Kiril Tomoff

Virtuosi Abroad: Soviet Music and Imperial Competition during the Early Cold War, 1945–1958 Kiril Tomoff

Marc Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index. Table of Contents: Introduction1. Shostakovich and The Iron Curtain: Intellectual Property and Transimperial Integration2. Dueling Pianos: Imperial and National Dynamics in Postwar Music Competitions3. From a Musical Holiday to the Tchaikovsky Competition: Moscow as a Global Center of Musical Culture4. Oistrakh on Tour, Richter at Home: Display, Control, and the Style of Global Empire5. Oistrakh and the Impresario: Soviet Concert Tours and Systemic IntegrationEpilogueNotesBibliographyIndexReview Quotes: "The impressive "Virtuosi Abroad" is based on wide research in Soviet-era archives, as well as on deep knowledge of the milieu of Soviet classical music. Kiril Tomoff's argument is original and offers insights widely applicable to a range of scholarship on the causes and consequences of cultural competition during the Cold War, the internal dynamics of Soviet classical music, and even the rise and fall of the USSR." David Engerman, Ottilie Springer Professor of History, Brandeis University, author of "Know Your Enemy ""Review Quotes:"The impressive Virtuosi Abroad is based on wide research in Soviet-era archives, as well as on deep knowledge of the milieu of Soviet classical music. Kiril Tomoff's argument is original and offers insights widely applicable to a range of scholarship on the causes and consequences of cultural competition during the Cold War, the internal dynamics of Soviet classical music, and even the rise and fall of the USSR." David Engerman, Ottilie Springer Professor of History, Brandeis University, author of Know Your Enemy"Publisher Marketing: In the 1940s and 1950s, Soviet musicians and ensembles were acclaimed across the globe. They toured the world, wowing critics and audiences, projecting an image of the USSR as a sophisticated promoter of cultural and artistic excellence. In Virtuosi Abroad, Kiril Tomoff focuses on music and the Soviet Union's star musicians to explore the dynamics of the cultural Cold War. He views the competition in the cultural sphere as part of the ongoing U. S. and Soviet efforts to integrate the rest of the world into their respective imperial projects. Tomoff argues that the spectacular Soviet successes in the system of international music competitions, taken together with the rapturous receptions accorded touring musicians, helped to persuade the Soviet leadership of the superiority of their system. This, combined with the historical triumphalism central to the Marxist-Leninist worldview, led to confidence that the USSR would be the inevitable winner in the global competition with the United States. Successes masked the fact that the very conditions that made them possible depended on a quiet process by which the USSR began to participate in an international legal and economic system dominated by the United States. Once the Soviet leadership transposed its talk of system superiority to the economic sphere, focusing in particular on consumer goods and popular culture, it had entered a competition that it could not win.

Contributor Bio:  Tomoff, Kiril Kiril Tomoff is Professor of History at the University of California, Riverside. He is the author of Virtuosi Abroad: Soviet Music and Imperial Competition during the Early Cold War, 1945 1958 and Creative Union: The Professional Organization of Soviet Composers, 1939 1953, both from Cornell.