Late-Stalinist ideological campaigns and the rupture of jazz: 'jazz-talk' in the Soviet Estonian cultural newspaper Sirp ja Vasar

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Articles

Introduction

On 10 February 1948 Moscow's Politburo launched an ideological campaign called the 'Resolution on Vano Muradeli's opera The Great Friendship'.²This directive started one of the fiercest campaigns in Soviet musical life, not only during the Stalinist period but throughout the entire history of Soviet music (Herrala 2012, p. 2). The campaign, which was directly connected to the international situation associated with post-WWII conflict between the West and the Soviet Union at the beginning of the Cold War, launched an attack against formalism³in music.

A month after the announcement of The Great Friendship campaign, on 21 March 1948, the word jazz disappeared from the official name of the state-owned Eesti Raadio dzässorkester (Jazz Orchestra of Estonian Radio). The politically incorrect name - including the word 'jazz' - was replaced a year later with the more appropriate Eesti Raadio estraadiorkester (The Estrada Orchestra of Estonian Radio). The disappearance of the name of Eesti Raadio dzässorkester is described by Estonian journalist and jazz historian Valter Ojakäär⁴as the beginning of the 'hidden-name period'. His suggestion is based on the fact that the ideological campaign of 1948 involved the authorities' trial to prohibit jazz and to hide the word from public discourse (Ojakäär 2008, p. 166).

However, the Resolution on Vano Muradeli's opera The Great Friendship was just one signpost in the ideologically driven journey of jazz towards its extinction from the public arena in the Soviet Union. In order to present the entire course of the attempt to silence jazz in Soviet Estonia, this article investigates the period of late Stalinism (1944-1953), which coincided with the country's Sovietisation. Through a close reading of jazz-related texts of the Estonian cultural newspaper Sirp ja Vasar (Sickle and Hammer), the article focuses on the dynamic of the processes which led to the temporary exclusion of jazz from public discourse. It also seeks to reflect on the complex interplay between ideology and discourse. This study tries to show the ways in which the meaning of jazz was constructed in official public narratives of the time.

In a disciplinary sense I would like to locate my investigation in the field of jazz studies. Jazz is more than ever...