Ideological tensions and Lithuanian music of the late Soviet period

ENThis article focuses on the specific features of ideological control and censorship in Lithuania’s musical culture of the late Soviet period. There is a prevalent view in post-Soviet cultural studies that after I960, the influence of political authorities on the Soviet Lithuanian musical culture was insignificant and ideological restrictions were of little consequence. Such an attitude is supported by the musicians who opposed the official Soviet cultural doctrine, while the documentation of the repressive authorities that is accessible to researchers contains few documents associated with the sphere of music. Within this context, the wave of ideological tensions and music censorship phenomena that arose in Soviet Lithuania in the 1980s (prior to Perestroika) shall be regarded as a sociocultural dissonance that requires further exhaustive analysis. The author discusses current theoretical approaches to relationships between music and politics through the analysis of four cases that illustrate ideological and administrative regulations of the time: the denunciation of music critics organized by the Central Committee of the Lithuanian Communist Party (1980); the ideological critique of Feliksas Bajoras’ opera Dievo avinėlis (The Lamb of God, 1981-1982) during an official audition and the ensuing ban on its production (1983).the disapproval expressed at the party meeting of the Lithuanian Composers’ Union concerning the promotion of modern mainstream composers in the media (1984); and public condemnation of four young Lithuanian composers for being interviewed by a Polish magazine, which took place at the Rector’s Office of the Lithuanian State Conservatory (1984). The analysis of four typical microhistories led to an assumption that the character of ideological constraints depended to a considerable degree on circumstances in cultural history that had only a loose connection with politics, such as conflicts between generations and individual artists, the demonstration and securing of power possessed by the cultural elite, informal methods that were widely practiced in the administration of cultural affairs, etc. The inability of the Soviet ideologues to articulate an explicit doctrine of Soviet music became intricately tied up with their endeavour to impose rigorous control on all public cultural activities and the international dissemination of music. In addition, these case studies revealed the local and ritual character of ideological control and administrative measures, corresponding to the paradoxical nature of relationships between political power and society, which captures the very essence of the late Soviet era.