Skip to main contentSteeped in the holy genocides of Joshua and Deuteronomy, former seminarian Iosif Dzhugashvili managed to marry the fanaticism of his abandoned Christianity with a totalitarian political structure to create history's largest mass grave. We know him as Stalin.
Between his ascendancy to power in the Soviet Union in 1924 and his death in 1953, Stalin authorized the deaths of an estimated 39 million people. The majority of these victims were unknown peasants (often rounded up with their village), but their ranks were garnished with such renowned names as Vsevolod Meyerhold (the great theater director) and Osip Mandelshtam (one of the 20th century's greatest Russian poets), artists who wouldn't bow to Stalin's demands for kitsch.
There were others who cheated Stalin, such as the poets Vladimir Mayakovsky (who shot himself in the heart), Marina Tsetaeva (who hanged herself) and Sergei Esenin (who wrote his last poem in the blood of his cut wrists--a wave of sympathetic suicides swept Russia days after). Yet in the midst of this charnel house, as a four-day symposium at Reed College reveals this week, some artists managed to survive and produce work of worth even under the heel of terror. When confronted by such events, it's wise to ask, "Could it happen here?" The Reed symposium is timely, as, in many ways, it could happen in modern America.
The ROMP (Reediana Omnibus Musica Philosopha) events will focus primarily on composers such as Dmitry Shostakovich and Sergei Prokofiev (who died on the very same day as Stalin, denying him one quick, free breath). But the work of other great Russian creators, such as artist Aleksandr Rodchenko and film directors Sergei Eisenstein (a close colleague of Prokofiev's) and Grigory Aleksandrov, will be discussed.
With the seminars will be a series of concerts under the curatorship of pianist Vladimer Feltsman, who will introduce a number of lesser-known Soviet composers and their work to Portland audiences.
Stalin's terror was built not in a day but incrementally. Meyerhold, Tsetaeva and Prokofiev all had means for escape but failed to heed the warnings until it was too late. It's this piecemeal construction of totalitarianism that should keep us on our guard, especially as we witness the dismantling of our civil rights in this new terror age.
While we mindlessly chatter about baseball in Portland or the filmed exploits of a dull, porcine blonde on television, the Bush administration, under the guidance of various totalitarian-minded men, is shredding laws protecting the environment, reproductive rights and personal freedom. If this sounds like hyperbole, it takes only a look at the country's attorney general, John Ashcroft, to see a shared link with the Old Testament terrors of Stalin.
Ashcroft represents the Talibanish Baptists and their psychotic-tongued Pentecostalite brethren who have become foot soldiers for an American theocracy. When not busily buying burkas for Art Deco statuary, Ashcroft has appeared before the proud South's leading Klan college to announce that America has no king but Jesus. This last weekend, Antonin Scalia, potentially the next chief justice of the Supreme Court, appeared before a group of fellow cultists to question the separation of church and state. Behind them stands the Armageddon lobby in Congress, a group of twice-born crusaders who believe a bloody conflict in Israel will spark the return of their Messiah, a thinly veiled hope that's been expressed on the Senate floor.
As these unignited minds perfect their gulag at Guantanamo Bay, dismantle the NEA and PBS and proselytize horrors from the Left Behind series, it falls to artists to speak out, to mine the vein of outrage at what is happening to this land. Some brave writers and artists have stuck their necks out: actor Sean Penn (who has flown to Baghdad to protest American militarism), musician Steve Earle and cartoonist Matt Groening (both of whom have contributed work to the new book It's a Free Country), Michael Moore and Gore Vidal (in various essays that have not been published in American papers), and hip-hop artist Mr. Lif (whose EP Emergency Rations, strangely enough, speaks of being forced to go underground. Pitchfork says, "Think Noam Chomsky with a beat"). Still, America remains too quiet.
Led by Tolstoy (the true genius behind modern environmentalism), Russian artists in the early 20th century responded to concerns that the human spirit was being ground down by materialistic industrialism. Now, artists must become true materialists to save this cradle of humanity, Earth, from a warped spiritualism that longs to see the world as cinders. It's not yet too late to speak out.
Stalin's successor, Nikita Khrushchev, first denounced his predecessor and his crimes in 1956. At one large gathering where Khrushchev was speaking, someone from the audience heckled, "You were one of Stalin's colleagues! Why didn't you stop him?" "Who said that?" Khrushchev bellowed angrily. A long, sick silence fell over the crowd. "Now," Khrushchev said quietly, ashamedly, "you know why."
Kaul Auditorium at Reed College, 3203 SE Woodstock Blvd., 294- 6400 (tickets), 788- 6651 (ROMP information), www.reed.edu/romp . 8 pm Monday- Wednesday, Jan. 20-22. $5 (students)- $35.
Panel discussions happen in the early afternoons. These include Malcolm Brown's "Prokofiev's 'Sacrifice to the Bitch Goddess,'" Laurel Fay's "Shostakovich and the Struggle for the Soul of Soviet Music" and Erika Wolk's "Modernism's Willing Executioner: Aleksandr Rodchenko at the White Sea Canal." Call Reed College for scheduling queries.
WWeek 2015