'Formalistic Freaks in Music': "Ilya Golovin", Shostakovich, and Zhdanovshchina for the Masses

Amidst all the art, literature, music, and theatre of the ‘Zhdanovshchina’ (the post-war Soviet intervention in arts policy), one play stands out: Sergei Mikhalkov’s Ilya Golovin. In this play, a leading Soviet composer is chastised for his formalism but sees the error of his ways and again writes music of sufficiently socialist character. Ilya Golovin is noteworthy not just because it presents a crude parody of Shostakovich and his music, but because it reveals the wider context of the ideological campaign against artists and shows us something of how different artists responded. In this article, I argue that Ilya Golovin is not simply a bizarre example of multiple artists toeing the ideological line: instead it reveals the uglier side of late Stalinism in the form of vehement anti-Semitism, as well as demonstrating the xenophobic Cold War patriotism that served as the ultimate motivation behind the Zhdanovshchina itself.