Soviet Union’s cultural world is getting conflicting signals

Press, 24 April 1986, Page 30

Soviet Union’s cultural world is getting conflicting signals

By

CHARLES BREMNER,

of Reuter (through NZPA) Moscow The Soviet State record firm issued two Beatles records recently and Moscow’s top music official denounced foreign rock as a barbarous influence on composers and performers. The two events typified the conflicting signals going out to the Soviet Union’s cultural world as the Mikhail Gorbachev Administration sets about promoting new life in the arts. Hundreds of fans queued in Moscow to buy out the early Beatles recordings, the first albums of the 1960 s British group to be released in the Soviet Union. Mr Gorbachev and his lieutenants turned out to hear the composers’ union chief, Tikhon Khrennikov, lament the lack of controls that allowed Soviet youth to come under the influence of Western pop. On the face of it Mr Gorbachev, his ideology chief, Yegor Llgachev, and other officials are proclaiming an orthodox line, calling for a return to the morally uplifting themes and forms of official communist culture. Yet writers and artists report an atmosphere of ferment since the

arrival of the “new guard” in the Kremlin, which is a little reminiscent of the post-Stalin thaw under Nikita Khrushchev 30 years ago. “They are moving slowly,” said one senior Western diplomat with long experience of Soviet cultural life. “Maybe they remember how things got out of hand with Khrushchev.” In keeping with Mr Gorbachev’s drive for openness the State news media have been airing outspoken criticism, and a handful of politically daring plays are causing something of a sensation in Moscow theatres. The Culture Minister, Mr Pyotr Demichev, cited two of the plays, “Silver Wedding” and “Speak Up,” as examples of lively theatre in an otherwise conservative speech to the party congress a month ago. He did not mention the most adventurous of the shows, Mikhail Shatrov’s "Dictatorship of Conscience,” a critical look at communism that has Moscow’s cultural world buzzing. Moscow theatre sources say Mr Ligachev, though reputed to be a hardliner, has seen the play. Mr Gorbachev, who is known to have promoted the theatre in his old home

town of Stavropol, has also taken an interest in it. In the tightly controlled Soviet cultural world the appearance and approval of such plays show that the boundaries of the permissible are widening. But the question being asked in official cultural circles and among the artists who function on the fringes of dissent is whether Mr Gorbachev intends to allow real innovation or simply to inspire new commitment to old dogma. Many artists reported disappointment with Mr Gorbachev’s statements on culture at the congress. Just as he attacked the leadership of Leonid Brezhnev for allowing economic stagnation, he blasted the old cultural bureaucrats for an output that was dull and boring. Films and television, he said, lacked "ideological and aesthetic clarity and also elementary taste”. But the Soviet media and arts world was engaged in a “psychological war” imposed by the West and a revived Soviet culture must mould the communist outlook and inculcate devotion to the motherland, he said. The party organ, “Pravda,” reinforced the point with an editorial that denounced bad taste and

called for more politically inspiring works. Embassy culture experts following the debate say it appears that Mr Gorbachev and the new men being appointed to control the arts will tolerate more candid treatment of sensitive themes and try to cut back bureaucratic controls. But their aim is to harness a broader reservoir of talent and energy to make the official arts more appealing rather than to allow a creative free-for-all, they say. Many of the country’s most gifted artists and performers were exiled or excluded from cultural life after conflict with officialdom in the last two decades. Strong calls for renewal emerged from a congress of the official Russian Republic Writers’ Union at the end of last year. Speaker after speaker called for a return to honest treatment of human themes and an end to political hackwork. In a speech that was widely believed to have the Kremlin’s approval, the poet, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, denounced mediocrity, intellectual stagnation, and official. dishonesty. He attacked the rewriting of history, particularly

that of the Stalin period and said, “A nation that allows itself to analyse its own mistakes and tragedies bravely knocks the ideological weapon out of its enemies’ hands.” Such ideas echo Mr Gorbachev’s efforts to promote self-criticism and honesty in the media and cultural world. The appointment a month ago of Mikhail Nenashev to head the State publishing committee was one of a series of moves aimed at this end. Mr Nenashev was editor of the daily, “Sovietskaya Rosslya,” which he turned into the most . critical organ of the official press. The head of the State television and radio committee has been replaced, and a close Gorbachev adviser, Alexander . Yakovlev, has taken . charge of party propaganda. Soviet sources and diplomats say it is still too early to judge the culture policy of the Gorbachev era, given the continuing personnel changes and the new leader’s initial concentration on areas of higher priority, such as the economy. They say stronger outlines should emerge from the national writers’ congress, due in three months.