Soviet Cultural Policy and its Influence on Central Asian Music

1. The Geography of Central Asia

Due to its geographical features and climatic conditions, central Asia is unsuited to supporting large sedentary populations. This has had a direct impact upon the political development of the region. In such a complex area, where power seems at times to have changed hands as regularly as the seasons, government policy has inevitably influenced many aspects of physical, cultural, and religious life. In answering this question I hope to address the issue of how soviet politics helped to shape the music of the region that we know today as Central Asia. What is distinctive about the geographic area that constitutes central Asia and how may its unique position have contributed to musical developments? Being at the centre of the world's largest landmass, mountainous areas, deserts and tundra set the scene and provide the backdrop that moulded the development of one of mankind's richest melting pots. In the centuries before naval-strength became the yardstick by which the world’s most powerful nations were measured, conquered and were themselves conquered; being distant from the ocean was no guarantee of safety from invaders and the horse was by far the most important symbol, and tool, of power. The inhospitable landscape ridged by mountains and scattered with oases, makes up an area whose ancient cities, towns and villages grew up at the crossroads of powerful ancient empires. The region was constantly the subject of power struggles and formed the trading routes through which products, cultures and religions passed. These conditions proved ideal in shaping musical developments, over many centuries, providing cultural and musical input from such diverse backgrounds as China, Iran, India and Russia, and colouring the already diverse music of the tribes who passed to and fro throughout the region and called it their own. A Paucity of fertile land led to riches of cultural diversity. Due to the harsh conditions, two distinct, yet interdependent, cultural systems developed. On the one hand there were the nomadic and semi-nomadic cultures with their leaning towards shamanist religious beliefs and heavy reliance upon animals for transport, food, and as a source of materials for building homes and making clothes; on the other, there were the oases or city state cultures in which Islam had been established as the religious system, and which relied upon highly developed water irrigation systems, crop rotation and intensive cultivation of what little fertile land was available. The mixture of these cultures coupled with the tremendous influence that climatic conditions can have upon people-movement in such a finely balanced ecosystem, combined to give rich combinations of cultural variety (Sumner: 1999, P.13). Nomadic raids provoked powerful neighbouring empires to seek control of the desolate areas on their doorsteps. Among the nomadic peoples of Central Asia it was not seen as a dishonourable activity to threaten and/or plunder weaker caravans, or even the powerful empires between which they acted as middlemen and for whom they sometimes fought as mercenaries. This was however a complete anathema to the morals of major static empires at either end of the Silk Route and the resulting clash of cultural ideals left an indelible mark upon the region - Hellenistic rule in the 3rd Century B.C.; Tang Chinese influence during the 7th Century A.D.; the Mongol invasion of the 14th Century A.D.; what has become known as the Great Game when Britain and Imperial Russia meddled and intrigued for the upper hand in Central Asia; and finally the Soviet era from the 1920s up until the emergence of new states along ostensibly ethnic lines after the collapse of Soviet Communism in the 1990s (Sumner: 1999, P.14-19).

1. Do governments affect culture?

Dictionaries usually define the verb to govern as; to direct, to control or to rule with authority, and while governance in the West is more normally thought of as directing or controlling aspects such as the fiscal and material management of a country, including taxation, education, health care, defence and other similar domains, there can also be farther reaching implications and even more sinister motives behind the machinations of government. While on the surface it seems that the modern democracies of most western Governments tend towards a more passive attitude vis à vis the arts, it was not always so, and other, more authoritarian, centralised governments, or those built upon a religious belief system, tend to get tangled up in every aspect of the lives of their citizenry, often in order to preserve, and promote the integrity of the nations that they govern. Add into the equation a population made up of many disparate ethnic groups that are in a constant state of flux, and it becomes easier to understand that a government, which has acquired a perhaps hostile population through conquest, may seek to engender nationalistic and micro-nationalistic feelings among the constituent parts of the population in order to follow Machiavelli’s (1469-1527) maxim and divide et impera. Whatever official government policy stated, it appears that the Imperial Russian government and its Soviet successors sought to set the peoples they had conquered at odds with one another, engendering both hatred laterally amongst their quasi-vassals, and blind obeisance to themselves as saviours and protectors of the heritage of the micro-cultures of Central Asia.

1. The application of Soviet Cultural Policy in the Central Asian Republics

Stalin is perhaps the name that first comes to mind when considering the Soviet era, and we can be quite certain that it was Stalin’s ideas that formed the basis for Soviet Cultural policy. In 1913 Lenin gave him responsibility for formulating party policy with regards to nationality and he stated that: “A nation is a historically constituted, stable community of people formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological character, manifested in a common culture.” (Stalin: 1952-1955). In the 1930s when Stalin was himself leader of the Soviet Union, and the Soviet “Cultural Revolution” was in full swing, he added that cultural changes must take place, and that “The development of cultures national in form and socialist in content is necessary for the purpose of their ultimate fusion into one General Culture, socialist as to form and content, and expressed in one general language.” (Frolova-Walker: 1998). This must have given the impression that the foundations were being laid for the realisation of the Marxist world vision according to the statement in the Communist Manifesto that: “The intellectual creations of individual nations [would] become common property.” (Marx: 1959. p.325). In Conversations from Tashkent, Mark Slobin tells us that Marxist principles held that since the economic substructure of Uzbekistan was changing as the work of industrialisation gathered pace, so music, being an important part of Uzbek society must also inevitably change (Slobin: 1971). But how was this kind of policy to be implemented in the Central Asian republics? Alexander Djumaev writes that with reference to traditional music, Soviet cultural policy tended to work in three ways,

i. It had a propensity to work towards state institutionalisation of culture.

ii. It sought to purify the old culture of elements that were hostile to itself, and replace them with a foundation in Marxist ideology.

iii. And it tried to create “national demarcation” of musical traditions.

Djumaev goes on to talk of the official goals of Soviet cultural policy regarding music not being to prohibit, rather to purify, explaining that there were three ideologically inimical themes especially subject to this purifying process: religious & mystical ideas; ideas that had emanated from feudal ruling classes; and music and poetry that was considered to have pessimistic or melancholy overtones. The purifying, or more appropriately, purging process, involved the elimination of communities that were seen as too ideologically disparate to fit into Soviet society. The first to suffer cleansing were the Sufi orders, seen by the soviets as being idle freeloaders whose music was a bad influence on the population; the dervishes, another group whose thinking, according to the Soviets was disreputable and malign, were also cleansed early in the soviet programme. One of the principle methods used for institutionalising the musical culture of the region was the establishment of Western style conservatories that were responsible for ensuring that composers and musicians were trained to operate according to Soviet norms. These conservatories were largely staffed by approved composers, and teachers from Moscow and Saint Petersburg, overseen by their superiors in Moscow. One of the crucial tasks that they were set by central government was the construction of musical repertoires that were to be established in order to stimulate, and represent, for example, the Uzbek-ness of Uzbek music, or the Tajik-ness of Tajik music (Djumaev: 1993).

1. The background to Musical Nation Building

A type of romantic musical nationalism developed in nineteenth-century Imperial Russia, and this, together with Marxist thought - also developed during the nineteenth-century - was to become the precedent for the attempts at musical nation building in Central Asia and other parts of the Soviet Empire throughout most of the twentieth-century (Frolova-Walker: 1998). One of the tenets of Soviet Marxism was that it was a duty of central government to decide what cultural values were acceptable and dictate how they were to be interpreted by composers, writers, musicians and actors, and any part of the media system (Levin: 1993 p52). When the Bolshevik revolution had been won, the leaders of the new Soviet government inherited a vast region that the Imperial government had effectively governed in what Stephen and Ethel Dunn describe as “typical colonial fashion” (Dunn & Dunn: 1967 p.148), having replaced the ruling classes with their own government, they sought to exploit the agricultural and mineral resources of the area, but aside from some abortive early plans for cultural change, implemented by the first governor-general, Kauffman, they had not made any enduring attempts at cultural nation building, which they saw as a potentially troublesome task. Prior to the advent of the Soviet state, there was nothing that really resembled nationalism in the Central-Asian region, with no nation-states, in the European sense of the word, existing historically, there was an assortment of ethnic groups, Uzbek, Kazakh, Tajik, Kirghiz and Turkmen, making up the largest proportion of the regional population. Essentially any nationalistic awareness that exists in twenty-first century Central Asia is as a result of the divide et impera policies of the previous Soviet governments (Levin: 1980 p.152).

1. The Effects of Soviet Cultural Policy in Central Asia

Mark Slobin visited Tashkent in 1971 and was shocked by both the results of the changes being made in this programme of systematised “modernisation” and the attitudes of soviet writers documenting the changes (Slobin: 1971). If we examine the effects of these processes upon the musical life of the new Central Asian republics, over thirty years later, we find that broadly speaking there are four areas upon which old soviet cultural policies have had long-term influence:

i. Society in general was obviously the principal target for the soviet reformers who were attempting to mould the society to fit their own ideals of modernisation. The other areas are subsidiary and were all part of the plan to influence society over the longer term. Societal effects on Central Asian music culture are visible in three main areas relating to gender, religion and the role of the musician. As often seems to happen when Socialist revolutions take place, one of the first areas to experience change was that of gender, and in 1924 the newly created Soviet Central Asian Republics were no exception. When musical propaganda troupes were established with the aim of extolling the virtues of the revolution, women played a prominent role contributing to the singing and dancing, while the men played the accompanying instruments. Later, women were encouraged to become more involved as instrumentalists. Religion was the second area to be greatly affected by the influence of soviet culture, which saw the Sufis and dervishes, with their superstitious beliefs, as having a negative influence on society. They were singled out and their khanaqa-s - holy-places where zikr’s and sama’s celebrations were held - were closed down by the authorities. In time any music perceived to have been influenced by Sufi or Dervish music was censured, and censored, to remove it from the public conscience (Djumaev: 1993). With the suppression of Sufi and Dervish practises the role of the musician in Central Asian society went through changes, and came under the microscope of the state. For centuries the abdal, or “Fool of God” had been seen as fulfilling duties far beyond those of simply playing music and they were seen as champions of moral and spiritual power, the act of performing music being seen as carrying a genuine moral responsibility in society (Levin: 1996, p.37). The changes that were enforced from above meant that although the abdal was no longer officially allowed to be seen as a mystical saint having spiritual authority, there was a sense in which his role was preserved, in that the soviets used musicians, albeit in a different manner, to broadcast the good news of what the revolution was doing for the people, and perhaps could be seen to have exploited the good standing in which they were held by society in general.

ii. Prior to the revolution infrastructure for the training of musicians was essentially non-existent, musical training invariably being carried out in a one-on-one setting as a young student studied in the home with his teacher, often a family member, such as his father or uncle. Learning methods for the essentially aural traditions of Central Asian music were based upon listening and then imitating. New musicians would generally start their musical apprenticeships by learning an instrument considered to be the mainstay of Central Asian musical instruments, the dutar, a two-string long necked fretted lute. The effect of Soviet planning upon this system was far-reaching as western style conservatories were set up in the 1930s (Slobin: 1971) and effectively became the headquarters of Communist party apparatus for implementing the changes that they wanted to see in Central Asia. Initially it appears that musical nation building was not at the centre of Soviet policy, as each nation did not have its own conservatory, but there were regional centres. When Slobin wrote in 1971, the conservatory in Tashkent served not only as the cultural centre for the Uzbeks but also for the Turkmen, Tajik and Kirghiz peoples. The larger area of Kazakhstan was given its own conservatory (Slobin: 1971). When the Soviet conservatories were established they took over responsibility for training both composers and musicians, and were given the ambitious task of establishing national repertoires of music for each of the Central Asian Soviet Socialist Republics. The conservatories were not the only institutions established by the communist regime: Slobin tells us that Radio Tashkent was established with a dual role: firstly to provide a platform for the dissemination of the newly constructed national music, but also to preserve the old non-modernised court tradition of maqam. A further institution known as the Institute for Research in the Arts was responsible for collecting, studying and preserving the old traditions. It had a sub-department called the Laboratory for research in Musical Instruments, which was exclusively charged with the objective of the development of new musical instruments (Slobin: 1971).

iii. Musical Instruments were affected in that they became subject to a programme of redevelopment. This took place in order to ensure that instruments were available in the correct range of sizes and tonalities to build the new orchestral traditions that were required by the authorities in Moscow. Some of the modifications involved incorporating frets onto the necks of certain instruments in an effort to mould the thinking of musicians, as they would be forced to use the tempered scale produced by the fretted necks (Slobin: 1971). The Laboratory for research in Musical Instruments was responsible for developing these whole families of instruments, based on the folk instruments of the five Central-Asian republics (Slobin: 1971). Furthermore, considerable influence on the changing musical culture of Central Asia was exerted during the 1930s when the Soviet Union was subjected to a period of what was called “Struggle with the Old”, when anything that was construed as not corresponding to new trends in the nascent socialist society was forced out of popularity. Turgun Alimatov mentions the sato, a bowed version of the tanbur, which disappeared from use during this time. One clear effect of the political regime being that when Alimatov chose to use this instrument, he had to develop his own style, as he had never previously seen it played and had thus been deprived of the possibility of learning it in the traditional fashion. It is true that Alimatov is renowned for never having had teachers, but the fact that he had never even seen the instrument played gives a clear picture of how effective the soviet programme was in purging elements with which it was it odds (Matyakubov: 1993, p.63).

iv. Repertoire was greatly influenced by years of soviet domination. The researchers charged with compiling new repertoires for the Central Asian Republics were largely drawn from musical scholars and composers from the well-established Russian conservatories in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. Influenced by the works of nineteenth-century Russian musical reformers, they were rarely indigenous to the area for which they were creating a repertoire, and were under considerable pressure from central government to provide the realisation of the Soviet leaders wishes. One of the most influential of these reforming scholars was Viktor Beliav, responsible for, amongst other things, removing the neutral thirds, seen by the Soviets as being in some way subversive, from the musical structure of Central Asian music. Amongst the reforms that were applied to repertoire was the distillation of separated Uzbek and Tajik versions of the previously bi-lingual shashmaqam. This was a move designed to give Uzbeks and Tajiks pride in their respective cultures - an obvious attempt at “Musical Nation Building” (Levin: 1980).

1. Since the break-up of the Soviet Union

The Soviet programme of “Musical Nation Building” appears to have achieved its aims, in that since the collapse of the Soviet empire, the newly formed independent Central Asian republics have more or less chosen to continue with the policies that were forced upon them from above during the preceding ninety years. Governments appear content with the status quo in that through a stronger sense of ethnic and national identity they can maintain, and strengthen their positions of control over the populations under their authority. I conclude with the interesting observation of Theodore Levin, whose comments, although written with reference to Uzbekistan, may well be applicable to the five newly formed Central Asian republics;

Finally, in some ways, Uzbekistan may be more fortunate than more pro-Western nations in preserving the integrity of those traditions which somehow escape drastic revisionism. Whereas in Turkey, and formerly in Iran, the lack of ideological barriers to Western cultural infiltration has resulted in the same creeping Occidental cultural imperialism which is ubiquitous throughout the "free" world, Soviet Central Asia, due to ideological opposition, has stayed, but not stopped the absorption of Western cultural influence in the most crucial recent years since the development of radio, television, photograph, and tape recorder. The result is that the effects of radical Westernization, which in final analysis might prove more deforming than Soviet style "nationalization," have thus far been averted (Levin: 1980).

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