"National in Form, Socialist in Content": Musical Nation-Building in the Soviet Republics

Abstract

The present article examines the Soviet project of developing national musical cultures within the Caucasian and Central Asian republics of the USSR. This undertaking effectively required the transplanting of the Russian nineteenth-century model of musical nationalism to the republics, under the guidance of composers sent from Moscow and Leningrad. The article investigates the relationship between this model and its imitations, using examples from Caucasian and Asian operas, and touching upon the connected discourses of orientalism and socialist realism.