform watching this spectacle with rapt attention. The filmmaker created an emotional climax during the men’s subsequent performance of ‘Sing in the Garden, Nightingale,’ in which the male nightingale laments he cannot sing: he has lost his voice singing in unfamiliar gardens and eating bitter berries. Although it is a nationally-known folk

Performing Masculinity 171 song, when Cossacks sing the song in the 1990s it may have multiple symbolic meanings: the Cossack has been traveling far from home and enduring the hardships of war – or the Cossack has been exiled and endures the hardships of disfavor and loss of identity. At one point the video’s director froze the frame, capturing the trio in the midst of a refrain, a wistful expression on the face of the lead singer. The still image, held for several seconds under the continuing soundtrack of the men’s music, resembled an old photograph, and the minor chords of the song gave it a nostalgic quality; it faded out to a shot of the listening boys. (Figure 6.2) The situation was poignant in part because the solemn young faces of the audience seemed to promise future resurrection of a once-active tradition: if the mission of the camps was successful, the nightingale would once again sing.

Folklore Revival in Don Cossack Territory In the 1990s it was not only the summer camps for young men that were working for the restoration of Cossack traditions. When I visited Volgograd oblast in 1998 the signs of folklore’s active presence were clearly visible. In nearly every village I found at least one folklore collective composed of retired people – often including at least some men – who sang local folkloric songs; some villages had mixed-age adult groups, including teenagers; in many villages children’s folk dance and singing groups were active at Houses of Culture or at schools. It was possible to find Cossack men of all ages in the various amateur and professional ensembles in the cities. Indications pointed to a conscious process of folk revival: for example, a wedding in one Cossack village featured folk as well as modern elements; another large village was home to a Center of Cossack Culture that housed a museum and a folklore performing group; and urban Cossack folk performing groups featured young or old village members as ‘masters.’ Many villages held yearly celebrations of traditional parish holidays featuring folk performances and rituals. Although the economic situation in the late 1990s may have limited the available funds for cultural activities, Cossack areas were still experiencing more activity in the area of folklore than were other regions of Russia. There are many possible reasons for this situation. The Cossack revival movement that began in the early 1990s helped to create a climate in which any cultural activities that could be identified as ‘Cossack’ were backed by the new Cossack philanthropic organizations that sprang up. Such organizations were often funded by Cossack businesspeople – or non-Cossack politicians and businesspeople who wished to gain Cossack support. For example, in Novoannenskii (in Volgograd oblast) I met a Cossack businessman who maintained a Cossack equestrian center – which, I was told by others, fulfilled a money-laundering function for his quasi-legal activities. In Alekseevskaia stanitsa, a large village that is a regional center in Volgograd oblast, the Center of Cossack Culture organized many Cossack

172

Performing Masculinity

revivalist activities – including holiday celebrations with folklore performances and demonstrations of fistfighting and horsemanship – as well as restoring traditional holiday celebrations, and fund-raising activities (including a ‘telemarathon to collect funds for the revival of the Cossackry’). The Center housed a museum of Cossack life and a Cossack folklore ensemble, and had produced several educational videos on Cossack culture. Sponsors of such events included private enterprises, a radio station, and the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation.36 Further, it is clear that folklore activities had already been very popular among Cossack descendants for several decades. Although it was forbidden to form Cossack organizations or to agitate for attention to Cossack affairs during the Soviet period, some elements of Cossack culture – such as Cossack song and dance ensembles – were supported, even though, as the following account suggests, such support was incomplete. The story of one amateur ensemble from a small town in Volgograd oblast is illustrative of official attitudes toward Cossack culture and the somewhat defiant attitudes of Cossacks themselves in the 1960s and 1970s. Yet the story, told to me in 1998, was certainly subject to retrospective reinterpretation that reflects not only Soviet-era attitudes but the kind of dual stance I have identified as characteristic of the post-Soviet period for Cossacks. My informant emphasizes the Cossacks’ victim status during the Soviet period, and also hints at a version of the protector/resurrector stance: in his recounting, while the Cossacks faced persecution from the Soviet bureaucracy, they paradoxically remained loyal supporters of the country and its leader, even during the Soviet period, and were rewarded with warm appreciation in return. In 1964 Vitalii Bortsov founded a choir and dance ensemble under the official auspices of the House of Culture in the town of Uriupinsk. Bortsov was born in 1936 in a Cossack khutor (small village) near Uriupinsk, but during World War II he and his family were exiled with other Cossack families to Perm oblast in the Urals. After Bortsov received his degree in folk dancing at the Perm Choreographic School, he asked to be assigned a job in his home oblast. Although Cossack families in exile maintained a tight sense of community and a consciousness of themselves as Cossacks, and although his own family regularly joined in Cossack traditional folk songs and dances at celebrations, Bortsov recalls that at the time it never occurred to him to form a Cossack ensemble. To do so was not accepted practice; his training had prepared him to perform and teach dances of all the republics of the USSR, not just Cossack ones.37 Furthermore, during the 1960s Khrushchev’s anti-religious policies had effectively shut down the activities of some of the professional Cossack choirs that had flourished earlier.38 Despite a political and cultural climate that was not propitious for starting a Cossack performing troupe, an older choreographer in a nearby town gave Bortsov the idea, and it appealed to him. Today, he is proud of the bold initiative he showed despite pressures to the contrary: ‘I started the

Performing Masculinity 173

Fig 6.2: Cossacks perform at Summer camp Cossack ensemble at a terrible time, when Cossacks here were not recognized, and were oppressed and battered. Even the word “Cossack” was a crime. But even so, I had the audacity to start a Cossack ensemble.’ 39 Bortsov worked on two fronts: he cultivated an ensemble of amateur young dancers in the city, and also went back to his birthplace to recruit middleaged and older men and women, workers in a kolkhoz, for the chorus. Bortsov and the dancers would travel regularly to the village for rehearsals, and the performing group became popular both in Volgograd oblast and in Moscow, and later abroad. According to Bortsov, ‘although they stifled the Cossacks a bit,’ local Party officials generally approved of his ensemble and gave their support. However, Moscow officials were not so clear about the degree to which it was appropriate to display symbols of the Cossackry. He recounted a story of their invitation to Moscow to perform in the Kremlin Palace as part of a celebration of the adoption of the new Brezhnev Constitution in 1977. For a dress rehearsal at the Palace, the group donned their usual costumes, which included the traditional parochka (late-nineteenth-century-style blouse and skirt set) for the women and the official pre-Revolutionary Cossack uniform, including a tailored military jacket, blue pants with red stripes (lampasy) down the sides, and a cap (furazhka). An official from the Department of Propaganda of the Central Committee approached Bortsov

174

Performing Masculinity

and said, “OK, your piece is fine, but take off the lampasy. Rip them off ”. The furazhki were also banned by the official. According to Bortsov, the lampasy are such an important symbol of Cossack culture that to have them ripped off is “to kill a Cossack”.40 His group were ready to head home, but instead they decided to turn their pants inside out, so that the stripes were not visible. A second official, the head of the Department of Propaganda, saw the Cossacks without lampasy and furazhki and inquired as to the reason and the origin of the command to take them off. As Bortsov remembers it, the higher official reprimanded his underling: ‘What did you do? They’re going to go home to the Don and say they were forced to rip off their lampasy! [To a Cossack] there’s nothing more sacred than that! Sew them back on!’ The victorious ending of Bortsov’s story emphasizes the national leader’s ultimate support of the Cossacks: I came back to my fsolks and said, ‘Turn the pants right side out!’ They said, ‘Hooray! [O-pa!]’ And [the official] had already ordered two or three seamstresses to sew the lampasy back on. And then we perform in front of them, and he says, ‘Oh, they sewed them back on already?’ ‘We didn’t rip them off.’ ‘Well, that’s Cossacks for you.’…And my folks danced with such pathos in front of Brezhnev, people yelled ‘Hurrah!’ Brezhnev, Lionia himself applauded, and even gave a standing ovation for our Cossacks!41

Clearly, Bortsov’s story reflects a guiding myth of the current Cossack revival movement: the Cossacks were repeatedly oppressed throughout the Soviet period. The myth of Cossack sacrifice is an important one for current Cossack identity construction because it serves as justification for the Cossacks’ attempts to receive apologies, reparations, and special status from the State. In the 1990s, official recognition was needed in order for the Cossacks to exist on more than a cultural plane: they desired military status, land, and autonomy.42 Yet Bortsov’s story, with the official’s worry that the Cossacks would ‘go back to the Don’ and tell others how they were treated in Moscow, and its victorious ending emphasizing Brezhnev’s endorsement of their performance, demonstrates his belief that throughout these difficult years the leaders themselves feared and appreciated the Cossacks, even if others – the lower bureaucrats – did not. This points toward another important myth dating back to the pre-Revolutionary era: that the Cossacks are loyal to the tsar or supreme ruler, and that the leader always repays the Cossacks with loyalty. Thus, Bortsov’s story represents the degree to which contemporary Cossacks are constantly drawing upon elements of their mythic preRevolutionary history in order to forge their identity in the post-Soviet world. And Bortsov’s narrative also ‘performs masculinity’: in underlining the authorities’ fear of the Cossacks’ wrath, he boasts that the Cossacks were really the bosses in this exchange. The discourse of masculinity is ulti-

Performing Masculinity 175 mately about authority: the Cossacks refused to be castrated by the removal of the lampasy, and retained their formidable masculine disposition throughout. In Bortsov’s further comments he stressed that although the Cossacks were ‘oppressed’ during the Soviet era, they were well supported financially. During glasnost and perestroika and the early 1990s, Bortsov’s group had made several tours abroad thanks to the support of the Ministry of Culture; but starting in the mid-1990s state money dried up. Apparently, whereas the model of locking horns with Soviet authorities was a familiar Cossack stance, begging was not. Contrary to my own expectations, Bortsov said that Cossack organizations did not pitch in to support the group. Instead, the ensemble was surviving due to the assistance of local businesspeople – not themselves Cossacks – who saw the value in supporting Cossack cultural activities. The Cossacks themselves, Bortsov said, were ‘cheap’: ‘if some [resources] appear, they put it in their own pockets, but in general they have nothing.’ Bortsov was pessimistic about the future of Cossacks in Russia, echoing the victim stance typical of the Cossacks in the post-Soviet era: ‘When you bury a dead person, he never returns from the cemetery. Well it’s the same here, they buried the Cossackry and I think it will never return. The only thing that is left is the culture.’ Bortsov may be right that the Cossackry will not gain its independence as a sovereign country, or a region within Russia, nor obtain a treaty giving it the rights and responsibilities it had prior to the Revolution. Still, it seems clear that the Cossackry will continue to exist as a rich reservoir of powerful mythology for Cossacks and other Russians alike. In a period when many Russians perceive either a chaotic maelstrom of various sources of value or a complete absence of meaning, Cossack history and traditions – connoting power, masculine authority, triumph over oppression, continuity with a lost past, and independence – provide a welcome resource for the building of a new identity.

7

The Village Revives

I have argued that when folk revivalists present ancient Russian folk traditions on stage, they represent a culture that is in some ways not their own. To whom, then, does this ancient agrarian tradition belong? Is what is shown on stage the culture of Russian villages? If so, how have village dwellers reacted to revivalists’ attempts to preserve it? Has there been a revivalist movement in the villages themselves as well as in Russian cities in the past few decades? If, in fact, village culture differs significantly from what is shown on stage by folk revivalists, then are revivalists’ hopes for a ‘regeneration’ of the village just a fantasy?

The ‘Real Village’ In order to answer these questions, it will help to establish the characteristics of villages in Russia today, and to distinguish this ‘real village’ from the mythic village of revivalists. The village dwellers who are targeted as ‘pockets of pastness’ by revivalists tend to be middle-aged and older people who live alone in village houses that were built to accommodate whole families.1 The majority are women; while most have been married, few have living male partners. Studies of out-migration have shown that northern and central Russia’s rural population between 1959 and 1979 decreased by about 48 percent, leaving behind a populace that was largely middle-aged and older. While the rate of out-migration slowed in the late 1970s, the trend has continued.2 To take one central oblast’s statistics: in 1989 people over 45 made up 53 percent of the total rural population of Riazan oblast, and 64 percent of these were women. At a higher age the percentage difference in gender is even more obvious: the 60-and-over population comprised 30 percent of the total rural population of Riazan oblast, and of these, 73 percent were women. Typically, these women are visited every summer by sons and daughters who have mastered a trade or profession and moved to a city, and who bring with them city mores, values, and ways of life, as well as by grandchildren and sons- and daughters-in-law, some of whom have had little or no experience in the village. Many of these members of the younger generation stay the entire summer to help with the agriculture.

The Village Revives 177 The village homes often reflect the intersection of modern and traditional ways of life: the structures are made of rough-hewn logs decorated with traditional nalichniki (carved window trimmings); each home has an icon corner; and the floors may be carpeted with mats, hand woven from cast-off clothes. Yet the furniture is often the mass-produced kind found in any former Soviet town, and decorations include bright polyester throws, plastic knick-knacks, and store-bought lamps. The television often physically occupies a central place, sometimes right under the icons. It also occupies a central place in the lives of these retired women: many ritualistically watch US-made and Latin American soap operas, such as Santa Barbara, which depict the mythic lifestyles of the Western, urban well-to-do. The programs take the place of former communal activities: people gather in front of the television set at a certain time weekly or daily to watch their favorite show. They talk of the characters as if they were real (although they know they are not). Often, when I introduced myself as an American, they wanted to know whether I knew the characters, actors, and programs.

Then and Now While they enjoy the entertainment provided by a global economy, retired villagers generally complain about other aspects of modernization. Three decades ago or so in villages, one never saw women without ‘proper’ village attire – skirts below the knee and covered hair. Viacheslav Shchurov remembered that during an expedition to a village in the 1950s, the villagers chastised a female Moscow student who wore pants and wore her hair loose: ‘Are you a man or a woman?’ ‘Aren’t you ashamed to go about bareheaded?’3 But now, it is no longer rare to see young women wearing jeans, short skirts or long, unbound hair in villages. Young people congregate at the local klub every night of the week, dancing in a darkened room to rock and pop music, and drinking alcohol openly. People born in the late 1920s and 1930s said that they never behaved in such ways: there was little alcohol abuse and very little premarital sex among their cohort; if people did engage in either of these transgressions, they were ashamed and tried to hide the signs of their behavior. Today both are ubiquitous, and older people feel powerless to change the situation. One woman sighed, ‘Oh Lord, in the past we dressed modestly and life was better.’4 However, a ‘better life’ included many hardships. In a village in Kaluga oblast several informants told my Russian research partner and me that prior to World War II their families were forced to move from their tiny villages of 7–8 houses into larger ones near the sovkhoz (large state farm) or kolkhoz. Officials came and cut down the chimneys of the houses to compel people to move; no one was given any money to replace the old houses. We saw several of these ‘ghost villages,’ some of which were simply fields of grass. In others decrepit houses were still standing; old farm and household implements stood among the debris from the crumbling roofs and walls. As

178

The Village Revives

Varvara Balabanova (b. 1929) told us, she liked living in the small village better not only because everyone knew each other but because ‘it was easier to steal from the sovkhoz.’ Stealing was very heavily punished; Balabanova knew a sovkhoz brigadier who received seven years in prison for stealing peas. Yet stealing was on everyone’s minds since they were not given adequate room to plant their own vegetables; and their work for the sovkhoz was paid only in grain – which they then had to mill in order to make flour.5 Yet Balabanova said that nonetheless, life was ‘the gayest’ (veseleishee). She and others described singing as a ubiquitous part of daily life, much more than it is now. A man born in 1924 said: ‘How we sang! You’d go to work with a song, you’d come home with a song; despite the fact that there was nothing to eat, we’d sing anyway.’ He reported that the songs they sang were not ‘ancient songs’ but ‘Soviet ones’: ‘the pre-Revolutionary ones had already gone away.’ 6 Balabanova and others told us that they did sing ‘ancient songs,’ but apparently Soviet songs were becoming equally popular in the years immediately before and after the war. Two women, Anna Evseenkova (b. 1923) and Aleksandra Riabykh (b. 1931), compared the attitude toward singing when they were young and nowadays. In the fragment of our conversation below, they indicate that the attitude toward singing changed with a radical shift in values: people no longer work as hard, and they find different, more passive forms of entertainment. (EM is Elena Minenok, the Moscow folklorist whom I accompanied): EM: AR + AE: EM: AR: AE:

AR: AE: AR:

EM: AR: LO: AR: AE: LO: AE:

Did you used to sing more songs in the past? Yes. When did you sing them? In the summer. When going to the cut the hay. At that time people didn’t say, ‘Five o’clock, the working day is over,’ instead they worked till dark. Yes, yes, yes. Today they don’t work like we used to. At night we took in the flax. It was ‘na ranke.’ The brigadier would say, Come, it’s time to harrow. So you go to harrow. On horses. You hitch them up ‘na ranke.’ ‘Na ranke’ means ‘early’ [rano]? Yes, about 5 o’clock [a.m.]. Did you sing all the time? How did you sing? Under what– While going to the cut the hay. When you were on a truck transporting grain there were songs – all the time, we sang… Or while walking home, with a rake on your shoulder, you’d sing. What songs did you sing? All kinds.

The Village Revives 179 AR: LO: AR: AE: EM: AR: AE: AR: AE: AR: EM: AR:

We sang a lot of songs. But now – now, if you sing songs, they say ‘She’s either drunk or a dummy.’ They say that? Yes. Now, I don’t know how many years it’s been since I’ve heard singing. Now people don’t sing. But you sang when you were young. Why did your children stop singing? Life. Life. Life. Nowadays, child, they just party more than anything. They run around… smoke… smoke, drink. Yes. And for that reason they stopped singing songs? They’re not interested in songs. They’re interested in a different life.

In this conversation the older women convey more than just a difference that would be true of any two generations. They try to show that they feel they are not highly regarded, that the values and rules by which they lived no longer apply, and that the values of the younger generation are now the rule. It is likely that the denigration of their values was a theme that village women heard throughout their lives. I repeatedly heard from older rural women comments similar to Aleksandra Riabykh’s remark that they were treated as ‘drunk or a dummy’ if they sang; Russian musicologists reported similar remarks. Older female villagers recounted that (in the past and even in recent memory) when they sang, people said ‘why are you yelling’ – reflecting the difference between the loud, open voice used in many Russian indigenous local singing styles and the more refined, sweet, rounded sound cultivated by the Soviet folk chorus. Musicologists noted that when they first came to a village to ask for local-style singing, they had to overcome enormous resistance on the part of the older people. The villagers had been told so many times that their singing was ugly and that they were stupid and backward, that they had learned to stop singing – that is, in effect, to reject their own culture – or to conceal it. Such criticism came not only from official sources, like culture workers, but from local young people, sometimes even their own children.

Village Singing and Gender Condemnations of indigenous singing may have been directed toward people of both genders who sang, but in practice the antipathy toward village culture has largely been a gendered one. In pre-Revolutionary tradition, depending on the situation and on local practice, women and men sang

180

The Village Revives

either together or separately: for example, in many locales the bulk of the ritual music for the Russian wedding was sung by women, while in a few areas men sang wedding songs together with women.7 But in most Russian regions singing was musically structured to accommodate (and many think to sound best with) mixed groups. However, as I pointed out in Chapter 2, wars contributed to a gender separation in singing. A further significant factor for older women was that Russian men’s life expectancy has been significantly lower than that of women, even when wars were not a factor. The lack of men forced women to sing in all-female groups or individually. There evolved the stereotype of old rural women singing incomprehensible and not very ‘beautiful’ songs – a cliché that, as some women told me, exists even now, although apparently it was more prevalent prior to the glasnost era. In asking rural women about their singing I was repeatedly told that they would have preferred to sing with men, but none were available. Thus, for example, a singing group of six women (born between 1925 and 1941) in a village in Riazan’ oblast told me that they had always sung with men in their youth and that they would much rather sing with men for aesthetic and practical reasons: mixed singing sounded better and was easier because the men would sing ‘bass.’ (Figure 7.1) In their tradition, everyone sings bass except for a single higher voice that sings ‘podgolosok’; when men do sing with them, they more or less double what the lowest female voices are singing – but for the men these notes would presumably be easier to sing than for the women (because they would be within their natural singing and speaking range), and they would be sung with a different timbre, which would add a richer coloring to the group’s sound. But there were no inter-

Fig 7.1: Women in a local ensemble sing around dinner table

The Village Revives 181 ested men. Many of the women recounted that they had lost their fathers in World War II, and/or were widowed. In my travels in Russian villages I only saw a few older women living with husbands – and most of those were alcoholics. As a result of the declining older male population in villages, the informants used by folklorists and musicologists since at least World War II have largely been female. Based upon my experience of such all-female choirs, I concluded that such singing groups were an important social institution, a source of solidarity for the middle-aged and elderly women who function as the economic and social backbone of Russian village communities. Yet Russian musicologists repeatedly led me away from such an interpretation. They told me – like the women in the village ensemble – that Russian singing was incomplete without men and that the fact that only women were singing was a sign of the degeneration of the tradition. They pointed to the reviving Cossack singing practice as an example of how vibrant a tradition could be when men and boys were active in it. Yet both the comments of musicologists and of village women on the necessity of singing with men may reflect the devaluation of women and their cultural products. If in the twentieth century Russian folk music’s association with women has contributed to its denigration, then it is understandable that people would imagine that men’s participation in folk singing could help restore a higher social status. In this context, while revivalists of Cossack music and dance may be raising the cultural capital of their productions by ‘performing masculinity,’ Russian rural women do not stand to gain cultural value through enacting femininity. In the context of village folk singing, feminine gender is ‘invisible’ because it is the norm that is already expected. While women-only singing groups may have come about for reasons that were detrimental to women, it was clear to me that such informal groups did perform more than a musical function for their participants. The women in such ensembles had been together for so many years that they often seemed to treat each other like siblings or relatives. For example, when talking to me in small groups, the women in the Riazan’ village often filled in or corrected details in each others’ stories about events that occurred in the past: it was not so much that they had heard the stories before, but that they lived them together. On one occasion, the group made fun of the desire of one of their members to tell me a sad story about her experiences during World War II: ‘She took a drink and now she wants to tell!’ The woman’s response was to completely ignore such comments and other interruptions to her story – obviously, she was used to such teasing. All of these groups had strong internal dynamics, and this one was no exception: it was clear who usually won arguments and who backed down easily. And obviously these women shared a complex world-view in which singing played a particular, important role. Despite social pressures to the contrary, the group had maintained a repertoire containing many local, pre-

182

The Village Revives

Revolutionary songs that the women had learned from their mothers. They also retained the local singing style, rich in improvisational folk polyphony. When I inquired as to why they had kept singing the old songs and style while other groups switched to a Soviet-era repertoire, they speculated that it was because the local workers in charge of culture did not force them to change. In fact, they remembered that the woman who was director of the klub before the war fully supported their singing of old songs. The values of the group may have been shared by many in the village at that time and later: the women reported that several of their children and grandchildren (all of whom live in other Russian towns and cities, but spend summers in the village) still participate in singing local-style songs in informal family gatherings. The younger generation mostly ‘sings along,’ and most often participate in singing the ‘cruel romances,’ but also know some ancient ritual material, the women said. However, despite an appreciation for old folk songs that came into vogue again during the glasnost period (discussed below), today the village has no klub and officially supported activities of any kind are scarce. The following story about the Riazan’ village singing group demonstrates how important singing was and is to these women: remarkably, the right to express one’s musical creativity signified elevated status in the community. The narrator, Valentina Kuznetsova, tells how the women jockeyed for musical ‘power’ and recognition within the ensemble.8 But her anecdote is remarkable for another reason: it is an example of the most productive narrative folkloric genre in Russian villages, the bylichka – a tale about contemporary life that incorporates traditional supernatural elements such as ghosts, witches, and other unclean spirits. (CD track 14) Kuznetsova, the oldest member of the group (who always sang the special podgolosok part, which allows the singer to improvise in a very noticeable way) told us that a few years ago, just before Moscow ethnomusicologists were to make a recording of their singing, she had gone hoarse. She was told by a local healer to whom she happened to go with a sick cow that her illness was caused by a hex. Apparently, a witch (volkha) – the mother of the ensemble’s youngest member – had cast the spell so that her daughter could sing podgolosok on the recording. Kuznetsova visited a babushka in a nearby village who successfully reversed the spell with a prayer: her throat cleared up, while the witch became ill. Since Kuznetsova was the village nurse (fel’dsher), she was duty-bound to visit the sick woman – but as soon as she called upon her, the witch touched Kuznetsova and she again became ill. After Kuznetsova’s second visit to the babushka, the witch worsened and died. According to Kuznetsova, the daughter insists that she burned her mother’s notebooks – that is, she did not inherit the ability to cast spells – but Kuznetsova believed the daughter did indeed receive transmission of her mother’s knowledge.9 This story might shock a Westerner with its blending of rational and irrational elements – a nurse who has studied medicine and who understands

The Village Revives 183 and accepts the use of contemporary technology to make an audio recording attributes a simple case of laryngitis to the work of supernatural forces. Yet rather than simply concluding that ‘Russian villagers are backward and superstitious’ as did the Bolsheviks in an earlier time, we might look at a similar genre in Western culture. For example, Westerners who otherwise consider themselves rational people of materialist views often hold supernatural beliefs, such as urban legends and astrology (the notion that the alignment of planets affects one’s personality).10 ‘Superstition’ is a common feature of contemporary Western urban cultures, much as it is in villages.11 Yet the story clearly has roots in Russian rural folkloric tradition, in which identifiable spirits, with various habits and powers, are said to live in the village and its surroundings. As James Scott has put it, ‘the religion and culture of peasants contain, almost inevitably, the seeds of an alternative symbolic universe’ which can be seen in folklore and rituals.12 Indeed, both Kuznetsova’s story about singing and the women’s singing itself imply the existence of a symbolic world, a culture distinct from the mainstream. It is obvious that for them singing is not simply a hobby; it forms part of the figurative realm that structures their lives. At a more basic level, the story, with its attribution of a cold to magic, demonstrates the great value these women place upon singing and being recorded. The story would not have contained as much drama if it had not revolved around such an important event – the recording of the singing group by scholars from the capital. While most of the village women I met sing just for themselves when working around the house or in the garden, and in family situations during informal get-togethers, they all seem to crave invitations to perform at holiday celebrations in the regional capital. That is, for them the cultural value of singing is consecrated by Moscow and the provincial capital or regional center: if administrators and musicologists demand a certain style or a performance, the women are eager to fulfill it. Moscow’s interest in their music represents a sanctification of their symbolic universe. When mentioning the positive reception they currently receive, village women often also noted – in nearly the same breath – that ‘it was not always so’: in the past, public singing brought ridicule. Thus, if they value public performance so highly, it may be because there are few other venues in which respect for rural women and their culture is conveyed publicly. The cultural hierarchy is a gendered hierarchy. As we will see in the next section, such a hierarchy consistently informs what people sing, how that singing is perceived by academics, and how the academic sphere has driven the valuation of various art forms.

184

The Village Revives

Fol’klor vs. Narodnyi in the Repertoires of Village Ensembles Moscow musicologist Ekaterina Dorokhova recounted the following example of the chasm between how villagers and revivalists understand the idea of folklore: I once heard even such a story. It happened in a regional center on some folk holiday. And one of those ethnographic groups from Moscow [i.e. a purist group from the youth folklore movement] came and sang very ancient songs from those very villages [where the holiday took place]. And there, no one sings them anymore. They were the most exotic, the most complex [songs from that area]. And there stood two women…middle aged ones. Participants in some local [folk music] collective. And one of them said, ‘Those people are singing ‘folklore’ [fol’klor], but we sing folk songs [narodnye pesni].’ That is, [the villagers] even try to separate [folklore] from themselves. They don’t see those ancient songs as their own, not to mention that they called it ‘fol’klor,’ a foreign word, as if to say, ‘We sing folk [narodnye] songs – ours – but that is ‘fol’klor’. Indeed, most villagers are not in the everyday habit of singing ancient traditional songs associated with the agricultural calendar or other ritual traditions – the kind that the group from the Riazan’ village sings, that urban folk ensembles collect and perform, and that are most often referred to by the word fol’klor. Thus, there exists the ironic situation in which the ancient ritual traditions that originated exclusively in rural locales are no longer seen by local inhabitants as belonging to them. Instead, the inhabitants of tiny villages view nationally popular ‘folk songs’ as their own songs. Much of this repertoire of ‘folk songs’ was created and promoted by the Soviet system. Villagers identify with what they heard on the mass media – what was popular nationally when they were young. Meanwhile, intellectuals who were alienated by the industrialization and national uniformity wrought by the Soviets are turning to ancient pockets of local-ness for a sense of authenticity. The fact that many villagers themselves do not support and continue their ancient local traditions does not make such traditions any less attractive for these urban intellectuals. In fact, some urban revivalists try to enlist the help of the older villagers who remember both strands of folklore, the ‘ancient’ and the ‘Soviet.’ Thus, if from the 1930s to the 1980s Soviet culture workers and people of the younger generation did violence to village culture by publicly disdaining it, then in the past three decades zealous folklorists have had an insidious effect on village culture by worshipping it. Often, where village ensembles actively sing ancient traditional songs and celebrate ritual holidays in the old manner, a revivalist group or musicologist has influenced them – in effect, has educated them about what fol’klor is and

The Village Revives 185 why it is valuable. These revivalists are reconstructing a memory. (I recount in detail a story of such influence in the next chapter.) This phenomenon seemed clear to me in numerous situations in Russia and Bulgaria: when urban intellectuals visit with the purpose of collecting, recording, and preserving ancient traditions, villagers sing ancient songs because they know that is what interests the revivalists. But when no one guides the selection of what to sing, retired villagers often sing songs of a different era. When I stayed at the homes of – and participated in impromptu celebrations with – middle-aged and older villagers, or simply asked them ‘What do you like to sing?,’ they often sang the songs they consider ‘folk’ [narodnye], that is, songs that were popular in their youth or that they heard repeatedly on the radio or television. These songs included many that were composed by nineteenth century or Soviet composers; some were featured in films. They are known nationally, and did not originate in their local song traditions, although they may be performed in a local style. Like the earlier ‘cruel romances,’ the texts of many of these songs reflect the point of view of a woman, and they express heartache and sadness at her failures in love. For example, when I visited villages in 1998–9, middle-aged and older female villagers liked to sing ‘You’re the Same as You Were’ (‘Kakim ty byl’), from the 1949 film Kuban Cossacks, about a girl who is in love with a troublesome, wandering man; ‘So Many Golden Lights’ (‘Ognei tak mnogo zolotykh’), from the 1957 film It Happened in Penkovo, about a girl in love with a married man; and ‘I Drank Myself Drunk’ (‘Napilas’ ia p’ianoi’), which expresses the point of view of a young wife whose husband is cheating on her.13 Even if these songs are more recent in origin, they continue a tradition established by the nineteenth and early twentieth-century genre of ‘cruel romances,’ which are also popular among this population. The older cruel romances include songs like ‘A Young Cossack Strolls by the Don River’ (‘Po Donu guliaet kazak molodoi’) based upon an 1835 poem by Dmitri Oznobishin, about a girl who falls from a bridge on her way to be married to a Cossack. Both earlier romances and the Soviet-era songs produced outside the mechanisms of Soviet control speak about taboo subjects such as adultery, forbidden passion, and illicit sex – in fact, the same themes featured in the soap operas they watch on television weekly. Clearly, the demand for such texts does not arise from television itself, but rather both the songs and television shows fulfill an important need. As research has shown, women form a large part of the audience for melodrama. Tania Modleski argues that ‘women have been attached to [melodrama] because it provides an outlet for the repressed feminine voice.’14 Louise McReynolds and Joan Neuberger help to demonstrate why that was true in the Soviet context: ‘as an alternative to the old intelligentsia’s valorization of reason, propriety, and public and political commitment, melodrama offered its audiences a world of feeling, sensation, and private moral dilemmas,’ but also ‘explored the social issues that preoc-

186

The Village Revives

cupied its audiences and offered models of behavior for changing times.’15 While this is not the place for an extended analysis of the popular culture consumed by Russian village women, it seems clear that villagers choose songs partly for the same qualities that they find in soap operas – access to a world of feeling and the raising of important social issues that concern women, such as their treatment by men. In an attempt to understand what makes villagers choose such songs, I asked them why they liked them. The answer of Ekaterina Nikanorova (b. 1931) and one of her singing partners, Aleksandra Kuliakova (b. 1940), in Liubovnikovo, Riazan’ oblast, was typical: LO: EN: LO: EN: AK: EN: AK: EN:

Which songs [Soviet or ancient] are more valuable for you and why? For me they’re the same; whatever song is heartfelt is better for me. Why is a song valuable? How to tell you? Whichever one is about life [is valuable]. About life. All of life is contained in songs. They’re in our memory, that’s the kind of life [they express].

Nikanorova’s answer reflected the context of the situation: two female visitors in their late 30s, one from Moscow and one from America, were sitting in her living room on a Sunday afternoon in October, asking her about old songs. She had brought out a notebook filled with song texts that she considered worth remembering, written neatly in her own handwriting. Nikanorova was well educated according to the standards for rural-dwelling women of her generation: she had completed 7 grades of elementary school and two grades of pedagogical high school. As a young bride she had worked in a starch factory in a nearby city for a few years, then moved back to the village and worked for 30 years in the supply department of the village’s kolkhoz before retirement. She was proud that she had never taken vacations. A physically large woman who was a natural leader and spoke her mind freely, Nikanorova would spontaneously start singing songs from her notebook during the afternoon we spent with her. The other women present would join in. (Figure 7.3; CD track 15). It seemed that Nikanorova’s song book reflected her love of songs and her desire to preserve them. Like the musicologists who had visited her to learn her songs since the late 1970s, Nikanorova saw these songs as worth remembering, and she was choosy about which songs she liked and would sing. But unlike the musicologists, she did not use the criterion of ‘ancient’ or ‘Soviet’ to decide which songs were worth preserving. Instead, her book of songs aided her in remembering the ones she liked best, songs that reminded her of various times in her life – perhaps the time she first learned

The Village Revives 187 the song, or some of the times she sang it together with people she knew and loved. As she sang songs and I asked her questions about them, she would tell stories about times that she had sung them – who she was with, what the occasion was. These were the aspects of the songs that seemed important to her, and were part of what she meant when she called them ‘heartfelt.’ Nikanorova’s comments about songs she did not like revealed that aesthetic (musical) criteria were also at work in her choice of songs. She liked songs that ‘came out well’ and refused to sings ones that she felt did not. If I asked for such a song, her fellow singers would try to convince her to sing it, saying ‘They need it in America’ – but Nikanorova was not always swayed by such pleas. While not every group I visited was as choosy with their repertoire as was Nikanorova’s, I sensed that among the village ensembles of middle-aged and older women with which I was acquainted, nearly all chose their songs based upon a combination of ‘heartfelt’ and ‘memory’ qualities, along with aesthetic criteria – which ones ‘came out well.’16 Since I visited only ensembles that had had prior contact with folklorists and ethnomusicologists from Moscow, these groups all had some consciousness of what was deemed valuable by revivalists – that is, old local songs. They all knew and performed such songs, and could talk about their memories of old ritual celebrations (such as Whitsunday, which some still practiced, and the local version of the traditional wedding, which most had not seen conducted since their youth). Nevertheless, many of the ensembles became more animated when they sang Soviet-era songs.

Changing Policies Towards Folklore In talking to groups of retired female farm workers in villages it became clear to me that national political changes had played an important role in their formation and the selection of their repertoire. The case of an ensemble from a different village in the same region as Liubovnikovo was illustrative. The group from Ermolovo was somewhat different from the Liubovnikovo ensemble in that it did not appear to be as swayed by the song choices of one leader, and it seemed more active: they had just returned from a concert in the region’s small main city, where they were warmly received, and they were energized by this performance. The character of their group was expressed by one word that came up repeatedly as I asked them about the songs that constituted their repertoire: ‘cheerful.’ Their choice of cheerful songs was clearly motivated not only by their own personalities – as a group, they loved to joke and laugh, and some of their members were locally famed for their witty chastushki – but also by the demands of their audiences and of the regional culture administrators who invited them to sing. (Figure 7.2; CD track 16) They explained that they were gathered together as an ensemble in the

188

The Village Revives

Fig 7.2: Members of a local ensemble from Ermolovo mid-1980s by the head of the local Village Council (sel’sovet, now called administratsiia). He worked with the group for five years, helping them to recruit members, to acquire a steady repertoire of ‘ancient’ (pre-Soviet) songs, and to prepare programs for specific occasions. They gave concerts in the village school for children and at the klub for holiday occasions; they were invited regularly to perform at celebrations at the regional center, Kasimov, and the provincial capital, Riazan’. The administrators would arrange for a bus to be sent to the village for them, and the members would receive komandirovochnye – pocket money for the trip. Praskov’ia Smetannikova (b. 1920) and her relative Polina Smetannikova (b. 1924) described the group’s current status and repertoire in the following way: PrS:

LO: PrS: PoS: LO: PrS:

And we’re ‘written in’ now. You can’t get away [from us], we’re an institution. We went to the Day of the City, in Kasimov, on the 26th [September, 1998]. They gave us six numbers [to sing]. We did four at the Soviet, where the fountains spray, and at Lenin Square and at the Square of the Hero in Kasimov. Lots of people came. And we sang songs and danced. Did they tell you what to sing? We sing what we’ve learned, or the most cheerful ones that they tell us. The most cheerful. The most cheerful ancient songs… And you danced? (whispers) We only dance a little bit because our legs don’t stamp anymore.

The Village Revives 189 Praskov’ia’s and Polina’s comments indicate their pride in being invited to official holidays. Although they were indeed guided by the culture administrators as to their choice of repertoire, they felt that the ‘cheerful’ character of their ensemble had not been forced upon them, but arose naturally, and was an asset to the group, since it won them a loyal audience and repeat offers from administrators. But Tatiana Miakisheva of Ermolovo (b. 1925) told me that people hadn’t always been so appreciative; it used to be that when they would sing old songs, people even commented ‘What are you yelling for!’ The ancient folk songs the old people knew weren’t included in official celebrations. Miakisheva and her fellow singers described this transition: TM: AM: PrS: PoS: LO: PoS:

Before [the founding of the ensemble], there was nothing. Everything was quiet before the dawn. Yes, and nobody did anything anywhere. And now without us they can’t do a single holiday in Kasimov. They count on us, they wait for us, Ermolovo. And when Ermolovo is there, then it’s… more cheerful than anybody, they wait for us.

The women’s comments point out local manifestations of a change in Soviet policy toward folklore that occurred in the mid-1980s with the advent of glasnost. They felt this change in their village through the beginning of interest in folklore on the part of village cultural administrators. The politics of the Gorbachev era meant that the government began to place increased attention on the folklore heritage that urban intellectuals had long deemed the most valuable. During the glasnost era, although the state continued to support its network of professional and amateur song and dance ensembles, it also began to support the preservation of ancient local traditions. Villages in other provinces told me similar stories of changes in their ensembles in the mid-1980s. Two women (b. ca. 1930) in the village of Troitskoe in Kaluga province, who were involved in a vocal ensemble based at the klub in their village, reported that the songs they sang on stage in productions for local holidays after World War II were ‘modern, Soviet ones.’ But in 1986 or 1987, with the coming of glasnost and an increase in attention being paid to the authentic village folklore, ancient songs began to be in demand. Unlike the group in Ermolovo, these women did not say that things were ‘quiet before the dawn’ before glasnost. They had been participating in local song culture both in an official capacity – they sang in a local ‘folk’ chorus – and also unofficially. Their account of how Soviet holidays were conducted in their village helped to explain how villagers still had ancient ritual songs in their repertoire when the glasnost-era interest in them affected official policy. According to their description, ancient rituals continued to be practiced separately from the official Soviet ones throughout the Soviet era.

190

The Village Revives

As an example, Zinaida Efremenkova described the Soviet replacement of Whitsunday holiday, when the village traditionally makes a procession through the streets to throw birch wreaths and a huge birch ‘doll’ into the river. This was traditionally called ‘Spirits’ Day’ because the spirits of dead people were said to walk about on that day. The new Soviet-style holiday, which was introduced in the late 1950s, was called the ‘Russian birch holiday’ [Prazdnik russkoi berezy]. In the conception Efremenkova describes below, the holiday no longer had the character of a pagan ritual that celebrated spring greenery, insured the abundance of future crops, and appeased troubled spirits. Instead, in the Soviet version it had become a way to motivate agricultural workers. Nevertheless, villagers continued to celebrate their traditional pagan holiday throughout the Soviet years. They celebrated it after the official part of the holiday was completed. ZE: LO: ZE:

LO: ZE: LO: ZE:

LO: ZE: LO: ZE: LO: ZE: LO: ZE:

…and [there was also] ‘Russian birch holiday.’ How many people were there! On what day was it celebrated? On Sunday [Spirits’ Day]. The sovkhoz organized it…. There was a procession. And that was after the spring sowing was done – they would try to finish precisely before Spirits’ Day. They gave prizes to the best workers [peredoviki]. Did they make wreaths? They did. But afterwards. First was the celebration, then they went to weave wreaths. After the holiday. That part was not official. They had a parade of the best workers, and the director of the sovkhoz gave a speech, and the party organization, and the secretary of the party organization. The most prominent people. They named them by first and last name and gave prizes, and gave some of them valuable presents, good ones. My son got a set of china, it cost 47 rubles, that was expensive in those days. What for? He operated a combine. For the harvesting… That was the official part. And then you went on stage? No, we didn’t perform on stage. Others performed, but during that holiday we didn’t. Was it simply a party? Yes, it was a party. There were sports games and football, and various gorodki (traditional Russian game).… So after the holiday you went to make wreaths. Yes, afterwards we went to make wreaths and sang and walked and danced. We wove them and undid them.17

Efremenkova’s comments indicate that she did not view the Soviet celebration as detracting from the village’s traditional celebration of Spirits’ Day.

The Village Revives 191 Although with my questions and comments I tried to make a separation between what I saw as the ‘official’ holiday and the ‘unofficial,’ traditional holiday, Efremenkova resisted that categorization. To her, the Soviet part of the holiday was a positive addition to the traditional one: her son received a prize, people’s hard work was recognized, they all played games and had fun. Afterwards, some of the villagers continued to celebrate the ancient holiday. There was room for both. I saw and heard of this phenomenon elsewhere in Russia: after glasnost and the fall of the Soviet Union, when it became possible to celebrate traditional holidays officially, it turned out that people had been celebrating them all along. These holidays had not been officially sponsored, but no one had stopped them from celebrating them. The official Soviet strategy for addressing ‘superstitious’ and ‘religious’ beliefs and rituals involved substituting other celebrations for them and, in some cases, shaming those who took part in them. But it is likely that in some villages such shaming did not take place or occurred only among party workers. Workers who were not party members, older people, and women and children would likely not have been shamed for carrying on such preRevolutionary rituals. Thus, when ancient songs came into demand in the mid-1980s, the village’s older women still knew these songs. They had been practicing them yearly since they were small. In some locales such songs had not been included in official celebrations previously, but during the late 1980s the women were asked to make programs containing ancient songs for schools and holiday celebrations in the village and the regional center. Suddenly, the fact that they remembered these ancient aspects of their local traditions gave them a certain cachet, especially to the urbanites who came to the villages as a ‘source’ for traditional folklore. According to Efremenkova, the large, official celebrations that had been sponsored by the sovkhoz in the 1980s ended with the ‘change in power’ in 1991. There was no longer money in the sovkhoz budget to put on such events. Instead, during the 1990s, the older women continued to celebrate the Spirits’ Day holiday in the traditional way, with wreaths and a doll made out of birch branches, a procession, dancing, and songs. The holiday’s continuance was spurred by the presence of a Moscow couple composed of a folklorist and a filmmaker, Elena and Sergei Minenok, who were making a film about the holiday. In 1999, the year I accompanied the Minenoks as they finished up their filming, the holiday celebration seemed in danger of dying out since many of the older women felt they could no longer walk in the procession due to failing health. The holiday had been sustained by the Minenoks’ interest, but it could not continue unless younger people began learning the songs. Although younger people and children participated in the holiday when I attended it in 1999, they did not appear to be singing. Still, it is possible that the tradition would continue even without the older women’s songs. The leader of the village’s klub, a middle-aged woman, clearly enjoyed organizing the holiday, and other middle-aged and younger

192

The Village Revives

men and women and children took pleasure in the holiday’s lively, carnivalistic character, which was exemplified by the communal creation of a larger-than-life size doll made out of birch branches, who was made ‘anatomically correct’ with a stuffed bra and a dish scrubber to represent her genitalia. The four villages I refer to above have different levels of participation in folklore, but all three are basically alike in several aspects: 1) they were originally tapped as sources of folklore by Moscow folklorists or musicologists in the 1970s or 1980s; 2) local culture workers made an effort to support folklore activities and, in some cases, helped to form a folklore performing group; 3) the folklore group is composed of middle-aged and older women (most are of retirement age); 4) these performing groups only meet to sing when there is an occasion – such as when they are invited by local culture workers to perform in the village or city – and very little other organized folklore activities exist in their villages; 5) their performances were more in demand in the late 1980s and early 1990s; later, with the dismantling of the Soviet Union and a radical change in the economic system, funds to sponsor folklore performances dried up and are only gradually being restored now in some locales. I believe that this picture holds generally true for many villages. There are three major exceptions to this picture, however, involving either less or more organized folklore performance. These are: 1) villages that have never been tapped as sources of folklore by scholars and where folklore has never been encouraged by local culture workers. In such villages, folklore performance may be sporadic or occur exclusively in family settings; 2) villages in Cossack and other territories where folklore has become part of the movement for the revival of the group’s religious, ethnic, or social identity, and is therefore not only encouraged by local culture workers but also financed by local business leaders (as discussed in Chapter 6); and 3) villages where a local individual or group has taken on the task of promoting folklore, and organizes many folklore-related events on a regular basis. Since I did not personally visit any villages of the first type, I cannot comment in detail on them. However, if Riazan’ oblast is representative, then such villages are in the majority. In Riazan’ oblast, as of 1 January 1 1998, there was a total of 2,300 amateur artistic clubs in cities and villages involving an average of 12.6 persons per group (this figure counts only clubs based at Houses of Culture and does not include similar clubs at schools). Of these, approximately 900 groups were choruses and vocal ensembles, many of which had a repertoire that was at least partially composed of folkloric or narodnyi (nationally popular) material. Another 90 groups called themselves ‘folklore ensembles,’ meaning they specialized in folklore or narodnyi repertoire. Many of the latter category were largely composed of pensioners.18 If one compares this statistic with the population of the oblast, which in 1989 was more than 1.3 million, then it is clear that the majority of the population does not participate in such groups (the rate is 1 person in

The Village Revives 193 47). Although these statistics are incomplete (because they do not contain school groups and do not separate folk performing groups from other groups), still they draw a general picture of the low rate of participation in all cultural activities, including folklore, in the provinces. On the other side of the spectrum are regions or single villages where folklore activities were or are popular and well-supported. Some, like the village of Kochemary in Riazan’ oblast, have retained a repertoire of older local songs partly due to the perseverance of former local organizers, some of whom even in the 1930s and 1940s did not insist that villagers sing the new Soviet songs. A different case is presented by the village of Vorob’evka in Voronezh oblast, where since the glasnost period the performance of folklore has become an emblem of the village’s dedication to Russian tradition. The village differs from the ones discussed above in that it is very large, with a population of 5,000, and is also the equivalent of the county seat, the raionnyi tsentr. Thus, it receives money from the government to hire culture workers and teachers. However, what this village does with its culture allotment – and the ways that it manages to increase its portion – is striking. The folklore-related activities of this village exceed those of much larger provincial cities.

Creative Support of Folklore Revival in South Russia: A Case Study Vasilii Kozlov, the head of the Culture Department of Vorob’evka, has been actively supporting folklore-related activities in the region since the mid1980s. The glasnost and post-Soviet eras set up the necessary conditions for Kozlov’s enterprise, since new economic freedoms allowed him to engage in creative financing for the staffing and education of folk performing groups, and for the building of structures to house the workshops of professional craftspeople. In addition, Kozlov has put on four national folk festivals since the early 1990s, which have become a bi-annual affair. I have already described and analyzed the festival itself in Chapter 5 as an example of the marriage of politics and folklore in today’s Russian culture. This section will examine how Kozlov used the knowledge of Moscow musicologists and the resources of national and local government and the private sector to create a kind of folklore-saturated village whose influence has spread to surrounding villages and towns, and beyond. The story of Kozlov’s enterprise allows us to see how contemporary villagers and rural life differ from the mythic conception. Rather than naive rural people remote from the concerns of the market-economy world who faithfully preserve their ancient folk traditions, this story concerns politically and economically aware people who consciously use folk traditions as cultural capital. Their actions may be likened to contemporary strategies by which traditionally objectified populations have made themselves active re-

194

The Village Revives

appropriators of their cultural artifacts: for example, in the United States and Canada, indigenous communities now obtain grants to establish their own museums, hire anthropologists, urge the repatriation of material collections, and recycle written artifacts as local history and tribal lore.19 As we will see, however, in the case of Vorob’evka what is re-appropriated often does not belong to the particular local culture of the Voronezh village. As distinct from indigenous North Americans with a particular ethno-cultural identity to reconstruct, these Russian villagers are primarily constructing a national identity. They adopt the principles of the urban revivalists they emulate by learning to perform music and dance and do crafts from various Russian and Cossack traditions. When I met him in 1998 I was struck by Kozlov’s extremely dynamic personality. At that time 40 years old, Kozlov was tall, with dark blue eyes and a boyish face, rumpled black wavy hair, dressed in dark pants and a blue polyester collared shirt. He had an unusual take-charge manner and a certain personal magnetism which he appeared to use to his advantage. Indeed, I was uncomfortable during the first few minutes after we met because his demeanor lacked the cool reserve characteristic of Russian business situations. Instead of introducing himself as ‘Kozlov, Vasilii Viktorovich,’ as is the custom in formal settings, Kozlov stared directly into my eyes for several seconds and introduced himself by his nickname, ‘Vasia.’ I was so taken aback that, to my embarrassment, I had to ask him to repeat it. I continued to be embarrassed and uncomfortable around him until I got used to his jocular, unprepossessing, and charismatic manner. Certainly, this was a man who mastered situations. He was not a small-town administrator trying to appear more important than he really was; rather, he appeared as an important man who tried to cultivate a down-to-earth image. That he drove (and was sometimes chauffeured) around the village in a late-model Ford served to underline his combination of secure material, social, and political status, hip Western image, and quirky style. As Kozlov tells it, he was exposed to village folklore as a child because his mother, a milkmaid in a very small village (khutor’ Vysokii) in Voronezh oblast, sang local songs to him. She herself had learned the songs from other young women from a neighboring village, Nikol’skoe, when she worked with these women cutting peat near St Petersburg. In explaining how he grew to devote his career to the preservation of ‘true’ folklore, Kozlov gave his mother’s love of folklore and of Pushkin (she owned two volumes of his works in a village that was too small to have a library) as two of the most important influences on him. As he characterized himself, he was a country bumpkin who did not take his first trip by train (to a small town that is one hour away by car) until he was in tenth grade, and in college still did not know that Stalin had died in 1953 (he thought he had been ousted from power). Yet, he said, he knew the difference between what he called the ‘monumental Soviet choral art’ of the folk choruses and the ‘true roots’ of Russian culture, i.e. village folklore.

The Village Revives 195 After serving in the army Kozlov received degrees in acting and theater directing in Kiev, and moved to the big village, Vorob’evka, in 1982 to work as director of an amateur theater group. He was promoted to director of the village’s Department of Culture in 1985 and still holds that post at the time of writing. Starting with his promotion in 1985 Kozlov began to devote himself to creating an environment favorable for folklore in the village. He collected about ten specialists from surrounding areas and paid for their resettlement in Vorob’evka. He had homes built for them or bought them existing homes or apartments, and gave or procured them jobs as leaders of local amateur cultural groups or school clubs, and/or as teachers in schools. Kozlov acquired the funds for this endeavor by convincing government and Party officials that it was necessary. He said persuading them was not difficult, first of all because Kozlov himself ‘possessed the language of ideology’ which was necessary to talk to these officials; secondly, ‘every director whom I had to convince of the necessity of spending money on this had peasant roots – many of them. If you can make him look inside himself, [explain things in terms of] his heritage, his roots, then you could find a common language.’ One of the specialists that Kozlov ‘procured’ in this way was the current leader of one of the village’s folk performing groups, Volodia Talorin (b. 1958). Talorin, a trumpet player who received a degree in choral and instrumental directing at the Tambov filial of the Moscow Institute of Culture, came to Vorob’evka in 1989 from Podgornoe village in neighboring Kalachevskii region. Before coming to Vorob’evka he had directed two amateur choirs at the Kalachevskii sovkhoz: a young people’s folk (narodnyi) choir and an ‘ethnographic’ choir composed of older women. Revealing his oppositional stance to the Soviet regime and its approach to folklore, he told me, ‘They used to make the sovkhozes have a choir. They demanded it. It was usually about 30–40 people: the more the better. Quality was not important.’ The Voronezh oblast, which was composed of 32 regions, had 16 of these large, amateur folk choirs. Talorin said his work with this chorus was good experience for his future work in Vorob’evka – but he learned more about folklore from the ‘grannies’ in the ethnographic chorus.20 In order to teach Talorin more about the ‘true roots’ of folklore, Kozlov sent him and others from the village to Moscow to attend a seminar on authentic folk music. Talorin came back full of enthusiasm about the specialists he had met in Moscow, such as Volodia Ivanov and Andrei Kabanov; but lamented that they would never come to such an out-of-theway place as Vorob’evka (to get to Vorov’ebka from Moscow, one needs to take an overnight train to Voronezh and drive three more hours). Kozlov remembers his reaction: ‘Who says they’ll never come here?’ He traveled to Moscow, got Kabanov’s home phone number, and proceeded to convince him to give a series of classes in folk performance and folklore collecting to the local participants in the village’s existing folk ensemble, in exchange for train fare and a travel allowance. Kabanov’s classes took place once per

196

The Village Revives

month or so for several months, and both Kozlov and other members of the group remembered that at first most of them did not welcome what Kabanov taught them. ‘Two or three people accepted him, those who think more deeply, while the rest slept during his classes, because it was hard to move away from the mindset of the Soviet chorus with its emphasis on quick, spectacular results, to an approach that was oriented toward an inner understanding of folklore, not winning over an audience, not popularizing or showing off.’21 In inviting Kabanov, Kozlov situated himself as a forward thinker, part of the urbanized village intelligentsia (‘those who think more deeply’), someone who appreciated the priceless authentic folk culture that was hidden in the village. Eventually the classes had an effect, and the members of the ensemble – who previously had never sung unarranged village folk songs on stage – not only had their voices ‘opened’ by Kabanov and learned a significant amount of the Cossack repertoire that was popular with urban ensembles, but also began to enjoy hunting for interesting local folklore material in neighboring villages. They apprenticed themselves to the mother of one of the members, who lived in the nearby village, Nikol’skoe, which was very well known for its musical folklore. Kozlov’s wife Irina, a participant in the chorus, remembered a particular song they tried for half a year to learn from Nina Peregudova’s mother. They all loved the song, but it was very difficult to make it sound the way Nina’s mother said it should. We made scandals and fought among ourselves [over that song]. We couldn’t make it work. We didn’t know what do to with it. And Nina tortured herself too, she said, finally, ‘OK, we won’t sing such songs, we’ll sing easier ones, bold, dashing ones where you learn it, you sing it, and that’s it.’ But Andrei Sergeevich [Kabanov] helped us accept this song too, and it went on and on like that, because the material is a bottomless barrel.22 The Moscow musicologist brought these villagers new appreciation of their own families. But he also gave them cultural cachet that allowed them to participate in the vogue for ‘authentic’ folklore. Besides performing often at holidays and special events in villages and towns in Voronezh oblast, the group traveled widely to festivals in the USSR and toured abroad to Egypt, Hungary, and Poland in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Meanwhile, Kozlov expanded the opportunities for learning by inviting not only Kabanov but a series of other Moscow specialists in various aspects of Russian folklore, including dance and musical instruments. Kozlov wanted his group to be able to do more than just sing: he embraced the syncretic view of village culture that was common among revivalists and wished to have everyone ‘be organic – he has to be able to control his body, he has to play an instrument,’ and to acquire a variety of traditional skills. It was as if villagers were becoming ‘true villagers’ again (according to the reigning myth of villagers’

The Village Revives 197

Fig 7.3: Members of a local ensemble sing for visitors wholeness) – ironically, under the tutelage of Moscow intellectuals. (CD track 17) In its performances, the group decided it would not simply stand and sing, like villagers in ‘ethnographic ensembles’ do – they also emulated some of the Pokrovsky Ensemble’s unorthodox stage style. Taking advantage of Kozlov’s expertise in theater directing, the group used the dramatic arts in its productions. Under the influence of these new activities several other folk groups, including a Cossack group and several children’s groups, sprung up in Vorob’evka. And then in the early 1990s Kozlov’s folkloric enterprise expanded even more. With Kabanov’s help and expertise, Kozlov started folklore performing groups in two other towns and villages in Voronezh oblast; he constructed a building in Vorob’evka to house folk crafts; and he began to organize celebrations or, as they came to be called, ‘all-Russian festivals,’ in Vorob’evka. All this new activity was financed through newly available private sources as well as through Kozlov’s expert manipulation of established government channels. Kozlov’s aim in starting folklore groups in other towns and villages was twofold. First, these groups would provide support and camaraderie for each other. ‘It was nice that there were already three groups; we could socialize. And we did some seminars together, at our place, and people came from different areas.’ Second, he felt that the existence of such groups would

198

The Village Revives

help to further promote folklore in Voronezh oblast and in Russia in general. Kozlov was on a mission: ‘Simply, our good, Russian song culture restores our genes.’ For Kozlov, true folklore contained a high moral stance, a dignity that would help to revive Russian society. He realized that authentic folklore, like true art, would always be given inadequate attention unless someone like himself sought resources to give it the publicity it deserved.23 The need for resources lay behind another of Kozlov’s projects, the craft center. Not only would the center revive ancient arts and help to support local craftspeople, but it would make a profit that could be used to finance other folklore-related projects. Currently, the center contains a wood drying room that produces oak for building and furnishing homes, a commodity that is much in demand by the ‘new Russians,’ Russia’s nouveaux riches. ‘They want everything to be made of oak, and to be beautiful, and they aren’t stingy with their money,’ Kozlov remarked. Craftspeople at the center make artistic objects out of the wood, and some of the wood is sold as lumber. The center’s most profitable venture is a blacksmithy that creates wrought iron gates, fences, and decorations, currently also in high demand for high-class buildings. Kozlov commented on his plans for the blacksmithy: ‘There’s a two year waiting list for the blacksmiths to join it. I need to create another brigade of blacksmiths, five or six people, to give them another building, and then it will be in excellent shape in terms of money…There are a lot of orders, a huge amount of them.’24 In short, ‘folklore’ had truly become a commodity, but unlike his urban intellectual counterparts, Kozlov was not afraid to exploit it – and shamelessly to discuss the success of his enterprise with a foreign visitor. The idea for the folk festival grew from the opening of the craft center in 1992. In order to celebrate it, Kozlov wished to invite craftspeople from other areas to see the new center and swap trade secrets with his staff. But he realized it would not be a celebration without a performance aspect. He invited folklore performing groups from Moscow and other areas, and came to the conclusion that what he was planning was indeed a festival. The modest first festival grew into a more involved one, for which Kozlov applied for and received the status of ‘all-Russian’ from the Ministry of Culture. Performing groups and craftspeople from all over Russia attend the festival and all of the several hundred participants receive free accommodation and three meals a day during its three days. This ‘all-Russian’ status was important because it meant Kozlov would receive earmarked funds from the Ministry of Culture’s budget, and would not have to beg for funding for each biennial festival. The Ministry of Culture would give 30 percent of the budget of the festival. The proceeds from the craft center and from other business ventures, as well as donations in produce from local merchants such as a vodka factory, a meat producer, and 16 local communal farms, would form the other 70 percent. To arrange the donations from local merchants was a large task in itself,

The Village Revives 199 but Kozlov’s biggest innovation was in how he obtained Ministry of Culture funding. He explained that the economic system in Russia is currently cashpoor, and for that reason it is running on a kind of modification of the barter system. Many factories and companies owe money to the oil and gas company (Gazprom) for gas. Because they have no cash, they pay the gas company in products, such as sugar, liquor, cars, and metal pipes. Meanwhile, the gas company owes large amounts of taxes to the government. These taxes are partly paid by passing on the products which the gas company has received in exchange for its gas. The Ministry of Culture gets its share of the taxes in products, which it then must sell in order to finance cultural events with cash. Kozlov’s innovation involved approaching the Ministry of Culture and offering to take his money for the festival in the form of products. In doing so, he said he was making things easier for the Ministry, who had less work to do to dispose of its income. When I spoke to him in May 1999, Kozlov had received three wagonloads – and was expecting five more – of metal pipes, of the kind used to carry natural gas for heating. He said he liked receiving pipes because he needed no special license to sell them; they could be sold freely on the open market, and natural gas was becoming an increasingly popular source of heat. Previously, he had received a shipment of 20 minivans, but the license to sell them was too expensive for him to make a profit from the sale. Apparently, Kozlov had received some help in arranging these deals, because he was giving half of the money from the sales to the Voronezh oblast government.25 While Kozlov’s high-level involvement in the business world might not seem surprising to a Westerner, it is exceedingly rare in Russia. Most lowlevel government bureaucrats like Kozlov – particularly those from small towns or villages and especially those in charge of culture – do not get involved in the financial dealings of the Moscow Ministry of Culture. Most adhere to time-honored bureaucratic practices and apply for money from State agencies but are often told that no money exists. Many folklore organizations, including ones in big cities like Moscow and Novosibirsk, are constantly trimming budgets and cutting corners to stay afloat.26 According to Kozlov, when he first started as director of the village’s Culture Department he himself played by the rules, operating through traditional bureaucratic channels. Eventually, however, he figured out how to play the financial game in a way that got the Ministry of Culture’s attention: I went for several years to the capital and didn’t understand that everyone is joking and making fun of me, saying ‘You see, there’s the budget, you have to watch the television, and when they say on television that the budget is [done], then you need to come and then maybe we can organize some money.’ And then I began to understand the gist of this situation. Now I gradually see that you don’t need to work with money.

200

The Village Revives

Certainly Kozlov is right when he says that anyone who wants to organize folklore events in Russia today needs to know how to do more than just play the balalaika. ‘You need to be a kind of matchmaker, who would mix things up and then rearrange them, and convince everyone, so that the event can happen.’ Perhaps one needs to be, like Kozlov, not just a matchmaker but an Ostap Bender-type character, a wheeler-dealer who is not afraid to bend rules and work on many fronts in order to achieve his goal. Unlike Ostap Bender, the fictional hero of Il’f and Petrov’s Twelve Chairs (1928), Kozlov was not a conman, but he did make especially creative use of generally accepted second-economy practices such as blat, which Sheila Fitzpatrick defines as ‘the informal system of reciprocal favors through which citizens obtained scarce goods and services.’ Perhaps the most interesting similarity between Kozlov and Bender is their ‘great talent’ to ‘ “speak Bolshevik” with total assurance and fluency’ and ‘to use this linguistic fluency’ wherever needed to achieve their ends.27 If Bender used his linguistic prowess to impersonate officials, Kozlov used it to convince both officials and businessmen of the ideological urgency of his folkloric enterprise. Whereas urban revivalists adhere to and promote the myth of the rural setting and of folk culture as a sacred sphere both untouched by and uninterested in business, it turns out that to achieve a revival of folk traditions one must learn how to manipulate the world of commerce. Although Kozlov’s particular manner of effecting financial transactions may be representative of the post-Soviet economy, the basic principle is one that has long ruled the very notion of folk revival. Bausinger writes, ‘Folklorism is the means used to protect the allegedly essential folk culture from actual development, and it is done with the help of all the technology of the culture industry.’28 In order to observe the fruits of Kozlov’s organizational efforts, I visited performances and rehearsals of some of Vorob’evka’s folklore groups (including two children’s groups) and traveled to Novokhopersk, a small town that hosts one of the folklore groups Kozlov helped to start. In almost all cases I saw active, enthusiastic groups whose participants are very conscious of their role as preservers of a national treasure. However, their performances were of fairly poor artistic quality. I played my recordings of these local groups for Andrei Kabanov in Moscow. Since he had originally brought this music to this area, I was curious to see how he would evaluate the results of his work. He pointed out many musical flaws in their performances: for example, one director had all or most of the children singing the upper part on one Cossack song, while most should have been singing the lower part, and the wrong accordion was used so that the song was pitched uncomfortably low; in another children’s group, a song from the Nekrasov Cossacks was again pitched too low and an upper part had been added that sounded strange. But despite the poor musical quality, Kabanov said the overall result was positive.

The Village Revives 201 What is folklore? It is goodness, it protects us from evil. There’s no evil in it…. There’s a group, they meet regularly, it’s a part of their life. From our point of view it’s ugly, but this will gradually become a local style. Like a crooked birch in the forest, this is part of nature, and I’m interested in it…. If they sang just like I taught them, it’d be just ‘by the book,’ which is a dead end…. Folklore was always able to avoid that dead end. With folklore, you should never copy anything. Kabanov said he realized that in evaluating his former pupils he was in a bind common to all teachers: to assert his own notion of what is ‘right’ in a folklore performance would be dogmatic and would end in failure. That is, if his students simply reproduced what they were taught, the result would be lifeless and lack creativity. For Kabanov, the drive to ‘preserve’ folklore implies precisely such a philosophical problem. One cannot preserve folklore as a living phenomenon without also creating anew: There are two positions within folklore that are always at odds with each other: preservation and composition. They are like speech and the norms of the language. We always want these to be the same, but they’re not. I can’t [speak strictly according to norms], I speak my own way…. If they were the same, it’d be flat, boring.29 Kabanov’s equation of poor-quality folklore performance with a ‘crooked birch’ is an unusually liberal view among musicologists – especially those trained at elite institutions like the Moscow Conservatory, where Kabanov received his degree. Most would deplore the degradation of the purity of the ‘original’ folklore. Nonetheless, his comments point to an important conclusion for this study: he argues that the fruits of folklorism should be regarded as a kind of authentic folklore itself. Even if the participants in Vorob’evka’s folklore ensembles learn and perform music and dance from other regional traditions (Don Cossack music was popular in Vorob’evka, although there were few existing Cossack populations in the oblast), this material may be seen as an essential part of the local popular culture and hence, a part of the evolving local folkloric style. However, Kabanov’s comments do not address some of the essential problems connected with the expansion of the folklore movement from the city to the village. The methods of the folklore movement require transmission based upon contact with educated specialists and the use of audio recordings. While city ensembles – including those in provincial capitals – can draw upon the resources of universities or houses of culture, villages lack such means. Kozlov avoided this problem initially by inviting specialists from the capital, but eventually, such contact with Moscow became less frequent. Beyond the workshops included in the biannual festival, Kozlov does not bring in specialists to educate the leaders of the Vorob’evka folklore ensembles. Without the benefit of continual advice and correction from

202

The Village Revives

educated specialists, local collectives must rely on local resources. It is true that villagers do have proximity to folklore informants (in their own or neighboring villages), but often lack transportation to visit them. Further, in the case of some of the Vorob’evka and Novokhopersk collectives, the material they perform is not of local origin, so local informants are of no help. These directors of the groups have very little professional experience with folklore, or music generally; although they love folklore and appreciate the initial assistance and repertoire material they received from Kabanov, they cannot create groups with a high level of artistic quality without continued education. But to further their education would require time and money that are often not available. With their relatively low salaries and minimal associated benefits, group directors can rarely afford to put continuous time and energy into their ensembles. For example, the director of one children’s folklore ensemble is a full-time teacher with no experience in folklore beyond the tuition she received from Kabanov. She conducts the twice-weekly folklore group as an extra load, for which she receives four hours of pay per week. The extra amount is very little: about $5 per month. Her husband, who does have a musical education (a degree in accordion from a specialized music high school), does not teach folklore for a living because, she said, if he did ‘we’d have nothing to live on.’ His only source of income from folklore involves performing Cossack folk music abroad, mostly in Germany. This attitude toward folk music as a non-lucrative hobby is shared by the children in her folklore group, she said. She knows of none from her group who have gone on to study folklore performance professionally: ‘It’s not prestigious now. The salaries are too low.’ Instead, children are interested in foreign languages and subjects related to technology.30 Despite folklore’s reputation as a field that does not generate income, Vorob’evka’s success with popularizing folklore has had concrete results even outside of its surrounding territory. My stay in Vorob’evka in Spring 1999 coincided with the visit of a group of performers from Semiluki, a fairly large city some 10 km from the oblast capital, Voronezh. They had driven three hours by bus to participate in a cultural exchange with Vorob’evka. Performances of the Semiluki groups, including a folklore ensemble, were held in Vorob’evka’s main square, and later Vorob’evka’s performers would travel to Semiluki. The exchange had been ongoing for two years, and a Vorob’evka official told me Semiluki had initiated the contact because of Vorob’evka’s active cultural scene. The director of the Department of Culture from Semiluki told me that the city had become interested in folklore activities thanks to Vorob’evka’s inspiration. When the exchanges with Vorob’evka started two years ago the city put an advertisement in the newspaper looking for a folklore specialist. They hired a young woman (age 18), Elena Tychinina, who had just graduated from the Voronezh music high school with a major in directing folklore ensembles. She directs an amateur adult ensemble, composed of local geog-

The Village Revives 203 raphers and other professionals, that rehearses twice weekly at the city’s Palace of Culture. They sing village music from Voronezh and neighboring oblasts. Although her education acquainted her mostly with arranged folklore, Tychinina said she prefers unarranged, authentic village music. When I spoke with her, she was planning to introduce a children’s group in the near future; the city did not currently have one. In order to learn from the experience of other such groups, the city was planning to host a festival of children’s folklore collectives from Voronezh and surrounding oblasts.31 For me, Semiluki’s newfound interest in village folklore offered further proof of Vorob’evka’s broad influence and suggested that the chain of folklore revival had come full circle. With the visits of Kabanov and other specialists from Moscow to Vorob’evka, the urban folk revival movement had changed the culture of a village. Now, with Semiluki’s appeal to Vorob’evka for help and inspiration, the village folk revival movement was helping to change the culture of a city. Yet clearly, what would be transmitted to Semiluki would include folk music and dance from other Russian regions that had been filtered through the perspective of villagers with little academic background in folklore. Was this an isolated incidence or was it happening elsewhere in the country? My sense was that this chain of influence – in which the urban revival movement inspired both village and also provincial city movements – was not common, but that it did occur in several instances, increasingly in the 1990s. Even without being asked by the villages themselves, many revivalists were taking it upon themselves to found folklore schools and amateur young people’s ensembles in villages and small towns. Often these villages and towns were chosen by the revivalists because they were already hubs of folklore activity (that is, the village had long possessed a strong folklore group composed of older residents) or were located close to cities with strong urban folklore centers or schools. For example, a recent graduate of the Folklore Department of the Voronezh Conservatory told me that he had founded an amateur adult folk chorus in one of the villages surrounding Voronezh, and traveled there weekly to conduct rehearsals. Both Dorokhova and Shchurov, Moscow musicologists, told me of separate villages in Belgorod region that had started children’s folklore schools with the support of revivalist Moscow scholars. In all of these instances where folklore is reimplanted in the village, it seems that the results will always be a ‘crooked birch.’ The concept of purity in folklore is an invention of scholars that has little relation to real life. Moreover, what is judged by them as ‘impure’ may be viewed from another perspective as productive and interesting. I return to these issues in the following chapter to look more closely at the interactions of villagers with urban revivalists as the latter try to return village rituals to their ‘original’ state. It turns out that in some cases villagers, confronted with the plea to return to earlier forms, do not comply but enact a kind of tacit resistance.

8

Making Memory: How Urban Intellectuals Reinvent Russian Village Traditions

Although performance of music and folk traditions was a central focus of the Russian folk revival movement’s origins, in fact it formed only a small part of the ultimate goals of its leaders. Many revivalists were interested not just in music, but in returning that music and its context to everyday life; they paid particular attention to ritual since it was one of the main contexts in which folklore was included in daily life.1 In the early 1980s Andrei Kabanov founded an experimental, ‘non-stage-oriented’ folklore ensemble and together with other groups in the urban folklore movement tried to identify situations in everyday city life in which folklore could play a natural role. They discovered moments – weddings, parties and celebrations for various occasions (such as birthdays and national holidays), family celebrations (such as anniversaries), and picnics, barbeques, and other outings – when traditional village songs and dances could play an organic role and gradually become habitual. Some organized rituals became established as yearly, public events: for example, the Moscow women’s group Folk Holiday arranged a holiday celebration on Willow Sunday, the Russian Orthodox equivalent of Palm Sunday, in a Moscow park and invited other folk ensembles and school groups – and anyone who happened to be passing by – to join them.2 Other groups focused their attention upon the ‘preservation’ of ritual by making video documentaries of traditional village holiday celebrations. Often they tried to film the ritual in the village where it originated, even if the locals, who had never before been filmed, needed to be coached about what to say and do. And some urban ensembles learned songs, texts, and gestures from published sources in order to reconstruct village rituals themselves. They would often take performances of such rituals on stage to schools, museums, concert halls, and other venues. In their writings on the importance of preserving ritual, revivalists theorized that the extensive and complex belief system associated with traditional holiday contexts might provide a solution to ‘problems connected with the industrial character of contemporary civilization, such as the problem of the so-called “deficit of human contact,” personal selfexpression, passivity with regard to cultural creation, and consumerism in

Making Memory 205 the area of culture, and others.’3 They hoped that folklore, properly implanted into Russian culture, could help to counter such trends. Marina Novitskaia, an author of textbooks for use in elementary Schools of Folk Arts wrote in 1990: ‘The vital necessity of returning the enduring achievements of folk art to our everyday life, to holidays, to the everyday culture of social interaction, to our spiritual world, to the sphere of ethical and aesthetic values is becoming more and more consciously felt, and that return to specific national features is becoming more and more urgent.’4 In arguing for the importance of the return of folklore to everyday life and in linking the presence of folklore in daily life with national characteristics, revivalists draw upon a central notion in Slavophile thought. Slavophiles idealized the Russian’s love of ritual, claiming that adherence to tradition was one of the essential characteristics of Russians, that it reflected their collectivity and contributed to their strength as a people.5 While the rhetoric of the late-twentieth-century revivalists does not generally engage in the idealization typical of the Slavophiles, the productions of the revivalists – performances, holiday celebrations, videos, textbooks, and the like – often idealize the way of life that they wish to implant in modern Russian society. Ultimately, such idealization can lead to generalization – a notion of a general Russianness expressed in folklore, ignoring regional differences – and sometimes falsification reminiscent of the fakelore of the Stalin era. Part of the revivalist strategy to re-implant folklore into the daily life of modern culture has involved working with villages in order to invite the active remembrance of ancient songs, and the celebration of traditional prerevolutionary holidays and parish saint’s days [prestol’nye prazdniki]. While many of these projects have been successful in encouraging the active performance of traditions, they often involve problematic interactions between village and city cultures, between agricultural workers and urban intellectuals. Because of the cultural gulf separating the village and city spheres, urban revivalists sometimes continue to play out the Soviet-era dynamic of patronage (shefstvo), in which intellectuals from the city were expected to be in charge of the cultural ‘development’ of the village. Under that program (which lasted from the 1920s to the 1980s), city intellectuals were supposed to ‘bring villagers into the twentieth century’ culturally by exposing them to accepted world classics and modern methods and materials in the arts. In this new version of that practice, the urban revivalists endeavored to encourage and enable villagers to return to their ‘roots,’ to re-enact the practices that had been shunned since the Revolution. From a Soviet standpoint, these revivalists were asking people to dust off their forgotten ‘museum exhibits’ and bring them back to life. In the remainder of this chapter, I examine this patronage dynamic by looking closely at a few examples of revivalist strategies.

206

Making Memory

Returning Memory to the Village Many revivalist musicologists attempt to return songs to their ‘sources’ – the memories of villagers – with the goals of ‘preserving’ what they call ‘ancient’ culture by keeping it active in people’s minds, and also of enabling villagers to demonstrate their ancient traditions in the dual contexts of local celebrations and wider exposure such as nationally broadcast television documentaries. Since scholars want villagers to set an example and provide an education in old traditions, they exhort them to preserve certain parts of their traditions, while ignoring other parts. Natalia Giliarova, professor of musicology at the Moscow Conservatory, has been working on the folklore of Riazan’ oblast since 1970, and has become a nationally recognized expert on the folk singing of this region. She sings in and directs a chorus, the Moscow Conservatory Folk Ensemble, that specializes in the music of this area. In late July 1996, as part of a seminar she and I organized together, she took a group of ten Americans to Liubovnikovo in Riazan oblast to visit a village singing collective she had been researching for several years.6 Excited by the presence of the American guests, the seven women in the village group, almost all retired collective farm workers, sang a number of songs from contemporary genres, such as Soviet-era songs and late-nineteenth-century romances. After listening for some time, the musicologist herself launched into a song, ‘Seiu veiu’ (‘I sow, I winnow’), a dance song whose text reflects the agricultural way of life of the village prior to industrialization. Giliarova had learned the song from this same village eight years previously, and had not only published it but included it in the repertoire of her ensemble. By contrast, only two of the village women knew the song; the younger ones did not. The village women followed along haphazardly but enthusiastically, joining in toward the second half of each verse, when the words were repeated, and sometimes whooping and clapping. Sixty-five-year-old Ekaterina Nikanorova, the unofficial leader of the local ensemble, tried to start a verse herself, but Giliarova re-started the same verse. Nikanorova had sung it differently, more plainly, without a swoop on the syllable ‘Okh’ prior to the first words. On a subsequent verse, Nikanorova sang along with Giliarova on the solo introductory phrase. When the song was over, one of the women declared, ‘We have to learn that song right.’ Giliarova responded: ‘Yes, you should learn it!’ A second woman exclaimed, to general laughter: ‘Natalia Nikolaevna, come and teach it to us!’ As the laughter subsided, Giliarova told them: ‘I will come! I’ll shoot a television program here.’ Later, the musicologist reiterated her plans, saying ‘I’m not going to leave you in peace.’ As if suggesting they should do the same, she gave them the example of another village in which, as in theirs, only a few older folks could remember old songs. In that village, the older group took in three younger, middle-aged women – ‘Just your age,’ she pointed to the middle-aged woman who had not known how to sing ‘Seiu veiu.’

Making Memory 207 At first, nothing came of it. They got mixed up, they were afraid, they didn’t know, they were all over the place. That was it! The older women made everyone write the words down. Then Mar’ia would start the song, and they’d look at the notebook the whole time. They’d look while singing, and then slowly, they wouldn’t have to look anymore. But they added three voices, younger ones.7 This scene provides us with an example of the interaction between academic and rural culture in Russia, and a glimpse into the working methods and goals of many Soviet-trained musicologists. It also provides us with insight into the constructed quality of memory and tradition in post-Soviet Russia. Several assumptions are at work in this situation. Both the villagers and the musicologist assume 1) that there exists a ‘correct’ way of singing the song, and 2) that only the musicologist knows this ‘correct’ version. As I accompanied Russian folklorists and musicologists on field expeditions in the late 1990s, the combination of these two principles was a repeated theme. It suggested a profound respect for academic learning, a reflection of the longstanding cultural tradition in Tsarist and Soviet Russia that Helena Goscilo calls ‘Russia’s peculiar penchant for ideological legitimation through “high” art.’8 In this case, the musicologist clearly functions as a representative of ‘high’ culture as opposed to the villagers’ ‘low’ culture. This relationship of upper to lower strata, elite to folk, is bound up with the nineteenth-century definition of ‘the folk’ as European peasant, and their ‘lore’ as the proper object of study of urban scholars.9 Such a definition was obviously accepted unquestioningly by the participants in this scene. I followed up on this interesting phenomenon a few years after the incident described above; I was with musicologist Elena Bogina (Giliarova’s student) in the village of Kochemary, also in Riazan’ oblast. After Bogina corrected the informants, I asked them whether they liked being coached in this manner. They answered with a clear ‘yes.’ They said they thought her comments helped them sound better, and that she knew how their music should sound. They respected her opinion and trusted that she was bringing them closer to the ‘original’ style of their village. That this was a goal they themselves strove for could clearly be seen in their actions while we were staying in the village: these women corrected a song text themselves by going to an older woman who was reputed to know many songs and checking their text with her. It turned out they had combined three separate song texts, spiritual verses (dukhovnye stikhi) that were sung to similar melodies. They later insisted on singing the songs ‘properly’ for our recording.10 A third aspect of our two scenes is the depiction of urban intellectuals teaching villagers traditional songs. In the first case, the songs to be ‘reimplanted’ are ones that the folklorist originally learned from the same community. The folklorist now ‘returns’ these songs to their ‘home’ by encouraging the group to learn them, re-learn them, or to ‘remember’ words or stylistic details. The scholar functions as a bridge between the old,

208

Making Memory

organic life of the song (the time when the song lived ‘naturally’ in people’s memories) and the new, ‘revived’ life of the song. He or she ideally functions like a computer storage disk, ‘uploading’ information after the computer’s hard disk has ‘crashed’ and lost its memory. However, as could be seen in the above scenes, whereas the computer restores everything that was on the disk, the folklorist must choose, based upon her own memory, tastes, training and other factors, what to restore. This method involving intervention of a folklorist may be contrasted with older, more spontaneous traditional methods of transmission of folklore in Russia, in which people learned from members of their own communities, and made their own decisions about what was worth maintaining as part of an active repertoire and what to discard because it was no longer relevant or appreciated.11 In fact, Giliarova is engaged in even more active work than simply recording and ‘uploading’ information. She is engaged in activism in the community and nationally. In the above scene, she suggests a practical way to keep the singing group from falling apart due to lack of enthusiasm, personnel, or opportunities to perform. She outlines how the younger members of the group may learn the songs by having written texts in front of them and following the older ones when they sing. Further, she tries to get the women to work toward the goal of presenting their local songs and holidays on a television documentary. Giliarova pointed out that the act of making the documentary will help them to focus on learning certain old songs; subsequently, it may be easier to keep those songs in their active memories. Primarily, however, a documentary will serve to educate a new generation, which may one day ‘wake up’ and begin to value its heritage after these informants are gone. For Giliarova and for many other revivalists, video documentary functions as another kind of storage device that both motivates village performers to ‘preserve’ certain elements of culture, and disseminates this constructed ‘information’ to the public. Giliarova’s activism is further shown by her use of her own ensemble as a means of preserving and even restoring songs. Following in the steps of Anna Rudneva, her mentor at the Moscow State Conservatory, Giliarova has learned to restore songs that have been mostly forgotten by villagers.12 With a text and one or two vocal parts, Giliarova and her chorus can, given her knowledge of the local style, bring a ‘dead’ song back to life in folk polyphonic performance. ‘One must preserve a good, artistic, good-quality performance. For now, only we [the urban ensemble] can do this.’ Giliarova described to me how when she first started to visit some villages, they sang ‘badly.’ But she was able to encourage them to restore their repertoires to a more acceptable level, that is, to include polyphonic performances of songs that date back to before the Soviet period. However, village ensembles themselves are often not able to restore songs that are left in the memory of just one member, either because the other villagers are not sufficiently familiar with the style of the song to be able to improvise with it; or because they do not see a reason for learning it. In this context, the folklorist and her

Making Memory 209 performing ensemble function not so much as a computer storage disk, restoring erased memory, as painters trying to restore frescoes in a church by extrapolating from existing designs. Such artists have not only to replicate what existed but to imagine in what ways the designs were used to decorate the church space, what colors may have been used and how those colors originally looked (e.g. bright or muted). In Russian folk music, the artist’s toolbox is her performing ensemble: a folklorist alone cannot reproduce polyphony. The method by which Giliarova reproduces polyphony seems simple to a casual observer. She has her group listen to a recording of the song as sung by villagers, and after they have understood the text, she asks them to sing it. She then corrects them on vocal timbre, styling, tempo, melodic contour and polyphonic structure by demonstrating with her own voice or with the voices of more experienced members.13 The method relies on the scholar’s interpretation of what would constitute the most ‘authentic’ version of the song. Based upon her fieldwork in the region, Giliarova must guess what textual variants, vocal timbres and tempos are the most representative of ‘ancient’ (at least pre-Revolutionary, and often older) music-making. Furthermore, since the only informants are generally retired women, Giliarova must imagine what the women sounded like when they were younger and had greater energy; and she has to estimate what men would have sung. The reconstruction process also hinges on her ensemble having an excellent knowledge of the traditions with which they work. For this reason, Giliarova limits the group’s repertoire to music from a few selected regional traditions: Riazan’ and Penza oblasts, and the Volgograd Cossacks. The members of the groups regularly go on academic expeditions with Giliarova to acquaint themselves with these traditions. (CD tracks 18–19) Thus Giliarova’s work occurs on parallel fronts: ‘educating’ villagers in order to keep traditions ‘alive’ (at least long enough to record on video); and educating urban young people in the art of singing in the local styles of certain villages. The goal in both cases, she said, is to show folklore to ‘an audience made up of children.’ By exposing children to ancient Russian traditions, Giliarova hopes ‘to preserve’ Russian folk culture – and most importantly, ‘to preserve people’s unconscious perception of the folk song.’14 Her comment returns to the notion of ‘genetic memory’. While her approach has strong foundations in established scholarship and has been successful in providing contemporary approximations of older folk art, it is clear that it perpetuates the shefstvo dynamic and the notion that only ‘ancient’ elements of village culture are valuable.

Other Approaches Some revivalists have cultivated other strategies for relating to their informants, in which the informant/scholar dichotomy is minimized, and interactions are modeled upon traditional group structures of the family

210

Making Memory

and its larger community. Performing groups that include young ‘native’ carriers of a given tradition (such as the Stanitsa ensemble of Volgograd), that cultivate mentoring relationships with older ‘masters’ of traditional arts (such as Little Spindle, the Moscow children’s ensemble), or that perform with their older masters (such as Gornitsa, the group from Alekseevskaia stanitsa in Volgograd oblast) often relate to their informants as members of the group’s ‘family.’ Such groups may avoid the shefstvo positioning of the intellectual who approaches native informants for the raw material that s/he will then turn into ‘art,’ because they respect the attitudes of these masters toward their arts. For instance, the director of Gornitsa, Valentina Kubrakova, recalled that due to the authentic color their ‘master,’ Ivan Bespalov, lent to any song, the ensemble would often have him lead their songs by starting the solo first line of every verse. To give Bespalov the solo line accorded him quite a bit of power: despite the demands of the stage which dictate cutting long songs down to a usual two or three minutes, Bespalov never stopped a song before he had sung all the verses. Sometimes it was ‘13 verses of a slow song.’ For Bespalov, the audience’s limited attention span was of no consequence: what mattered was to tell the song’s story in full.15 Compare this account with a practice observed at the 1998 Moscow Folklore Spring Festival, when the group from Sudzha, in Kursk oblast, who performed together with four old women from the village, did not give their elders the opening solo lines in several of their songs. Some revivalist leaders criticized the practice, saying it showed disrespect to the older women. Similarly, in fieldwork situations or teaching situations with village informants, some revivalists allowed their informants to lead as teachers rather than simply to provide raw material that then would be transformed by a scholar. For example, Elena Krasnopevtseva prepares the children in her ensemble Little Spindle for a long time before they are ready to travel to a village to learn from masters. Each child studies a vocal part or instrument by learning from cassette tapes (they often learn a single voice from a multitrack recording) and from their Moscow teachers. When they go to the source village, each child stays in the home of the village ‘grandmother’ or ‘grandfather’ whose instrument or vocal part s/he has been learning, because Krasnopevtseva believes that ‘in order to play an instrument, one must understand the inner life of the bearer [of the tradition].’ When the children sing along with the grandmothers, Krasnopevtseva tells them to blend with their teachers ‘in such a way that I can’t hear you.’ She reports that they quickly learn to listen to their teachers rather than trying to show off what they know. Krasnopevtseva pays close attention to the aesthetic system of the grandmothers themselves: she recently discovered, for example, that they listen for overtones, and reject a particular performance as ‘bad’ (gadko) if they do not hear them.16 She herself has established very close relationships with some village grandmothers; one in particular has served as a mentor, teacher, and confidant and has been very influential in Krasnopevtseva’s own personal development.17

Making Memory 211 Thus, Krasnopevtseva feels she has succeeded in avoiding the shefstvo position in regard to her informants. Indeed, learning about the musical tastes, daily life, and views of a villager makes for a stance that differs from the typical approach of folk enthusiasts to folkloric sources, which demands that the exotic native Others ‘be premodern, untainted, and thus musically the same as they ever were.’18 Yet of course, there is always the danger that the revivalist’s own expectations color the encounter. As we saw above, villagers were glad to supply the kind of folk music they thought the scholar wanted, since they had been acculturated to value the scholar’s taste more than their own. Presumably, all encounters between scholars and villagers have the potential to be tainted by a shefstvo dynamic that is deeply ingrained in the culture.

Returning Ritual to the Village Yet if shefstvo underlay the attitudes of many folklorists to villagers, the opposite was not always true, despite the villagers’ deference described above. In some cases where revivalists have attempted to return ancient culture to villages, they have not met with unequivocal success. Such is the story of the visit of Zabava (‘Fun’), a Saratov-based ensemble, to a village in its oblast for a holiday celebration. While many of the villagers on this occasion adopted a revivalist attitude and wished to show how well their culture had preserved ancient folk forms of the holiday, some seemed tacitly to thumb their noses at the idea that their own traditions were inadequate. The story of this urban-rural encounter also illustrates the dangers of using the medium of television to ‘record’ rituals. Both Saratov Television and Saratov Radio were invited to the village to make programs about this happening. Documentary films are not representations of reality in its entirety; they literally and figuratively frame events in accordance with the goals of the filmmakers and the (real or imagined) demands of an audience. Since I witnessed both the real life and the documentary version of the event, I could compare the two: I saw that documentaries about folk customs often do all they can to present the village as an idyllic place where the source of true Russianness – folklore – by some miracle still lives today. If Giliarova’s urban group was conservative in its approach – taking only a few geographical regions and trying to master their musical styles – the Saratov ensemble followed the Pokrovsky model in performing Russian traditions that would be most interesting to audiences. Since this ensemble’s leaders vigorously stressed to me their disdain for the Soviet approach to folklore, I assumed they would have tried to avoid the shefstvo attitude. Yet when we traveled to the village, Zabava’s leaders, like Giliarova, criticized the actual customs practiced in the village and lamented the fact that more ancient traditions had not been ‘preserved.’ As it turned out, Zabava’s urban ensemble participated, through the television documentary, in the creation of a false impression about the true state of Russian traditions.

212

Making Memory

The setting was Christmas, the official celebration of which Russians were ‘deprived’ of for 70 years. Since 1991 they have reclaimed it; but its reinstitution has not involved a simple return to the pre-Revolutionary style of celebration. Instead, when I spent the 1999 Christmas season in Russia, I saw an array of different winter holiday traditions, ranging from Western commercialism to Russian High Orthodoxy, from Soviet glorification of labor to ancient pagan agrarian rites. There was no single source of rites associated with Christmas. The coexistence of these different traditions suggests, rather, that Christmas does not have a single identity in Russia; rather, for the Russians who celebrate it, the holiday functions as a locus for finding and affirming national and cultural identity. In the official culture of post-Soviet Russia, Christmas is associated with Russianness because of its dual associations with the Orthodox Church and with folk culture. Christmas has been reinstated with pomp and pageantry: it is now a formal state holiday, and in 1998 the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, Alexei II, led a midnight mass that was broadcast live on public television for four and a half hours. The video footage showed several politicians in attendance, such as then-Prime Minister Yevgeni Primakov, and also folk performers in a festival outside the church.19 This proximity of folk and church celebrations points to the essence of the Christmas holiday for Russia. Church and folk cannot be separated here: for every church tradition at Christmas, there is an equally interesting folk one. Often, they are combined in a single ritual or single text, as in a folk Christmas carol that mentions both Christ and Koliada, a pagan god.20 In 1999, at the same time as the official, nationally televised Christmas celebration took place in Moscow, Zabava made their own version of a televised Christmas celebration. They had had copious experience in front of the camera: the group had produced videos of a traditional wedding, of Maslenitsa (a Shrove Tuesday celebration), and a folk Christmas. The latter, completed just the year before (1998), showed all basic elements of the holiday: caroling, mummery, evening parties, and fortune-telling. The script for the holiday reconstruction was not based upon the traditions of a single village but incorporated village Christmas traditions from several regions of southern Russia and Ukraine. Although each area (in fact, each village) had different texts and songs, Zabava’s leader, Anzhelika Glumova, put together the most interesting examples of representative traditions, gleaned from folklore collections. The script was published in 1998 by the Department of Leisure Activities of the Saratov Province House of Culture and Science. The video showed caroling, in which a group of young people goes around the village, singing under the windows or at the porch. At each house, they sing a specific carol to each member of the household. The songs bless the household by describing the members as attractive and rich, and their animals as beautiful and sleek – as if, by saying they are already rich, the carolers bring abundance to the house. The songs and the sayings that come after them also prod the hosts, telling them that if they give abun-

Making Memory 213 dantly, they will be rich and beautiful, while if they are stingy, they and their children will be homely and poor. The carolers collect specially prepared biscuits, candies, or other food or coins from the host or hostess, in return for blessing the household with their singing. The point of this ritual was a kind of incantation. As Zabava’s leader told me, ‘this is an ancient, magical ritual, the invocation of a good harvest. If you ask who needs whom more – the carolers the hosts or the hosts the carolers – then it used to be that it was the hosts who needed the carolers more. If [the carolers] didn’t glorify them, something bad would befall them. [The hosts] even invited, enticed them in.’21 This caroling would start on Christmas day, and would last up to a week thereafter. On Christmas day itself, the youngest carolers, called khristoslavtsy, would sing canonical Church texts and other songs about Christ’s birth. During the week following Christmas, young people would dress up for the tradition of mummery [riazhenie] in costumes of the opposite sex, animals, and social types such as soldiers, gentry, cripples, robbers, gypsies, and so on. 22 For this part of their celebration, Zabava used animal masks made of skins and other natural objects. (Figure 8.1). As they showed it, traditionally the mummers would appear at evening gatherings of young people, and would often behave there in an unusually familiar, aggressive, and loose manner – scaring, chasing, and tackling those who were not in costume, talking and laughing boisterously. Their lively and sexually charged behavior fit the general theme of the winter holiday, which was the celebration of the coming fertility of the earth and the overcoming of winter’s dead spirit.23 At some point, probably in the nineteenth century, mummery became mixed with caroling, so that mummers too would go door to door with songs.24 During Christmas 1999, Zabava’s three adult leaders and about twelve young people aged 10–18 set out with their Christmas-caroling script to visit the village of Vladykino, population 560, located some 190 miles (300 kilometers) from the provincial capital, Saratov. They had heard about the village from Olga Makarova, a culture specialist in the Saratov Culture Department, whose home village it was; her uncle is the self-appointed local historian and founder of the local museum. Zabava chose to arrange a concert and a television documentary in Vladykino because Makarova had told Zabava’s leaders that the young people still go caroling there. The leaders of Zabava were excited to go to a village where ancient traditions are still practiced despite 70 years of Soviet prohibition; they assumed they would be able to learn local songs or sayings there in order to enrich their repertoire. Further, they felt that going to Vladykino would be a chance for their own teenagers to experience a real village setting: they expected to be swept away by the energy of the local carolers.25 Thus, they set out with three goals: to demonstrate to the villagers their semi-professional performance of ancient folklore (the traditional shefstvo stance); to collect material (again implying their superiority as repositories of culture who

214

Making Memory

Fig 8.1: Two members of Saratov Ensemble ‘Zabava’ know how to use the material properly); and the presumably more egalitarian stance of allowing the city children to experience an authentic village setting. However, from the ensemble leaders’ point of view, the two latter aims were foiled. First of all, the folkloric material available was not ancient, local, or appropriate to the holiday. As we soon discovered, no local carols actually remain in Vladykino. Village inhabitants born in the 1920s said they never witnessed any actual carol singing in the village.26 Children, young people, and even some middle-aged people do get dressed up in mummer’s costumes on Christmas eve and go door-to-door, wishing ‘Merry Christmas’ to the hosts and holding out an open sack. The hosts give specially-prepared biscuits, store-bought food, candy and alcoholic drinks to the mummercarolers. Second, Vladykino’s Christmas celebration differed significantly from the tradition the Saratov ensemble had studied. Not only children and young people but adults went from house to house; and the teens and adults drank alcoholic beverages. The carolers used no sung or spoken texts appropriate to Christmas. In fact, at one house when prompted by a radio reporter and television director to ‘sing something,’ a rather drunk ‘caroler’ in his 30s sang a song from prison folklore instead of a carol. The costumes were simplified: many mummer-carolers wore just rouged or charcoaled cheeks, while some wore no costume at all. (See Figure 8.2) And instead of the households seeking and receiving the benefit of a blessing from the carolers, only the caroler-mummers sought and received benefit from the hosts, in the

Making Memory 215

Fig 8.2: Local young man in ‘Mummer’s’ costume form of something to eat and drink. Zabava’s leader, 32-year old Anzhelika Glumova, lamented this fact: ‘The essence of the holiday is obviously already lost, and it has become ordinary begging.’27 Whether or not the caroling constituted begging, it was clear that the holiday had changed with time. From the point of view of many contemporary American folklorists, change is inevitable and not necessarily bad. Although participants may lament the loss of some perceived spirituality, new holiday celebrations may better suit the relationships, conditions, or tenor of different times. But Zabava’s leaders did not see change neutrally. Meanwhile, the Vladykino residents who went caroling or received carolers were unaware that their holiday did not meet the standards of the urban revivalists. They were conscious of, and proud of, their holiday. According to the local historian, 43-year old Alexei Karas’ev, this practice existed throughout the Soviet years, despite the fact that the holiday was officially discontinued after 1918, and New Year was substituted as an official holiday. The fact that Christmas was a religious holiday, Karas’ev said, was ‘no problem.’ ‘Many had icons in the corner – whether they believed or not, no one talked about that, but…everyone had icons [displayed in the home].…Everyone prepared for the holiday.’28 The children would go from house to house early in the morning, and, Karas’ev remembers, they would recite texts like: ‘Open your suitcase, take out a nickel.’ (‘Otkryvai sunduchok, vynimai piatachok’).29 To continue the celebration of Christmas during Soviet years was some-

216

Making Memory

what rare. According to descriptions of ethnographers, New Year’s Eve became an important holiday for Soviet citizens after it was officially instated in 1918, and subsequently both the Christian and pre-Christian winter holiday celebrations started to die out. In some villages a few of the Christmas traditions, such as masquerades, became transferred onto the New Year holiday.30 Since there was no official support for any sort of celebration on Christmas itself, however, in most places public celebration of this holiday died out. Yet there were villages like Vladykino in which caroling was carried on privately at Christmas. For Karas’ev, this fact – coupled with the increasing popularity of the holiday – was a source of pride. ‘This is Russian, this is our culture; what kind of Russians are we without culture? Without traditions, without rituals, without songs? – This is our wealth.’ By contrast, some of those who did not participate in the caroling – such as two older women I sought out for information about past practices – seemed rather indifferent about it. To these women, the holiday was not celebrated properly; they commented that there was in fact ‘no caroling’ in the village now, and there had not been any for a long time. Their comments seemed to indicate that for them, caroling was something entirely different from that which takes place today. Zabava’s leaders were disappointed in more than the transformation of the purpose of caroling; they were also critical of the behavior of the young villagers. Glumova felt the local teenagers in costume lacked the proper wild, free spirit, and were acting up in a very modern way. They used a lot of curse words and seemed bold when they were on the street, but as soon as they entered the house where they should have recited verses, sang songs, or acted humorously in front of the television camera, they could not actually say or do anything. The cameras could not have made them forget what to say, Glumova said. She compared these teenagers with people who actually know and participate in their folk traditions: ‘Someone who has an inner freedom, someone who is competent in some sphere of activity, for whom this is really organic and from his heart, it’s all the same to him, a camera, a microphone, or whatever; in principle, he relaxes and gets wild [chumit’sia], he’s happy at what’s going on, he might even get more wound up from the presence of the camera, might play, might [even] play up too much [pereigryvat’]…But here, they…don’t know the songs or the sayings [zaklichki], but they come in dressed up – yeah, great, ‘Merry Christmas’ [s Rozhdestvom Khristovym] – and that’s it. What next? And the camera’s on. They aren’t able to do anything else.’31 Glumova’s remarks suggest that true folk participants should be fluent speakers of a language of folk culture. They would possess a vocabulary of possible texts to be said and sung, gestures and actions to be used. Their knowledge would include a prescription of what must happen at such events. By contrast, these youths lacked knowledge of such a language. Instead, their behavior revealed only fragmentary acquaintance with the holiday – they knew snippets of text, they practiced the easiest and most obvious

Making Memory 217 forms of masquerading. As a result, for Glumova, they did not participate in the holiday in a meaningful way. The lack of vocabulary in the heads of the young participants meant that the holiday was empty, devoid of the proper moral and spiritual expressions. Glumova compared her group favorably to the village youngsters. She said that the city youths did possess the proper playful spirit, and attempted to mix with the locals, but that the locals were too concerned with appearing ‘cool’ to participate. Vadim Kovalskii, one of the co-leaders of Zabava, recounted the resistance put up by the local youths when the city group engaged in a folkloric dance with accordion accompaniment outside one of the homes. One local girl protested when he tried to bring her into the ongoing group dance; she said that she did not want to mess up her hair. Meanwhile, he said, the local boys stood to the side in their leather jackets, while he, Kovalskii, wore a sheepskin coat. He thought their choice of outer clothing was inappropriate for an extremely cold night, and attributed it to their attempt to seem ‘citified.’ The locals’ resistance to participating in a folklore dance with unfamiliar city people and their desire to appear as if they themselves were from a city are understandable, however, if one recalls common attitudes toward folklore, village dress, and villagers in Soviet Russia. For example, as I noted in Chapter 7, Soviet village women were often mocked by younger villagers for singing village songs. Rural folk culture was associated with old women. And even if the village youths did appreciate rural folk culture, it may have been uncomfortable for them to witness urbanites making a great show of an unfamiliar ‘folklore’ while their village was supposedly renowned for its folk traditions. Finally, the youths’ use of curse words and urban folklore such as gestures, posturing, ‘attitude,’ and attire likely reflect the authentic folklore of their culture. If they were trying to seem ‘citified,’ that stance may have much to do with a common aspiration toward urban culture among both village and city-dwelling young people in Russia since at least the 1960s.32 By contrast, Zabava was almost entirely made up of city teenagers who were enamored with rural culture, yet had never experienced a spontaneous form of the ancient rituals they had studied. Instead, they had memorized an enormous quantity of Christmas songs and the sayings that come after them. They had been taught the traditional meaning of the holiday and had been encouraged by their leaders to evince the proper spirit while acting it out. They had learned what amounts to a script of the holiday. The fact that it was learned did not mean that it constituted a dry, empty memorization: these teenagers’ motivation was to resurrect the ancient bases of Russian culture in order to bring traditional values to a contemporary society that seemed devoid of them. Accordingly, the teenagers themselves had actively initiated caroling in the city of Saratov (described in the Introduction), and were trying to revive the holiday in a small way by caroling door to door, and in so doing hoping to educate people about the holiday.33 The teenagers’ consciousness of the value of tradition, which I have iden-

218

Making Memory

tified as a hallmark of folklorism (following Bausinger), could be seen in the attitudes of the group’s leaders as well. Glumova authored the script for the group’s Christmas celebration because she felt her job was to return to people something they were unconsciously seeking due to their ‘genetic memory.’34 As she put it, 70 years of Soviet rule ‘took the information away…erased it from [people’s] memory.’35 Yet it was precisely this view that Soviet society had robbed the citizenry of an authentic culture that made Zabava’s leaders unable to accept what they found in the real village. If villages did not produce the folklore that these revivalists had read about in sources written prior to the Revolution or by scholars with a well-known anti-Soviet bent, then it was not a proper source of ‘Russian’ folklore. The strong revivalist tenets of this group could not help but color all their interactions with the villagers. But Zabava’s leaders were not the only ones who adhered to the notion that folklore had to be ancient and ‘Russian’: the locals, too, were concerned to show ‘authentic’ folklore. To be sure, their standards were different from those of Zabava (Glumova holds a college degree in Slavic literature and her work shows the tastes and resources of an educated person), but the basic principle was the same. This was evident when I reviewed the 20-minute television program made by Saratov Television about the holiday in Vladykino.36 To my surprise, the program showed local people caroling with songs and traditional texts. I was shocked, since I had been under the impression that the locals did not know traditional songs or texts. I was not present for all of the television shootings, but I was present at unplanned encounters where locals did not know any traditional Christmas songs. I telephoned Glumova, and she explained to me that I had not been mistaken about Vladykino’s level of knowledge of Christmas traditions. Rather, someone had prepared a kind of script for this part of the program as well. In one scene three local middle-aged women performed songs and sayings appropriate for Christmas. One of these women is a culture worker in the village; it is her job to promote culture, including traditional culture. The texts they sang in this scene were not of local origin, but were probably obtained from published booklets like Glumova’s, and either learned especially for the filming, or learned earlier for another occasion. One sung text about Christ’s birth was a canonical church hymn, and could have been learned in church.37 In another caroling scene, children recited texts obviously learned not long ago, probably in school. It is quite possible that they learned these texts specially for a new holiday practice which the village recently instituted, in which children are encouraged to learn a poem or saying to recite in church at a ceremony on Christmas morning. Each child who recites is given a gift.38 On second and third viewings of this program, I began to see that no script learned for the occasion could hide the fact that the local youths – especially the males – felt very uncomfortable participating in the holiday. Their behavior inside the house was very reserved. Glumova was right: they

Making Memory 219 lacked a kind of inner guidance, something to tell them what to do. However, I believe the youths’ behavior may indeed have been affected by the situation. They were wild in other circumstances on the street and within houses, but in the filmed scene, where they were standing physically behind women of their mothers’ age singing and chanting folk and Church texts, they probably felt that they might say or do the ‘wrong thing.’ Zabava’s teenagers, by contrast, not only possessed that inner guidance, but came across as being almost too forward: in one scene they almost overwhelmed the host and hostess, who were speechless and did not make a move to offer food and drink until several rousing songs and texts had been performed. Clearly, the members of the Saratov ensemble were the more experienced actors as both the locals and the visitors performed their Christmas scripts. Perhaps what interested me the most about this televised performance was Glumova’s attitude toward it. When I called her to ask whether I had misunderstood the events I had seen, she was at first perplexed: what difference did I see between the reality and the TV version? She told me ‘so what?’ if the locals learned a few texts especially to show on TV; ‘so what?’ if the TV producers purposely showed Christmas carols that few in the village knew, and that did not originate in their village? From her point of view, none of that mattered, just as it did not matter that she pieced together her script from various regional traditions. Of course, she said, she would have liked to see the holiday better preserved, with original texts and songs. But what mattered most in the television version was that people saw what Christmas traditions could look like, they heard Russian songs. Such a performance might be enough to activate their ‘genetic memory.’ Thus, through the work of ensembles like Zabava – as well as through the work of individuals like Kozlov (Chapter 7), the concept of Russian local traditional culture is changing: it is becoming more pan-Russian. In the Saratov Christmas event as well as in Giliarova’s work, television plays a large part, since it offers the possibility of awakening ‘genetic memory’ by exposing ordinary Russians to their roots. For revivalists like Giliarova, villagers must be ‘taught’ to sing and say the proper things with the proper style in order to ensure an ‘authentic’ reenactment of tradition. By contrast, for Glumova and Kozlov – and for many other revivalists, television producers, village culture workers, and historians like them – it is not important exactly what is sung or said in traditional ritual. Instead, they are looking for a sense of Russianness, something to give people a sense of national identity. The particular texts they sing and speak function only as symbolic signs of tradition and Russianness. In a certain sense, video documentaries such as the ones produced by Zabava and Giliarova perform a function similar to that designed for folklore during the Stalin era. At that time, folklore was harnessed as propaganda for the Soviet state and its ideological goals. Ironically, in the 1990s revivalists with anti-Soviet leanings were also utilizing folklore as propaganda. While they did not promote a state ideology, they advocated a

220

Making Memory

particular view of Russian culture and a particular interpretation of the folk heritage.39 In this context the reticent behavior of the youths may be viewed as a kind of resistance: recognizing that anything they said or did could be criticized by the urban folklorists as ‘incorrect,’ they simply refused to join the games and were silent in front of the camera. Meanwhile, village culture continued to exhibit signs that it possessed its own authentic folklore, qualitatively different from the carefully prepared productions scripted by the revivalists – including the local ones. For example, throughout the village we saw barns and homes with crosses marked in chalk on the doors. An older woman told me that people mark buildings to signify that they have been sprinkled with holy water on the Orthodox religious holiday of Epiphany, 19 January, when a priest from the neighboring church blesses the water in a local well. This was clearly an active tradition that was not carried on for the purpose of revival. Although it was an Orthodox holiday, the chalk crosses indicated that locals had established ways of conducting it that were not prescribed or regulated by the Church. There was a similar spontaneous quality to the prison song sung by one of the carolers at 2 a.m. when the village host, the television and radio directors, and I were sitting around a table drinking and eating. Clearly, the song’s use in a Christmas caroling setting was an anomaly in folkloric practice, which the man recognized. Before he sang it, he asked if it would be all right: ‘There’s another one, but I don’t know whether it fits here or not.’ Everyone told him: ‘it fits, it fits.’ The Christmas ritual had merged with the ritual of zastol’e, the celebratory Russian practice of sitting around a table, sharing toasts, poems, jokes, and songs. In the context of zastol’e, nearly any heartfelt performance was permissible. The song must have been a well-known text among this man’s peers, who may have included former prisoners or simply those enamored with the criminal world. In it, a young prisoner tells of his wish to be like a dove, flying free above the prison. In a self-reflexive twist at the end of the text, he laments that this very song will not be heard: A young man lying on his plank bed Quietly sings a song. He sings how hard it is to live without one’s freedom Without friends, without tender girlfriends. And they will never again hear this song Because tomorrow this young man is to be shot. The song pointed out the ephemeral, ever-changing nature of folklore: songs change with the people who sing them. There is no fixed tradition that must be guarded, preserved, or re-invented, because folklore can be trusted to evolve in unexpected and constantly interesting ways. Furthermore, the song asserted, folklore is precious to the people who produce it because it reflects their individuality. A song can symbolize more than an ancient culture: it can signal an identity, which in the end is as priceless as life itself.

9

Conclusion: Folklore and Popular Culture

Our country is the only one in the world that has its own national culture. America is a great state, but it has no national culture. Nadezhda Babkina1

Throughout this narrative I have stressed the ways that various groups have constructed images of the folk as a means of representing their own identities. Thus, whereas nineteenth-century elites approached folkways as a source of ‘national character’ and to signify their oneness with the common people, radicals saw allegiance with the narod as a means of differentiating themselves from the autocracy. Soviet post-War culture endorsed its sentimentalized, homogenized kitsch version of the folk as a means of recovering national confidence and expurgating ‘foreign’ elements; a few decades later, oppositional-minded intellectuals revolutionized the study and performance of folklore through attention to the regional and local nature of folk culture. In the post-Soviet period, the debate over the correct way to show Russian tradition constituted a struggle over the representation of Russianness. In all these periods, both government officials and nonconformists utilized conceptions of the folk for political ends; each group, in attempting to give voice to its political position, emphasized different attributes of the imagined ‘other.’ Thus, rather than an object of scientific study or representation (as it is more usually thought of), folk culture functions as a locus in which groups negotiate their identities, a perfect example of Foucault’s notion of discourse as ‘systematically form[ing] the objects of which it speaks.’2 Within this charting of the ways that groups have framed their notion of ‘folk,’ we have also seen the less obvious ways that individuals and groups have engaged in practices that did not fit within chosen or established frames. Rural dwellers, in particular, neither preserved nor transformed their traditions in the ways that scholars and officials expected. Boundaries between urban and rural culture were more fluid than those who studied folklore may have wished. Even when urban intellectuals carefully planned to use their performances to show how folklore was performed in ‘ancient Russia,’ there was always the possibility that a subverting element would creep into the picture: the frame of a festival that included folk-kitsch, for

222

Conclusion

example, or a child’s chastushka that spoke about the commercial nature of the performance situation. One such subverting element for the post-Soviet folk revival movement has been its relation to and dependence on the Western European and North American ‘World Music’ movement. Motivated by a ‘loss of faith in institutions…spiritual confusion and social breakdown,’ both educated Russians and Westerners have sought spiritual development and bygone forms of community in signs of the primitive.3 In the West, educated, affluent people (among whom I count myself and my cohort) are the primary purchasers of the World Music productions that have packaged folk, classical, and pop genres from other cultures as a kind of balm for the modern illness of alienation. For Americans, there is often the unconscious acceptance of the notion expressed by Babkina in this chapter’s epigraph: we must seek ‘roots’ in older, more primitive cultures. For Russian revivalists the ideological wrinkle in this situation is that World Music is essentially a commercial venture that draws heavily on the popularity of Western (particularly American) pop-music forms, while their ostensible aim as musicians and scholars is to head off the ‘Americanization of [Russian] music.’ 4 In fact this contradiction between altruistic goals and moneymaking strategies exists within the World Music movement itself. As numerous critics have pointed out, World Music was not a grassroots movement but the conscious creation of record companies and concert promoters who decided that record shops would be more likely to carry the newly popular music of third world countries if they had a category to describe it.5 Timothy Brennan argues that this music ‘characterizes a longing in metropolitan centers of Europe and North America for what is not Europe or North America’; it ‘represents a flight from the Euro-self at the very moment of that self’s suffocating hegemony, as though people were driven away by the image stalking them in the mirror.’ That image is of the imperialist exportation of the products of European and North American culture factories. In this context World Music offers the hope of subverting the ‘ideological parochialism of Euro-American popular music’ and freeing music from imperialist domination – an illusory goal that appeals to the well-educated, liberal, affluent consumers of this music.6 Ironically, it has been the existence of the World Music movement that has allowed many Russian and East European folk revival groups – and their counterparts in the growing field of folk-pop fusion – to survive the ravaged economies of their home countries. The rise of international music festivals and the proliferation of entrepreneurs willing to take on projects in East European folk and folk-influenced music allowed such groups to form and to achieve international success. The interest of big names in ‘ethnic’ music was crucial: artists such as David Byrne, Paul Simon, and Peter Gabriel utilized various international folk idioms and performers in their compositions, and Gabriel’s Real World Studios provided a place where ‘musicians who had no commitment towards Western pop’ could record

Conclusion 223 albums so that any ‘talented musicians in the world, regardless of nationality or home, [could] reach an international public.’ As Gabriel put it, the idea behind his enterprise (which included the studio, a record label, and World of Music and Dance – WOMAD – a series of outdoor music celebrations modeled after rock festivals) was to expose people to ‘the cultures of other countries’ in order to erase their ‘fear of foreigners’: ‘From this point of view, Real World can undoubtedly be seen as a bulwark against racism…. Though the songs may ultimately wind up sounding European, that’s okay with me. At the heart, it is world music that I do. It’s all connections. Ultimately, we’re all connected.’ 7 Like Russian revivalists, these Western musical producers cultivated the illusion that these non-Western musicians were ‘pure’ because they were supposedly not interested in making pop music, and would never ‘sell out’ their own musics for money. Such privileging of the primitive asks the Other to remain ‘the same’ while Western musical producers exploit their music. The notion of ‘connectedness’ is deceptive because in the final analysis, the system is set up so that savvy businesspeople and intellectuals possess the means to market the music, transform it, and profit from it, while native musicians are reduced to the role of providing the unrefined material. Such an approach mirrors the stance of Russian folk revivalists toward rural carriers of folk traditions: in both cases the cultural capital is held by those who possess the skill to identify and analyze folk art, not by the producers of the art. Indeed, the category of World Music is not subversive of Western imperialism: on the contrary, it perpetuates it by misrepresenting the musics it purports to stand for. The marketing of non-Western cultural artifacts may promote an appearance of cultural and ethnic diversity and ‘authenticity,’ but also cultivates and fetishizes the primitive quality of the musicians. By lining up and implicitly equating disparate traditions that have very different societal functions, the World Music category reduces all to the same clichés: Indian classical music, comprising a system similar in complexity to that of European classical music, is situated alongside Angelique Kidjo’s rock music from Benin, an American-based music with the addition of African rhythms and instruments; the discs of Tuvan throat-singers, whose vocal-instrumental ensemble formations were influenced both by the Soviet passion for Andreev-style folk orchestras and by Western-style rock bands, sit on record-shop racks next to recordings of retired Russian villagers singing agricultural holiday songs a cappella. The packaging seems to assert that all such music belongs to a ‘transnational youth culture of entertainment,’ when in fact of these four examples only Kidjo and the Tuvans have expressly directed their productions at such a market.8 Presumably, no one asked Russian Old Believers – who are known for their reserve and believe photographing the face and recording the voice to be a sin – whether they would like their wedding laments and religious songs to be marketed to affluent European and American consumers.

224

Conclusion

Nevertheless, their village’s opus can be purchased, with detailed notes, on Pan Records Ethnic Series from the Netherlands – one of a handful of European companies that produced several discs of ‘authentic’ Russian village music in the late 1990s.9 Does the production of ethnographic field recordings for public sale constitute exploitation, or is it simply a way of distributing this precious material more widely? Debate on this question continues to rage, although currently the tide has turned in favor of compensating native performers and having them sign legal contracts before recording even takes place.10 While the market for ethnographic recordings of Russian folk music outside of Russia (as well as within Russia) has remained small, Russians have begun to actively participate in the World Music movement in other ways, raising similar political and ethical issues. The movement has had its most productive florescence in the cultivation not so much of various world musical traditions, but of an indigenous music tradition incorporating experimental fusions of Russian folk music with jazz, alternative rock, classic rock, and pop. Following in the wake of the Pokrovsky Ensemble’s collaboration with the Paul Winter Consort in 1986–7, such creations of Russian artists – with and without foreign collaborators – have attained fairly wide popularity abroad as well as within Russia itself. While this music takes much from the productions of World Music aimed at Westerners – and can often similarly be characterized as a superficial search for the primitive in pleasantly entertaining form – its proponents and critics argue it is different in that it showcases Russian and other Slavic folk musics. Perhaps the most successful of such artists within Russia has been the group Ivan Kupala, composed of three men who worked for a St Petersburg radio station in the mid-1990s. These technophiles without musical education (although they had dabbled in St Petersburg rock bands) put together their compositions by electronically sampling and combining ethnographic field recordings from Russian villages (mostly groups of older female vocalists and some wind instruments) with various musical phrases from other ethnic vocal and instrumental musics (such as Bulgarian flutes and women’s chorus, a Romanian instrumental ensemble), environmental sounds (birds, water), simple synthesized chordal arrangement, a very danceable beat (mostly house, some trance and reggae) and synthesized bass. Their 1999 album Kostroma was so popular that a year later one critic wrote that only a hermit had not heard their music; anyone who listened to the radio had memorized the ritual dialogue in the title song ten times over already.11 That dialogue was a Spring and Summer ritual play from Dorozhevo, Briansk oblast, about which folklorists and musicologists have written much since the 1940s; the Pokrovsky Ensemble performed their rendition of it widely in the 1980s.12 The version from Dorozhevo is a carnivalistic play in which a woman describes and acts out the entire process of spinning thread and weaving cloth; she then eats dinner and gets sick (the latter is accompanied by exaggerated erotic gestures); lying on her deathbed, she (farcically)

Conclusion 225 confesses her sins to the priest, then gets up and dances.13 The play contains approximately forty separate spoken episodes, separated by a chorus; in the recording by Ivan Kupala, only five are represented. Not surprisingly, the pop version of the play does not render its carnivalistic, ribald origins, but it does hint at them with the insertion of various exuberant vocalized yells and whoops sampled into the instrumental finale. Instead of carnival, the song’s charm lies in its humorous and poignant juxtaposition of the voices of the elderly female performers speaking and singing in their local dialect with the modern dance club arrangement.14 The old women’s vocal track, with its rough, hoarse texture, gives the piece an exotic, nostalgic quality – as the first track on the album (immediately prior to the title track, ‘Kostroma’) underscores with the phrase, spoken by an older male villager: ‘It happened long ago. It’s the absolute truth.’ Of course, ‘it’ did not happen long ago: the music grows directly out of the work of 1990s West European urban house dance (and trance) music such as that of Deep Forest and Enigma. When asked if they were interested in folklore, two members of the group said ‘we are not fanatics of folklore, we are fanatics of beautiful music. We love good folk music; we don’t like stylizations of folk music.’15 But even if the musicians do not see themselves as revivalists who purposely expose listeners to ancient Russian roots, reviewers have lauded the compositions for bringing something ‘Russian’ to the Russian music scene: ‘Interestingly, it never gets boring. It’s ours, after all. Your own wealth doesn’t feel heavy in your pockets.’16 Clearly, the musicians are capitalizing upon the current popularity of ‘a fashion for everything Russian, that is, Russian folk music.’17 Unlike other folk-pop fusions that sample eclectically from multiple sources, do not reveal their sources, and ‘hide’ their samples by chopping them into unrecognizable bits, the music of Ivan Kupala gives the illusion of full citation – of putting the music of Russian grandmothers in the spotlight. Most of the tracks on the group’s first album contain fairly full versions of Russian folk tunes (although sometimes two tunes are combined together), and the names of the villages from which samples were obtained are listed on the album cover (although there is no indication which source belongs to which track). However, ultimately this is not a form of quotation but of mutation. As one member of the band described, each second of sound takes approximately two to two-and-a-half hours to produce. The vocals and instrumentals of the Russian villagers are transformed, reshaped to fit the strictly consistent rhythms and pitches of the electronic accompaniment, and to fit a musical structure intended for dancing to (for example, repetitions of sung phrases are inserted to fill up rhythmic breaks in the vocal tracks). When the group made the transition to live performance, it considered hiring village informants but found that real-life ethnographic performers could not be made to sing on cue; instead, it employed four Gnesin-educated young women, two of whom were formerly members of the Pokrovsky Ensemble.18

226

Conclusion

If Ivan Kupala’s music was carefully wrought in the studio, the music of another author of musical projects in Russian folk fusion was inspired by the live, improvisational mood of jazz and folk idioms. Conservatoryeducated revivalist musician Sergei Starostin, the director of the World Village television documentary series discussed in Chapter 4, has been involved in some of the most interesting contemporary experimental projects using folk music. Although his music (and that of the groups with whom he collaborates) has not been as broadly popular in Russia as that of Ivan Kupala, it has accrued a significant following at home and has made notable inroads into Western European and American markets. In fact, it could never be as popular as Ivan Kupala’s music, because this is not danceable pop aimed at a club audience, but sophisticated music with many influences: jazz, rock, folk, and world. Perhaps best known in America and Western Europe is the pair of CDs that Starostin – respectively alone and as part of the Moscow Art Trio with Mikhail Alperin and Arkady Shilkloper – has created together with Bulgarian and Tuvan ensembles.19 On several tracks Starostin’s solo vocals weave unusual Russian village melodies around a texture created by the Bulgarian choir singing arranged art versions of Bulgarian folk tunes or the Tuvan throat-singers with their instrumental ensemble. Here Russian vocal folk music provides one of the sharper flavors in an eclectic musical stew. Most interesting, however, is Starostin’s work with Inna Zhelannaia and the band known alternately as Alliance and as The Farlanders. Starting in 1989 with the band’s first album, these musicians have been creating original ‘alternative’ folk-rock, using Russian folk tunes as the base of about onethird of their compositions, and Russian folk instruments (as well as instruments of other ethnic traditions) in almost all the pieces.20 The songs vary widely in sound and influences: sometimes one can hear the inventive rock of Pink Floyd, at other times the funky jazz of Herbie Hancock; klezmer notes from two clarinets mix with Balkan rhythms and instruments (flute, bagpipe) and a reedy-sounding Russian zhaleika and overtone flutes; a fretless bass, acoustic and electric guitar, drumset and other percussion instruments form the music’s core, while Zhelannaia’s voice is often compared to the voices of the Indigo Girls and the Cranberries. This is the eclectic, inspired music of seasoned musicians who love to experiment with their instruments and voices. For example, the song ‘Through the Garden’ is a jazz-rock arrangement of the traditional wedding dance song recorded in 1964 by Viacheslav Shchurov in the village of Afanas’evka, in Belgorod oblast (‘Through the Garden, through the Cherry Orchard’ / ‘Cherez sadik, cherez vishen’e’).21 As the song opens, bass drums, snare drums, and cymbals play a quirky beat; a six-string fretless bass and electric guitar enter with a repeated jazz-funkinspired motif, and then Starostin, playing a double-reed zhaleika, a village instrument traditional in the region from which the song comes (where it is called rozhok), assumes the role of a jazz saxophone by ‘commenting’ on the

Conclusion 227 guitar riff with playfully mocking short, sharp, staccato phrases. When Starostin’s and Zhelannaia’s vocals enter with funk bass and drum accompaniment, they sing the notes and the words of the traditional dance song, but they omit ornaments that help to give a characteristic accent to the village version, and at one point Zhelannaia doubles the melody a third higher, taking her out of the range of the village style. During subsequent instrumental breaks an overtone flute playing long held notes offers a dialogic counterpoint to Starostin’s spiky zhaleika.22 This music at first listen seems farther from the traditional than that of Ivan Kupala because it does not directly quote any traditional recordings, and transforms the village sound in obvious ways in accordance with its new jazz environment. Yet there is something more authentic about Zhelannaia’s and Starostin’s production: it never promises nostalgia and fascination with the exotic folk as does the Kupala musical packaging, but instead incorporates traditional instruments and elements in the creation of a new composition in the jazz-fusion genre. To be sure, one of Starostin’s goals as a performer is the quintessential one of the revivalist, to make sure that people hear folk sounds: ‘I think subconsciously, my goal is to broaden the influence of folklore intonations, folklore music, in various genres. That’s my missionary goal…I try to introduce folklore into the most varied [musical contexts], where it’s hard to imagine how folklore could blend in.’23 Yet judging by his music, one would have to conclude that Starostin views facilitating the exposure of folk music as a musical challenge rather than as a propaganda job. Or, to put it a different way: rather than fitting folklore to a modern style (as does Kupala), Starostin approaches folklore as a set of tools that can be re-fitted in order to be used creatively in a new environment – a potentially more productive approach. Indeed, while Starostin has brought folk music to a wide variety of musical genres (combinations of the music of various ethnic groups, folk-rock and folk-jazz fusions, a jazz opera), Kupala has issued two subsequent discs that are remixes and remakes of the tracks on their first album.24 These remixes add very little to the original pieces, and are clearly a device that allows the group to remarket old material. While Russian listeners may appreciate both groups for bucking the trend of what Zhelannaia calls the ‘Americanization of music’ by incorporating Russian sounds into their compositions, that does not mean that listeners understand or fully recognize their Russian musical roots. In fact, after reading some of the criticism of this music, it seems clear that many Russian listeners are ill-equipped to correctly identify Russian musical elements when they hear them.25 Thus, whether audiences can be considered ‘exposed’ to the roots of Russian music when they listen to dance versions of ethnographic recordings or jazz played with Russian folk instruments is debatable. And even if Russian radio listeners memorize the dialogue in Kostroma, that does not mean that they understand the nature of the source ritual. Thus, the folk revival and World Music movements not only intersect in

228

Conclusion

such productions, but share many of the same goals, methods – and, ultimately, contradictions. It is impossible to reconstruct or create a music that will transform society by countering the process of Americanization or reeducating a listener. Still, each of these movements plays an important role in society, a role that exemplifies what I have identified as the true functions of folklore. Instead of seeking roots and authenticity in a particular kind of music, one may seek it in practices. The debate over authenticity may be turned on its head: to some audiences, including this listener, the most authentic music may not be that which is most ‘traditional,’ but that in which the performers creatively express their (self-defined) identity, and audiences find a reflection of theirs. If the modern music of Russian musicians who are equally enamored of Russian folk and Western pop, rock, and jazz styles is appreciated by audiences, then it is a viable, living music – perhaps even the start of a tradition. In short, it is popular culture, which has an appreciable effect on people’s lives. Richard Stites wrote that while high culture may seem to reflect eternal truths and deep values, ‘popular culture rarely concerns itself with the great enigmas of human experience’; yet popular culture provides an essential means of social bonding and shares many of the other important functions of folk culture as I have defined it, such as allowing the expression of taboo subjects and providing a means of establishing or envisioning identities within communities, whether immediate (family, neighborhood) or imagined (nation, state, or interest-based). In fact folk culture and popular culture are very much intertwined: the main difference is that while folk culture is something one actively does or creates, popular culture is typically seen as something one consumes: ‘urban songs and dances, light reading, the entertainment stage, and cinema.’ Yet popular culture entails both consuming and creating, since ‘audience reception’ comprises the ways that people incorporate elements of popular culture into their daily lives. Thus, folkloric practices such as ‘songs they sing together for certain functions, clothes they wear, styles of behavior, gestures, emulative postures (e.g. of cinema stars), dances…speech patterns, jokes, and narrative styles’ are all ways that people make popular culture part of their lives.26 Recognizing this point of intersection between popular and folk culture is crucial to understanding the ways that folklore functions in the modern world. If we disregard it, as do many Russian folklorists and musicologists, we will always see folklore as a remnant, a pale shadow of its former self. In order to perceive a healthy, truly living folklore, we must open our eyes to the grassroots creative practices of all kinds of social groups, including those who produce or consume folk-pop or folk-jazz fusions, and those I have identified as producers of an artificial ‘folklorism’ – the Soviet-style folk choirs and the urban revivalists, the provincial amateur choirs and the rural revivalists. That popular culture and folklore are intertwined was made abundantly

Conclusion 229 clear to me when two fourth-year students in the Musical-Ethnographic program of St Petersburg State Conservatory, whose classes I was visiting, invited me to attend a rock concert which they said was related to folk music.27 That these students liked rock was a surprise, since the school was conservative and most of the students seemed serious and reticent. In the Soviet-era wooden auditorium of the St Petersburg youth club we sat in the first row of seats. The audience, including my companions, grew increasingly excited as the concert progressed, and shouted out names of favorite songs during the breaks between numbers. When the band played a particularly well-loved tune, the spectators erupted into applause, whistles, and cries after the first few chords; occasionally they sang along and some stood, holding hands or lighters aloft. As an ‘outsider’ to this music, I did not fully understand the crowd’s enthusiasm, nor did I understand what it had to do with folk music. My companion Liuda Makhova filled me in the next evening, over a meal at her dormitory. The band, Kalinov Most, began in the mid-1980s in Novosibirsk, where Makhova was from, and had grown popular nationally in the early 1990s. By playing various tracks from the band’s discs and explaining their lyrics to me, Makhova demonstrated how the singer, Dmitri Reviakin, used elements of Siberian village vocal style in his singing and showed that his lyrics were sprinkled with folkloric images and neologisms based upon Slavic roots (the latter, she said, were reminiscent of Velemir Khlebnikov’s modernist poetry).28 To make her points, she taught me two Siberian village songs that she had learned in folk ensembles in her home town. Clearly, Makhova was proud that all of this music – the rock and the traditional village songs – expressed what she considered to be the rich culture of their Siberian ancestors: ‘There’s everything in Siberia!’ But what seemed more important here was the way in which Reviakin’s music created a space in which the concert attendees were able to express and enact aspects of their identities. To perform the role of a fan of this band was not simply to say that one enjoyed this form of entertainment; it was to make a statement about one’s politics, cultural appreciation, and ethnic or regional identification. The same was true of Makhova’s folk revivalist activities and her self-identification as a folk revivalist. Indeed, as has become clear to me through this study, all groups incorporate specific rituals, music, slang, expressions, jokes, references, and material goods into their daily lives. In many cases, the material that folk revivalists consciously attempt to preserve by performing on stage also exists offstage in a spontaneous form that has personal meaning for them and their audiences. Through such a process it is no longer folklorism, but folklore itself. Thus, radio listeners’ memorization of the dialogue from Kostroma may not mean that they understand the pagan significance of a ribald summer ritual, but when they get together at parties their common knowledge and appreciation of that music may allow them to enact social groupings and identities

230

Conclusion

that have more than fleeting significance. In fact, they may create their own ribald rituals. Three further episodes from my fieldwork experiences, described below, show how the practices of folk revivalists have also create a space in which participants enact identities by expressing values and social and regional affiliations. Such examples offer a glimpse into the ‘underside’ of the movement – that which happens when microphones are turned off, when agendas for maximizing the presentation of Russian culture to Westernized audiences are forgotten or fade into the background, when ritual situations allow people to make music and to experience the emotional and social transformations which that activity entails.

September 1998 On the last evening of the folk festival in Vorob’evka, after a large banquet for all participants in a school gymnasium, members of various groups began to sing, play, and dance beloved folk songs. When I wandered outdoors at 2 a.m., a group of about twenty young adult members of several ensembles were loosely grouped in a circle around an accordionist. They were engaged in what was obviously a favorite pastime: singing bawdy chastushki. As I listened, I began to understand that this style of music-making was like a game with particular rules. For example, a participant said ‘mine!’ or simply moved into the center of the circle during the instrumental interlude to signal that he or she wanted to sing the next chastushka. Once I had listened for a while and understood some of the rules, I jumped in with a chastushka I had learned in Riazan’ oblast; the accordionist sensed my difficulty with the speed of the accompaniment and slowed down to accommodate me. After my performance, a few others sang chastushki related to my theme (mine was about perestroika – which, someone commented, was a bit outdated) before moving on to other, more productive themes, like mothers-in-law. At times, a competition between men and women was initiated by comments or by the chastushki themselves. For instance, after several men in a row sang chastushki, one of the men egged on the women, saying ‘Girls, sing! The boys are talking, but you’re…’ to which one of the women responded by singing: My dear sweetie pie Is like a scarlet posy He’s big, he has big mustaches Just his thing is tiny!29 In response, all of the women whooped and hollered to praise the particularly witty chastushka, while the man who had suggested it in the first place said ‘We’ll get you back,’ and a second man countered with another chastushka jokingly defending a small manhood:

Conclusion 231 On the window grows a posy Sky blue and scarlet. Better small and standing up Than big and wilted!30 These chastushki were particularly funny because they used the technique of surprise. The first two lines seemed to be perfectly innocent, but the second two revealed their hidden metaphorical meaning. In general, the singers avoided using curse words; instead they utilized symbolic substitution or a whistle in place of the offensive word. In one case, just before a man was about to sing a chastushka in which he pronounced such language, he crossed himself and said ‘Forgive me God!’ Obviously, the participants were conscious that this was taboo material, and the situation – the fact that it was late at night, we were outdoors, people were intoxicated, and the next day everyone would part to go home – made this a special time in which transgressions were permitted. After several facetious exchanges, some of the participants began to leave, remarking that they were getting sober – it was time to drink more; fresh arrivals from the banqueting hall replaced them, and the songs continued.

April 1999 One evening after the events of the Moscow Folkloric Spring festival were finished, I and about 12 members of ensembles from Moscow, Volgograd, and Astrakhan’ gathered in a room in the Hotel Sevastopol’ on the outskirts of the city, where the out-of-town guests were staying. We prepared and ate salted fish from Astrakhan’, drank vodka and homemade liqueur from Volgograd, made toasts, talked about the politics of funding a folk ensemble, and sang along with each other’s songs. At one point the Volgograd women sang a melodramatic nineteenth-century Cossack romance, ‘The White Birch’ (‘Belaia bereza’), in which a gypsy tells a woman her lover is cheating on her. With each verse, more and more of those present joined in on the repeated lines; Andrei Kabanov sang along, changing the words to ‘and the Metro is closing!’ to signify it was time to go home. After the song one of the young Volgograd women, Vika, started a long, heartfelt toast to her mentors, the leaders of ensemble Stanitsa, Olga Nikitenko and her husband Aleksandr (Sasha) Kiiazhka, but Nikitenko interrupted it by kissing Kiiazhka passionately while everyone shouted ‘bitter!’ (a kind of toast usually performed at weddings); he explained that tomorrow would be their twenty-second anniversary. Vika resumed her lengthy toast, at the culmination of which she called Nikitenko her mother and kissed her warmly. The leader of the Astrakhan’ group launched into ‘I Walked in the Garden and Picked Flowers’ (‘Vo sadu ia khodila, tsvetochki rvala’), a romance from their region with a melody and story similar to

232

Conclusion

‘White Birch,’ in which a woman tells her friends not to fall in love, since her own lover has married another, at which point her ‘life ended.’

May 1999 I flew from Moscow to Perm, a large industrial city just west of the Urals, to visit the folk ensemble called Songster Workshop, based at the university there. The group, composed of about 12 members ranging from their late teens and 20s to their 30s and 40s, were mostly students and faculty at Perm University. Their enthusiasm and deep knowledge of local village traditions reflected not only their scholarly approach, but also their own village backgrounds. At a casual dinner held to celebrate their recent participation in the Moscow Folklore Spring festival, they sang several songs from their repertoire. Wishing to participate in the singing instead of simply listening, I asked if they knew any Cossack songs – a regional style with which I was familiar because of my contacts with Moscow revivalist groups. They said they never performed Cossack music onstage, but occasionally sang it for themselves; they had learned some songs from their leader, who acquired them years ago from an ensemble in Saratov oblast. I started ‘Zagorelas’ vo pole kalina,’ from the Terek Cossacks – a song made popular among folk aficionados by the Pokrovsky Ensemble. The Perm singers joined in, singing in full voice and obviously greatly enjoying themselves. But for me, something was wrong: they had changed the musical structure of the song, and it sounded more like the local Perm style than like a Cossack song.31 However, no one seemed to notice, so I did my best to find my own voice in this new musical fabric. When I commented on this ‘interesting’ interpretation to the director, he said matter-of-factly, ‘Yes, it’s interesting that the kids sing it with a Perm accent.’ Each of these examples demonstrates the extent to which the appropriated material of Russian (and Cossack) folk music becomes part of the daily life of the participants of revivalist ensembles. Those who perform folk music on stage to entertain and educate audiences also use that very music to engage creatively with others; to socialize and to solidify social relations; and to establish and enact a shared identity. Their performances in such contexts differ from the Western theater model in which, according to popular assumption, what is performed on stage is a simulacrum and ‘acting means make-believe.’32 Here, in each case the particular relation between the performers and listeners was not the classic one of active/passive, real/unreal. The listeners felt free to join in at any time, to express their heartfelt appreciation, to take the performance in a different direction, to inject their own (personal or regional) style into the music and the toasts. Also contrary to the Western theater archetype, these contexts did not privilege the aesthetic qualities of the performance. Rather, here the participants emphasized the emotional, psychological, and social effects of their

Conclusion 233 acts.33 For example, I suggested the song to the Perm group because I wanted to feel closer to them; the fact that they participated willingly and with gusto allowed me to feel socially accepted. That they sang the song differently than the Moscow groups did not matter on the social level, which was prominent; even on the musical level, their singing simply provided an interesting musical challenge for me and did not detract from the fulfilling experience of immersing oneself into a group, musically creating with other co-creators. In the Moscow hotel room, the Astrakhan and Volgograd groups expressed appreciation for each other when they carried on a musical dialogue by singing songs that were similar to one another – and participating in each other’s songs. Further, perhaps since the Volgograd group had been the center of attention for several minutes (first it sang a song, then its members led two toasts), the second song constituted the Astrakhan group’s social bid for acceptance and attention. Play, humor, and carnivalesque inversion also played a large part: the chastushki and hotel-room situations were like games in that there were unwritten rules for participation and the participants behaved as though creative, humorous manipulation of the sung and spoken material was one of the goals. For example, Kabanov showed impish irreverence for the melodramatic folkloric text when he changed the words to reflect the (mundane) current situation: he created a ritual inversion by breaking the common ‘rules’ of singing (by which one would take the text seriously and try to sing the ‘correct’ words). Nikitenko interrupted Vika’s perhaps too-heartfelt speech with a playfully eroticized counter-toast, again breaking ‘rules’ of toasting and showing irreverence to those who are overly earnest. The chastushki singing evolved into a mischievous battle of the sexes in which the temporary winners were those who gave greatest insult to the rival gender; in these carnivalesque songs the ‘lower strata’ of the body, the genitals, were privileged. Just as in the play-time or pretend-time of ritual, these situations provided a ‘space’ (or frame) within which irreverence, insults, eroticized behavior, cursing and other taboo language were accepted – indeed, were part of the goal.34 In fact, each of these scenes offers an example of ritual: the first was the ritual of a rock concert with the attendant outpouring of love from the fans; the second scene represented a variant of the Russian ritual of an outdoor, public musical gathering, ulichnoe gulianie; the third and fourth exemplified the ritual of zastol’e, in which the participants, sitting at a table with food or drink, express themselves creatively and emotionally. The last two are among the most productive rituals incorporating music in Russia today: ulichnye gulianiia spring up in city parks and apartment building courtyards all over Russia whenever there is an accordionist and a few people who love to sing and dance (the name for such an agreed-upon place in a city park is piatachok); zastol’ia are a ubiquitous feature of Russians’ celebrations of holidays, birthdays, weddings, and the like. Toasts are an omnipresent, defining feature; and even in urban settings singing often takes place: some-

234 Conclusion times the host will make sure that someone brings a guitar in order to sing bard’s songs, or the participants sing along with recorded music. Victor Turner has argued that one of the defining features of ritual is its liminality, the transitional state in which the normal rules of the society are temporarily suspended. In the context of such a displacement of social structure, ritual makes room for what Turner calls ‘communitas’ or a feeling of community: ‘an essential and generic human bond.’35 Although the scenes I have described do not fit the traditional association of liminality with a rite of passage, a state ‘betwixt and between,’ I believe they are modified versions of such states, where ritual marks out a space in which people feel free to express themselves in ways they would not customarily, to ‘play’ with structures, systems, rules, and expectations. For example, the toast allows Russians to avow deep emotions that might be hard to express publicly without the aid of the requisite verbal pattern. Group singing (including singing along) provides a structure in which people assert their connectedness. The zastol’e and the gulianie both provide structures that allow participants to play creatively, to be imaginative, to express emotions, to reinforce groups. Chastushki allow for the acting out of transgression, the ‘interrogation of boundaries.’36 Through these rituals, participants are transformed: after the ritual is over, they may feel that new bonds have been established, identities have been forged, rules and hierarchies have been challenged. Thus, these folk-music aficionados are not simply using music to solidify personal relationships. We can understand these offstage performances in several ways. Perhaps, with their playful subversion of conventions, the performers tacitly affirm a broader inversion: that what they do offstage is just as important – or maybe more important – than what they do onstage. Performing onstage requires adherence to set rules, hierarchies, and conventions: the audience remains quiet while the performers sing, each song has a beginning and end, the choice of songs follows a set program, the content of songs and gestures must be ‘proper,’ and so on. In the offstage situations I have described, each of these requirements is reversed. The actions of the performers suggest that the constraints of the stage are stifling, staid; the atmosphere is too ‘cultured.’ These revivalists require an outlet for inhibitions, a place in which to undo limitations. In this sense the behind-the-scenes performances act as a crucial supplement or an equally valuable double that makes up for the institutionalization and aestheticization of staged folklore. Offstage, they can both create and transgress. Furthermore, when they sing in the contexts of such rituals they assert their identity as part of an ‘imagined community’ that links them through its shared culture. After they experience such backstage rituals their stage acts may contain at least the memory of this play, heartfelt emotion, and sense of belonging – and be richer because of it. The formation of an imagined community occurs not just within each ensemble, but on an international level: the groups are linked despite being

Conclusion 235 geographically widespread. Whether or not they have had prior face-to-face contact, each group can participate in singing with other groups who are part of the youth folklore movement because they share the ability and the desire to sing along with folk music. Thus, the Perm group can and does sing along with the music of Terek Cossacks, led by an American. Bawdy chastushki bring together young adults from various regions (and countries) and none are left out; all are accommodated. What is significant about this imagined community is the way it is brought about through a single, very traditional method of transmission. While Russian folk ensembles use both face-to-face and fixed media (written texts and notation, video and audio recordings) to learn the materials they perform on stage, the rituals that occur when folklore ensembles get together offer spontaneous situations for face-to-face transmission. As in the example of the encounter of the Astrakhan’ and Volgograd groups in the Moscow hotel room, these two ensembles sang along with each others’ songs even though they had no prior knowledge of this material. Although they probably did not learn the songs from this one encounter, a few subsequent encounters would have been sufficient for the groups to adopt songs from each others’ repertoires, if they should have desired (and I saw ample evidence of such repertoire-sharing among groups). Such was the primary method of folklore transmission prior to the widespread use of radio: within a community, people learned by singing along with elders, and similarly, visitors from other communities adopted new repertoire by singing along with hosts, and vice versa. In this sense the culture of the folk revival movement comprises what I define as authentic folklore – grassroots and spontaneously produced, not organized and consciously constructed. If on stage the performers are appropriators of a romanticized village culture which is not their own, during such moments of spontaneous incorporation of this music into their lives, the position of appropriator weakens and fades away, and folklorism becomes folklore. This folklore is not recognized by the participants as such – it is just what they do when they are not ‘performing.’ Thus, folklorism comes full circle and becomes real folklore: each performer can be seen as part of the culture he or she represents, if we define that culture as the milieu of the folk revival movement.

Appendix

List of Interviews Aivazian, Svetlana. Director of Alliance of Folklore Ensembles. 16 September 1998, Moscow. Batmanova, Olga. Director of Novgorod Center of Folk Art. 3 December 1999, Novgorod. Borisenko, Boris Ivanovich. Head of Department of Folk Chorus and solo singing at the Institute of Arts. 22 September 1998, Volgograd. Boronina, Elena Germanovna. Director of amateur folk ensemble and teacher of folk arts. (a) 11 November 1998; (b) 5 November 1998, Moscow. Bortsov, Vitalii. Director of amateur folk ensemble. 10 May, 1999, Uriupinsk, Volgograd oblast. Bur’iak, Marina. Director of the amateur folk ensemble Kudesy, teacher of folk music at School of Arts, Novgorod. 2 December 1998, Novgorod. Demchenko, Natal’ia. Director of amateur folk ensemble. 11 May 1999, Vorob’evka, Voronezh oblast. Dorokhova, Ekaterina. Musicologist at Russian Folklore Commission in Moscow, artistic director of the amateur folk ensemble Narodnyi Prazdnik, member of the ensemble Russian Music. 13 January 1999, Moscow. Galitskii, Vitalii. Maker of ancient folk instruments, member of professional folk ensemble Rusichi. 14 January 1999, Moscow. Galiuk, Vera. Director of amateur folk ensemble Radoves, in Voronezh. 13 September 1998, Vorob’evka, Voronezh oblast. Giliarova, Natal’ia. Musicologist, Professor, and Dean at Moscow Conservatory, director of amateur Moscow Conservatory Folk Ensemble. (a) 20 September 1998; (b) 25 September 1998; (c) 31 October 1998, Moscow. Glumova, Anzhelika. Director of amateur folk ensemble. (a) 12 September 1998; (b) 9 January 1999; (c) 1 January 1999; (d) 9 January 1999, Saratov. Grechkosei, Valentina. Director of amateur ensemble Vereiushka, in Zheleznogorsk, Kursk oblast. 13 September 1998. Vorob’evka, Voronezh oblast. Gribova, Dusia. Member of village ensemble. 20 October 1998, Lubianiki, Riazan oblast. Gubareva, Zinaida. Member of village ensemble. 10 October 1998, Kochemary, Riazan’ oblast. Iarysh, Vladimir. Maker of gusli and teacher of folk music at School of Arts, Novgorod. 2 December 1998, Novgorod.

Interviewees 237 Il’ina, Larisa. Craftsperson working in birch bark. Novgorod Center of Folk Art. 3 December 1999, Novgorod. Kabanov, Andrei. Freelance musicologist, adjunct faculty at Gnesin Academy, codirector of amateur folk ensemble Izmailovskaia Sloboda. (a) 10 November 1998; (b) 13 November 1998; (c) 18 November 1998; (d) 28 December 1998; (e) 9 January 1999; (f) 16 January 1999; (g) 21 April 1999; (h) 14 May 1999; (i) 8 June 1999, Moscow. Kabanova, Zhanna. Adjunct faculty at Gnesin Academy, co-director of amateur folk ensemble Izmailovskaia Sloboda. (a) 17 January 1999; (b) 26 May 1999, Moscow. Kaidun, Vera. Director of children’s ensemble Gornitsa. 5 December 1998, St Petersburg. Karas’ev, Alexei. Founder of local historical museum. 6 January 1999, village of Vladykino, Saratov oblast. Kliuchnikova, Olga. Staff member of Alliance of Folklore Ensembles, leader and member of folk singing studio. 22 January 1999, Moscow. Kob, Ivan Semenovich. Singer of religious verses. 23 May 1999, Bolotnoe, Novosibirsk oblast. Kol’tsova, Nadezhda. Director of professional folk ensemble Uzoroch’e. 21 October 1998, Riazan’. Kotov, Andrei. Director of professional ensemble specializing in religious vocal music. 26 January 1999, Moscow. Koval’skii, Vadim. Actor, teacher of martial arts, co-director of amateur folk ensemble. 1 January 1999, Saratov. Kozlov, Aleksandr. Director of Riazan State Folk Choir. 22 October 1998, Riazan. Kozlov, Vasilii. Director of Department of Culture, Vorob’evka. (a) 9 May 1999; (b) 12 May 1999, Vorob’evka, Voronezh oblast. Kozlova, Irina. Doctor, member of amateur folk ensemble. 7 May 1999, Vorob’evka, Voronezh oblast. Krasnopevtseva, Elena. Director of amateur folk ensemble. (a) 19 November 1998; (b) 20 January 1999, Moscow. Kubrakova, Valentina. Director of Center of Cossack Culture, museum, and amateur folk ensemble; producer of amateur videos on Cossack culture. Also present: Natalia Giliarova, Valerii Dronov, Nadezhda Penkovtseva. 24 September 1998, Alekseevskaia, Volgograd oblast. Kukhanova, Irina. Student at St Petersburg Conservatory, Musical-Ethnological Department. 5 December, 1998, St Petersburg. Makhova, Liuda. Student at St Petersburg State Conservatory (musical-ethnographic department), 6 December 1998, St Petersburg. Makheeva, Tat’iana. Composer of Requiem for Dmitri Pokrovsky. 29 November 1998, Moscow. Marshalkina, Ania. Member of amateur folk ensemble. 7 January 1999, village of Vladykino, Saratov oblast’. Mekhnetsov, Anatolii. Professor, St Petersburg State Conservatory, Musical-Ethnographic department, Director of St Petersburg Folkloric-Ethnographic Center, Director of student Folklore Ensemble of the St Petersburg State Conservatory. (a) 4 December 1998; (b) 5 December 1998; (c) 7 December 1998, St Petersburg; (d) 22 April 1999, Moscow. Minenok, Elena. Folklorist at the Institute of World Literature, Moscow. (a) 16 November 1998, Moscow; (b) 30 May 1999, Troitskoe, Kaluga oblast; (c) 31 May

238

Interviewees

1999, Petrovskoe, Kaluga oblast; (d) 1 June 1999 Troitskoe, Kaluga oblast’; (e) 9 June, 1999, Moscow. Mironova, Marina. Director of Ensemble Khoper. 9 May 1999, Novokhopersk, Voronezh oblast. Nefedova, Maria. Co-director of Pokrovsky Ensemble, 30 December 1998, Moscow. Nekrylova, Anna. Professor and researcher, Institute of Art History, Folklore Sector, St Petersburg. 7 December 1998, St Petersburg. Novitskaia, Marina Iur’evna. Folklorist, author. 18 January 1999, Moscow. Osipova, Elena. Weaver. Novgorod Center of Folk Art. 3 December 1999, Novgorod. Pereslegin, Alexander. Musicologist, member of amateur folk ensemble Cossack Circle. 13 January 1999, Moscow. Popova, Natal’ia. Teacher of folklore at Center of Ancient Instruments, Novgorod. 4 December 1998, Novgorod. Povetkin, Vladimir. Maker of ancient instruments, teacher, Director of Center of Ancient Instruments, Novgorod. 4 December 1998, Novgorod. Savel’eva, Ira. Folk singer and researcher, Moscow Conservatory. 17 November 1998, Moscow. Shamina, Liudmila. Professor of folk singing, researcher, Gnesin Academy. 17 November 1998, Moscow. Shchurov, Viacheslav Mikhailovich. Musicologist, Moscow Conservatory, teacher of folk singing, Ippolitovo-Ivanovo Institute. (a) 9 November 1998; (b) 11 November 1998; (c) 9 December 1998, Moscow. Shilin, Aleksei. Choreographer, teacher at Gnesin School and Academy. 26 January 1999, Moscow. Smyslova, Tamara. Former member of Pokrovsky Ensemble, Director of professional folk ensemble. 11 November 1998, Moscow. Starostin, Sergei. Researcher on folk music, author of documentary series, professional folk musician. 22 December, 1998, Moscow. Strel’tsov, Sergei, member of amateur folk ensemble. 20 September 1998, Veshenskaia stanitsa, Rostov oblast. Talorin, Volodia. Director of amateur folk ensemble. 7 May 1999, Vorob’evka, Voronezh oblast. Trifilov, Nikolai. Member of amateur folk ensemble Cossack Circle. 11 September 1998, Nikol’skoe, Voronezh oblast. Tychinina, Elena. Director of Semiluki Department of Culture. 7 May 1999, Vorob’evka, Voronezh oblast. Vagner, Pavel. Member of amateur folk ensemble. 20 September 1998, Veshenskaia stanitsa, Rostov oblast. Vilochkova, Zinaida. Village resident. 7 January 1999, village of Vladykino, Saratov oblast’. Zagradakaia, Svetlana. Director of amateur folk ensemble. (a) 9 December 1998; (b) 18 December 1998, Moscow. Zhuk, Valera. Director of amateur folk ensemble Pesel’naia artel’. (a) 15 May 1999; (b) 17 May 1999, Perm. Zosimova, Evgeniia. Director of professional folk ensemble Karagod. 29 October 1998, Moscow.

Interviewees 239

Group Interviews, listed by location Berezovka, Volgograd oblast. Village ensemble. 21 September 1998. Mariia Popova (b. 1928), Aleksandra Krivenkova (b. 1928), Aleksandra Karpova (b. 1937), Anna Ponomareva (b. 1926). Also present: Nina Kentner, Natal’ia Giliarova. Charuss, Riazan oblast. Village ensemble. (a) 25 July 1995; (b) 26 July 1995. Ermolovo, Riazan oblast. Village ensemble. (a) August 1, 1996; (b) 16 October 1998. Evdokinia Blinnikova (b. 1915), Aleksandra Matasova (b. 1919), Praskovia Smetannikova (b. 1920), Polina Smetannikova (b. 1924). Also present: Elena Bogina. Kochemary, Riazan oblast. Village ensemble. (a) 22 July 1995; (b) 24 July 1995; (c) 19 October 1998; (d) 20 October 1998. Valentina A. Aleshina (b. 1941), Valentina Chukhunova (b. 1940), Aleksandra Tarasova (b. 1936), Tat’iana Arkhipova (b. 1928), Valentina I. Aleshina (b. 1930), Zinaida Gubareva (b. 1925). Kozlinovskii, Volgograd oblast. Village ensemble. 21 September 1998. Tat’iana Chekunova (b. 1940), Raisa Khadiuk (b. 1933), Liubov’ Makeeva (b. 1958), Valentina Ovchinkova (b. 1964), Nadezhda Sukharukova (b. 1937), Lena Voronova (b. 1979), Iurii Serpin (b. 1939), Petr Sukharukov (b. 1935), Anna Dolgacheva (b. 1972), Valentina Khavrova (b. 1965), Ol’ga Gleikina (b. 1960), Nikolai Popov (b. 1939 – accordionist), Rima Serkina (b. 1938). Also present: Liuba Dolgachova, Nata’lia Giliarova. Krasnokorotovka, Volgograd oblast. Village ensemble, 19 September 1998. Natal’ia Larina (b. 1924), Anna Skorobochatova (b. 1929), Tat’iana Sosina (b. 1932), Larisa Zavolochkina (b. 1984), Mariia Kozlovtseva (b. 1984), Tat’iana Ermilova (b. 1986), Liuda Serikova (b. 1985). Also present: Nata’lia Giliarova. Lasino, Riazan oblast. Village ensemble. (a) and (b) 18 October 1998. Ekaterina Rusina (b. 1924), Valentina Karpova (b. 1929), Polina Kislenko (b. 1921), Mar’ia D’iachkova (b. 1924). Also present: Elena Bogina. Lubianiki, Riazan oblast. Village ensemble. (b) 20 October 1998. Lidiia Savina (b. 1959), Alla Kirsanova (b. 1975), Ol’ga Staroverova (b. 1978), Tat’iana Khokhlova (b. 1957), Liubov’ Kirsanova (b. 1946), Anna Kondrakova (b. 1953), Tat’iana Staroverova (b. 1959). Also present: Elena Bogina. Liubovnikovo, Riazan oblast. Village ensemble. (a) 29 July 1996, (b) 17 December 1998. Varvara Beliakova (b. 1924), Antonina Poddubnaia (b. 1941), Anna Ivanushkina (b. 1941), Aleksandra Kulikova (b. 1941), Ekaterina Nikanorova (b. 1921), Anna Nosova (b. 1941). Polfiniaty, Kaluga oblast. Village ensemble. 31 May 1999. Anna Evsenkova (b. 1923), Aleksandra Riabykh (b. 1931). Rog-Izmailovskii, Volgograd oblast. Village ensemble. 19 September 1998. Taia Godovaniuk (b. 1941), Mariia Krasikova (b. 1942), Aleksandra Krasikova (b. 1936), Aleksandr Lukashin (b. 1930), Raisa Lukashina (b. 1932), Mariia Ageeva (b. 1935), Ol’ga Afanas’eva (b. 1925), Vasilii Trasikov (b. 1935), Anna Babicheva (b. 1931), Nikolai Shein (b. 1931), Zoia Sheina (b. 1935). Ust-Buzuluk, Volgograd oblast. Village ensemble. 24 September 1998. Tamara Kozyreva (b. 1931), Anna Kramarova (b. 1933), Zinaida Kondrashova (b. 1942), Hadezhda Medveditskova (b. 1949), Valentina Kolesnikova (b. 1931), Iulia Popova (b. 1930), Vitalii Popov (b. 1930), Taisa Antamoshkina (b. 1936), Zoia Minaeva (b. 1929), Aleksei Minaev (b.1929), Valentina Tereshenkova (b. 1931), Maria Matorkina (b. 1935), Vasilii Kozyrev (b. 1926).

240

Interviewees

Troitskoe, Kaluga oblast. Village ensemble. a) 1 June 1999. Zinaida V. Efremenkova (b. 1929), Varvara R. Balabanova (b. 1929). b) 30 May 1999. Antonina Balabanova (b. 1930), Lidiia Sibirskaia (b. 1931), Aleksei Sibirskii (b. 1927). Vorob’evka, Voronezh oblast. Amateur folk ensemble Vereia. (a) 7 May 1999; (b) 18 May 1999. Olga Garlova (b. 1965), Nina Peregudova (b. 1955), Ludmilla Kostiakova (b. 1964), Volodia Talorin (b. 1958), and Irina Kozlova.

Notes

Introduction 1 Ania Marshalkina (b. 1982), interview with the author, village of Vladykino, Saratov oblast’, 7 January 1999. 2 Based upon statistics from the 1989 census indicating city and rural population of the RSFSR. Itogi vsesoiuznoi perepisi naseleniia 1989 g. vol II, ‘Vozrast i sostoianie v brake naseleniia SSSR,’ part I (Minneapolis, MN: East View, 1992), 24–6. 3 E. V. Kashcheeva, ‘Gorodskie formy dosuga: moskovskoe meshchanstvo,’ in Traditsionnye formy dosuga: istoriia i sovremennost’, Sokhranenie i vozrozhdenie fol’klornykh traditsii, vyp. 5, Gosudarstvennyi respublikanskii tsentr russkogo fol’klora, Moscow, 1994, 162. 4 Kashcheeva, 160. 5 Nancy Ries, Russian Talk: Culture and Conversation during Perestroika (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997). 27–8, 30. 6 James R. Dow and Hannjost Lixfeld, ‘Introduction,’ in German Volkskunde: A Decade of Theoretical Confrontation, Debate, and Reorientation (1967–7), ed. and trans. James R. Dow and Hannjost Lixfeld (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1986), 8. 7 Barre Toelken, The Dynamics of Folklore (Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 1996), 2. 8 James Clifford, The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), 12. 9 Alan Dundes, ‘What is Folklore?’ in The Study of Folklore, ed. Alan Dundes (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1965), 2.; Toelken, 19. 10 Hermann Bausinger, ‘Towards a Critique of Folklorism Criticism,’ in Dow and Lixfeld, op. cit., 115–16 11 I am referring to Clifford’s notion of the ‘art-culture system.’ See Clifford 1988, 224. 12 Bausinger, 117–20. 13 James Clifford, ‘Introduction: Partial Truths,’ in Writing Culture: the Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, ed. James Clifford and George E. Marcus (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1986), 15. 14 Robert Cantwell, When We Were Good: The Folk Revival (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 7. 15 Georgina Boyes, The Imagined Village: Culture, Ideology and the English Folk Revival (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993), xiii. 16 Periodicals included Sovetskaia muzyka, Sovetskaia kul’tura, and Klub i khodozhestvennaia samodeiatel’nost’.

242

Notes

17 See Barry P. Michrina and CherylAnne Richards, Person to Person: Fieldwork, Dialogue, and the Hermeneutic Method (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1996). 18 Such techniques are used, for example, in Jane Sugarman, Engendering Song: Singing and Subjectivity at Prespa Albanian Weddings (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1997); Theodore Levin, The Hundred Thousand Fools of God: Musical Travels in Central Asia (and Queens, New York) (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1996); and Lila Abu-Lughod, Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986). 19 Sugarman speaks of similar renegotiations among diaspora families from Prespa Albania, 26. 20 Helena Goscilo, ‘The Gendered Trinity of Russian Cultural Rhetoric Today – or the Glyph of the H[i]eroine,’ in Soviet Hieroglyphics: Visual Culture in Late Twentieth-Century Russia, ed. Nancy Condee (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1995), 74–5; Gregory Feifer, ‘Utopian Nostalgia: Russia’s “New Idea”,’ in World Policy Journal 16, no. 3 (Fall 1999), 111. 21 Such a view of performance has affinities with Judith Butler’s work on gender and identity. In Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, (New York: Routledge, 1990) Butler argues that ‘there is no preexisting identity’ and that identity is essentially created ‘through sustained social performances’ (141). Works of Pierre Bourdieu and Michel Foucault also point towards such a conception of performance; for a summary and assessment see Sugarman, 27. 22 Siân Jones and Paul Graves-Brown, ‘Introduction: Archaeology and Cultural Identity in Europe,’ in Cultural Identity and Archaeology: The Construction of European Communities, ed. Paul Graves-Brown, Siân Jones, Clive Gamble (London: Routledge, 1996), 4, 7. 23 Jones and Graves-Brown, 7. 24 See Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge (New York: Pantheon, 1972), 162–65; Pierre Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 34, 42–3; and Lois McNay, Foucault: A Critical Introduction (New York: Continuum, 1994) 3, 11. In the past decade several studies have been written in Soviet history and culture that employ this dual dynamic. See, for example, the work of Evgeny Dobrenko, Lynne Viola, and Stephen Kotkin. 25 Clifford 1988, 224–6. 26 Clifford 1988, 229. 27 Eric Hobsbawm, ‘Introduction: Inventing Traditions,’ in The Invention of Tradition, ed. Eric Hobsbawm and Terrence Ranger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 1.

1 The Invention and Re-invention of Folk Music in PreRevolutionary Russia 1

2 3 4

A. Pol’shina, ‘Zhanrovye osobennosti orkestra russkikh narodnykh instrumentov i puti ego razvitiia,’ in Narodnoe tvorchestvo: Voprosy muzykal’noi samodeiatel’nosti i fol’klora Ministerstvo kul’tury RSFSR, Nauchno-issledovatel’nyi institut kul’tury, Trudy 20 (Moscow, 1974), 122–3. Evgenii Kuznetsov, Iz proshlogo russkoi estrady: Istoricheskie ocherki (Moscow, 1958), 316. F. Sokolov, V. V. Andreev i ego orkestr (Leningrad, 1962), 70–72. Sokolov, 74–5. Famitsyn’s monograph is Domra i srodnye ei muzykal’nye instrumenty russkogo naroda (St Petersburg, 1891).

Notes 243 5 6

7 8 9 10 11 12 13

14 15 16 17

18 19

20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27

28

K. Vertkov, Russkie narodnye muzykal’nye instrumenty (Leningrad, 1975), 82–83, 173, 175. Iu. Boiko, ‘Russkie narodnye instrumenty i orkestry russkikh narodnykh instrumentov,’ in Traditsionnyi fol’klor v sovremennoi khudozhestvennoi zhizni: Fol’klor i fol’klorizm, ed. I. Zemtsovskii, V. Lapin, and I. Matsievskii (Leningrad, 1984), 88. Boiko notes that contemporary Kazakh musicians often used an imitation of this style of playing on their native instrument, the dombra, calling it ‘Russian’ style playing. See note 19, p. 95. Boiko, 88– 9. Kuznetsov 317–20. V. V. Andreev, ‘Pis’mo v redaktsiiu,’ in Novoe vremia 9422 (1902), supplement. Iu. V., Keldysh, Istoriia russkoi muzyki, v. 1 Drevniaia rus’ XI–XVII veka (Moscow, 1983), 67, 194. Boiko, 92. Boiko, 93. ‘Russkaia balalaika v Amerike (beseda s V. V. Andreevym),’ in Peterburgskii listok 64 (March 7, 1911), reprinted in A. V. Tikhonov, Sozdatel’ velikorusskogo orkestra V. V. Andreev v zerkale russkoi pressy (1888–1917 gody) (St Petersburg, 1998), 136–7. Novoe vremia 11122 (27 February, 1907), reprinted in Tikhonov, 86. Novosti 14 March 1888, quoted in Pol’shina 124. Hans Rogger, National Consciousness in Eighteenth-Century Russia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1. 960), 161; Kuznetsov 68–9. Malcolm Hamrick Brown, ‘Native Song and National Consciousness in Nineteenth-Century Russian Music,’ in Art and Culture in Nineteenth-Century Russia, ed. Theofanis George Stavrou (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1983), 60. Kuznetsov 56–9. Elena Chinyaeva, ‘Hostages of Their Own Music,’ in Transitions 4, no. 4 (September 1997), reprinted in Patrin, www.geocities.com/Paris/5121/culture.htm (accessed 14 January 1999). The opposing view is taken by E. Druts and A. Gessler, who argue that the Russians and Russian music had a great influence on Romani music. See Narodnye pesni russkikh tsigan (Moscow, 1988), 4. Kuznetsov 57–62. On the similarity of lifestyles of gentry and serf see Priscilla Roosevelt, Life on the Russian Country Estate: A Social and Cultural History (Yale University Press, 1995), 3, 12. Izalii Zemtsovskii, ‘Traditional music,’ in The New Grove Dictionary of Music Online ed. L. Macy (Accessed 26 June 2001), www.grovemusic.com. Izalii Zemtsovskii, Russkaia narodnaia pesnia. Nauchno-populiarnyi ocherk (Moscow, 1964), 5–6. On the difficulty of generalizing about Russian folk music see Zemtsovskii, ‘Traditional music.’ Viacheslav Shchurov, Stilevye osnovy russkoi narodnoi muzyki (Moscow, 1998), 70. Zemtsovskii, ‘Traditional music.’ T. Popova, Russkoe narodnoe muzykal’noe tvorchestvo vol. 2 (Moscow, 1964), 13. On the term ‘podgolosok’ see Lineva, Velikorusskiia pesni v narodnoi garmonizatsii, v. 1 (St. Petersburg, 1904), iv. Russian folk polyphony differs from Western polyphony as well as from Western harmony; see Alfred J. Swan, ‘The Nature of the Russian Folk-Song,’ Musical Quarterly 29, no. 4 (October, 1943): 512. Elizabeth A. Warner and Evgenii S. Kustovskii, Russian Traditional Folk Song (Hull: Hull University Press, 1990), 10; see also Jowan Hove, ‘The Two Worlds of

244

29 30

31 32

33 34

35

36

37 38 39 40 41

42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49

50

Notes

the Russian Peasant and Urban Folk Song,’ Etnomusikologian vuosikirja (1990):186; Viacheslav Shchurov, interview with the author, Moscow, 9 November 1998. Zemtsovskii 1964, 44; Izalii Zemtsovskii, Russkie narodnye protiazhnye pesni, Moscow 1966, 16. See Jowan Hove, ‘The Two Worlds of the Russian Peasant and Urban Folk Song,’ in Etnomusikologian vuosikirja (1990), 178; F. Rubtsov, ‘Russkie narodnye khory i psevdonarodnye pesni,’ in Stat’i po muzykal’nomu fol’kloru (Moscow, 1973), 192; E. Lineva, Velikorusskie pesni v narodnoi garmonizatsii 1 (St. Petersburg, 1904), xxvii. Izalii Zemtsovskii, Russkie narodnye protiazhnye pesni, Mocow 1966, 12–13; Zemtsovskii 1980, 394. ‘Russian Folk Music,’ s. v. ‘Union of Soviet Socialist Republics,‘ in New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie (London: Macmillan, 1980), 388. E. V. Gippius, ‘O russkoi narodnoi podgolosochnoi polifonii v kontse XVIII–nachale XIX veka,’ Sovetskaia etnografiia, no. 2 (1948), 96. Margarita Mazo, ‘Introduction,’ in A Collection of Russian Folk Songs by Nikolai Lvov and Ivan Prach, ed. Malcolm Hamrick Brown (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1987), 14–18 and 32; see also Rogger, 161–3. Roosevelt 204, 236; Kuznetsov, 36–7; Mazo 6; Elizabeth A. Warner, The Russian Folk Theatre (The Hague: Mouton, 1977), xii; A. F. Nekrylova, Russkie narodnye gorodskie prazdnikiki, uveseleniia i zrelishcha. Konets XVIII–nachalo XX veka (Leningrad, 1988), 159. Robert A. Rothstein, ‘Death of the Folk Song?’ in Cultures in Flux: Lower-Class Values, Practices, and Resistance in Late Imperial Russia, ed. Stephen P. Frank and Mark D. Steinberg (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), 115–17. V. G. Smolitskii, N. V. Mikhailova, Russkii zhestokii romans (Moscow, 1994), 3–6. Shchurov, 1998, 71. Rothstein 1994, 115–17. Mazo, 14. William A. Wilson, ‘Herder, Folklore, and Romantic Nationalism,’ Folk Groups and Folklore Genres: A Reader, ed. Elliott Oring (Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 1989), 28–9. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract and Discourses, trans. G. D. H. Cole (London: J. M. Dent, 1973), 118. Johann Gottfried Herder, Outlines of a Philosophy of the History of Man, trans. T. Churchill, 1800 (reprinted New York: Bergman, 1966), 194. Wilson, 30. Rothstein 1994, 110. A. D. Soimonov, ‘ “Pesennaia proklamatsiia” P. V. Kireevskogo,’ in Sovetskaia etnografiia 4 (1960), 148. Rothstein 1994, 120. And elsewhere: see Tamara E. Livingston, ‘Music Revivals: Towards a General Theory,’ Ethnomusicology 43, no. 1 (Winter 1999), 74. Richard Handler and Jocelyn Linnekin, ‘Tradition, Genuine or Spurious,’ Folk Groups and Folklore Genres: A Reader, ed. Elliott Oring (Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 1989): 39. Rothstein 1994, 118.

Notes 245 51 Robert C. Ridenour, Nationalism, Modernism, and Personal Rivalry in Nineteenth-Century Russian Music (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1981), 76. 52 Jennifer Fuller, ‘Epic Melodies: An Examination of Folk Motifs in the Text and Music of Prince Igor,’ in Intersections and Transpositions: Russian Music, Literature, and Society, ed. Andrew Baruch Wachtel (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1998), 35. 53 Richard Taruskin, Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions: A Biography of the Works through Mavra vol. 1(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 606. 54 Ridenour, 76–7. 55 Cathy A. Frierson, Peasant Icons: Representations of Rural People in Late 19th Century Russia (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 7. 56 Richard S. Wortman, The Crisis of Russian Populism, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 8, 14–18. 57 Both the Wanderers movement in painting and the Mighty Handful started with progressive goals to bring art to the people and to counter what they saw as the professionalization and institutionalization of art. Both movements are widely viewed as having ended up more reactionary than progressive. See Taruskin 1996, 45–54, 73. 58 Richard Taruskin, ‘ “The Present in the Past”: Russian Opera and Russian Historiography, ca. 1870,’ Russian and Soviet Music: Essays for Boris Schwarz, ed. Malcolm Hamrick Brown (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1984), 80; William Craft Brumfield, The Origins of Modernism in Russian Architecture (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1991), 11. 59 Alison Hilton, Russian Folk Art (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1995), 216–17. 60 Hilton, 217. 61 Taruskin 1996, 355. 62 ‘Present in the Past,’ 110. 63 ‘Present in the Past,’ 115, 125, 143. 64 Richard Taruskin, ‘ “Little Star”: An Etude in the Folk Style,’ Musorgsky: In Memoriam 1881–1981, ed. Malcolm Hamrick Brown (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1982), 64; Izalii Zemtsovskii, Iskateli pesen: Rasskazy o sobirateliakh narodnykh pesen v dorevoliutsionnoi i Sovetskoi Rossii (Leningrad, 1967), 68. 65 Taruskin 1996, 724–5, note 136. 66 Frierson, 10, 12. 67 Warner and Kustovskii, 4; Dana Prescott Howell, The Development of Soviet Folkloristics (New York: Garland, 1992), 21–2; M. K. Azadovskii, Istoriia russkoi fol’kloristiki, vol. 2 (Moscow, 1963), 238–39. 68 Zemtsovskii 1964, 69; Taruskin 1996, 724. The musicologists who first wrote down Russian folk polyphony in musical notation in the 1870s were V. Prokunin, Iu. Mel’gunov, and N. Pal’chikov. Mel’gunov was the first to describe several important features of Russian folk polyphony. See Gippius, 1948, 101–2. 69 Taruskin 1996, 355. 70 Hilton, 234–5. 71 Hilton, 245–8. 72 Taruskin 1996, 533–4. 73 Taruskin 1996, 119. 74 Robert Fink, ‘On Igor Stravinsky,’ Modernism/Modernity 4.3 (1997), 152. 75 Taruskin 1996, 905, 914. 76 Taruskin 1996, 949–50. 77 Kuznetsov 185–5.

246

Notes

78 N. I. Zhulanova, ‘Molodezhnoe fol’klornoe dvizhenie,’ in Samodeiatel’noe khudozhestvennoe tvorchestvo v SSSR: Ocherki istorii. Konets 1950-x–nachalo 1990-x godov., ed. L. P. Solntseva and M. V. Iunisov (St Petersburg: 1999), 129, note 3. See also F. Rubtsov, ‘Russkie narodnye khory i psevdonarodnye pesni,’ in Stat’i po muzykal’nomu fol’kloru (Moscow, 1973), 205. 79 D. Lokshin, Zamechatel’nye russkie khory i ikh dirizhery (Moscow, 1963), 65, states that the pseudonym was adopted because Agrenev and his chorus performed ‘mostly Slavic songs,’ but Agrenev’s involvement with the Slavic political movement suggests the name symbolized more than the choice of repertoire. 80 Lokshin, 67. 81 Lokshin, 68. 82 Kuznetsov, 193–7; Lokshin, 72. 83 Lokshin, 70–71. 84 Kuznetsov, 197. 85 P. I. Chaikovskii, Muzykal’no-kriticheskie stat’i (Moscow, 1953) 139, 287, quoted in Kuznetsov, 194. 86 Kuznetsov, 197. The words ‘vulgar’ and ‘dilettante’ are Kuznetsov’s and reflect the Soviet view of the chorus. 87 A. Khitrovo, Dmitrii Aleksandrovich Slavianskii i ego deiatel’nost’ (Tver’, 1887), 55–61. 88 M. Gor’kii, Sobranie sochinenii v tridtsati tomakh, v. 23 (Moscow, 1953), 156. 89 Kuznetsov, 197–8. 90 Kuznetsov, 199–200. 91 Rubtsov 1973, 204. 92 Rubtsov 1973, 206. 93 Zhulanova, 129, note 3. 94 Livingston, 74. 95 Zemtsovskii 1964, 80. 95 Zemtsovskii 1964, 80. 99 Zemtsovskii 1964, 73; see also Eugenie Lineff, Russian Folk-Songs and Peasant Wedding Ceremonies (Chicago: Summy, 1893), 60. 100 Lineff 1893, 62. 101 James Bailey and Mikhail Lobanov note that Lineva departed ‘from ethnographic meticulousness’ in her choir’s concerts. ‘In actuality, only a few wedding songs were sung by the choir and even those were taken mainly from the collection of Rimsky-Korsakov.’ See Slavic and East European Folklore Association 4, no. 1 (Spring 1999), 26–7. 102 E. E. Lineva, Russkaia muzykal’naia gazeta 15 (Aug. 15, 1901): col. 420; I. I. Shevchenko, ‘Iz istorii Moskovskoi narodnoi konservatorii (1906–1918 gg.),’ in Traditsionnyi fol’klor i sovremennye narordye khory i ansambli. Fol’klor i Fol’klorizm, vyp. 2, eds. V. Lapin, I. Zemtsovskii, and L. Ivleva (Leningrad, 1989), 81. 102 Viktor Lapin, ‘Razvitie russkikh narodnykh khorov (istoriia i sovremennost’),’ in Sokhranenie i razvitie russkikh narodno-pevcheskikh traditsii, ed. L. V. Shamina (Moscow, 1986), 18–19; see also E. Kann-Novikova, Sobiratel’nitsa russkikh narodnykh pesen Evgeniia Lineva (Moscow, 1952), 142–5. 102 Shevchenko, 83. 103 For other points of view see Susannah Lockwood Smith, ‘Soviet Arts Policy, Folk Music, and National Identity: The Piatnitskii State Russian Folk Choir, 1927–45,’ Ph.D. diss., University of Minnesota, 1997, 18; Shevchenko, 81. 104 Smith, 13–21. 105 Smith, 18.

Notes 247 106 Kuznetsov, 313. 107 Kuznetsov, 313. 108 V. Poponov, ‘Entuziast russkikh narodnykh orkestrov,’ in Sovetskaia muzyka 9 (1949), 85. 109 Livingston, 76–7. 110 Richard Taruskin, ‘The Limits of Authenticity: A Discussion,’ Early Music 12, no. 1 (1984): 9. 111 Lapin 1986, 20.

2 A Unified National Style 1 Esther Kingston-Mann, Lenin and the Problem of Marxist Peasant Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), 43. 2 Vladimir Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 3 (Moscow: Progress, 1977 [1960]), 177. 3 Sheila Fitzpatrick, The Russian Revolution 1917–1932 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 7–8. 4 Yuri Slezkine, ‘The USSR as a Communal Apartment, or How a Socialist State Promoted Ethnic Particularism,’ Slavic Review 53, no. 2 (Summer 1994), 417, 424. 5 Slezkine, 424–36. 6 Slezkine, 424, 434. 7 Iurii M. Sokolov, ‘Mesto narodnoi slovesnosti sredi kraevedcheskoi raboty,’ in Voprosy kraevedeniia (Moscow, 1923), 109; Howell, 70. 8 Howell, 74; Sheila Fitzpatrick, Stalin’s Peasants: Resistance and Survival in the Russian Village after Collectivization (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 227–30. 9 Howell, 61–62, 70–74. 10 Sheila Fitzpatrick, The Cultural Front: Power and Culture in Revolutionary Russia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992), 20–21; Howell 74–5. 11 Helmut Altrichter, ‘Insoluble Conflicts: Village Life Between Revolution and Collectivization,’ in Russia in the Era of NEP: Explorations in Soviet Society and Culture, ed. Sheila Fitzpatrick, Alexander Rabinowitch, and Richard Stites (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1991), 201; Oinas and Stephen Soudakoff, eds. ‘Introduction,’ in The Study of Russian Folklore (The Hague: Mouton, 1975), 4. 12 Slezkine, 440–41. 13 Fitzpatrick 1994, 41. 14 Robert Conquest, The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the TerrorFamine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 23. 15 Fitzpatrick 1994, 38–41. 16 Fitzpatrick 1994, 48. 17 I.V. Stalin, Sochineniia, 13 (Moscow: Politizdat, 1952), 306, 309; Slezkine, 442. 18 N.L. Rogalina, Kollektivizatsiia: Uroki proidennogo puti (Moscow, 1989), 198; Fitzpatrick 1994, 262–3. 19 Greg Castillo, ‘Peoples at an Exhibition: Soviet Architecture and the National Question,’ in Socialist Realism Without Shores, ed. Thomas Lahusen and Evgeny Dobrenko (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997), 100. 20 Slezkine, 442–3. 21 Slezkine, 443; see also John B. Dunlop, The Faces of Contemporary Russian Nationalism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983), 10–12. 22 For examples of this view in relation to folk music see articles such as B. Asaf’ev, ‘O russkoi pesennosti,’ in Sovetskaia muzyka 3 (1948), 22–30; and V. Surin, ‘Vydaiushchiisia russkii Khor,’ in Sovetskaia muzyka 5–6 (1946), 32–6.

248

Notes

23 Howell, 75, 312, 319. 24 Susannah Lockwood Smith, ‘Soviet Arts Policy, Folk Music, and National Identity: The Piatnitskii State Russian Folk Choir, 1927–45,’ Ph.D. diss., University of Minnesota, 1997, 66. 25 Adam B. Ulam, A History of Soviet Russia (New York: Praeger, 1976), 99. 26 Fitzpatrick 1994, 268. 27 Smith 1997, 126. 28 For a description of what both Moscow and St Petersburg folklorists valued in folklore collecting prior to the revolution, see Howell, 18–20. 29 Howell 318–26. 30 Ursula Justus, ‘Vosvrashchenie v rai: sotsrealizm i fol’klor,’ in Sotsrealisticheskii kanon, ed. Hans Gunter and Evgenii Dobrenko (St Petersburg, 2000), 70–72. 31 Max Hayward, Writers in Russia: 1917–1978, ed. Patricia Blake (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983), 62; ‘Muzyka,’ in Bol’shaia sovetskaia entsiklopediia, 40 (Moscow, 1926–47) 569. 32 See Chapter 3 for more on sociological school. Howell, 321–4, 333–5. 33 Maxim Gorky, ‘Soviet Literature,’ in Soviet Writers Congress 1934: The Debate on Socialist Realism and Modernism in the Soviet Union (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1977), 53–4; Justus 71. 34 Elena Minyonok, interview with the author, Moscow, 16 November 1998; see also Felix J. Oinas, ‘The Political Uses and Themes of Folklore in the Soviet Union,’ in Journal of the Folklore Institute 12, no. 2/3 (1975), 159. 35 Feodosii Rubtsov also makes this point, criticizing the Soviet approach to folklore. See F. Rubtsov, ‘Russkie narodnye khory i psevdonarodnye pesni,’ in Stat’i po muzykal’nomu fol’kloru (Moscow, 1973), 184. 36 Howell 12–14, quote from V. F. Miller to E. N. Eleonskaia, 22 February 1913 in E. V. Pomerantseva, ‘Komissiia po narodnoi slovesnosti Obshchestva liubitelei estestvoznaniia, antropologii i etnografii (1911–1926),’ in Ocherki 2 (1963), 200. 37 Oinas 1975, 158–69; Frank J. Miller, Folklore for Stalin: Russian Folklore and Pseudofolklore of the Stalin Era (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1990), 3–19. 38 Miller, 105–7. 39 Viktorin Popov’s commentary in Iu. M. Sokolov, Russian Folklore, trans. Catherine Ruth Smith (Hatboro, PA: Folklore Associates, 1966), 677. 40 Miller, 107. 41 See Eve Levin’s deconstruction (and recovery) of the term ‘double belief’ in her ‘Dvoeverie and Popular Religion,’ in Seeking God: The Recovery of Religious Identity in Orthodox Russia, Ukraine, and Georgia, ed. Stephen K. Batalden (DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 1993), 29–52. 42 Feliks Roziner, ‘Sotsrealizm v sovetskoi muzyke,’ in Sotsrealisticheskii kanon, 166–7. 43 Boris Schwarz, Music and Musical Life in Soviet Russia, 1917–1981, enlarged edition (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1983), 137–8. 44 Amy Nelson ‘The Struggle for Proletarian Music: RAPM and the Cultural Revolution’ in Slavic Review 59, no. 1 (Spring 2000), 126, 131; Lynn Sargeant, ‘The Social Politics of Music: Revolutionary Legitimacy and Artistic Integrity in the Moscow and Leningrad Conservatories, 1917–1932,’ paper given at the 1997 national congress of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies. 45 A. Sokol’skaia, ‘Plastika i tanets v samodeiatel’nom tvorchestve,’ in Samodeiatel’noe khudozhestvennoe tvorchestvo v SSSR 2000, 382. 46 Evgeny Dobrenko, ‘Muzyka vmesto sumbura: Narodnost’ kak problema muzykal’noi kinokomedii stalinskoi epokhi,’ in Revue des etudes Slaves 67, no. 2–3 (1995), 410; LaPasha, 160–61.

Notes 249 47 Dobrenko 1995, 414. 48 Dobrenko 1995, 418. 49 Evgeny Dobrenko, The Making of the State Reader: Social and Aesthetic Contexts of the Reception of Soviet Literature, trans. Jesse M. Savage (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997), 138–9, 143, 161–2. 50 Vera Dunham, In Stalin’s Time: Middleclass Values in Soviet Fiction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 93. 51 Dobrenko 1995, 432. 52 As Amy Nelson points out, this elitist view originated with the Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians, RAPM. See Nelson 108; Birgit Mentsel’, ‘Vse bel’kanto trudiashchimsia ili Opera stalinskoi epokhi,’ in Sotsrealisticheskii kanon, 990. 53 Dobrenko 1995, 432. 54 Jennifer Fuller, ‘Epic Melodies: An Examination of Folk Motifs in the Text and Music of Prince Igor,’ in Intersections and Transpositions: Russian Music, Literature, and Society, ed. Andrew Baruch Wachtel (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press), 46. 55 N. Briusova, ‘Vtorichnaia zhizn’ russkoi narodnoi pesni v operakh sovetskikh kompozitorov,’ in Sovetskaia muzyka 8–9 (1946), 57. 56 Quoted in ‘Letter to Stalin’ from Moscow composers and musicologists, 1948, Nicholas Slonimsky, Music Since 1900 (New York: Scribner’s, 1971), 1375. 57 Steven Moller-Sally argues that the same Romantic model of imitation through inspiration obtained in literature as well. See ‘ “Klassicheskoe nasledie” v epokhu sotsrealizma, ili pokhozhdeniia Gogolia v strane bol’shevikov,’ in Sotsrealisticheskii kanon, 509–22. 58 1997, 160. 59 V. Kudriakov and A. Liuter, ‘K novomu rastsvetu,’ in Kul’turno-prostetitel’naia rabota 3 (1965), 1. 60 Genrikh Bruk, ‘Nastoiashchee i budushchee muzykal’noi samodeiatel’nosti,’ in Sovetskaia muzyka 1 (1941), 71. 61 L. Robin C. LaPasha, ‘From Chastushki to Tchaikovsky: Amateur Activity and the Production of Popular Culture in the Soviet 1930s.’ Ph.D. Diss., Duke University, 2001, 300. 62 ‘Samodeiatel’nost’ muzykal’naia,’ in Bol’shaia sovetskaia entsiklopedia, 50 (Moscow, 1926–47),181. 63 S. Rumiantsev, ‘Muzykal’naia samodeiatel’nost’,’ in Samodeiatel’noe khudozhestvennoe tvorchestvo v SSSR: Ocherki istorii 1917–1932 gg (St Petersburg, 2000), 238. 64 B. Tevlin, ‘Neskol’ko replik,’ in Sovetskaia muzyka 12 (1965), 123. 65 A. Lenskii, ‘Pogovorim nachistotu,’ in Sovetskaia muzyka 12 (1965), 120. 66 ‘Samodeiatel’nost’ muzykal’naia,’ 181. 67 Smith 1997, 152; LaPasha, 305. 68 LaPasha, 316. 69 By 1973 they numbered 175 in the Soviet Union. M. M. Iakovlev, ‘Doma narodnogo tvorchestva,’ Muzykal’naia entsyklopediia, 2 (Moscow, 1974), col. 283. 70 Smith 1997, 133. 71 S. Bugoslavskii, Ivan Shishov, Russkaia narodnaia pesnia, ed. M. Grinberg (Moscow: 1936), 5. 72 Izalii Zemtsovskii, ‘Sel’skaia khorovaia samodeiatel’nost’ i fol’klor,’ in Problemy muzykal’noi samodeiatel’nosti (Moscow, 1965), 82–3. 73 ‘Eshche raz o narodnykh instrumentakh,’ in Sovetskaia muzyka 10 (1965), 107–8. 74 LaPasha, 314.

250

Notes

75 ‘Gosudarstvennyi komitet Rossiiskoi federatsii po statistike,’ in Rossiiskii statisticheskii ezhegodnik, 1998 (Moscow, 1998), 322. 76 Z. Golubchina, ‘Pervyi god,’ in Kul’turno-prostetitel’naia rabota 1 (1965), 13. 77 I. Ranish , ‘Za obshchestvennyi domashnyi ochag,’ in Kul’turno-prostetitel’naia rabota 3 (1965), 24. 78 LaPasha 270–71. Rudneva’s important theoretical work influenced the contemporary folklore movement. See N. N. Giliarova and L. F. Kostiukovets, ‘Ot redaktorov-sostavitelei,’ in A. Rudneva, Russkoe narodnoe muzykal’noe tvorchestvo (Moscow: Kompozitor, 1994), 5–10. 79 LaPasha 293–4. 80 LaPasha 326–7. 81 LaPasha’s research bears out this supposition. See 158, 301, 318. 82 Zemtsovskii 1965, 84, 87. 83 Village of Lasino, Riazan’ oblast, group interview. 84 LaPasha 262–3, 267. 85 A. Koposov, ‘O russkikh narodnykh khorakh,’ in Sovetskaia muzyka 4 (1962), 21; LaPasha, 317. 86 Participants appeared in stylized costumes, sang in a mannered way, used smaller versions of folk orchestras for accompaniment, and conveyed an optimistic, rousing feeling to their audiences. 87 Iurii Kruglov, Fol’klornaia praktika (Moscow, 1979), 20. 88 Alfred G. Meyer, ‘The Impact of World War I on Russian Women’s Lives,’ in Russia’s Women: Accommodation, Resistance, Transformation, ed. Barbara Evans Clements, Barbara Alpern Engel, Christine D. Worobec, 208–24. 89 Exceptions abound. For instance, it is not unusual to find a rural woman who plays balalaika. In some areas women traditionally played specific instruments, e.g. small button accordions or panpipes. However, in general female accordionists and rozhok players were and are rare. When groups of village women lacked an accordionist, they sang a form of ‘mouth music’ (pod iazyk) as accompaniment for chastushki. 90 Eliot Borenstein, Men without Women: Masculinity and Revolution in Russian Fiction, 1917–1929 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000), 17. 91 See Borenstein 273–4 and Elizabeth Waters, ‘The Female Form in Soviet Political Iconography, 1917–29,’ in Russia’s Women: Accommodation, Resistance, Transformation, 240–41. 92 Victoria E. Bonnell, Iconography of Power: Soviet Political Posters under Lenin and Stalin (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1997), 81. 93 Lynne Viola, Peasant Rebels under Stalin: Collectivization and the Culture of Peasant Resistance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 183; LaPasha, 223. 94 Robin LaPasha, personal communication, August 2002. Cossack areas likely constitute an exception. 95 LaPasha, 267, 269. 96 See Bonnell, 110–11. 97 V. Vinogradov, ‘Istochnik tvorcheskogo vdokhnoveniia,’ in Sovetskaia muzyka 2 (1948), 91. 98 Miller, 19. 99 ‘Samodeiatel’nost’ muzykal’naia,’ 181. 100 Smith 1997, 127–8. 101 Smith 1997, 123. 102 V. Poponov, Orkestr khora imeni Piatnitskogo (Moscow, 1979), 70. 103 Surin, 34. 104 Smith 1997, 120. 105 Surin, 35.

Notes 251 106 A. Zhivtsov, ‘Gosudarstvennyi russkii narodnyi khor im. Piatnitskogo,’ in Sovetskaia muzyka 2 (1948), 88. 107 Surin, 32. 108 Howell, 390–91; Smith 1997, 134–5. 109 Theodore Levin, ‘Dmitri Pokrovsky and the Russian Folk Music Revival Movement’ in Retuning Culture: Musical Changes in Central and Eastern Europe, ed. Mark Slobin (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996), 61–2; Carole Pegg, Mongolian Music, Dance, and Oral Narrative: Performing Diverse Identities (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 2001), 256–7; Timothy Rice, May It Fill Your Soul: Experiencing Bulgarian Music, ed. Philip Bohlman and Bruno Nettl (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 176–9. The same was true of dance. The Soviets invented ‘national’ dance styles based upon Soviet ballet for cultures whose own dance styles did not seem appropriately athletic or flashy. Tim Scholl, private communication, 23 Sept. 2002. 110 G. G. Soboleva, Sovremennyi russkii narodnyi khor (Moscow, 1978), 45. 111 Often foreign (Western) elements from classical music and dance were introduced. Many professional groups had numbers that were labeled as ‘national’ – such as ‘Ukranian dance’ – but these were cliches having little to do with authentic traditional dance. V. Ural’skaia and T. Purtova, ‘Khoreograficheskaia samodeiatel’nost’,’ in Samodeiatel’noe khudozhestvennoe tvorchestvo v SSSR; Ocherki istorii. Konets 1950-x–nachalo 1990-x godov (St Petersburg, 1999), 338–9. 112 LaPasha, 121–2, 147–9, 198. 113 LaPasha, 105–6, 144. 114 LaPasha, 154–5, 170–71, 194. 115 Izalii Zemtsovskii, ‘Russian Folk Music,’ s. v. ‘Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, ‘ in New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 19, ed. Stanley Sadie (London: Macmillan, 1980), 396. 116 M. Cheremukhin, ‘Proshloe i nastoiashchee orkestrov russkikh narodnykh instrumentov,’ in Sovetskaia muzyka 5 (1949), 53 117 Poponov 1979, 69. 118 On nostalgia see LaPasha, 200–01. 119 Smith 1997, 101; see also Schwarz 109–10. 120 Smith 1997, 101. 121 Fitzpatrick, 149–82. 122 LaPasha, 314–16. 123 LaPasha 327. 124 Schwarz 396. See also Mayo Bryce, Fine Arts Education in the Soviet Union (Washington, D.C.: US Government Printing Office, 1963), 28–31. 125 M. Anastasiev, ‘Music Education in the U.S.S.R.,’ in Musical America (February, 1959), 21; Norman Haltmeyer, ‘A Study of Soviet Music Education’ (M.A. thesis, State College of Iowa, 1964), 44. The folk instruments taught were accordion, domra, and balalaika; at the high school level they included mandolin as well, while at the conservatory level other instruments were taught according to the local musical traditions in the republic where the conservatory was located. See Daniel Robert Remeta, ‘Music Education in the USSR’ (Ph.D. diss., University of Southern California, 1974), 187, 237. 126 In Soviet music schools students were grouped in majors already at the elementary school level, and each major had a different program of study. See Bryce 28. The Soviet music curriculum remained much the same from 1934 until the late 1980s, when Dmitri Kabalevskii’s new curriculum was introduced. See Mary Elizabeth McCaskill, ‘A Comparative Study of General Music Education Curricula in Elementary Schools of the United States of America and the

252

127 128

129

130 131 132

133

134 135

136 137 138 139

Notes Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic’ (Ph.D. diss., Lexington, University of Kentucky, 1989), 307; and Remeta 39. Bryce, 35. After the revolution the new ‘School of Russian Ballet’ was based more on character than on classical ballet style. This was the basis for the teaching of folk dancing in Russian schools. See Sokol’skaia 385; and V. Ural’skaia and T. Purtova 345. At the high school level singers took 40 hours in folk music during their fouryear program. They had to give a final solo recital at which they performed two opera arias (one by a Russian composer, the other by a foreign composer), two romances, one folk song, and a composition by a Soviet composer. At the conservatory level, students could choose the specialty of Opera Singer, Chamber Artist, or Teacher. They did not have special classes in folk music, but did spend 157 hours on the history of music in the USSR. The final recital for those in the Chamber Artist specialty had to contain Russian folk songs, Russian and foreign classical songs and romances, and songs by Soviet composers. Remeta 192, 195, 240–41, 244. Bryce, 72. Remeta 286–7. See also G. Karpov, ‘O kul’turno-prosvetitel’nykh shkolakh,’ in Kul’turno-prosvetitel’naia rabota 9 (1948), 46–8. The program was initiated by Alexander Iurlov, conductor of the RSFSR Academic Russian Chorus. See Viacheslav Shchurov, ‘Slovno chistoi vody glotok,’ in Narodnoe tvorchestvo 5 (1997), 40; and V. Popov, ‘A. A. Iurlov i narodnaia pesnia,’ in Aleksandr Iurlov: Stat’i i vospominaniia. Materialy, ed. I. Marisova (Moscow, 1983), 43. The Gnesin Institute, currently the Gnesin Russian Academy of Music, is still one of the premiere musical institutions in Russia. It was opened in 1944 on the basis of the Gnesin School (uchilishche) which dated back to 1895. The purpose of the Institute was to train teachers for musical schools and institutes all over Russia. The programs include, for example, a major in folk-chorus directing at the Moscow Institute of Culture, the Gnesin Music School, and the Moscow Cultural-Pedagogical School, all of which were initiated by the first graduates from the Gnesin Institute folk chorus directing program. Besides these, a major in folk music or folk chorus is currently offered in institutes in St Petersburg, Volgograd, Saratov, Ekaterinburg, Nizhni Novgorod, Petrozavodsk, Novosibirsk, Krasnoiasrk, Vologda, and Irkutsk, among other cities. There are special conservatory programs in folklore and folk music only in St Petersburg and Voronezh. See Shchurov 1997, 41; and Natalia Giliarova, interview with the author, Moscow, 25 September 1998. Zemtsovskii 1965, 84, 86; E. Zazerskii, ‘Sel’skii klub,’ in Pravda (20 Sept. 1963). Zemtsovskii’s comment reflects the new climate of the 1960s, when oppositional voices began to be heard and some of the professors at some institutions began to teach the value of ancient traditional singing. However, it is likely that in the 1960s many of the graduates of the cultural enlightenment schools, whose training was oriented towards party ideology, still would have promoted newly composed rather than traditional folk music. See L. Kulakovskii, ‘O russkoi narodnoi pesennoi klassike,’ in Sovetskaia muzyka 11 (1949), 42; M. Cheremukhin, 53; Asaf’ev 24. Cheremukhin, 53. Charles Molesworth, Salmagundi 85/86 (special issue on kitsch, roundtable discussion by several scholars), 279. ‘Neskol’ko myslei po povodu olimpiady muzyki i tantsa,’ in Sovetskaia muzyka 9 (1935), 62.

Notes 253 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154

155

156

157

158 159

160 161 162 163

I. Chekhov, D. Eppel’, Selu – kul’turu gorodskuiu (Moscow, 1968), 94–8. I. Chekhov, D. Eppel’, 93. LaPasha, 301–3. G. Polianovskii, 70 let v mire muzyki (Moscow, 1977), 256. Group interview, village of Lubianiki, Riazan’ oblast, 20 October 1998. Saul Friedlander,Salmagundi 85/6, 203; Robert Nozick, Salmagundi 85/6, 221. Friedlander, 203. Hermann Broch, ‘Notes on the Problem of Kitsch,’ Kitsch, the World of Bad Taste, ed. Gillo Dorfles (New York: Universe Books, 1969), 73. Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, translated by Michael Henry Heim. (New York: Harper and Row, 1984), 252. Kundera, 248. Kundera, 251–2. Kundera, 255. Matei Calinescu, Faces of Modernity: Avant-Garde, Decadence, Kitsch (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1977), 243–4. Molesworth, 279. Elena Zubkova, Russia After the War: Hopes, Illusions and Disappointments, 1945–1957, translated and edited Hugh Ragsdale (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1998), 119. ‘Ob opere ‘Velikaia druzhba’ V. Muradeli (Postanovlenie TsK VKP(b) ot 10 fevralia 1948 g.),’ in Sovetskaia muzyka 1 (1948), 3–8, translated as ‘Resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of 10 February 1948,’ in Slonimsky, 1359–60. ‘Declaration of Tikhon Khrennikov’ in ‘Discussion at a General Assembly of Soviet Composers, Moscow, 17–26 February 1948,’ translated in Slonimsky, 1366. For example, as a result of the resolution, during the late 1940s and early 1950s a major study of Russian folk polyphony was published, and another was republished. These studies were partially oriented toward composers who wanted to compose in the folk-polyphony style – as had nineteenth century composers such as Balakirev and Musorgsky. E. V. Gippius, ‘O russkoi narodnoi podgolosochnoi polifonii v kontse XVIII–nachale XIX veka,’ in Sovetskaia etnografiia 2 (1948), 103–4. Gippius 1948, 104. For instance, in 1949 a commentator on the Russian folk orchestra appealed for folk polyphony in future compositions. He faulted the nineteenth-century Andreev orchestra for the lack of such polyphony, saying that ‘the absence of true folk polyphony robbed it [the orchestra] of the possibility to completely express the character of folk singing [pesennost].’ Yet how could folk orchestras and choruses, the music of which had been based upon Western harmony since their inception, play and sing folk polyphony? Cheremukhin, 53; see also V. Ikonnikova and A. Moreeva, ‘Za russkuiu khorovuiu sovetskuiu pesniu,’ in Sovetskaia muzyka 7 (1949), 73, who state that newly composed songs follow the tradition of folk polyphony mentioned in the 1948 resolution. ‘B’et kliuchom narodnoe tvorchestvo,’ Klub 4 (1951), 4–5. ‘B’et kliuchom narodnoe tvorchestvo,’; A. Kuznetsov, ‘V pomoshch’ rukovoditel’iu tantseval’nogo kollektiva,’ Klub 4 (1951), 26–7. A. Chizhova, Tantsuet ‘Berezka’ (Moscow, 1967), 5, 11–15. See descriptions in T. Ustinova, Berech’ krasotu russkogo tantsa (Moscow, 1959). For example: ‘The young men, sprucing themselves up a bit, proudly walk in a circle, as if asking ‘Who will come and dance with us?’ Majestically

254

164 165 166 167 168 169 170

171

Notes and regally the girls enter. They are obviously worried: after all, each of them will have to invite her favorite boy to dance’ etc., 85. Rubtsov 1973, 199. G. Bruk, ‘Chto pet’ samodeiatel’nosti,’ in Sovetskaia muzyka 12 (1965), 121–2. V. Poponov, Orkestr Khora imeni Piatnitskogo (Moscow, 1979), 102. ‘Postanovlenie kollegii Ministerstva kul’tury SSSR’, June 20, 1961. For example D. Osipov, ‘V pomoshch’ rukovoditeliam khudozhestvennoi samodeiatel’nosti: Sovety rukovoditeliam orkestrov russkikh narodnykh instrumentov,’ Klub 2 (1951), 25–6. ‘In Leningrad alone at the present time there are 68 Russian folk song collectives (in 1947 there were only six).’ N. Kotikova, ‘O russkikh narodnykh khorakh,’ in Sovetskaia muzyka 2 (1957), 153. Shchurov argues that the organization of the major in folk-chorus directing at the Gnesin Institute in 1966 gave a major impetus to the revival movement. See ‘Slovno chistoi vody glotok’ (1997), 40. Natalia Giliarova says that this department taught in a serious way only for the first few years; later, it lost its focus on research, which she considers essential to a revivalist mission. Interview with the author, Moscow, 31 October 1998. Exceptions abound. Many times within one department there are teachers with a revivalist mentality and others with a folk-chorus mentality. Students may learn improvisation from the revivalist teachers while learning to sing arranged music in a stylized voice from some of the other teachers. In general, the academic structure of most of the folk chorus departments resists a revivalist approach, since revivalism is rooted in deep knowledge of folklore, while these departments are preparing specialists for specific, narrowly-defined jobs as heads of performing groups. The academic departments that do offer a revivalist approach are much more rigorous; examples are the programs at the St Petersburg Conservatory headed by Anatolii Mekhnetsov, and the one at the Voronezh Conservatory headed by T. Sysoeva. Students in these programs are being trained as folklorists (researchers) as well as ensemble leaders.

3 The Origins of the Russian Folk Revival Movement 1 Viacheslav Shchurov, interview with the author, Moscow, 9 November 1998. 2 Tamara E. Livingston, ‘Music Revivals: Towards a General Theory,’ in Ethnomusicology 43, no. 1 (Winter 1999), 66. 3 Kathleen F. Parthe, Russian Village Prose: The Radiant Past (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), 3. 4 Parthe, 21–2. 5 Parthe, 52–61. 6 Theodore Levin. ‘Dmitri Pokrovsky and the Russian Folk Music Revival Movement,’ in Retuning Culture: Musical Changes in Central and Eastern Europe, ed. Mark Slobin (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996), 26. 7 Natal’ia Giliarova, interview with the author, Moscow, 31 October 1998. 8 Parthe points out that the village prose writers largely ‘hinted at rather than discussed frankly’ the effects of collectivization on the village. See pp. 50–51. 9 The Pokrovsky Ensemble appeared in Farewell (Elem Klimov, 1982), a dramatization of Valentin Rasputin’s Farewell to Matyora (1976). 10 See, for example, Viktor Lapin, ‘Istreblenie fol’klora i ekologiia kul’tury,’ in Iskusstvo Leningrada 7 (1991), 4–7. 11 According to Parthe, only a few village prose writers were sympathetic to the views of fascist organizations like Pamiat’. These included Rasputin, Astafiev, Belov, and others. See her page 96.

Notes 255 12 Gerald Stanton Smith, Songs to Seven Strings: Russian Guitar Poetry and Soviet ‘Mass Song’ (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1984), 120. 13 B. M. Dobrovol’sky, ‘Sovremennye bytovye pesni gorodskoi molodezhi,’ in Fol’klor i khudozhestvennaia samodeiatel’nost’ (Leningrad, 1968), 193, quoted in Gerald Stanton Smith (1984), 48. See also Smith, 44. 14 Andrei Kabanov, one of the founders of the folk revival movement, told me that members of groups called ‘Amateur Song Circles’ (Krug samodeiatel’noi pesni, or KSP), who sang their own poetry or the music of Okudzhava, Vysotskii and other bards, used to invite members of the folk revival movement to their underground gatherings [slety] in woods and fields outside Moscow in the 1980s. He said that although both resisted the Soviet mentality and supported the development of ‘individual personality and freedom,’ the KSP participants [KSPeshniki] were more political than the folk revivalists, and composed lyrics that directly critiqued the establishment. Interview with the author, 17 January 1999. 15 Andrei Kabanov reported that the gatherings of the KSP drew many more participants than the gatherings of the folk revival groups, probably because their songs used ‘the contemporary word’ rather than obscure, ancient folk language, and because it was easier to sing their simple melodies with guitar accompaniment, than to learn to sing polyphonic folk a cappella songs. Interview with the author, 17 January 1999. 16 N. I. Zhulanova, ‘Molodezhnoe fol’klornoe dvizhenie,’ in Samodeiatel’noe khudozhestvennoe tvorchestvo v SSSR: Ocherki istorii. Konets 1950-x–nachalo 1990-x godov., ed. L. P. Solntseva and M. V. Iunisov (St Petersburg: 1999), 109. 17 On the importance of discourse and ideology in revival movements, see Tamara E. Livingston, ‘Music Revivals: Towards a General Theory,’ in Ethnomusicology 43, no. 1 (Winter 1999), 69. 18 N. P. Leont’ev, ‘Volkhovanie i shamanstvo,’ Novyi mir 8 (1953), 243. 19 Frank J. Miller, Folklore for Stalin: Russian Folklore and Pseudofolklore of the Stalin Era (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1990), 103–4. 20 Miller, 101, citing, among others, L. I. Emel’ianov, ‘Makar’evskii raion,’ in Russkii fol’klor 6 (1961), 137, and O. V. Alekseeva, ‘Pyshugskii raion,’ in Russkii fol’klor 6 (1961), 132. 21 To a large extent this story of folklore’s death has political implications. Folklorists have privately criticized the government’s policies towards the village and indicated that these are responsible for folklore’s likely premature death in certain regions – see Chapter 6 on this topic. Of course, it is a matter of interpretation whether folklore is ‘dying out’ or is simply ‘changing.’ It is my view that folklore changes; certain traditions may die out or become unrecognizable, but folklore as a whole does not generally die. The difference revolves around the definition of folklore: Soviet folklorists and musicologists do not tend to think of contemporary material as having any folkloric interest whatsoever. Giliarova interview, 31 October 1998. See also Miller, 102. 22 A. Koposov, ‘O russkikh narodnykh khorakh,’ in Sovetskaia muzyka 4 (1962), 22. 23 F. Rubtsov, ‘Sovremennoe narodnoe pesnetvorchestvo,’ in Voprosy teorii i estetiki muzyki 4 (Moscow, 1965), 126–8, citing L. I. Emel’ianov, ‘Poniatie “fol’klor” v sovetskoi fol’kloristike,’ and V. E. Gusev, ‘Ekspeditsiia v Kostromskuiu oblast’,’ in Russkii fol’klor: Materialy i issledovaniia, 6 (Moscow, 1961), 25, 125, 129, 150–51. 24 Levin 1996, 20. 25 Rubtsov 1965, 128. I use Levin’s translation of samodeiatel’nost’: see ‘Dmitri Pokrovsky,’ 35. 26 Rubtsov 1965, 129–33.

256

Notes

27 V. Pomerantsev, ‘Ob iskrennosti v literature,’ in Novyi mir 12 (1953), 235–6, 242, 245. 28 Livingston, 74. She cites an unpublished manuscript on nationalist revivals by Thomas Turino (1997) as the origin of the term ‘time depth.’ 29 Dana Prescott Howell, The Development of Soviet Folkloristics (New York: Garland, 1992), 152. 30 Howell, 116, 132–4; see also two articles by E. V. Gippius, ‘Krest’ianskaia muzyka Zaonezh’ia,’ in Iskusstvo severa: Zaonezh’e (Leningrad, 1927), 147–64, and ‘Kul’tura protiazhnoi pesni na Pinege,’ in Iskusstvo severa II: PinezhskoMezenskaia ekspeditsiia (Leningrad, 1928), 98–116 31 ‘Predislovie,’ in Iskusstvo severa: Zaonezh’e (Leningrad, 1927), 6. 32 Gippius 1927, 149–50. 33 Howell, 335–6 34 Gippius and V. I. Chicherov, ‘Sovetskaia fol’kloristika za 30 let,’ in Sovetskaia muzyka 4 (1947): 35–6. 35 Howell, 335–6. 36 N. Briusova, ‘Oshibki i derzaniia fol’klorista,’ In Sovetskaia muzyka 5 (1949), 57. 37 Gippius (1928) 116. 38 Gippius and Chicherov, 37. The criticism of Gippius in 1948 was part of the ideological campaign against ‘cosmopolitanism,’ in which several categories of intellectuals, including Jews and formalist or comparativist academics, were attacked. 39 Andrei Kabanov, interview with the author, Moscow, 13 November 1998. 40 Dmitrii Pokrovsky, ‘Fol’klor i muzykal’noe vospriiatie,’ in Vospriiatie muzyki: sbornik statei, ed. V. N. Maksimov (Moscow, 1980), 248, 250. 41 New work on polyphony was published by E. V. Gippius, ‘O russkoi narodnoi podgolosochnoi polifonii v kontse XVIII–nachale XIX veka,’ in Sovetskaia etnografiia 2 (1948), 101–2; Lev Kulakovskii, O russkom narodnom mnogogolosii (Moscow 1951); Lev Kulakovskii, Kak sobirat’ i zapisyvat’ narodnyi pesni (Moscow 1962); Anna Rudneva, ‘Kurskie tanki i karagody,’ in Voprosy muzykoznaniia 11 (Moscow 1956), 147–90; Anna Rudneva, ‘Ritmika stikha i napeva v russkoi narodoi pesni,’ in Izvestiia na instituta za muzika 13 (1969), 303–34; T. Bershadskaya, Osnovnye kompozitsionnye zakonomernosti mnogogolosiia russkoi narodnoi krest’ianskoi pesni (Leningrad 1961); Izalii Zemtsovskii, Russkaia narodnaia pesnia: Nauchno-populiarnyi ocherk (Moscow, 1964); and Izalii Zemtsovskii, Iskateli pesen: Rasskazy o sobirateliakh narodnykh pesen v dorevoliutsionnoi i Sovetskoi Rossii (Leningrad, 1967), 67–8. See also Barbara Krader, ‘Soviet Research on Russian Folk Music Since World War II’, in Ethnomusicology 7 (1963): 252–61, and Izalii Zemtsovskii, ‘Russian Folk Music,’ s. v. ‘Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, ‘ in New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie (London: Macmillan, 1980), 388–98. 42 Kabanov, 13 November 1998. 43 Natalia Giliarova, interview with the author, 31 October 1998. 44 Viacheslav Shchurov, interview with the author, 9 November 1998. The first recording of the Folklore Ensemble of the Gnesin Institute was a 45 rpm disc issued in 1968. The group also made recordings in 1977 and 1978. In 1984 it changed its name to Solovka; in 1997 it released a CD, Solovka: The Moscow Folk Song Ensemble, with Pan Records (Leiden, Holland: PAN 7008 CD, 1997). 45 Shchurov, ‘Slovno chistoi vody glotok,’ in Narodnoe tvorchestvo, 5 (1997), 42. 46 Tamara Smyslova, interview with author, Moscow, 11 November 1998. 47 Kabanov, 13 November 1998. 48 Kabanov, 13 November 1998.

Notes 257 49 See, for example, the response by N. Kotikova, ‘O russkikh narodnykh khorakh,’ in Sovetskaia muzyka, 2 (1957), 152–5 to an article by E. Rodygin. ‘O russkikh narodnykh khorakh,’ Sovetskaia muzyka, 9 (1956). 50 Viacheslav Shchurov, interview with the author, Moscow, 9 November 1998; see also I. Zemtsovskii 1967, 47. 51 Tamara Smyslova, interview with the author, Moscow, 11 November 1998. 52 A 1992 catalog of published recordings of authentic folk music (on LPs and 45s) lists 92 entries under Russian and Cossack folklore. See I. Zemtsovskii, Muzykal’nyi fol’klor na gramplastinkakh: opyt diskografii (Moscow, 1992). 53 Viacheslav Shchurov, interview with the author, Moscow, 9 November 1998. 54 In fact, I have not been able to ascertain what the quality of the Folklore Commission’s sponsorship of the Pokrovsky Ensemble was. Apparently, even if the ensemble was registered as an official research group of the Folklore Commission, this did not mean that they had permission to perform as a performing group. The group was unofficial from its inception until 1978. Theodore Levin, ‘Dmitri Pokrovsky and the Russian Folk Music Revival Movement’ in Retuning Culture: Musical Changes in Central and Eastern Europe, ed. Mark Slobin (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996), 20. 55 Pokrovsky, 251–3. 56 Natal’ia Giliarova, 31 October 1998. 57 Pokrovsky is quoted in Levin 1996, 30. 58 In September 1998 I witnessed Kabanov’s ‘laboratory’ at the biennial folk festival in a large village, Vorob’evka, in Voronezh oblast. The experiment that Kabanov constructed that day was quite challenging. Some music students from Voronezh walked out of the room in protest (and perhaps, out of fear of embarrassment) after Kabanov asked them to learn a song by singing it together with villagers. 59 Pokrovsky, 246–50. 60 Pokrovsky, 251. 61 Smyslova, 11 November 1998. 62 Pokrovsky, 253–4; and Kabanov, ‘K probleme sokhraneniia pesennoi fol’klornoi traditsii v sovremennykh usloviiakh,’ in Khudozhestvennaia samodeiatel’nost’: Voprosy razvitiia i rukovodstva, Nauchnyi Issledovatel’skii Institut Kul’tury, Trudy 88 (Moscow, 1980): 99, 101–3. 63 This method of recording was first used at the Department of Folk Music at Moscow State Conservatory (in 1967 according to Shchurov). See A. Rudneva, V. Shchurov, and S. Pushkina, Russkie narodnye pesni v mnogomikrofonnoi zapisi (Moscow, 1979), 3. Earlier attempts by Svetlana Pushkina had used two cassette recorders to record a group of several singers. Shchurov attributed his modification of this technique to two factors: 1) there were enough tape recorders at the Moscow Conservatory to record each singer; and 2) the village group had come to Moscow to perform and to be recorded. Viacheslav Shchurov, interview with the author, Moscow, 9 December, 1998. 64 Kabanov made the recording of 8–15 songs in 8 channels in 1974. Kabanov, 13 November 1998. 65 Levin 1996, 24. 66 Levin 1996, 20–22. 67 Levin 1996, 21. 68 Smyslova, 11 November 1998 and Levin 1996, 20–21. 69 Levin 1996, 17, 24; and personal memories of Pokrovsky Ensemble concerts in Boston in 1987 and 1991. 70 I am indebted to Mark Leiderman for offering some of the ideas and terminology in the previous paragraph.

258

Notes

71 Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, transl. Richard Nice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), 3. 72 Peter Stallybrass and Allon White, The Politics and Poetics of Transgression (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986), quoted in Mark Andliff and Patricia Leighten, ‘Primitive,’ in Critical Terms for Art History, 182. 73 Shchurov, interview with the author, 9 November 1998. 74 Shchurov, interview with the author, 9 November 1998. 75 Nikita Tolstoi, ‘Problemy rekonstruktsii drevneslavianskoi dukhovnoi kul’tury,’ in Iazyk i narodnaia kul’tura (Moscow, 1995), 41–2, 50. 76 Clearly, such movements may have been inspired by rock and roll dancing. 77 Marianna Torgovnick, Gone Primitive: Savage Intellects, Modern Lives (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 228, 240. 78 Torgovnick, 75, 78. 79 Torgovnick, 82. 80 The Pokrovsky Ensemble, Les Noces (‘The Wedding’) and Russian Village Wedding Songs, Elektra Nonesuch 79335–2, 1994. 81 A. Zhivtsov, ‘Gosudarstvennyi russkii narodnyi khor im. Piatnitskogo,’ in Sovetskaia muzyka, 2 (1948), 85. 82 Maria Nefedova, interview with the author, 30 December 1998. 83 Nefedova, interview. The play, with musical setting by Pokrovsky and including the ensemble as actors, was banned in 1982; subsequently Liubimov was forced to emigrate to the West. When he returned to the Taganka in 1988, his production of Boris Godunov finally had its premiere. See www.taganka.org/html/stuecke/spektakli2.htm (accessed 10 September 2003). 84 Kabanov, interview with the author, Moscow, 18 November 1998, and Smyslova, interview with the author, 11 November 1998. 85 Kabanov, 18 November 1998. 86 Levin 1996, 23. 87 Kabanov, 18 November 1998. 88 Smyslova, 11 November 1998. 89 Smyslova, 11 November 1998. 90 Kabanov, personal communication, Moscow, October 1998. 91 Observed in Moscow during rehearsals for Stravinsky’s Svadebka, Spring 1990. 92 Later they did employ a choreographer, Evgeniia Rudneva, a Bolshoi-trained ballerina and the daughter of musicologist Anna Rudneva. I did not speak to Rudneva, but those who spoke about her said that she made herself into a specialist on authentic Russian folk dancing and, in keeping with the revivalist philosophy, was interested in studying and notating the village dances rather than transforming them into choreographed set pieces. Smyslova, 11 November 1998. 93 See discussion of the ways that this ensemble’s program reflects syncretism in Elena A. Kransopevtseva and Olga V. Velichkina, ‘Proekt detskoi shkoly narodnogo tvorchestva,’ in Sokhranenie i vozrozhdenie fol’klornykh traditsii, ed. A. A. Banin (Moscow, 1990), 178. Information also based upon the author’s observation of a rehearsal, 19 November, 1998, and conversation with Krasnopevtseva, same date. 94 Krasnopevtseva and Velichkina, 179. 95 Krasnopevtseva and Velichkina, 179. 96 Kabanov, interview with the author, 28 December 1998. 97 Andrezej Walicki, The Slavophile Controversy: History of a Conservative Utopia in Nineteenth-Century Russian Thought, translated by Hilda Andrews-Rusiecka (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press 1989 [1975]), 199. 98 E. Lineva, Velikorusskie pesni v narodnoi garmonizatsii, 1 (St Petersburg, 1904), xxix. Lineva’s use of the term artel to mean ‘singing collective’ was often cited by

Notes 259 later musicologists. Artel refer to the Russian tradition in which artisans formed cooperative craft societies. Thus, Lineva tacitly situates singing as a kind of craft, and underlines the self-organizing feature of village craft societies. See Alison Hilton, Russian Folk Art (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1995), 42–9; 99 When I first started investigating the folk revival movement in 1998, I had to learn new terminology. If I asked revivalists whether they had a chorus, they said no; but if I asked whether they had a collective or ensemble, they said yes. This was sometimes explained to me as a designation of quantity: choruses were large, and ensembles were small. However, it may have had something do to with the Soviet adoption of the term ‘chorus’ for its folk choruses, and revivalists’ desire to avoid such associations. 100 To be sure, the fact of a group’s having a leader did not mean that it was not collective in character. In fact, the Slavophiles generally supported autocracy, since it was a Russian tradition and since, theoretically, within that structure the tradition of the commune could flourish. See Nicholas V. Riasanovsky, Russia and the West in the Teaching of the Slavophiles: A Study of Romantic Ideology (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1965), 150–51. 101 Kabanov, 13 November 1998. 102 Levin 1996, 24. 103 Smyslova, 11 November 1998. 104 Gilarova, 31 October 1998 105 V. Kadiaev, ‘Festival’ v Saratove’, Politicheskaia agitatsiia 981, no. 11 (June 1988), 24.

4 Revival and Identity after Socialism 1 Theresa Sabonis-Chafee, ‘Communism as Kitsch: Soviet Symbols in Post-Soviet Society,’ in Consuming Russia: Popular Culture, Sex, and Society since Gorbachev, ed. Adele Marie Barker (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999), 367. 2 Sabonis-Chafee, 375. 3 Ol’ga Shablinskaia, ‘Kadysheva – Zolushka nashikh dnei,’ in Argumenty i fakty 14 (April, 2000), 16. 4 Concert, Moscow, Kremlin Palace of Soviets, 14 November 1998. 5 Natal’ia Sapozhnikova, ‘Nadezhda Babkina – voitel’nitsa Russkoi pesni,’ in SelfMade Man: Zhurnal o liudiakh i ikh uspekhakh 20 (November 2002); Mikhail Antonov, ‘Randevu so zvezdoi,’ in Smena 29, no. 22819 (13 February 2001), both reprinted in www.babkina.ru/press/star/index.html (Accessed 30 March 2003); ‘Babkina Nadezhda Georgievna,’ www.biograph.comstar.ru/bank/babkina.htm (Accessed 20 February 2000). 6 www.biograph.comstar.ru/bank/zykina.htm (Accessed 20 February 2000). 7 Roman Nikitin, ‘ “Zolotoe kol’tso” Zolushki,’ in Ekstra – M 10 (March 14, 1998). 8 World Village was originally named Folklore: Unknown Cultures and started in 1991 as a monthly half-hour program on the new Russian television studio, RTR, at the initiative of Sergei Starostin. During the early years of its existence, RTR had to fill up free air time and was glad to have programs such as this, made by professional folklorists but not professional filmmakers. Through the seven-year run of the series 150 programs were made. The program was closed when a new manager, Eduard Segalaev, came to the studio during a pre-election period and wanted to create a new folklore program with an optimistic, national theme. He wanted it to be called Ei ukhnem! (the title of the song known in English as the ‘Song of the Volga Boatmen’) and to run for 13 minutes every day except Sunday. The idea of a cheerful, entertaining kitsch show did not fit the

260

9

10 11 12 13 14

15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

24

25

Notes

conception of Starostin and his team, and they could hardly keep up with the daily deadlines, but they continued to produce the own program under the new name for a time. Sergei Starostin, interview with the author, Moscow, 22 December 1998. See ‘Zavolokin, Gennady Dmitrievich,’ on Mezhdunarodnyi Ob’edienennyi Biograficheskii Tsentr, www.biograph.comstar.ru/bank/zavolokin.htm (accessed 30 March 2003). Each week it visits a different location and features certain accordionists (and sometimes singers) in the area. Starostin said: ‘it was made so that our provinces wouldn’t forget the accordion, and to cheer up the state of the Russian soul. It’s very far from folklore, in reality, because mostly city accordionists take part in the show…When village accordionists did appear before the camera…they were given hardly any attention at all.’ Interview with the author, Moscow, 22 December 1998. (Starostin, 22 December 1998). Hermann Bausinger, Folk Culture in a World of Technology, trans. Elke Dettmer (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1990), 156. Agence France Presse, ‘Gazprom and Regions Cozy up,’ in Banks and Exchanges Weekly, May 24 1999, 11. Compare remarks by T. Ustinova, choreographer of the Piatnitsky Chorus, in her Berech’ krasotu russkogo tantsa (Moscow, 1959), 6. Compare a 1948 article on the Piatnitsky choir, quoting a late-nineteenth-century critic: ‘Every male and female worker in Russia, just as 1000 years ago, accompanies his or her work by singing whole collections of songs.’ The article makes the point that ‘the song lives in all of us’ despite the unfavorable conditions of industrialization and capitalism, when no respect was given the folk song. A. Zhivtsov, ‘Gosudarstvennyi russkii narodnyi khor im. Piatnitskogo,’ in Sovetskaia muzyka 2 (1948), 85, quoting Vladimir Stasov. ‘Gazprom and IMF: Mortal Friends,’ in Banks and Exchanges Weekly, May 5 1999, 13. Bausinger 1990, 160. Dan Ben-Amos, ‘Foreword,’ in Bausinger 1990, x. See Zuzana Štefániková,’Folk Costume as a Form of Ethnic Identification in Slovakia,’ in Folklore, Folklorism and National Identification: The Slovak Cultural Context, ed. Gabriela Kiliánová and Eva Krekovicová (Bratislava, 1992), 28, 31. Maria Nefedova, interview with the author, Moscow, 30 December 1998. According to Aleksei Shilin, this gesture was composed and does not exist as an element of Russian village traditional dance. Interview with the author, Moscow, 26 January 1999. Natal’ia Erokhina, comments after presentation of paper, ‘Molodezhnoe folk’lornoe dvizhenie v kontekste muzykal’noi kul’tury,’ at the State Republic Center of Russian Folklore, Moscow, 26 November 1998. Natal’ia Giliarova said she had noticed the same thing: many of these groups ‘talk very well.’ Conversation with the author, 20 September 1998. In the Soviet and post-Soviet periods narodnyi also described any artist, performer, or professional who had achieved a certain professional status in his or her field – thus, ‘narodnyi pevets RFSFR’ designated a professional singer in the Russian republic. Iu. Boiko, ‘Russkie narodnye instrumenty i orkestry russkikh narodnykh instrumentov,’ in Traditsionnyi fol’klor v sovremennoi khudozhestvennoi zhizni: Fol’klor i fol’klorizm, ed. I. Zemtsovskii, V. Lapin, and I. Matsievskii (Leningrad, 1984), 93. Petrozavodsk is in the Republic of Karelia, on the Finnish border, whose population in 1989 was roughly 10 percent Karelians and 74 percent Russians. Many of

Notes 261

26 27 28 29 30

31 32 33 34 35 36 37

38 39 40 41

42 43 44 45

46

the Karelians living in Russia have become Russified. The costumes worn by the Petrozavodsk ensemble apparently represented Karelian folk costume (which has similarities with the Northern Russian costume), yet the songs were in Russian and represented the Soviet style of folk music and dance presentation. See ‘Republic of Kareliya,’ in The Territories of the Russian Federation, 2001 (London: Europa 2001), 80–82; E. I. Klement’ev, ‘Karely,’ in Narody Rossii Entsiklopediia (Moscow, 1994), 186–9; Pekka Nevalainen, ‘The Many Karelias,’ Virtual Finland, http://um1.tmt.tele.fi/finfo/english/karjala.html (Accessed 6 June 2002). Natal’ia Giliarova, interview with author, April 1990 (notes not dated). Ekaterina Dorokhova, interview with author, Moscow, 13 January 1999. Svetlana Braz, comments at the Folk Ensemble division of the ‘Young Talents of Moscow’ competition, held 3–4 November 1998, Moscow. Such as Tsar Maksimilian. They also performed in the Taganka theater’s production of Boris Godunov. They were the actors and singers in The Song of Jeremiah, for which Anatolii Vasiliev directed and designed sets, and Vladimir Martynov set a Biblical text to a ‘paraliturgical’ Orthodox musical score. First performed in Moscow at the Pushkin Museum in 1993; I saw it in 1999 at the Moscow School of Dramatic Art. See Plach Ieremii, (theater program, Moscow: Almanakh Menon, 1996). V. Ural’skaia and T. Purtova, ‘Khoreograficheskaia samodeiatel’nost’,’ in Samodeiatel’noe khudozhestvennoe tvorchestvo v SSSR, ed. Solntseva et al. (1999), 345. Aleksei Shilin, interview with author, Moscow, 26 January 1999. Nefedova, interview. Dorokhova, interview. Natalia Giliarova, interview with the author, 31 October 1998. Bausinger 1990, 23, 76. Some scholars have embraced the broader definition of Western folklorists. See, for example, A. K. Baiburin et al, Problemy sotsial’nogo i gumanitarnogo znaniia, 1–2 (St Petersburg: Dmitrii Bulanin, 2000), and the work of Sergei Nekliudov and other scholars at Russian State Humanities University (RGGU), represented at: www.ruthenia.ru/folklore/Mast4.html (accessed 28 March 2003). Words by M. Isakovskii and music by M. Blanter. According to the Kabanovs, the comment was made by Aleksandr Shchadrin, who had worked at Pokrovsky’s studio and was a jazz musician. Zhanna Kabanova, interview with the author, Moscow, 26 May 1999. Anatolii Mekhnetsov, comments at round table, Gnesin Academy of Music, Moscow, 23 April 1999. To be sure, mainstream audiences do accept ‘Katiusha’ and other Soviet-era popular songs as ‘folklore.’ Kadysheva, Balagan Limited, and other popular groups sing such songs, and many amateur groups – especially those composed of pensioners – sing them as part of their repertoire. Bausinger 1990, 76. Natal’ia Sapozhnikova, ‘Nadezhda Babkina – voitel’nitsa Russkoi pesni.’ Krasnopevtseva, interview with the author, Moscow, 20 January 1999. Izaly Zemtsovsky and Alma Kunanbaeva, ‘Communism and Folklore,’ in Folklore and Traditional Music in the Former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe: Proceedings of a One-Day Conference, May 16, 1994, ed. James Porter (Los Angeles: Department of Ethnomusicology, UCLA, 1997), 8. Interestingly, most such groups work with south-Russian folk music, which is known for its liveliness; according to this stereotype (which is not totally accurate) north-Russian music is generally more serious and directed inward, and

262

47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62

63 64

65 66 67

Notes

would be less suited to such vibrant self-expression. Ekaterina Dorokhova, interview with author, Moscow, 13 January 1999. Zhanna Kabanova, master class, ‘Folklore Spring’ Festival, Moscow, 21 April 1999. Viacheslav Shchurov, interview with the author, Moscow, 9 November 1998. Anzhelika Glumova, interview with the author, Saratov, 9 January 1999. According to Andrei Kabanov, he and his wife received fairly regular income from 6 different sources for teaching folklore and one for research in the spring of 1999. Interview with the author, Moscow, 15 May 1999. Anatolii Mekhnetsov, master class, Folklore Spring Festival, Moscow, 22 April 1999. Andrei Kabanov, interview with the author, Moscow, 18 November 1998. Zhanna Kabanova, interview with the author, Moscow, 17 January 1999. Zhanna Kabanova, interview with the author, Moscow, 26 May 1999. Phrase spoken by a Soviet woman on the USSR–US TV Bridge/Telemost Leningrad-Boston, 17 June 1986, led by Soviet journalist Vladimir Pozner. Alan Dundes, Interpreting Folklore (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1980), 36. Anatolii Mekhnetsov, interview with the author, Moscow, 22 April 1999. In pre-Revolutionary Russia there was a tradition of interest in bawdy subjects by Pushkin and other Romantic-era intellectuals; see Paul W. Goldschmidt, ‘Pornography in Russia,’ in Barker, 319–20. Goldschmidt 324–5. Bausinger 1990, 155. Andrei Kabanov, interview with the author, Moscow, 21 April 1999. For example, A. A. Toporkov, ed., Seks i erotika v russkoi traditsionnoi kul’ture (Moscow, 1996); A.L. Toporkov, Russkii eroticheskii fol’klor (Moscow, 1995); S. D. Pliusnin, Russkii eroticheskii fol’klor: skazki, skazy, pribautki, prigovorki, pogovorki, zagadki, oboznacheniia intimnogo, chastushki (Kirov, 1997). Viacheslav Shchurov, interview with the author, Moscow, 9 December 1998. I discovered the text in a version published in the United States by Kevin Moss, director of the Russian Choir at Middlebury College, who had acquired the full text from Dmitri Pokrovsky. Middlebury Russian Choir Songbook, Babel, 1988. The Pokrovsky ensemble did not perform the erotic verses either. In Russian, ‘culture’ can mean ‘tasteful,’ in the sense that Kabanova thinks Popov’s dances are tasteful rather than crass presentations of sexuality. I am purposely taking the word literally here. Marianna Torgovnick, Gone Primitive: Savage Intellects, Modern Lives (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 246. Tamara E. Livingston, ‘Music Revivals: Towards a General Theory,’ Ethnomusicology 43, no. 1 (Winter 1999), 77.

5 Power and Ritual 1 2

Ernest Gellner, Nationalism, (New York: New York University Press, and London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1997) 6, 54. Katherine Verdery, ‘Whither “Nation” and “Nationalism”?,’ in Daedalus 122, no. 3 (Summer 1993), 38–41. ‘Nationness’ is used by John Borneman in Belonging in the Two Berlins: Kin, State, Nation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992) (cited in Verdery 41) and Rogers Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996; ‘national sentiment’ is a phrase used by Anthony Smith, 168.

Notes 263 3 4

5

6

7 8 9 10 11 12

13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

Gregory Guroff and Alexander Guroff, ‘The Paradox of Russian National Identity,’ in National Identity and Ethnicity in Russia and the New States of Eurasia, ed. Roman Szporluk (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1994), 86, 90. Mark Sandle, ‘Searching for a National Identity: Intellectual Debates in PostSoviet Russia,’ in Ethnicity and Nationalism in Russia, the CIS and the Baltic States, ed. Christopher Williams and Thanasis D. Sfikas (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999), 65, 82. Nathaniel Knight, ‘Ethnicity, Nationality and the Masses: Narodnost’ and Modernity in Imperial Russia,’ in Russian Modernity: Politics, Knowledge, Practices, ed. David L. Hoffmann and Yanni Kotsonis (New York: St. Martin’s, 2000), 57–9; Brubaker, 17, 112, 137. As Brubaker shows, there are complicating factors in defining nationality this way: Russia has always been a multi-ethnic state, and new conceptions of the nation need to take this into account in some fashion, even while nationalization is taking place. Michael Cherniavsky, Tsar and People: Studies in Russian Myths (New York: Random House, 1969 [1961]), 116–17, 120, 146, 171; Judith D. Kornblatt, ‘Christianity, Antisemitism, Nationalism’, in Consuming Russia, ed. Adele Marie Barker, (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999) 415, 417. Robert L. Nichols, ‘The Icon and Machine in Russia’s Religious Renaissance, 1900–1909,’ in Christianity and the Arts in Russia, ed. William C. Brumfield and Milos M. Velimirovic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 131–44. Kornblatt, 414. David I. Kertzer, Ritual, Politics, and Power (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988), 11. Eliot Borenstein, ‘Suspending Disbelief: “Cults” and Postmodernism in PostSoviet Russia,’ in Barker, 456. Oksana Oracheva, ‘The Ideology of Russian Nationalism,’ in Williams and Sfikas, 50. Anthony D. Smith, Theories of Nationalism (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1983), 160. See also Sandle, 74–5. Others use different terms: R. Szporluk speaks of ‘Empire-savers’ and ‘nation-builders’ in ‘Dilemmas of Russian nationalism,’ in Problems of Communism 38, no. 1 (1994), 36–9, cited in Sandle, 70. About the small but growing role of ultra-nationalist views in Russian politics, see Oracheva, 61–2. Sandle, 71; Stephen K. Carter, ‘Russian Nationalism and Russian Politics in the 1990s,’ in Williams and Sfikas, 92, 96, 100. Katherine E. Smith, Mythmaking in the New Russia , 159, 176–7, 180–81, Sandle, 73–4. Katherine Smith, 125–6. The concert series took place in 1997–8. Brochures printed for the concerts listed sponsorship by Aeroflot and Ingosstrakh. Robert W. Orttung, Danielle N. Lussier and Anna Paretskaya, The Republics and Regions of the Russian Federation: A Guide to Politics, Policies, and Leaders (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2000), 213, 216. ‘Tuleev, Aman Gumirovich,’ in European Internet Network, Russia Today; ‘Tuleev Gets the Death Penalty,’ in World Reporter, July 14 1999, 16. Galina Yemelianova, ‘Ethnic Nationalism, Islam and Russian Politics in the North Caucasus (with special reference to the autonomous Republic of Dagestan),’ in Williams and Sfikas, 128. During the Seven Years’ War of 1756–63. A. Listopadov, Pesni Donskikh Kazakov vol. I, part 2 (Moscow, 1949), 225–7. The song was sung in different versions referring to different historical events. A version was sung in which Krasnoshchekov’s name was replaced by that of Cossack General Matvei Platov

264

21 22

23 24 25 26 27

28 29 30

31

32 33 34

35 36 37 38 39 40 41

Notes

(referring to events in the late eighteenth century); and during the Soviet period, Lenin’s name was used. Kabanov, interview with the author, 8 June 1999. Kabanov had recorded it, and the Pokrovsky Ensemble and later the Cossack Circle had popularized it by singing it widely in concerts. The song’s first five verses consist of the following lines: ‘Oh, you, Russia, Mother Russia / Oh, you, our Russian land / Oh, you have seen dire need, / Oh, you have spilled much blood, / Oh, you have amassed much glory! / Oh, our Mother Russia, / You have granted us much.’ Translated from Listopadov, 226. Sandle, 68. Roman Laba, ‘The Cossack Movement and the Russian State, 1990–96,’ in Low Intensity Conflict & Law Enforcement 5 (1996), 377, 399–401. Anzhelika Glumova, interview with the author, Saratov, 9 January 1999; Irina Tarasova, interview with the author, Moscow, 24 April 1999; Zhanna Kabanova, interview with the author, Moscow, 26 May 1999. Vasilii Kozlov, interview with the author, Voronezh, 12 May 1999. Elena Panina, ‘ “Segodnia oboshlos.” A zavtra?’ in Zemskii vestnik 6 (1998), 7; ‘Piat’ let sluzheniia Rossii,’ in Zemskii vestnik 6 (1998), 24; Vera Chizhova, ‘Doroga nachinaetsia s tropinki,’ in Zemskii vestnik 6 (1998), 30–31; Igor’ Sanachev, ‘Mestnoe samoupravlenie v Rossii: tak chto zhe proiskhodit?’ in Zemskii vestnik 4 (1998), 44–6. See definitions in Sandle, 71–7. The girls wore short red dresses and red sandals, while the boys wore yellow folkstyle tunics with red embroidery and Cossack- or Ukrainian-style wide pants with red boots. To be sure, this festival opening reflected many of the elements of Soviet festivals since the 1930s, such as a parade of all the participants in costumes to reflect their geographical region. Lynn Mally, Revolutionary Acts: Amateur Theater and the Soviet State, 1917–1938 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000), 171–2. In fact the costumes were so general and had such mixed styles that they are not identifiable as ethnically Russian. However, they do represent the ethnic diversity mentioned by Panina as belonging to the Voronezh area: Russian, Ukrainian, and Cossack. I would say that they stand for a generic Russian-empire folk style. Nurit Schleifman, ‘The Uses of Memory: The Russian Province in Search of Its Past,’ in Russia at a Crossroads: History, Memory and Political Practice, ed. Nurit Schleifman (London: Cass, 1998), 29. Schleifman, 29–30. Kozlov, interview with the author, 12 May 1999. The Ministry of Culture provided 30 percent of the budget, but according to Kozlov the actual percentage was more since there is some padding of official figures. One of Kozlov’s main sources of income for the festival is purchasing and re-selling items. See Chapter 7. Thomas P. Hodge, ‘Susanin, Two Glinkas, and Ryleev: History-Making in A Life for the Tsar,’ in Intersections and Transpositions, ed. Andrew Baruch Wachtel (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1998), 14. Richard S. Wortman, Scenarios of Power: Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy, vol. 2 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 226–8. Knight, 56. Knight, 56–7. Guroff and Guroff, 79, 86, 93. Verdery, 39. Many of the examples examined so far exhibit features of ritual – for example, I would classify the opening and closing of the Vorob’evka festival as ritual, or at least as ritualized performance. Still, the fact that most of the festival’s rituals

Notes 265

42 43 44 45 46

47 48 49 50

took place on stage as authored and scripted theatrical events allows me to consider them primarily as performance and only secondarily as ritual. Kertzer, 11. The priest appeared to be in his 30s. He had been a medical student at the university in Novosibirsk when he received his calling. Kertzer, 10. See Wortman (2000), 235–6. B. V. Gorbunov, Traditsionnye rukopashnye sostiazaniia v narodnoi kul’ture vostochnykh slavian XIX–nachala XX vv. Istoriko-etnograficheskoe issledovanie (Moscow, 1997), 30–31, 44, 64–5; A. Gruntovskii, Russkii kulachnyi boi: Istoriia, Etnografiia, Tekhnika (St Petersburg, 1998), 50–51. Gorbunov, 47, 49, 51. Gorbunov, 60–61. Kornblatt 1999, 414–16. John B. Dunlop, ‘The Russian Orthodox Church as an “Empire-Saving” Institution,’ in The Politics of Religion in Russia and the New States of Eurasia, ed. Michael Bourdeaux (Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, 1995), 15–16.

6 Performing Masculinity 1 Peter Holquist, ‘From Estate to Ethnos: The Changing Nature of Cossack Identity in the Twentieth Century,’ in Russia at a Crossroads: History, Memory and Political Practice, ed. Nurit Schleifman (London: Frank Cass, 1998), 111. 2 Roman Laba, ‘The Cossack Movement and the Russian State, 1990–96’ In Low Intensity Conflict & Law Enforcement 5 (1996), 379. 3 Shane O’Rourke, Warriors and Peasants: The Don Cossacks in Late Imperial Russia (New York: St Martin’s Press, 2000), 135–7. 4 Holquist, 92–3, 98. 5 Holquist, 98, 101. 6 Holquist, 101–3. 7 Holquist, 103–4. As Holquist points out, the establishment of Cossack cavalry divisions did not mean the resurrection of the Cossacks as a military community within the USSR. The divisions were composed simply of male residents of formerly Cossack regions, not necessarily descendants of Cossacks themselves. 8 V. Kommissinskii, ‘Gosudarstvennyi akademicheskii Kubanskii kazachii khor,’ Krasnodar: Server administratsii i gorodskoi dumy goroda Krasnodara. http://med.krd.ru/www/home.nsf/webdocs/4AB9F27C367A4013C3256A62002D09 51.html (accessed 11 April 2002). 9 Aleksei Shilin, Tvorcheskaia masterskaia russkogo khoreograficheskogo fol’klora A. I. Shilina nos. 2, 3 (video, 1995); comments of members of ensemble from 1st Buzuluk, Volgograd oblast, at Laboratory led by Andrei Kabanov, Vorob’evka, 12 September 1998. 10 Lester W. Grau, Rebirth of the Cossack Brotherhood: A Political/Military Force in a Disintegrating Russia (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Foreign Military Studies Office, July 1992), 7. 11 Levin 1996, 29. 12 Tamara Smyslova, interview with the author, 11 November 1998, Moscow. 13 The declaration was adopted by both the national Union of Cossacks and many of the local chapters. ‘Ustav Soiuza kazakov, Moskva, 30 iuniia 1990 g,’ reprinted in Mukhin, A. A. and Vladimir Pribylovskii Kazach’e dvizhenie v Rossii i stranakh blizhnego zarubezh’ia, 1988–1994 gody vol. 2, Prilozheniia, (Moscow, 1994), 265.

266

Notes

14 Listopadov, ‘Oi, ty, kormilets, Don Ivanovich,’ in Pesni Donskikh Kazakov vol. I, part 2 (Moscow, 1949), 399–402; ‘Po goram-to, goram,’ 423–5. 15 Holquist, 92. 16 Robert H. McNeal, Tsar and Cossack, 1855–1914 (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1987), 1–2. 17 Listopadov, ‘Ai, ne dve-to tuchushki groznye,’ 383–5. 18 ‘Basic principles for the concept of a state policy toward the Cossackry,’ 22 April 1994, quoted in Holquist, 112–13. 19 Laba, 397. 20 ‘Don Cossack Association Created,’ in Izvestiia, 9 March 1990, 3, cited in Laba, 384. 21 Laba, 391–2. 22 Laba, 398, 401. 23 25 December 1998. 24 Judith Kornblatt, The Cossack Hero in Russian Literature: A Study in Cultural Mythology (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992), 61. 25 After Cossacks were issued uniforms, starting at the end of the eighteenth century, they were supposed to wear a uniform at all times (although different uniforms were designed for parade dress and for everyday use). See Oleg Agafonov, Kazach’i voiska Rossiiskoi imperii (Moscow: Epokha, 1995), 490–91. In the early years of Cossack history Cossack women wore Turkic-style costumes that identified them as Cossack women. Later, costumes closer to the style of the neighboring Russians and Ukrainians were adopted. Starting in the late nineteenth century Cossack women, like many women in villages all over Russia, began to wear the parochka, a blouse and skirt sewn of the same material or color. This is the costume used today by Cossack performing groups, while groups representing Russian village traditions usually take forms of costume that represent an older local style. See N. Sosnina and I. Shangina, Russkii traditsionnyi kostium: Iliustrirovannaia entsiklopediia (St Petersburg, 1998), 204; ‘Zhenskii kostium,’ www.cossackweb.com/kazaki/r_zhkost00a.htm (accessed 29 Sept. 2002). 26 On the Don, songs are led by the bass, but among Kuban and Tereg Cossacks the upper voice leads. Interview with Andrei Kabanov, 10 December 1998. To be sure, there are some Cossack women’s songs – mostly wedding songs. 27 Sex and Russian Society, ed. Igor Kon and James Riordan (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1993), 69. 28 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990), 140. See also Martha Nussbaum, ‘The Professor of Parody,’ in The New Republic (22 February, 1999), www.tnr.com/archive/0299/022299/nussbaum022299.html 29 David I. Kertzer, Ritual, Politics, and Power (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988), 99. 30 The video asserted that the camp did more than simply prepare the boys for entry into military academies: ‘the study of traditional Cossack military arts gives a good opportunity to develop physical qualities necessary not only for a future fighter but for every youth who will become a man and a head and defender of his family.’ 31 L. Muratov, I. Stul’nev, Shatry nad Donom, Telekompaniia SKIT, Moscow 1997. These videos are part of a series, Kazaki, produced by the Russian Folklore Alliance (Rossiiskii Fol’klornyi Soiuz) and sold at its Moscow office and through other private distributors of items related to the Cossackry, Russian patriotism, and folklore. Thus, the audience for the films presumably would include many folk- and Cossack-related clubs that are members of the Alliance. For a descrip-

Notes 267

32

33 34

35 36 37 38 39 40

41 42

tion of the Moscow Cossack division featured in the film, see http://platovetz.narod.ru/ (Accessed 23 March 2003). The duality of the Cossack position seems to be clearly encapsulated in the Cossack experience during World War II. The Cossacks were split: many defended the Soviet Union, but approximately 266,000 Cossacks fought against the USSR, hoping to defeat Stalin and regain their independence. When these were forcibly repatriated after the war, they were executed or imprisoned in labor camps. The video does not explore this history and is uncritical of Soviet policy. See Peter J. Huxley-Blythe, The East Came West (Caldwell, ID: Caxton, 1964), and ‘Cossacks in WWII,’ www.cossackweb.com/cossacks/kazww2.htm (accessed 29 September, 2002). See, for example, V. Medvedev, ‘Terpi, kazak…‘ in Komsomol’skaia pravda, 2 April 1992; and V. Perushkin, ‘Kazachyi krug,’ in Argumenty i fakty, 15 April 1992, 4; for a challenge of these figures see Holquist. For discussion of the myth see T. V. Tabolina, Vozrozhdenie Kazachestva 1989–1994. Istoki, Khronika. Perspektivy, vol. 1, ‘Tsentr’ (Moscow, RAN Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, Center for the Study of Interethnic Relations, 1994), 47. Regional’nyi tsentr kazach’ei kul’tury, Letnie Kazach’i lageria (1995), part of the Kazaki series. Valentina Kubrakova, interview with the author, Alekseevskaia, Volgograd oblast, 24 September 1998. Vitalii Bortsov, interview with the author, Uriupinsk, Volgograd oblast, 10 May 1999. Kommissinskii. Vitalii Bortsov, interview with the author. The lampasy served as a sign that the wearer belonged to the Cossacks. According to one quasi-academic version of Cossack mythology, lampasy were found on costumes dating back to the ancient warrior tribes, the Polovtsy and Scythians; ‘It is no wonder that Cossacks were and are so proud of them.’ See B. Almazov, V. Novikov, A. Mazhola, Kazaki (St Petersburg: Diamant, 1999), 50. However, there is no evidence that Scythians were ancestors of the Cossacks. Vitalii Bortsov, interview with the author. Holquist, 112.

7 The Village Revives 1 Of course it is difficult to generalize about the ‘real’ Russian village, because many differences exist in standard of living and livelihood. Since my own experience and that of many of my musicologist and folklorist contacts has been primarily in central, western and southern Russia, most of my examples are drawn from these regions. 2 Sue Bridger, ‘Rural Youth,’ in Soviet Youth Culture ed. Jim Riordan (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1989), 83–4. 3 Shchurov, interview with the author, 9 December 1998. 4 ‘Okh, gospodi, togda my prosten’ko khodili i luchshe bylo’.Varvara Balabanova, interview with the author and Elena Minenok, Troitskoe, Kaluga oblast, 1 June 1999. 5 Varvara Balabanova, interview with the author, 30 May 1999. As Elena Zubkova points out, stealing from the sovkhoz was often the ‘fault of the state’ since it did not pay people enough. See Russia After the War: Hopes, Illusions, and Disapointments, 1945–57, trans. Hugh Ragsdale (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1998), 131.

268

Notes

6 Nikolai Nikitych Senatov, interview with the author and Elena Minenok, Petrovskoe, Kaluga oblast, 31 May 1999. Balabanova said much the same. 7 Natal’ia Giliarova, lecture at Moscow Conservatory, 26 July 1996. The exception – where men do sing wedding songs – is in Sekirino, Riazan. But despite men’s musical participation, the wedding ritual in Sekirino is matriarchal in the sense that the girl’s parents go to the house of the boy to propose their daughter, rather than the opposite. 8 Due to the potentially sensitive nature of this informant’s statements, I have changed her name. Varvara Balabanova of Troitsa told a similar story about a sorceress [koldunia]. Balabanova’s mother suddenly took ill, and because of various signs she knew that a spell had been put upon her. She died after three days, at the age of 43. Interview with the author, 30 May 1999. 9 For a list of such legends see www.tafkac.org/faq2k/medicine_index.html (accessed 18 July, 2002). 10 See further examples in Hermann Bausinger, Folk Culture in a World of Technology, trans. Elke Dettmer (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1990), 28–30. 11 James Scott, ‘Hegemony and the Peasantry,’ in Politics and Society 7, no. 3 (1977), 284, cited in Lynne Viola, ‘The Peasant Nightmare: Visions of Apocalypse in the Soviet Countryside,’ in Journal of Modern History 62, no. 4 (December 1990), 758. 12 ‘Kakim ty byl’ from Kubanskie Kazaki (Ivan Pyr’ev, 1949), with music by Isaak Dunaevskii and lyrics by M. Isakovskii and M. Vol´pin. ‘Ognei tak mnogo zolotykh’ from Delo bylo v Pen’kove (Stanislav Rostotskii, 1957) with music by Kirill.Molchanov and lyrics by N. Dorizo. ‘Napilas’ ia p’ianoi’ was popularized in the 1990s by Nadezhda Kadysheva and her group Golden Ring, but its origins are earlier. I was not able to find its composer. Due to its implied message (the speaker gets drunk because of an unfaithful husband) it was not published during the Soviet period., but has been widely published in songbooks since then. Other songs named as popular by my village informants include ‘Moskva zlatoglavaia,’ a city-style romance about Moscow in winter, and ‘Chernyi voron,’ with words by N. Verevkin, about a soldier who dies in battle. 13 Tania Modleski, ‘Time and Desire in the Woman’s Film,’ in Cinema Journal 23, no. 3 (Spring 1984), 21. 14 Louise McReynolds and Joan Neuberger, eds. ‘Introduction,’ in Imitations of Life: Two Centuries of Melodrama in Russia, ed. Louise McReynolds and Joan Neuberger (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002), 3. 15 Rudneva, too, speaks of peasants rejecting certain performances of songs because of aesthetic criteria, using expressions such as ‘the song doesn’t fly’ or ‘the song can’t be sung.’ See A. Rudneva, Russkoe narodnoe muzykal’noe tvorchestvo (Moscow: Kompozitor, 1994), 200, 203. 16 Zinaida V. Efremenkova, interview with the author, Troitskoe, Kaluge oblast, 1 June 1999. 17 Amateur clubs include theater, dance, and instrumental (orchestral) groups as well as choruses, and about half are children’s groups while half are adults’. Statistics and interpretations of them given by Viacheslav Korostylev of the Tsentr Narodnogo Tvorchestva (TsNT) in Riazan, from internal records of the TsNT and from a yearly report sent to all the TsNTs, Formirovanie samodeiatel’nogo narodnogo tvorchestva. Korostylev could not estimate how many of the groups were based in villages as opposed to cities. 18 James Clifford, The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), 248.

Notes 269 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

26 27 28 29 30

Volodia Talorin, interview with the author, Vorob’evka, 7 May 1999. Vasilii Kozlov, interview with the author, Vorob’evka, 12 May 1999. Irina Kozlova, interview with the author, Vorob’evka, 7 May 1999. Vasilii Kozlov, interview with the author, Vorob’evka, 9 May 1999. Vasilii Kozlov, interview with the author, Vorob’evka, 12 May 1999. Vasilii Kozlov, interview with the author, Vorob’evka, 12 May 1999. For instance, I attended a small folk festival in Novosibirsk where (unlike at the Vorob’evka festival) participants had to pay for their own accommodation. The director told me the center had recently been threatened with closure. In order to prevent its demise, he had asked colleagues in Moscow and elsewhere to write letters supporting the center’s continued existence. The center was allowed to continue, but with an extremely limited budget. Sheila Fitzpatrick, ‘The World of Ostap Bender: Soviet Confidence Men in the Stalin Period,’ in Slavic Review 61, no. 3 (Fall 2002), 537, 547. Bausinger 1990, 160. Andrei Kabanov, interview with the author, Moscow, 14 May 1999. Natal’ia Demchenko, interview with author, Vorob’evka, 11 May 1999. Elena Tychinina and Director of Semiluki Department of Culture, interviews with the author, Vorob’evka, 7 May 1999.

8 Making Memory 1 See, for example, Andrei Kabanov, Perspektivy fol’klornogo dvizheniia v sovremennom narodnom tvorchestve, Nauchno-issledovatel’skii institut kul’tury, Programma razvitiia narodnogo tvorchestva (Moscow, 1989), 24; and Marina Novitskaia, ‘Detskaia shkola narodnykh iskusstv,’ in Sokhranenie i vozrozhdenie fol’klornykh traditsii, ed. A. A. Banin (Moscow, 1990), 155. 2 I attended this celebration in 1990. See also N. I. Zhulanova, ‘Molodezhnoe fol’klornoe dvizhenie,’ in Samodeiatel’noe khudozhestvennoe tvorchestvo v SSSR: Ocherki istorii. Konets 1950-x–nachalo 1990-x godov., ed. L. P. Solntseva, M. V. Iunisov (St Petersburg, 1999), 119. 3 I. P. Pankrat’ev, ‘Sovremennyi liubitel’skii fol’klornyi kollektiv: nekotorye osobennosti deiatel’nosti,’ in Khudozhestvennaia samodeiatel’nost’: Traditsii, masterstvo, vospitanie, Nauchno-issledovate’lskii institut kul’tury, Sbornik nauchnykh trudov No. 144 (Moscow, 1985), 32. 4 Novitskaia, 155. 5 Andrezej Walicki, The Slavophile Controversy: History of a Conservative Utopia in Nineteenth-Century Russian Thought, trans. Hilda Andrews-Rusiecka (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press 1989 [1975]), 198; N. Zernov, Three Russian Prophets: Khomyakov, Dostoevsky, Solov’ev (London, 1944), 37–8; Elena Hellberg-Hirn, Soil and Soul: The Symbolic World of Russianness (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998), 94. 6 This group is discussed in Chapter 7. 7 Village of Liubovnikovo, Riazan’ oblast, 29 July 1996. 8 Helena Goscilo, ‘The Gendered Trinity of Russian Cultural Rhetoric Today – or the Glyph of the H[i]eroine,’ in Soviet Hieroglyphics: Visual Culture in Late Twentieth-Century Russia, ed. Nancy Condee (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1995), 81. 9 Alan Dundes, ‘What is Folklore?’ in The Study of Folklore, ed. Alan Dundes (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1965), 4. 10 Village of Kochemary, Riazan’ oblast, 19 and 20 October, 1998. 11 Much has been written about transmission in folkloric traditions. As I noted in Chapter 3, Kabanov and Pokrovsky found that transmission of Russian poly-

270

12 13

14 15 16

17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

Notes

phonic music was relatively casual: there was no apprenticeship process, and often people ‘just started singing.’ The structure of the music permitted relatively inexperienced singers to participate in singing the simpler, lower parts, while the precentor and the diskant or highest podgolosok were commonly sung by the more accomplished singers. By contrast, in traditions such as that of the Ukrainian minstrels, transmission was accomplished by apprenticeship to an established master. After the last of the minstrels were wiped out in 1939 under Stalin, no such transmission was possible and the next generation of these traditional musicians had to learn from published texts. See Natalie Kononenko, Ukrainian Minstrels: And the Blind Shall Sing (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1998), 116–17. As a further contrast, in the sphere of classical music, transmission is by formal education. It was this system of transmission that was applied to all the arts, including folklore, by the Soviets, so disrupting the traditional transmission patterns; Alekseev points out that due to ‘the total liquidation of illiteracy’ – and, I would add, due to the professionalization of folklore performance – ‘whole generations have been totally left out’ of the process of folkloric oral transmission. Today, he noted in 1988, oral transmission commonly skips a generation: older people deliver their knowledge of folk traditions to their grandchildren, bypassing the generation of the fathers. See Eduard Alekseev, Fol’klor v kontekste sovremennoi kultury: rassuzhdeniia o sudbakh narodnoi pesni (Moscow: Sovetskii kompozitor, 1988), 68. Giliarova, 31 October 1998. Rudneva died in 1983. For example, at a rehearsal on 30 April 1999, the group was learning a wedding song from Riazan’ oblast, ‘Nauchi-ka molodets.’ Giliarova corrected the lead singer several times on timbre, pacing, and manner of pronouncing the words. The girl singing upper voice was told to imitate one of the other members, who sang the top notes ‘in the head.’ (For Giliarova this head-voice timbre likely suggested a hint of a ‘church’ vocal quality and represented a remnant of a preRevolutionary aspect of the tradition). Lower voices were told to sing more cleanly, in unison. The group was asked to sing in smaller units and Giliarova made comments such as ‘You’re both yelling,’ and ‘Now I understand, there’s not enough of that timbre in the middle.’ Giliarova, 31 October 1998. Kubrakova, interview with the author, 24 September 1998. Of course, this may also be a classic case of the ethnomusicologist imputing his/her own observations to his/her informants. Krasnopevtseva said that the grandmothers do not actually articulate that they are listening for overtones; rather, she simply noticed that when she could hear overtones they liked the performance, and vice versa. Krasnopevtseva, interview with the author, 20 January 1999. Timothy Taylor, Global Pop: World Music, World Markets (New York: Routledge, 1997), 21. BBC Monitoring International Reports, ‘Russian Public TV broadcasts Orthodox Christmas service in Moscow,’ Worldwide BBC Monitoring Service, January 6 1999; Reynolds. O. V. Makarova and A. V. Glumova, Vot prishlo, prikatilo, Rozhdestvo Khristovo… (Saratov: Saratovskii oblastnoi Dom kul’tury i nauki, 1998), 14. Anzhelika Glumova, interview with the author, Saratov, 9 January 1999. T. S. Makashina, ‘Sviatki’ (foreword), in Sviatki: Sbornik, ed. G. E. Levkodimov and L. M. Firsova (Moscow: ZAO RIFME, ‘Molodezhnaia Estrada’ series, 1997), 5–7. Makashina, 8. Makarova and Glumova, 14. Glumova, 9 January 1999.

Notes 271 26 Zinaida Vilochkova (b. 1929), interview with the author, village of Vladykino, Saratov oblast’, 7 January 1999. Casual conversation with elderly woman passerby on street yielded same memory about caroling: ‘no one caroled.’ 27 Glumova, 9 January 1999. 28 Alexei Karas’ev (b. 1955), interview with author, village of Vladykino, Saratov oblast’, 6 January 1999. 29 Karas’ev. Original text: ‘Ia malen’kii mal’chik sel na stakanchik stakanchik khrup davai mne rub. Otkryvai sunduchok vynimai piatachok.’ 30 V. A. Lipinskaia, ‘Narodnye traditsii v sovremennykh kalendarnykh obriadakh i prasznikakh russkogo naseleniia Altaiskogo kraia,’ in Russkie: semeinyi i obshchestvenyi byt, Institut etnografii im. N. N. Mikluxo-Maklaia, (Moscow: Nauka, 1989), 118. 31 Glumova, 9 January 1999. 32 Sue Bridger, ‘Rural Youth,’ Soviet Youth Culture ed. Jim Riordan (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1989), 89. 33 Ania Marshalkina (b. 1982), interview with the author, village of Vladykino, Saratov oblast’, 7 January 1999. 34 Makarova and Glumova. 35 Glumova, 9 January 1999. 36 ‘Rozhdestvo vo Vladykino,’ Saratov Television, 1999. 37 I base this supposition on information given me by Glumova in a phone conversation in late January 1999, and on the information given me by two elderly informants mentioned in an earlier footnote. 38 Makarova and Glumova, 1; Karas’ev, 6 January 1999. 39 I do not mean to suggest that any revivalists’ goals, actions, or productions are harmful in the way that Stalinist policies toward folklore were. Furthermore, I recognize that my own work, including this book, ‘advocates a particular interpretation of folk heritage’. There is no ‘way out’ of ideology.

9 Conclusion 1 Natal’ia Sapozhnikova, ‘Nadezhda Babkina – voitel’nitsa Russkoi pesni,’ in SelfMade Man: Zhurnal o liudiakh i ikh uspekhakh 20, November 2002. 2 Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge (New York: Pantheon, 1972), 42. 3 David Brooks, Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000), 227. 4 Viktoriia Loginova, ‘Inna Zhelannaia: Ia vybiraiu svobodu,’ in Moskovskaia Pravda (5 April 1995), 8, available online at http://messia.narod.ru/zhelannaja.htm (Accessed 18 October, 2002). 5 Timothy Brennan, ‘World Music Does Not Exist,’ in Discourse 23, no. 1 (Winter 2000), 45. 6 Brennan, 46. 7 ‘Biography’ on the Peter Gabriel Official Web Site, www.petergabriel.com/biog/ (accessed 18 October, 2002). See also Simon Frith, ‘The Discourse of World Music,’ in Western Music and Its Others: Difference, Representation, and Appropriation in Music, ed. Georgina Born and David Hesmondhalgh (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000), 306–7. 8 Brennan, 47. 9 Jovan Howe, Irina Raspopova, Sinjie Lipjagi: Village of Blue Linden Trees (Leiden, Netherlands: Pan Records Ethnic Series, 1996), PAN 2039CD. Other discs include: Sygrai, Vanya / Play, Vanya: Folk Instrumental Music and its Vocal Counterpart in the Southern, Western, and Central Regions of Russia (Leiden, Netherlands: Pan Records Ethnic Series, 1991), PAN 2002CD; Vyacheslav

272

10

11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

20

21

22

23 24 25

Notes

Shchurov, Tam Letal Pavlin / A Peacock once Went Flying: Songs from the Area of Belgorod Town and the Oskol River (Leiden, Netherlands: Pan Records Ethnic Series, 1991), PAN 2001CD; Ekaterina Dorokhova, Chants des Peuples de Russie: Regions of Briansk, Tula, Arkhangelsk, Sverdlovsk … (Paris: Le Chant du Monde, 1994), CMT 274978. But this is very difficult, since often the copyright for field recordings belongs to the person who made the recording, not the artists. On the political and ethical issues connected with these practices, see David Hesmondhalgh, ‘International Times: Fusions, Exoticism, and Antiracism in Electronic Dance Music,’ in Born and Hesmondhalgh, 286–93. Iurii Saprykin, ‘Zdorovo, Kostroma,’ on Afisha, www.afisha.ru/cdreview?id=136722 (accessed 13 May 2002). Lev Kulakovskii, ‘Kostroma,’ in Sovetskaia etnografiia 1 (1946), 163–86, and Iskusstvo sela Dorozhevo (Moscow, 1957, 1965); V. K. Sokolova, Vesenne-letnie kalendarnye obriady russkikh, ukraintsev i belorusov (Moscow, 1979). Kulakovskii 1946, 185. Some listeners found this music not only humorous but a hilarious parody of the Soviet folk music tradition that took itself too seriously. Viacheslav Rusin, ‘Ivan Kupala: My ne fanaty fol’klora, my fanaty krasivoi muzyki,’ in Zelenograd on-line, http://zol.gorcom.ru/music/music6-ivankupala.htm (accessed 13 May 2002). ‘Ivan Kupala: Kostroma,’ on Notonosets, http://noto.ruz.net/al/ikk.htm (accessed 13 May 2002) Dmitrii Serostanoff, Gazeta ‘EN’ (20 April, 2000), http://muzyka.kulichki.net/ivan_kupala/ (accessed 13 May, 2002). Oleg Klimov, ‘Ivan Kupala – konstruktor vysokoi stepeni slozhnosti,’ Muzykal’naia gazeta 47 (1999), www.nestor.minsk.by/mg/mg99/47/mg94705.html (accessed 13 May 2002). Bulgarian Voices [Angelite] and Huun-Huur-Tu featuring Sergei Starostin and Mikhail Alperin, Fly, Fly, My Sadness, JARO 1996 (4197–2) and Shanachie (SHA-64071); Bulgarian Voices [Angelite] and Moscow Art Trio with HuunHuur-Tu, Mountain Tale, JARO 1998, Zebra Acoustic Series 1999 (ZA 44405–2). Alians, Sdelano v belom / Made in White (BSA Records, 1989); Mari Boine and Alians, Motel Moskva (Norway, 1993); Inna Zhelannaia, Vodorosl’ (General Records, 1995, GR 95056); Inna Zhelannaia and Farlanders, Inozemets (GreenWave, 1998, GRCD-98–1, and Jaro-4222); Inna & The Farlanders, The Dream of Endless Nights (Shanachie, 1999); Farlanders, Moments: Live in Germany (Jaro 4230–2, Green Wave, 2000). Inna Zhelannaia and Farlanders, ‘Inozemets’; transcription of village recording published in Viacheslav Shchurov, Belgorodskoe Prioskol’e (Moscow, 1995), 286–7. After Shchurov recorded the song with his student ensemble Solovka in 1968, the song became quite popular among groups in the youth folklore movement; Starostin called it a ‘shlager’ (a hit). I base these observations partly on the transcription made by Shchurov and the 1968 recording by Solovka. The vocals also lack the traditional solo lead-in; and they break after each pair of verses for an instrumental interlude, which is not traditional for a Russian dance-song. Starostin, interview with the author, 22 December 1998. Ivan Kupala, Zdorovo Kostroma: Kollektsia remiksov i rimeikov, with groups Griv, Deadushki, Leprikonsi, Diskoteka Avariia, Zdob si Zdub, and S.P.O.R.T. (Soiuz, 2000); and Ivan Kupala, Zvezdnaia Seriia (Star Records, 2002). For example, a critic of the Kupala album stated that the group ‘traveled to villages’ with a tape recorder when in fact they used recordings donated to them

Notes 273 by ethnomusicologists (see Dmitrii Serostanoff, Gazeta ‘EN’). Another critic said the group mixed ‘two seconds of Arkhangel’sk grannies with 3 seconds of Bashkir grannies, and a Breton instrumental,’ when in fact each of the songs is composed mainly of one or two recordings of Russian villagers (see Timofei Ovsenin, ‘CD Ivan Kupala “Kostroma”,’ in Afisha, www.afisha.ru/cdreview?id=6439 (accessed 13 May, 2002). With Starostin’s music, some critics misidentified some of the folk instruments used, and one critic told Zhelannaia she had trouble distinguishing her own authored songs from the folk songs on the album (see Viktoriia Loginova, ‘Inna Zhelannaia: Ia vybiraiu svobodu’). 26 Richard Stites, ‘The Domestic Muse: Music at Home in the Twilight of Serfdom,’ in Intersections and Transpositions: Russian Music, Literature, and Society, ed. Andrew Baruch Wachtel (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1998), 2–3. 27 December 5 1998. 28 See, for example, Siberian-style vocals in ‘Sberegla’ (Poias Ul’chi, CD 1994 SNC Records, MC 1996 SNC Records, MC 1997 Moroz Records) and ‘Provezen’ ’ (Uzaren’, LP 1992 SNC Records, CD 1993 SNC Records, MC 1996 SNC Records, MC 1997 Moroz Records). 29 Moj milyonok dorogoi

30

kak tsvetochek alen’kii Stan bol’shoi, usy bolshoi, Tol’ko khren-to malen’kii Na okne rastet tsvetochek Goluboi da i alen’kii Lushche malen’kii stoiachii Chem bol’shoi da vialen’kii

31 Although the group knew all the words and sang without hesitation, there was no dishkant, they pronounced the words without reducing their vowels, and they introduced pitches that were not in the original scale of the song. This transformation was explained when the leader, Valera Zhuk, told me that although the members of the group back in the 1980s had learned the songs from the cassette he brought from Saratov, the current members had never heard the cassette, and had learned the songs from other members. Interview with the author, 15 May 1999. 32 Richard Schechner, ‘Collective Reflexivity: Restoration of Behavior,’ in The Crack in the Mirror: Reflexive Perspectives in Anthropology, ed. J. Ruby (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982), 63; Edward L. Schieffelin, ‘Problematizing Performance,’ in Ritual, Performance, Media, ed. Felicia Hughes-Freeland (London: Routledge, 1998), 200. 33 Schieffelin, 205. 34 Tom F. Driver, Liberating Rites: Understanding the Transforming Power of Ritual (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1998), 156. 35 Victor W. Turner, The Ritual Process (Chicago, IL: Aldine, 1969), 94–7; Driver, 160. 36 Peter Stallybrass and Allon White, The Politics and Poetics of Transgression, (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986), 200.

Index

Transliterations of Russian terms appear in italic font. Endnotes are indicated by "n" and the endnote number. Endnotes are listed on the pages where their full text occurs, e.g., 231n5 indicates endnote number 5, whose full text occurs on page 231. a capella singing 20, 57 Abu-Lughod, Lila 243n18 accordion 18, 22, 62, 155; Play, Accordion! 108-9 acting out of folk songs/rituals 93-4, 100, 118 Agafonov, Oleg 267n25 agrarian calendar/rites 20, 184, 212 Agrenev-Slavianskii chorus 28-31 Agrenev-Slavianskii, Dmitri 28 alcohol abuse 177, 181 Alekseev, Eduard 271n11 Alekseeva, O. V. 256n20 Alexander III, Tsar 151 alienation (ostranenie) 91 All-World Russian Assembly 158 Alliance of Folk Ensembles 132 Almazov, B. 268n40 Alperin, Mikhail 227 Altrichter, Helmut 248n11 amateur artistic activity 46-7, 50, 52-3, 74; and patronage (shefstvo) 61; see also professionalism amateur music 100; amateur clubs 48, 192; bard movement 71-2; folk choirs 8, 46-50, 51-2, 74, 162; folk orchestras 55-6; see also funding American folk music 7-9, 223; revival movement 70, 72 ’Americanization of music’ 223, 228 Anastasiev, M. 252n125 Andreev, Vasilii 16-19, 23, 33, 244n9 anonymity 73 Antonov, Mikhail 260n5 Army Ensemble 47

artel 102 Asaf’ev, B. 249n22 audio cassette recordings 87, 132-3, 137; learning from 210 authenticity 28, 39, 74-8, 121-3, 229, 236; in contemporary folk culture 184, 195-6, 201-3, 209, 218-20; and historicism 25-6; of instruments 1617; and mainstream performance 109; peasant culture as source of 23, 70 author’s background/perceptions 7-11 Azadovskii, M. K. 246n67 Babkina, Nadezhda 106, 107, 117 Baiburin, A. K. 262n37 Bailey, James 247n100 Balabanova, Vavara 178, 268n4, 269n56, 269n8 Balakirev, Mily 24, 25, 26 balalaikas 16-17, 18, 22; derogatory slang use of term 117 ballet 27, 44 bard movement 71-2 Barker 263n58 Bausinger, Hermann 6-7, 109, 122, 134, 242n12, 261n11, 261n16, 262n36, 262n42, 263n60, 269n10, 270n27 Ben-Amos, Dan 261n17 Bershadskaya, T. 257n41 Bespalov, Ivan 210 bias 7, 9-10; see also methods of study Blanter, M. 262n38 blat (reciprocal favors) 200

Index 275 Bogina, Elena 207 Boiko, Iurii 17, 18, 244n6-7, 244n11-12, 261n24 Boine, Mari 273n20 Bolsheviks 35, 161, 183 Bonnell, Victoria E. 251n92, 251n96 Borenstein, Eliot 142, 251n90, 264n10 Boris Godunov 96 Born, Georgina 273n10 Borneman, John 263n2 Borodin, Aleksander 24, 44 Bortsov, Vitalii 172-5, 268n37, 268n41 Bourdieu, Pierre 90, 243n21, 243n24, 259n71 boycotts (of new music material) 50 Boyes, Georgina 9, 242n15 Braz, Svetlana 262n28 Brennan, Timothy 272n5-6, 272n8 Brezhnev 88, 173-4 Bridger, Sue 268n2, 272n32 Briusova, N. 250n55 Broch, Hermann 254n147 Brooks, David 272n3 Brown, Malcolm Hamrick 244n17 Brubaker, Rogers 263n2, 264n5 Bruk, Genrikh 250n60, 255n165 Brumfield, William Craft 246n58 Bryce, Mayo 252n124, 252n126, 253n127, 253n130 Bryne, David 223 Bugoslavskii, S. 250n71 Bulgarian ensembles 225, 227 Butler, Judith 167, 243n21, 267n28 byliny (epic songs) 20, 29, 69 Calinescu, Matei 254n152 ’cantilena’ (lyrical) style 64 Cantwell, Robert 242n14 carnival quality (of folk performances) 91, 92, 134, 225-6 caroling 1-2, 9-10, 20, 212-16 Carter, Stephen K. 264n13 cassette recordings see audio cassette recordings Castillo, Greg 248n18 Catherine the Great 19 CD of text examples 15 censorship 135 chastushki (sung limericks) 22, 29, 40, 41, 231-2, 235; performance by children 125-7, 134 Chekhov, I. 254n140-1

Cheremukhin, M. 252n116, 253n137, 254n159 Chermnykh, Mikhail 52 Cherniavsky, Michael 264n6 Chernobyl’ accident 104 Chicago World’s Fair 31 Chicherov, V. I. 257n38 children’s folk ensembles 2-3, 48, 50, 118; Izmailovskaia Sloboda 125, 129; ’Little Spindle’ 101, 124, 128, 130, 210-11 Chinyaeva, Elena 244n19 Chizhova, A. 254n162, 265n27 choirs see folk choruses choreography see dance choruses see folk choruses Christmas celebration 212-20; caroling 1-2, 9-10, 20, 212-16 Chulkov, Mikhail 22 classical music 17, 24, 44-5, 55-7; in post-Soviet nationalism 139, 140 Clifford, James 13, 242n8, 242n13, 243n25-6, 270n18 club, village 48-9, 50, 177, 182, 189 collection: of folk songs 23, 26, 31; of folklore 36-7, 73, 84 collective (kollektiv) 47 collectives, village singing 80 collectivism (sobornost’) 100-3, 130 collectivization 35, 38-9, 71 commercialism of folklore 107, 110-11, 223-5 Communists 64, 143 competitions 47, 53 Composers’ Unions 44 Conquest, Robert 248n14 Cossack Circle ensemble 105, 144 Cossackry 141, 144-6, 160-75; amateur/professional folk choirs 52, 106-7, 162, 163, 172-3; ataman (leader) 157, 164, 169-70; Bolotnoe parish celebration 153-9; Cossack revival movement 141, 146, 160, 1634, 168-75; Cossack roots 104-5; costumes/dress 155, 163, 173-4; decossackization 161, 170; fistfighting games 157-9, 172; history of 161-3, 164; masculinity and 160, 162, 165-8, 174, 181; myths of 164-5, 168-71, 175; and national music 1446; Old Believers and 144; propagandization of 169, 173-4 costumes 30, 32, 48, 54, 71; Boyar 29;

276

Index

Cossack 155, 163, 173-4; in postSoviet folk festivals 148-9; in postSoviet mainstream performances 107, 115-16, 120 counter-melodies (podgoloski) 21, 26, 180 crafts and folklore funding 198-9 Crimean War 24 cruel romances 40, 122, 182, 185 Cui, César 24 cultural-enlightenment schools 48, 74 cultural identity see identity

epic songs: byliny 20, 29, 69; of Stalin era 41-2, 73 Erokhina, Natal’ia 116, 261n21 estrada (stage) 3, 19, 30-1, 33; in mainstream performances 107, 117; see also stage aesthetics ethnography 26, 31-2, 40, 77, 184; field recordings 225-6; and Pokrovsky Ensemble 92, 94-5, 103-5; see also World Music Movement Eurasianism 142 Evseenkova, Anna 178

dance 59, 64, 83, 119; ballet 27, 44; Cossack dance ensembles 144, 162, 172-3; dance-games 155; dance songs (pliasovye) 20, 100; Soviet ’national dances’ 66 defamiliarization (ostranenie) 91, 96 Degtirev, Alexsandr 79 Demchenko, Natal’ia 270n29 Department of Propaganda of the Central Committee 173-4 Diaghilev, Serge 27 dialects 20, 48, 100 dissemination (of folk music) 97-100 divertissements (intermission acts) 3, 19, 22, 28 Dobrenko, Evgeny 45, 243n24, 250n469, 250n51, 250n53 Dobrovol’sky, B. M. 256n13 documentaries 108-9, 169, 204, 208, 21120 Don Cossack Choir 52 Dorokhova, Ekaterina 118, 119, 184, 262n27, 262n34, 263n46, 272n9 Dow, James 242n6 Driver, Tom F. 274n34 Druts, E. 244n19 Dundes, Alan 242n9, 263n56, 271n9 Dunham, Vera 250n50 Dunlop, John B. 248n21, 266n50 Dzerzhinsky, Ivan 161

’fakelore’ 9, 42, 74, 122 Famitsyn, A. S. 17 Farewell to Matyora (film) 71 fascism 38 Fatiushina, Iuliia 115-16 (incl. Fig. 4.2), 117 Feifer, Gregory 243n20 femininity see gender festivals see folk festivals Fink, Robert 246n75 fistfighting games 157-9, 172 Fitzpatrick, Sheila 37, 200, 248n3, 248n8, 248n10, 248n13, 248n15-16, 249n26, 252n121, 270n26 The Five see The Mighty Handful flutes 17, 101 the folk 5-6, 62-3, 222; nineteenthcentury views of 23-4; as post-Soviet national symbol 138-42, 143; redefined in Stalin period 38-43; Soviet views of 35-8; terminology changes 39, 117, 152; see also narod (the people); peasants folk choruses 17, 27-33, 38, 52, 102; allfemale 180-2; amateur 8, 46-50, 51-2, 74, 162; children’s ensembles 2-3, 48, 50, 118; gender separation 51-2, 54-5, 101, 179-83; kolkhoz folk choirs 48, 49-50; professional 47-8, 50, 52-5, 64, 162; of serfs 19; Soviet 17, 80, 93, 102, 229; see also mainstream folk performance folk choruses/ensembles, specific: Agrenev-Slavianskii chorus 28-31; Army Ensemble 47; Cossack Circle 105, 144; Don/Kuban Cossack Choir 52, 162; Ensemble Volia (Freedom) 112-13; Ermolovo ensemble 187-9; Folk Chorus of the Gnesin College 114; Folk Holiday (Narodnyi

Early Music movement 33 Edison cylinder machine 31 education 45, 58-62, 118-20; of choir directors 48, 59-60, 67, 118; learning in groups (ansamblevoe obuchenie) 101 Efremenkova, Zinaida V. 190, 269n16 Emel’ianov, L. I. 256n20, 256n23 Ensemble Volia (Freedom) 112-13

Index 277 prazdnik) 132; Gnesin Academy Folk Choir 112; Gornitsa 210; Ivan Kupala 225-8; Izmailovskaia Sloboda 125, 128; ’Little Spindle’ 101, 124, 128, 130, 210-11; Moscow Conservatory Folk Ensemble 206; Northern Russian Folk Choir 49; Omsk Folk Chorus 81; Petrozavodsk Music School ensemble 114, 117-19; Piatnitskii Choir 47, 53; Pokrovsky Ensemble 78-88; Red Army Choir 52; Red Army Song and Dance Ensemble of the USSR 53; Russian Music 128; Russian Song - Russkaia pesnia 106; Sirin Choir 118-19; Songster Workshop (Pesel’naia artel’) 123, 233; Stanitsa 113-14, 128, 163, 210; State Academic Kuban Cossack Choir 106-7; State Academic Piatnitsky Russian Folk Choir 107; Ural Russian Folk Chorus 61; Zabava (’Fun’) 131, 211-20 folk dance see dance folk festivals 147-8, 193, 196, 223; Moscow ’Folklore Spring’ festival 110-16, 118, 120, 139; Vorob’evka festival 147-52, 198-9 Folk Holiday (Narodnyi prazdnik) ensemble 132 folk instruments see instruments folk music 2-4, 16-34, 74-6; contemporary/popular 223-8; dissemination of 97-100, 196; and education system 58-62; exploitation potential 224-5; gap between rural and urban music 18, 86, 205, 222; narodnaia muzyka/narodnye pesni 39, 117, 184; post-1934 encouragement of 38, 180, 182, 189; see also American folk music; authenticity; revival folk orchestras 16-18, 27, 33, 55-7; gender separation in 51-2; post-1934 encouragement of 38 folk polyphony 33, 64-5, 67, 182, 208-9 folk-pop 110, 223-7, 229 folk-rock 95, 227 folk songs 20-2, 28-33, 74-8, 184-9; acting out of 30, 93-4; ’death of the folk song’ 9, 24, 111, 122; in opera 25-6, 57; Song Commission 31; and Soviet nationalism 40-2; ’The Song’

(symphonic arrangement/high culture) 45 folk theater 118-19, 128, 197 folklore 4-7, 13, 38-43, 117, 184-7; 1999 Moscow ’Folklore Spring’ Festival 110-16, 118; commercialism of 107, 110-12; dying out perceived 43, 73, 256n21; as hobby 46-9; liberals vs. purists 120-3; narodnoe tvorchestvo (’people’s creation’) 41, 43, 73; panRussian (obshcherusskii) principle 53-4, 119-20; and popular culture 222-36; preservation of 187-93, 20421; as propaganda 41-2, 54-5, 73, 77, 220; ’pseudofolklore’ 30-1, 42, 73; and Soviet national style 35-43; terminology changes 117, 184; see also collection; funding; memory; revival Folklore Commission (of the RSFSR) 78 folklorism 6-7, 13, 43, 229, 236; in late nineteenth century 24-33; and mainstream performance 109 Foucault, Michel 13, 222, 243n21, 243n24, 272n2 Friedlander, Saul 254n145-6 Frierson, Cathy 25, 246n55, 246n66 Frith, Simon 272n7 Fuller, Jennifer 246n52, 250n54 funding 106-8, 192; by Gazprom 110-12, 115-16, 139, 146; for Vorob’evka folklore 149-50, 193-200; see also professionalism Gabriel, Peter 223-4, 272n7 Gazprom: funding of folklore performance 110-12, 115-16, 139, 146; tax receipt in local products 199 Gellner, Ernest 138, 263n1 gender 51-2, 176, 179-83; and Cossack identity/performance 160, 162, 166-8, 181; female view of folk song texts 185-7; separation in singing 51-2, 545, 101, 179-83; valuation of women 181, 183; see also masculinity ’genetic memory’ 105, 144, 218-19 Geographical Society (Russian) 26, 31 Gessler, A. 244n19 Giliarova, Natalia 81, 85, 118, 251n78, 253n133, 255n7, 255n170, 256n21, 257n43, 258n56, 261n22, 262n26, 262n35, 269n7, 271n12-14; and

278

Index

contemporary village singing 206, 208-9; on preservation of songs 121-2 Gippius, Evgenii 77-81, 245n33, 246n69, 254n157-8, 257n32, 257n34, 257n378, 257n41 glasnost 106, 112, 121, 134; and encouragement of folklore traditions 180, 182, 189 Glinka, Mikhail 17, 24, 46, 151 Glumova, Anzhelika 92-3, 131, 263n49, 265n25, 271n20-1, 272n24-5, 272n27, 272n31, 272n34-5, 272n37-8; and video documentary of Zabava 212, 215, 216-19 Gnesin Academy 107, 110, 112, 118 Gnesin Institute 60, 74, 80, 130-1 Golden Ring - Zolotoe kol’tso 107 Goldschmidt, Paul 263n58-9 Golubchina, Z. 251n76 Goncharova, Natal’ia 27 Gorbachev 71 Gorbunov, B. V. 266n46-8 Gorky, Maxim 29, 247n89, 249n33; 1934 speech redefining folklore 39-41, 48 Gornitsa 210 Goscilo, Helena 207, 243n20, 270n8 Grau, Lester W. 266n10 Graves-Brown, Paul 243n22-3 Great Russian Orchestra 17 Grotovskii, Jerzy 118 Gruntovskii, A. 266n46 guitar poetry movement 71-2 Guroff, Gregory and Alexander 264n3, 265n39 Gusev, V. E. 256n23 ’Gypsy’ dances 66 ’Gypsy’ singers 19 Haltmeyer, Norman 252n125 Handler, Richard 23-4, 245n49 Hayward, Max 249n31 Hellberg-Hirn, Elena 270n5 Herder, Johann Gottfried 23, 245n43 Hesmondhalgh, David 273n10 heterophony 21 hidden meaning (podtekst) 74 high culture 40, 43-6, 140, 207, 229 Hilton, Alison 25, 27, 246n59-60, 246n71-2, 260n98 historicism 25, 156 Hitler 63 Hobsbawm, Eric 243n27 Hodge, Thomas P. 265n35

holidays 20, 100; Bolotnoe parish celebration 153-9; Christmas 212-20; in contemporary village culture 1845, 189-92, 204-5, 212-20; new versions in Soviet period 42-3, 143, 189-91; New Year’s Eve 216; restoration by Cossack revival 172; video documentaries of 208, 212-20; Whitsunday 20, 187, 190-1 Holquist, Peter 266n1, 266n4-7, 267n15, 268n42 House of Amateur Art 48 House of Culture 48-9, 172, 192 House of People’s Art 48 Hove, Jowan 244n28, 245n30 Howe, Jovan 272n9 Howell, Dana Prescott 246n67, 248n8-9, 249n23, 249n28-9, 249n32, 249n36, 252n108, 257n29-30, 257n33 Huxley-Blythe, Peter J. 268n32 Iakovlev, M. M. 250n69 icons 153-4, 159, 177 identity 12-13; national 4-6, 138-9, 194, 219-20; regional 103-5, 147-52; see also Cossackry; nationalism Ikonnikova, V. 254n159 ‘immersion’ in a style 132-3 instruments 16-17, 56, 84, 227-8; accordion 18, 22, 62, 108-9, 155; balalaikas 16-17, 18, 22; brelka (folk flute) 17; domras 16-17; guitar 19, 712; gusli 16-17; mandolin 17; pan pipes (kugikly) 101; piano 19, 48; rozhki (folk horns) 17, 101; svireli (folk flute) 17; tambourines 17, 151; timpani 17; zhaleika 227-8 intelligentsia 4, 107, 117, 196 ’internationalism’ 38 interview methods 10-11 interviews/interviewees 237-41 Ippolitovo-Ivanovo State MusicalPedagogical Institute and College 114 Isakovskii, M. 262n38 Ivan Kupala 225-8, 273n18, 273n24 Ivan the Terrible 25 Ivanov, Volodia 195 Izmailovskaia Sloboda 125, 128 Jones, Siân 243n22-3 Justus, Ursula 39, 249n30 Kabanov, Anastasia 127-8 Kabanov, Andrei 78-87 (incl. Fig. 3.2),

Index 279 125, 204, 232, 256n14-15, 257n39, 257n42, 258n47-8, 258n62, 258n64, 259n84-5, 259n87, 259n90, 259n96, 260n101, 263n50, 263n52, 263n61, 265n20-1, 270n1, 270n28, 271n11; on contemporary village performance 200-1; ’immersion’ approach critique 133; performance for Tuleev’s campaign 144-6; on teaching/learning singing 97, 99, 102-3; Vorob’evka classes 195-7 Kabanov, Ivan 126, 127 (incl. Figs. 4.3, 4.4) Kabanova, Zhanna 93, 118, 125, 262n39, 263n47, 263n53-4, 265n25; on exposure to village life 130-1, 1323 Kadysheva, Nadezhda 2, 107-8, 109 Kandinskii, Vasilii 27 Kann-Novikova, E. 247n102 kant style singing 21 Karas’ev, Alexei 215-16, 272n28 Kashcheeva, E. V. 242n3-4 Kaz’min, Petr 53 Keldysh, Iu. V. 244n10 Kertzer, David I. 168, 264n9, 266n42, 266n44, 267n29 KGB 88, 158 Khitrovo, A. 247n88 Khrushchev era 70-1, 72, 172 Kidjo, Angelique 224 Kingston-Mann, Esther 248n1 Kireevsky, Petr 23 kitsch 7, 62-4, 106, 110, 151, 222; slang terms for 117 Klement’ev, E. I. 262n25 Klimov, Oleg 273n18 klub 48-9, 50, 177, 182, 189 Knight, Nathaniel 152, 264n5, 265n37-8 kokoshniki 115, 120 kolkhoz (collective farm) 48, 177; folk choirs 48, 49-50; workers’ independent singing 74 Kolotilova, A. 49 Kommissinskii, V. 266n8, 268n38 Kononenko, Natalie 271n11 Kontsevich, G. 162 Koposov, A. 73, 251n85, 256n22 Kornblatt, Judith D. 264n6, 264n8, 266n49, 267n24 Korostylev, Viacheslav 269n17 Kostiuk, Aleksandr 107 Kostiukovets, L. F. 251n78

Kostroma 100, 225-6, 228, 230 Kotikova, N. 255n169, 258n49 Kotkin, Stephen 243n24 Kotov, Andrei 118 Koval’skii, Vadim 167 (Fig. 6.1), 168, 217 Kozlov, Vasilii 140 (Fig. 5.1), 147, 14952, 193-203, 219, 265n26, 265n34, 270n20-4 Krader, Barbara 257n41 Krasnopevtseva, Elena 101-2, 125, 21011, 259n93-5, 262n44, 271n16-17; ’Little Spindle’ children’s group 101, 124, 128, 130, 210-11 Kruglov, Iurii 251n87 Kubrakova, Valentina 210, 268n36, 271n15 kuchka see The Mighty Handful (moguchaia kuchka) Kudriakov, V. 250n59 kulak (rich peasant) 37 Kulakovskii, Lev 253n136, 257n41, 273n12-13 Kuliakova, Aleksandra 186-7 Kunanbaeva, Alma 262n45 Kundera, Milan 62-3, 254n148-51 Kustovskii, Evgenii S. 244n28, 246n67 Kuznetsov, Evgenii 29, 30-1, 32, 243n2, 244n8, 244n16, 244n18, 244n20, 245n35, 247n78, 247n83, 247n85, 247n87, 247n90-1, 248n107-8, 254n161 Kuznetsova, Valentina 82-3 Laba, Roman 265n24, 266n2, 267n19-22 lampasy 173-4 LaPasha, L. Robin C. 49, 250n61, 250n67-8, 251n74, 251n78-81, 251n84, 251n94-5, 252n112-14, 252n118, 252n122-3, 254n142 Lapin, Viktor 247n102, 248n112, 255n10 Lebed, Alexander 142 Lenin, Vladimir 248n2 Lenskii, A. 250n65 Leont’ev, N. P. 256n18 Levin, Eve 249n41 Levin, Theodore 152, 243n18, 252n109, 255n6, 256n24, 258n54, 258n65-9, 260n102, 266n11 liberals (in revival movement) 120-37 Lineff, Eugenie 247n98-9 Lineva, Evgeniia 28, 31, 33, 85, 244n27,

280

Index

245n30, 247n100-1, 260n98; folk choir description 102 Linnekin, Jocelyn 23-4, 245n49 Lipinskaia, V. A. 272n30 Listopadov, A. 265n20, 267n14, 267n17 ’Little Spindle’ 101, 124, 128, 130, 21011 Liubimov, Iurii 96 Liuter, A. 250n59 Livingston, Tamara 70, 97, 245n48, 247n95, 248n110, 255n2, 256n17, 257n28, 263n67 Lixfeld, Hannjost 242n6 Lobanov, Mikhail 247n100 Loginova, Viktoriia 272n4 Lokshin, D. 247n80-4 Lussier, Danielle N. 264n17 Luzhkov, Iurii 143-4 Lvov, Nikolai 22 lyric songs 21, 30 lyrical (‘cantilena’) style 64 McCaskill, Mary Elizabeth 252n126 McNay, Lois 243n24 McNeal, Robert H. 267n16 McReynolds, Louise 185, 269n14 magic 182-3, 213 mainstream folk performance 106-9, 110, 118-20 Makarova, Olga V. 214, 271n20, 272n24, 272n34, 272n38 Makashina 272n23 Makhova, Liuda 230 Mally, Lynn 265n30 Marshalkina, Ania 242n1, 272n33 Martynov, Vladimir 96 masculinity: and Cossack image/myth 160-75; gender separation/roles 51-2, 54, 181; and Orthodox Church participation 158-9; see also gender mass singing 47 Mazhola, A. 268n40 Mazo, Margarita 245n34, 245n40 Mead, Margaret 94 Medvedev, V. 268n33 Mekhnetsov, Anatolii 122-3, 124, 129, 255n171, 262n40, 263n51, 263n57; and ’immersion’ in a style 133; and sexuality in performances 134 Mel’gunov, Iurii 26, 246n69 memory 4, 70, 187; ’genetic memory’ 105, 144, 218-19; reconstruction by revivalists 185, 204-21

mentoring 61, 210 methods of study 10-15 Meyer, Alfred G. 251n88 Miakisheva, Tatiana 189 Michrina, Barry P. 243n17 The Mighty Handful (moguchaia kuchka) 24, 25-6, 44-6, 246n57 Mikhailova, Nikita 143-4, 245n37 Miller, Frank J. 249n38, 249n40, 251n98, 256n19-21 Minenok, Elena 178-9, 249n34, 268n4, 269n6 Ministry of Culture 147, 149-50, 199 modernism 90-1 Modleski, Tania 185, 269n13 moguchaia kuchka see The Mighty Handful Molesworth, Charles 254n138, 254n153 Moller-Sally, Steven 250n57 Moreeva, A. 254n159 Moscow Conservatory Folk Ensemble 206 Moscow ’Folklore Spring’ festival 11016, 118, 120, 139 Moscow House of Composers 83 Moscow State Musical Theater of Folklore 108 Moscow State Shnittke Institute and College 114 Moscow State University of Culture 114 Moscow University MusicalEthnographic Commission 31-2 Moscow University Society of Lovers of Natural Science, Anthropology and Ethnography 26, 31 MTV 109 Mukhin, A. A. 266n13 Mukhina, Vera 39 ’multi-track’ recordings 87, 132-3 mummery 212-15 Muradeli 64 Muratov, L. 267n31 music CD (of text examples) 15 music high school 48 Musical-Ethnographic Commission 31-2 Muslim condemnation of Tuleev 145 Musorgsky, Modest 24, 96 Nadezhdina, Nadezhda 66 narod (the people) 5, 38-9, 222; redefinition by revivalists (Pokrovsky Ensemble) 90; terminology changes 39, 117, 152; use of narodnyi as

Index 281 modifier 39, 117, 184; see also the folk; peasants narodnoe tvorchestvo (’people’s creation’) 41, 43, 73 narodnost’ (nationality) 46, 139, 152 national character 25, 37-8, 205, 222 national identity 4-6, 138-9, 194, 219-20 National Salvation Front 142 national style 24-7, 28, 35-67; panRussian (obshcherusskii) principle 53-4, 119-20; Russian ’national school’ 44; Soviet national (narodnyi) dance 66 National Theater of Folk Music and Song 108 nationalism 71, 123-4, 138-59; narodnost’ (nationality) 46, 139, 152; and Orthodoxy 112, 144, 147, 150, 153-9; polycentric vs. ethnocentric 142; and regionalism 147-52; symbols of 6, 109, 138-42, 151; see also Cossackry Nefedova, Maria 96, 259n82-3, 261n19, 262n33 Nekliudov, Sergei 262n37 Nekrylova, A. F. 245n35 Nelson, Amy 249n44, 250n52 NEP (New Economic Policy) 35, 37 Neuberger, Joan 185, 269n14 Nevalainen, Pekka 262n25 New Economic Policy (NEP) 35, 37 ’new martyrs’ (novomuchenniki) 169 ’New Russians’ 4, 198 Nicholas I (Tsar) 152, 164 Nicholas II (Tsar) 169 Nichols, Robert L. 264n7 Nikanorova, Ekaterina 186-7, 206 Nikitenko, Ol’ga 113, 125, 166, 232 Nikitich, Dobrynia 69 Nikitin, Roman 260n7 Northern Russian Folk Choir 49 nostalgia 56, 70, 142; in kitsch 62-3 nouveau-riche 4, 132, 198 Novikov, V. 268n40 Novitskaia, Marina 205, 270n4 Nozick, Robert 254n145 Oinas, Felix J. 248n11, 249n34, 249n37 Old Believers 144, 224 olympiads (olympiady) 47 Omsk Folk Chorus 81 opera: divertissements (intermission acts) 3, 19, 22, 28; specific operas 25-

6, 64, 151, 161; use of folk song in 256, 57 Oracheva, Oksana 264n11 oral tradition 73, 122 orchestras see folk orchestras O’Rourke, Shane 266n3 Orthodoxy 138, 140, 212, 220; Bolotnoe parish celebration 153-9; and Cossackry 141, 144; and fistfighting games 157-8; icons 153-4, 159, 177; and nationalizing performances 112, 147, 150; and pagan practices 40, 157 Orttung, Robert W. 264n17 Osipov, D. 255n168 pagan folk culture 40, 157, 212, 230-1 Palace of Culture 48 Palace of Pioneers 48 Pal’chikov, N. 246n69 Pamiat’ 142 pan-Russian (obshcherusskii) principle 53-4, 119-20 Panina, Elena 147-8, 149, 265n27 Pankrat’ev, I. P. 270n3 Paretskaya, Anna 264n17 parish celebration 153-9 Parthe, Kathleen F. 255n3-5, 255n8, 256n11 Paskhalov, V. 32 patronage (shefstvo) 61, 205, 209, 214 peasants 35-6, 38-9, 76-7; and authenticity 70; depicted as female 166; kulak (rich peasant) 37; romantic view of 5, 23, 132; see also the folk; narod (the people) Pegg, Carole 252n109 the people see narod People’s University 49 Perushkin, V. 268n33 Peter the Great 143 Petrozavodsk Music School ensemble 114, 117-19 Piatnitskii Choir 34, 47, 57, 85 Piatnitskii, Mitrofan 28, 32-4 Pliusnin, S. D. 263n62 podgoloski (counter-melodies) 21, 26, 180, 182 Pokrovsky, Dmitri 9, 10, 69, 80, 94 (Fig. 3.3), 257n40, 258n55, 258n59-60, 258n62, 271n11; Cossack ancestry of 163; disclaimer of nationalist views 152 Pokrovsky Ensemble 69, 78-88, 94 (Fig.

282

Index

3.3), 128; acting out of folk songs/rituals 93-4, 100; artistic dissidence of 88-97; choreography for 119; and Cossack music/costumes 163; and ethnography 92, 94-5, 103-5; interactions with village folk groups 83-7, 129-30; lecture-demonstrations 89-90, 97; performance in film 71; performance in theater productions 91, 96, 100, 118; sexuality in performances 92-4; studios 97-9 Poles’e region (in western Russia and Belarus) 92, 104-5 Polianovskii, G. 254n143 Pol’shina, A. 243n1, 244n15 polyphony 20-2, 26, 48; in contemporary performance 208-9; contrived use for national image 54; folk polyphony (mnogogolosie) 33, 64-5, 67, 182, 208-9 Pomerantsev, Vladimir 75, 257n27 Poponov, V. 248n109, 252n102, 252n117, 255n166 Popov, Viktorin 249n39 Popova, T. 244n26 Popular Conservatory 32 popular culture 40, 222-36; see also mainstream folk performance ’populism’ 85 populists 25, 71, 144 Potemkin village 37, 41, 70 Prach, Ivan 22 precentor (zapevala) 21, 89, 102 preservation of folklore 187-93, 204-21 Pribylovskii, Vladimir 266n13 Primakov, Yevgeni 212 ‘primitive’ art/traditions 92, 94-5, 136, 223, 224 professionalism 58-62, 64; in festival of folklore collectives 110-16; in mainstream performances 106-9; professional folk choruses 47-8, 50, 52-5, 64, 162 Prokofiev, Sergei 96 Prokunin, V. 246n69 proletarian culture 37 propaganda 36-8; and Cossackry 169, 173-4; Potemkin village 37, 41, 70; use of folklore/folk songs 41-2, 54-5, 73, 77, 220 protiazhnye pesni (drawn-out songs) 21, 88-9 ‘pseudofolklore’ 30-1, 42, 73-4

Pskovitianka (opera) 25, 26 puppets 124, 128, 130 (Fig. 4.5) purists (in revival movement) 120-37 purity 76, 132 Purtova, T. 252n111, 253n128, 262n31 Pushkin, Aleksandr 96 Pushkina, S. 258n63 Ranish, I. 251n77 RAPM (Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians) 37, 39, 44; effort to eradicate the folk chorus 52 RAPP (Russian Association of Proletarian Writers) 37, 39 Raspopova, Irina 272n9 Rasputin, Valentin 71, 255n9 realism 90-1; socialist realism 39-40, 434, 45 recordings: audio cassette 87, 132-3, 137, 210; ethnographic field recordings 225-6; learning from 132-3; multitrack 87, 132-3; wax cylinder 31, 32 Red Army Choir 52 Red Army Song and Dance Ensemble of the USSR 53 regionalism 103-5, 147-52 Remeta, Daniel Robert 252n125, 253n129, 253n131 Renaissance and Unity 144 resistance to Soviet-style folk art 49-50 Reviakin, Dmitri 230 revival 6-9, 13-14, 64-7; authenticity redefined 39, 74-8, 121-3; exposure to village life 83-7, 129-33; liberals vs. purists 120-37; methods of study 1015; reconstructing village traditions 184-5, 204-10; syncretism and collectivism 100-3; unstaged examples 231-6; and World Music movement 228-9; see also folklore; memory; village revival movement: origins 68-105; artistic dissidence 88-97; bard (guitar poetry) movement 71-2; discourse of 72-5; dissemination of folk music 97100; Gippius, Evgenii 77-81; Kabanov, Andrei 78-87; Pokrovsky Ensemble 69, 78-97; village prose 701 revival movement: post-Soviet 106-38, 160-75; Cossack revival movement 141, 146, 160, 163-4, 168-75; festival of folklore collectives 109-16;

Index 283 mainstream performance 106-9, 11820; the mythical village 129-33; regional performances 147-52; selfexpression 124-8; sexuality in performances 133-6; terminology changes 117, 184; use of stage aesthetics 128-9; youth folklore (oppositional) revival movement (molodezhnoe fol’klornoe dvizhenie) 106, 108-10, 117, 120-37 Riabykh, Aleksandra 178-9 Riasanovsky, Nicholas V. 260n100 Rice, Timothy 252n109 Richards, CherylAnne 243n17 Ridenour, Robert 24, 246n51, 246n54 Ries, Nancy 5, 242n5 Rimsky-Korsakov, Nikolai 24, 25-6, 26, 44 Rite of Spring 27 ritual 20, 40, 76-7, 153-9, 234-5; and Cossackry 144, 153-9, 168-71; icons 153-4, 159, 177; in popular culture (Kostroma) 225-6, 228, 230-1; preservation by video documentaries 204-5, 208, 211-21; and sexuality 133, 135-6; in Vorob’evka festival 147-52; see also memory Rodygin, E. 258n49 Rogalina, N. L. 248n18 Rogger, Hans 244n16, 245n34 romances 22; cruel romances 40, 122, 182, 185 Romani choruses 19 Romantic movement 5-6, 44-5, 62, 76, 77, 122 Roosevelt, Priscilla 244n21, 245n35 Rothstein, Robert 23, 245n36, 245n39, 245n45, 245n47, 245n50 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 23, 245n42 Roziner, Feliks 249n42 RSFSR (Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic) 48, 50 Rubtsov, Feodosii 30, 66, 74, 81, 121, 245n30, 247n79, 247n92-3, 249n35, 255n164, 256n23, 257n25-6 Rudneva, Anna 49, 80, 208, 257n41, 258n63, 269n15 Rudneva, Evgeniia 119, 259n92 Rumiantsev, S. 250n63 Rusin, Viacheslav 273n15 Russian Association of Artistic Crafts 149

Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians (RAPM) 37, 39, 44, 52 Russian Association of Proletarian Writers (RAPP) 37, 39 Russian Culture Fund 144 Russian Geographical Society 26, 31 Russian language 38 Russian Ministry of Culture 147, 149-50 Russian Music (singing group) 128 Russian national character/spirit, Russianness (in music, folklore) 28, 29, 54, 110, 123, 205, 218-20 Russian Orthodoxy see Orthodoxy Russian Shield 157 Russian Song - Russkaia pesnia 106 Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) 48, 50 Russian Zemstvo Movement 147 Sabonis-Chafee, Theresa 260n1-2 St. Petersburg Center of Folklore and Ethnography 129 St. Petersburg Song Commission 31 Sanachev, Igor’ 265n27 Sandle, Mark 264n4, 264n12-13, 265n23, 265n28 Sapozhnikova, Natal’ia 260n5, 262n43, 272n1 Saprykin, Iurii 273n11 sarafany 29, 115, 155; derogatory slang use of term 117 Sargeant, Lynn 249n44 Schechner, Richard 274n32 Schieffelin, Edward L. 274n32-3 Schleifman, Nurit 149, 265n32-3 Schnittke, Alfred 96 Scholl, Tim 252n109 Schwarz, Boris 249n43, 252n124 Scott, James 183, 269n11 self-expression 124-8 Senatov, Nikolai Nikitych 269n6 serfs (choruses of) 19 Serostanoff, Dmitrii 273n17, 274n25 Serov, Alexander 25 sexuality in performances 90, 92-4, 1336, 231-2, 234-5; childrens’ performance of chastushki 125-7, 134 Shablinskaia, Ol’ga 260n3 Shaliapin, Fyodor 17 Shangina, I. 267n25 Shchadrin, Aleksandr 262n38 Shchedrin, Rodion 95, 96 Shchurov, Viacheslav 81, 83-4, 244n24,

284

Index

244n28, 245n38, 253n132-3, 255n1, 255n170, 257n44-5, 258n50, 258n53, 258n63, 259n73-4, 263n48, 263n63, 268n3, 272n9, 273n21-2; censored version of ’Porushka Parania’ 135; criticism of Pokrovsky Ensemble 912, 95; and lifestyle practices of folklore performers 129, 177 shefstvo (patronage) 61, 205, 209, 214; alternatives to 210-11 Shevchenko, I. I. 247n101, 247n103 Shilin, Alexei 119, 261n20, 262n32, 266n9 Shilkloper, Arkady 227 Shishov, Ivan 250n71 Shostakovich, Dmitri 96 Simon, Paul 223 sincerity 70, 76 singing artel 102 Sirin Choir 118-19 skomorokhs (professional performers) 16, 18 Skuntsev, Volodia 105 slang use of terms 117 Slavianskii kapella see AgrenevSlavianskii chorus Slavic Congress 28 Slavophilism 16, 25, 100, 120, 205; in post-Soviet folk revival 142, 147-8 Slezkine, Yuri 35, 248n4-6, 248n12, 248n20-1 Slonimsky, Nicholas 250n56 Smetannikova, Praskov’ia and Polina 188-9 Smith, Anthony D. 142, 263n2, 264n12 Smith, Gerald Stanton 256n12-13 Smith, Katherine E. 142-3, 264n14-15 Smith, Susannah Lockwood 247n104-6, 249n24, 249n27, 250n58, 250n67, 250n70, 251n100-1, 252n104, 252n119-20 Smolitskii, V. G. 245n37 smotry (competitions) 47, 53 Smyslova, Tamara 81, 83-4, 100, 257n46, 258n51, 258n61, 258n68, 259n84, 260n103, 266n12 soap operas 177, 185-6 Soboleva, G. G. 252n110 sobornost’ (collectivism) 100-3, 130 socialism 35, 37, 39 socialist realism 39-40, 43-4, 45 Society of Lovers of Natural Science,

Anthropology and Ethnography 26, 31 sociological studies of folklore 24, 40, 76-8 Soimonov, A. D. 245n46 Sokolov, F. 243n3-4 Sokolov, Iurii M. 248n7, 249n39 Sokol’skaia, A. 249n45, 253n128 solo singing 102, 115, 125-6, Solzhenitsyn, Alexander 70, 142, 147 songs see folk songs Songster Workshop (Pesel’naia artel’) 123, 233 Sosnina, N. 267n25 Soudakoff, Stephen 248n11 Soviet folk choruses 17, 80, 93, 102, 229 Soviet identity, New Man and Woman 55, 64, 90 sovkhoz (large state farm) 177, 178 spontaneity (stikhiinost’) 77, 125 stage aesthetics 128-9, 197; stsenicheskii (stage-oriented) style 116, 117, 120, 128, 130; see also estrada Stakhanovite movement 55 Stalin, I. V. 248n17 Stalingrad 169, 170 Stallybrass, Peter 259n72, 274n36 Stanitsa 113-14 (incl. Fig. 4.1), 128, 163, 210 ‘star’ system 124 Starostin, Sergei 108, 227-8, 260n8, 261n10, 273n21, 273n23 State Academic Kuban Cossack Choir 106-7 State Academic Moiseev Ensemble of Folk Dance 107 State Academic Piatnitsky Russian Folk Choir 107 stealing 178 Štefániková Zuzana 261n18 Stites, Richard 229, 274n26 Stompelev Great Russian folk orchestra 56 Stravinsky, Igor 27, 96, 112 stsenicheskii (stage-oriented) style 116, 117, 120, 128, 130 Stul’nev, I. 267n31 Sugarman, Jane 243n18-19, 243n21 supernatural/superstitions 182-3 Surin, V 249n22, 252n103, 252n105, 252n107 Svadebka (’The Wedding’) 96 Swan, Alfred J. 244n27

Index 285 symbols: Cossack masculinity 166-8; national 6, 109, 138-42, 151; religious 155-6, 159 syncretism 76, 100-3 Sysoeva, T. 255n171 Tabolina, T. V. 268n34 taboo subjects (expressed through folklore) 134, 135-6, 229, 232, 234 Talorin, Volodia 195, 270n19 tape recordings see audio cassette recordings Tarasova, Irina 265n25 Taruskin, Richard 26, 246n53, 246n57-8, 246n61-5, 246n68, 246n70, 246n73-4, 246n76-7, 248n111 Taylor, Timothy 271n18 Tchaikovsky 17, 24, 44, 247n86; on Agrenev’s folk song repertoire 29 television 177, 185; documentaries of village folk culture 108-9, 208, 211-20 Tevlin, B 250n64 Thaw period 50, 70, 75 Tikhonov, A. V. 244n13-14 time depth 76 Toelken, Barre 242n7, 242n9 Tolstoi, Nikita 92, 259n75 Toporkov, A. A. 263n62 Toporkov, A. L. 263n62 Torgovnick, Marianna 94, 259n77-9, 263n66 traditions 4-6, 24, 38, 105, 219; reconstruction of 14, 204-21; see also authenticity; folklore; revival; village Trutovskii, Vasilii 22 Tsar’ Maksimilian 68, 91, 100 Tuleev, Aman 144-6, 264n18 Turner, Victor W. 235, 274n35 Tuvan throat singers 224, 227 Tychinina, Elena 202-3, 270n30 Ulam, Adam 249n25 Union of Soviet Composers 77, 78 unison singing 54, 87, 103 Ural Russian Folk Chorus 61 Ural’skaia, V. 252n111, 253n128, 262n31 Ustinova, T. 255n163, 261n13 Velichkina, Olga V. 259n93-5 Verdery, Katherine 152, 263n2, 266n40 Vertkov, K. 244n5 video documentaries see documentaries village 20-3, 57, 176-203; amateur folk

choirs 50, 74, 229; and authenticity of folklore 184-7, 195-8, 203; club (klub) 48-9, 50, 177, 182, 189; documentaries of 108-9, 204, 208, 211-20; gender and singing 179-83; ’ghost villages’ 177; the mythical village 129-33, 140, 196-7, 211; Potemkin village 37, 41, 70; preservation/reinvention of traditions 204-21; revivalists’ exposure to village life 83-7, 129-33, 137; singing collectives (kollektivy) 80, 119; statistics on active folklore performance 192-3; Vorob’evka as contemporary example 193-203 village prose 70-1 Vilochkova, Zinaida 272n26 Vinogradov, V. 251n97 Viola, Lynne 243n24, 251n93, 269n11 Volga Volga (film) 45 volia (free will/freedom) 90, 164 Volksgeist 6 Volkskunde 5 Vorob’evka 193-203, 231 Walicki, Andrezej 259n97, 270n5 the Wanderers 27, 246n57 Warner, Elizabeth A. 244n28, 245n35, 246n67 Waters, Elizabeth 251n91 wax cylinders 32 website for audio examples 15 ‘The Wedding’ (Svadebka) 96 White, Allon 259n72, 274n36 ‘white sound’ 118 Wilson, William A. 245n41, 245n44 Winter, Paul 96, 225 witches 182 women see gender World Music movement 223-5, 228-9 World of Art 26-7 World Village (television program) 1089, 227, 260n8 Wortman, Richard S. 246n56, 265n36, 266n45 Writer’s Union 40, 53 Yeltsin 143, 165 Yemelianova, Galina 264n18 youth folklore movement (molodezhnoe fol’klornoe dvizhenie) 83, 106, 10810, 117; censored version of ’Porushka Parania’ 135; split between

286

Index

liberals and purists 120-37; see also revival Zabava (’Fun’) 131, 211-20 Zakharov, Vladimir 53 zapevala (precentor/leader) 21, 89, 102 Zavolokin, Genady Dmitrievich 109, 261n9 zemstvo organizations 147 Zemtsovskii, Izalii 50, 61, 244n22-3, 244n25, 245n29, 245n31, 246n64,

246n68, 247n96-8, 251n72, 251n82, 252n115, 253n134-5, 257n41, 258n50, 258n52, 262n45; studies on educational levels 60 Zernov, N. 270n5 Zhelannaia, Inna 227-8, 273n20-1 Zhivtsov, A. 252n106, 259n81, 261n14 Zhulanova, N. I. 30, 247n79, 247n94, 256n16, 270n2 Zubkova, Elena 254n154 Zykina, Ludmilla 106, 107, 108