History 305
Devine
Fall 2006
Study Questions for November 20th
In reading these chapters from Starr’s book, do not worry about
the numerous names of musicians and festivals. The questions below address the
important themes that emerge from Starr’s detailed account of Soviet jazz in
the 1950s and 1960s. You can easily skim over the sections not addressed in the
questions.
Starr, Red & Hot, Chapter 11
- What
role did young people play in revitalizing Soviet popular culture after
the death of Stalin?
- Who
were the stiliagi? What made them stand out from the Soviet
status quo?
- Why
were young people such as the stiliagi so alienated from Soviet society? How did they
express their alienation?
- How
did the Soviet regime respond to the stiliagi? How did Communist leaders explain the
emergence of the stiliagi
and who did they blame for it?
- What
factors pushed the stiliagi
toward embracing jazz? What needs
did listening to jazz fulfill for them?
- Why
did the characteristics of jazz – its emphasis on individuality,
improvisation, and personal expression – prove especially attractive to
those alienated from Stalinist values?
- Starr
entitles this chapter “The Search for Authenticity.” Why is this an appropriate title?
- Why
was the Sixth World Youth Festival of 1957 a “watershed” for Soviet
jazz? What impact did this festival
have on Soviet jazz musicians and, more broadly, Soviet popular culture?
- To
what extent should the opening of Soviet cultural life to the West be
credited with the developments in jazz during the 1950s? What role did the new generation of
alienated Soviet youth play?
- Starr says
the Soviet government’s willingness to “crack open a small window” to the
West (p. 260) had unintended consequences. What were they?
Starr, Red & Hot, Chapter 12
- Why
did jazz flourish in the Soviet Union
between 1962 and 1967? How did
other developments in the USSR
– the rise of Khrushchev, the launching of Sputnik – affect the
government’s attitude toward jazz?
- Despite
the government’s new willingness to accept jazz music, why was it still
hard for jazz musicians to “play and eat”?
- What
impact did the Soviet “music bureaucracy” have on jazz and on jazz
musicians? Why does the author say
that the bureaucracy ended up forcing modern jazz in the USSR to
become an “elite art”? (p. 267)
- How
did the Komsomol deal with the problem of
juvenile delinquency? In what ways
did its strategy resemble earlier strategies for dealing with “wayward
youth” both in the US
and the USSR?
- Why
were the “jazz clubs” popular with both patrons and the government? Why
were they also a “mixed blessing”? (p. 270)
- What
did Mao Zedong have to do with Khrushchev’s decision to clamp down on
“Western” music and culture in the Soviet Union? Why else might Khrushchev have returned
to the old policies of censorship?
- What
impact did the rise of black nationalism and
“soul” music in the late 1960s have on Soviet musicians?
- Why
would the regime’s support of “jazz festivals” be considered a “policy of
cooptation”? Did this policy serve
the government’s interests?