The Magical Chorus: A History of Russian Culture from Tolstoy to Solzhenitsyn

by Solomon Volkov

Book Overview

From the reign of Tsar Nicholas II to the brutal cult of Stalin to the ebullient, uncertain days of perestroika, nowhere has the inextricable relationship between politics and culture been more... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1400042720
• ISBN13: 9781400042722
• Release Date: March 2008
• Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
• Length: 333 Pages
• Weight: 1.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.6" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Chudno!

If only something like this book had been available when I studied Russian literature forty years ago, the twentieth century wouldn't have been the great slog that much of it was then. I especially appreciate that art, music and ballet are part of the picture painted of Russian politics and culture. If there still are departments of Slavic Languages that teach 20th century Russian literature, I hope this will be among their textbooks. If not, a blessing on the student who finds this book. I congratulate the author and thank him profoundly. It's a wonderful book.

A song that continues

Surveys of Russian culture date back really to James Billington's "The Icon and the Axe." These books tended to fixate on the glories of the 19th century which include Pushkin, Repin, Tchaikovsky, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy before moving on to the Silver Age and then running out of steam around World War II. This was more a fault of the authorities who presented the world with a mummified high culture (designed to raise hard currency), a suppressed underground culture of dissidents, and a banal popular culture. To complicate matters, there was an interesting, but also bizarre emigre culture (think of Nabokov for the first and the movie Liquid Sky for the latter). One of the outgrowths of the fall of the Soviet Union and the passage of time is insight into the rest of the story and what a complex story it is. From the vantage point of the 21st century, 30th century Russian culture is a complex organism indeed. Be it the role of the intellectuals that Lenin exiled in the 1920s, attempts to re-imagine Russian culture in the aftermath of World War II, the comings and goings of the intellectual firmament during the sixties and seventies are all interesting topics. Even more fascinating is what happened to the cultural life of the Soviet Union when the country whose impulses it was meant to reflect ceased to exist. Solomon Volkov is well equipped to chronicle the comings and goings of this world. He was part of it in some respects and as a leading musicologist, biographers of Shostakovich, and author of half a dozen books on Russian topics. He even knew most of the figures depicted in the last third of the book. In many respects the book provides a great deal of commentary tracing the evolution of Russian culture under a variety of circumstances including decline, revolution, civil war, tyranny, foreign invasion, destruction, political comings and goings, stagnation, repression, and finally the greatest challenge, freedom. I did like the book's attempt to show continuity within Russian culture through the 20th century, literally from the death of Tolstoy to the return and death of Solzhenitsyn. In this respect the book is an improvement over numerous books which speculate with very little understanding on the internal dynamics of Russia. If I were to identify a flaw it is almost that the story Volkov is attempting to tell is too big for a book of under 300 pages. Really I think some of the issues Volkov raises really need more space for greater development. The controversy between "the town" and the village (think "blue state Russia" and "red state Russia") really deserves more space than Volkov is able to provide it. Is there a relationship between these two schools and the old westernizer and slavophile dichotomy? The career of Eduard Liminov who can be said to have had a foot in both camps is an example. Starting life as the son of a KGB official, living in exile as a dissident in New York in the 1970s (and the author of a book tha

A magical chorus is a magical book...

This book was a wonderful read, not just about the major artistic figures--and they are all here, Tolstoy, Akmatova, Shostikovich, Gorky, Chekhov--but also the views that Lenin, Stalin and other leaders took toward the arts. This is especially so of Stalin: and the author does not hesitate to discuss Stalin's interest in the arts, his intelligence, and his love for the Russian classics. I also enjoyed reading about Pasternak's own fascination with Stalin. In the end, I gained a better understanding of the "soul" of Russian artistic genius, and an appreciation for its survival during difficult, disastrous years.

The twining of politics and art

In Russia, it has been said, "a poet is much more than a poet" (Pushkin), and "a great writer is like a second government" (Solzhenitsyn). Indeed, in few countries is culture so intertwined with politics. Particularly during the last century, when art (be it film, literature, music or painting) was unceremoniously dragooned into the service of the State. How Russian politics and culture battled during the 20th century is the subject of Solomon Volkov's fine new book, a volume that is part memoir, part history, part rumination on the Russian worldview. Sprinkled liberally with first-hand accounts (many of the author himself), it brings to light fascinating episodes, from the various Nobel Prize scandals, to the real roots of the Thaw (American films, perhaps?), to bards like Vysotsky and Okudzhava, made popular by official scorn. Through it, there is a sense of continuity, of politicians hopelessly trying to reign in culture, to dictate what shall be proper and sanctioned, of artists giving a nod to the Powers That Be, then quietly writing "for the drawer" or singing subversive songs for friends. In one episode, Volkov tells of the buses full of riot police, hunkered down outside the Taganka Theater during Vysotsky's wake there in 1980. It brought to mind more recent deployments of excessive OMON legions against a miserly collection of liberals and oppositionists. In Russia, after all, a demonstrator is much more than a demonstrator. (Reviewed in Russian Life)

Volkov magic!

The Magical Chorus is not only a fierce and fearsome look at a century and a half of Russian history, but a tantalizing journey behind the appearances of history, with insight only Solomon Volkov can forge. Volkov stalks his books stealthily page by page until capture; the hunt always excites and invigorates, and reveals essences. Magical Chorus is no exception to the wiles of an author who for whatever reason remains oddly controversial. For me, he's a master writer. Brilliance mesmerizes around the lightest details of Russian cultural life, as Volkov's passions become ours. Magical Chorus languored about too long for me until the middle 'A Rendevous With Stalin', where ignites the connection to the book's real and entrancing heart - the Russian mystery of mirrors between her rulers and artists. After that, Volkov takes off. Uncle Joe's moral tics, and Stalinism itself, are dissected like a surgeon; Akhmatova (noting she died thirteen years to the day after Stalin), Yevtushenko, sympathetic stories of Prokofiev and Mayakovsky. Volkov's empathy never impedes his duty as a writer. The best thing about reading him is he never gives you reason to tire. This is a first rate keeper that harbors a blistering study of tragedy.