The Dancer Defects
Price:
$60.00 (06)Description
The cultural Cold War between the Soviet Union and the West was without precedent. At the outset of this original and wide-ranging historical survey, David Caute establishes the nature of the extraordinary cultural competition set up post-1945 between Moscow, New York, London and Paris, with the most intimate frontier war staged in the city of Berlin. Using sources in four languages, Caute explores the cultural Cold War as it rapidly penetrated theatre, film, classical music, popular music, ballet, painting and sculpture, as well as propaganda by exhibition. Artists such as Miller, Picasso, Eisenstein, Shostakovich, and Stravinsky became involved in this fierce cultural competition through which each of the major Cold War protagonists sought to establish their supremacy. Caute challenges some recent, one-dimensional, American accounts of 'Cold War culture', which ignore not only the Soviet performance but virtually any cultural activity outside the USA. The West presented its cultural avant-garde as evidence of liberty, even through monochrome canvases and dodecaphonic music appealed only to a minority audience. Soviet artistic standards and teaching levels were exceptionally high, but the fear of freedom and innovation virtually guaranteed the moral defeat which accelerated the collapse of the Soviet Union.Reviews
"Based on extensive research in copious books and manuscript collectionsin various languages, Cuate has painted a large and complex canvas of the shifting nature of the culture conflicts of the post-war era. There are no real heroes or villains, only sordid stories of artists attempting to survive and create in a political world that used them as pawns in a power struggle. Cuate has written a fascinating tale of artistic discord." Journal of Slavic Military Studies
"If we want to help our students understand why powerful states react fearfully to alien cultural expressions, and cannot always distinguish cultural difference from hostile intentions, Caute's 'struggle for cultural supremacy' is a good place to start. There is a lot of interesting history left to be written about this episode."--American Historical Review
About the Author(s)
David Caute is the author of such books as The Fellow-Travellers and The Great Fear.
