The Dancer Defects: The Struggle for Cultural Supremacy during the Cold War

The cultural Cold War between the Soviet Union and the West was without precedent. 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. Using sources in four languages, 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, whose inflammatory play, The Russian Question, occupies a chapter of its own based on original archival research. Leading film directors involved included 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; Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Hindemith among them. Despite constant attempts at repression, 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 companines, the pride of the USSR, were fraught with threats of cancellation and the danger of defection. Considering the case of Rudolf Nureyev, Caute pours cold water on overheated speculations about KGB plots to injure him and other defecting dancers. Turning to painting, where socialist realism prevailed in Russia, and the impressionist heritage was condemned, Caute explores the paradox of Picasso's membership of the French Communist Party. Re-assessing the extent of covert CIA patronage of abstract expressionism (Pollock, De Kooning), Caute finds that the CIA's role has been much exaggerated, likewise the dominance of the New York School. Caute challenges some recent, one-dimensional, American accounts of 'Cold War culture', which ignore not only the Soviet performance but virtually any cultural activity outside the USA. The West presented its cultural avant-garde as evidence of liberty, even through monochrome canvases and dodecaphonic music appealed only to a minority audience. Soviet artistic standards and teaching levels were exceptionally high, but the fear of freedom and innovation virtually guaranteed the moral defeat which accelerated the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Table of Contents:
Introduction: The Culture War Part I: Marking the Territory 1: Propaganda Wars and Cultural Treaties 2: The Gladiatorial Exhibition Part II: Stage and Screen Wars: Russia and America 3: Broadway Dead, Says Soviet Critic 4: The Russian Question - a Russian Play 5: Soviet Cinema under Stalin 6: Hollywood: The Red Menace 7: Witch Hunts: Losey, Kazan, Miller 8: Soviet Cinema: The New Wave Part III: Stage and Screen Wars: Europe 9: Germany Divided: Stage and Screen 10: Brecht and the Berliner Ensemble 11: Dirty Hands: The Political Theatre of Sartre and Camus 12: Squaring the Circle: Ionesco, Beckett, Havel and Stoppard 13: Andrzej Wajda: Ashes and Diamonds, Marble and Iron Part IV: Music and Ballet Wars 14: Classical Music Wars 15: Shostakovich's Testimony 16: All that Jazz: Iron Curtain Falls 17: The Ballet Dancer Defects Part V: Art Wars 18: Stalinist Art: The Tractor Driver's Supper 19: Passports for Paintings: Abstract Impressionism and the CIA 20: Picasso and Communist France 21: The Other Russia: Pictures by 'Jackasses' Conclusion Bibliography Notes and References

About the Author :
David Caute is the author of such books as The Fellow-Travellers and The Great Fear.

Review :
`for the big picture as well as plenty of little ones, the result is masterly' The Economist