Synthesized Socialism
Under Review
In this article, I show that contrary to enduring Cold War binaries between Western experimentalism and Soviet socialist realism, the Soviet government strategically deployed electronic music to bolster its image as a modern, forward-looking nation during the early Cold War. Drawing on previously unseen archival sources, oral history interviews, and organological methods, I argue that the Soviet government cultivated a specific politics of timbre through the creation of state-sponsored electronic musical instruments and ensembles. I begin by examining an order from the Ministry of Culture from 1955, in which engineers and inventors were tasked with building electronic instruments that sounded “modern.” I then follow the development of the Ekvodin, a multi-voice synthesizer with a keyboard for easy performance, which the Ministry of Culture heralded as the future of Soviet music. Using the Ekvodin as a case study reveals both the sonic and ideological values at play in the design of electronic musical instruments. I also explore two “misfires” in Soviet electronic music: the invention of the Il’ston synthesizer and Alfred Schnittke’s Poem about Space. Finally, I analyze the reception of the Ekvodin and the All-Union Radio and Television’s Ensemble of Electronic Musical Instruments to highlight the ideological debates over how best to “sound modern” in global networks of musical creation. In doing so, this article invites a broad reconsideration of musical aesthetics and politics in the Cold War.