The dancer defects : the struggle for cultural supremacy during the Cold War / David Caute.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Caute, David.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Popular culture--United States--History--20th century.

Popular culture.

Social aspects.

Arts--Political aspects.

History.

Politics and culture.

United States.

Popular culture--Soviet Union--History.

Politics and culture--United States--History--20th century.

Politics and culture--Soviet Union--History.

Arts--Political aspects--Soviet Union--History.

Arts.

Arts--Political aspects--United States--History--20th century.

Cold War--Social aspects.

Cold War.

United States--Intellectual life--20th century.

Intellectual life.

Soviet Union--Intellectual life.

Soviet Union.

Physical Description:

xiv, 788 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2003.

Summary:

The Cultural Cold War between the Soviet Union and the West was without precedent or parallel. At the outset of this original and wide-ranging historical survey, David Caute establishes the nature of the extraordinary cultural competition set up post-1945 between Moscow, New York, London, and Paris, with the most intimate frontier war staged in the city of Berlin. The author of The Fellow-Travellers and The Great Fear explores the cultural Cold War as it rapidly penetrated theatre, film, classical music, popular music, ballet, painting, and sculpture, as well as propaganda by exhibition. Major figures central to Cold War conflict in the theatre include Brecht, Miller, Sartre, Camus, Havel, Ionesco, Stoppard, and Konstantin Simonov. Among leading film directors involved were Eisenstein, Romm, Chiarueli, Aleksandrov, Kazan, Tarkovsky, and Wajda.

In the field of music, the Soviet Union in the Zhdanov era vigorously condemned 'modernism', 'formalism', and the avant-garde. A chapter is devoted to the intriguing case of Dmitri Shostakovich, and the disputed authenticity of his 'autobiography' Testimony. Meanwhile in the West the Congress for Cultural Freedom was sponsoring the modernist composers most vehemently condemned by Soviet music critics, notably Stravinsky. The Soviet Party was unable to check the appeal of jazz on the Voice of America, then rock music, to young Russians. Visits to the West by the Bolshoi and Kirov ballet companies were fraught with threats of cancellation and the danger of defection. Caute dampens overheated speculations about KGB plots to injure Rudolf Nureyev and other defecting dancers.

Turning to painting, where socialist realism prevailed in the USSR and dissident art was often brutally repressed, Caute explores the paradox of Picasso's membership of the French Communist Party. Reassessing the extent of covert CIA patronage of abstract expressionist artists like Jackson Pollock, Caute finds that the CIA's role has been much exaggerated. He also challenges some recent accounts of 'Cold War culture', which virtually ignore the Soviet performance and cultural activity outside the USA. Soviet artistic standards and teaching levels were exceptionally high, but the regime's endemic fear of free innovation finally accelerated its collapse.

Contents:

Introduction: The Culture War 1

Part I. Marking the Territory 17

1. Propaganda Wars and Cultural Treaties 19

2. The Gladiatorial Exhibition 33

Part II. Stage and Screen Wars: Russia and America 53

3. Broadway Dead, Says Soviet Critic 55

4. The Russian Question: A Russian Play 88

5. Soviet Cinema Under Stalin 117

6. Hollywood: The Red Menace 160

7. Witch Hunts: Losey, Kazan, Miller 192

8. Soviet Cinema: The New Wave 219

Part III. Stage and Screen Wars: Europe 247

9. Germany Divided: Stage and Screen 249

10. Brecht and the Berliner Ensemble 271

11. Dirty Hands: The Political Theatre of Sartre and Camus 306

12. Squaring the Circle: Ionesco, Beckett, Havel, Stoppard 337

13. Andrzej Wajda: Ashes and Diamonds, Marble and Iron 365

Part IV. Music and Ballet Wars 377

14. Classical Music Wars 379

15. Shostakovich's Testimony 415

16. All That Jazz: Iron Curtain Calls 441

17. The Ballet Dancer Defects 468

Part V. Art Wars 507

18. Stalinist Art: Tractor Drivers' Supper 509

19. Passports for Paintings: Abstract Expressionism and the CIA 539

20. Picasso and Communist Art in France 568

21. The Other Russia: Pictures by 'Jackasses' 589.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [733]-755), filmography and index.

ISBN:

0199249083

OCLC:

52486094