Union of Soviet Composers

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USSR Union of Composers or Union of Composers of the USSR (Russian: Союз Советских композиторов СССР), also Union of Composers or Composers’ Union was a ‘creative’ professional organisation of composers in the Soviet Union. It still exists as the Union of Composers of Russian Federation.

The Union of Composers of the USSR 1932-1957 (as well as other creative unions of artists, architects, writers, and so on) was organised according to the Communist Party Resolution ‘On the Reconstruction of Literary and Artistic Organisations’, issued on April 23, 1932. It was followed by the liquidation of two antagonistic composers’ organs: the Western and modernist orientated ACM - Association for Contemporary Music and democratic RAPM, the Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians proclaimed that mass song should be the basis of Soviet music.

The Unions of Composers were created in 1932 in Moscow, Leningrad and the capitals of the republics and autonomies.

The Stalin era, was a period characterized by bureaucratic control and the reign of Socialist Realism in all the fields of arts including music. The ruling ideological doctrine of ‘Socialist Realism’ was promulgated in 1934. It was explained as a ‘truthful and historically concrete depiction of reality in its revolutionary development’. In musical term this meant a composing of patriotic, elevating scores, preferably with a topical or folkloric content, supportive for the communist ideology and the regime, simple and accessible to the masses. All experimentation or any fluctuation from these frames were branded as ‘formalism’ and banished together with the ‘decadent music of the rotten West’.

The Union of Soviet Composers established control over the music profession and negotiated the relationship between composers and the Communist Party leadership. There was a complex and mutable interaction of creative intelligentsia and political elite in a period hitherto characterized as one of totalitarian control.

Most accounts of Soviet musical life focus on famous individuals. In 1936 Dmitri Shostakovitch was victimized for his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. A series of critical articles in the organ of the Communist Party newspaper Pravda, and especially ‘Muddle Instead of Music’ were initiated personally by Stalin, and then supported by the colleagues-composers from the Composers' Union.

In 1939 the government instituted an Organizational Committee (Orgcomitet) of the Union of Composers.

The pressure to the composers Dmitri Shostakovich, Sergei Prokofiev, Nikolai Myaskovsky, Vissarion Shebalin and others reached its peak in the "Party Resolution" of 1948, and the infamous auto-da-fé of the First Congress of the Composers’ Union. The First Congress took place on April 19-25, 1948. At the congress the Organizational Committee of the Composers’ Union was replaced by party functionaries and Tikhon Khrennikov was chosen by Andrei Zhdanov and Stalin to the post of general secretary of the Union of Composers of the USSR that he held until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

The Union's meetings and congresses were organized on a regularly basis. The Second Congress took place on March 28 - April 5, 1957; the third on March 26 - April 3, 1962, etc. These events were usually accompanied with a series of the official concerts and music festivals. These were followed by a parody to the democratic elections with only one candidate to the chair. The speeches of Khrennikov and other secretaries included a report on a situation with a creative life in the Union as well as critics of some defect and deficiencies. Thus at the Sixth Congress in 1979 the music of the so-called 'Khrennikov's Seven' was criticized as "pointlessness... and noisy mud instead of real musical innovation", that harked back to the First Congress of 1948.

The "Union of Composers of the USSR" was renamed into the "Union of Soviet Composers" in 1957. It was also re-structured with the regional sub-divisions into:

The Union of composers of RSFSR (Russian Federation);
The Union of composers of Armenian SSR, Azerbaijan SSR, Byelorussian SSR, etc. (all Soviet republics);
The Union of composers of Bashkir ASSR, Buryat ASSR, Dagestan ASSR, etc. (all Soviet autonomies);
The Union of composers of Moscow, Leningrad, Chelyabinsk, etc. (all major cities).

The Union was really a powerful organization having control over the performing organizations, concert halls, music publishers, Radio and TV, Ministries of Culture, Rights Agency VAAP, theatres, orchestras, ensembles, conservatories and other music institutions, and music shops.

The structures of the Union has included:

Centre of music information and propaganda of Soviet music;
All-Union House of Composers (Vsesoyuzny Dom Kompozitorov);
Music Foundation (Muzfond);
Production department of Muzfond (Proizvodstvenny kombinat Muzfonda);
Creative Houses (camps and cottages for the composers in Ruza, Ivanovo, Repino, etc);
Publishers "Sovetsky Kompozitor" (renamed "Kompozitor" after 1991)
Editorial offices for journals “Sovetskaya Musyka” and “Muzykal’naya Zhizn’”;
Libraries.

In 1987 the Union of Composers included 2506 members (with 1134 members for the Russian Federation, 586 for Moscow, and 158 for Leningrad). The Union had a complex hierarchic system of Secretaries, Commissions, and Administration Boards, Sections and Sub-sections with Tikhon Khrennikov on top.

Inside if the Union of Composers, a new "ACM - Association for Contemporary Music", the revival of the previous, was established in Moscow in 1990 with its chairman a composer Edison Denisov (1929-1996).

After the collapse of the USSR the "Union of Soviet Composers" was renamed into the "Union of Composers of Russia" with its leader Vladislav Kazenin (b. 1937).