Influence of Stalinist politics on music in Central and East Europe
According to a peer-reviewed article published in JSTOR (Journal Storage) in 2009, titled “Composing for and with the party: Andrzej and Stalinised Poland” authored by David Tompkins, in the 1050s there was a significant proliferation of Cantatas honoring Stalin and other songs which celebrated his political party. The article further describes that during this period, television was not widely accessible and the primary source of music in the Soviet Union was loudspeakers, radio, cultural affairs and concert halls which provided music with an exceptional power to cultivate the new socialist image that Stalin and his party hoped to project to the world (Tompkins, 2009).
The article describes that the Socialist party widely viewed music as a new force that could be used to spread messages and ideologist on a large scale and they saw music as having endless possibilities in regards to influencing all people. For them, if a person was mobilized emotionally at a concert or through any other musical forum, there was a high likelihood that their artistic experience could become a way of manipulating their ideological experience. In cognizance of this fact, the Communist parties in the Soviet region directed vast sums of money into performance and commissions that encouraged the new socialist-realism which included approving musical exploits from the past. It was therefore not a surprise that musicians and composers from the region embraced the goals of the Socialist party in trying to reshape the society by the use of music.
The author of the article, Tompkins further describes that historians are in the process of evaluating the influences of the Stalin movement on the East and Central Europe music industry in an Era that works of the Socialist-realist saturate the public music space. The communist parties maintained considerable influence over the decades that followed which saw many musicians and composers compile vast volumes of music that carried the socialist agenda either out of fear or in an attempt to secure their source of livelihood. After the death of Stalin in 1953 and the years preceding 1990, makers of music in this region of Europe made significant efforts to produce music that obscured their Socialist creative works in a way that shows their retrogressive shame for Socials ideologists portrayed in their work.
The journal article by Tompkins describes the significant influence on music by the political powers of the day and how ideologist purveyed through music can drastically change in a short time as a result of changes in politics of the day. In reading this article, I realized that the prevailing political circumstances significantly influence music just like any other sphere of art.