The article Chaos Instead of Music says that lot of the music in Stalinist Russia was left leaning. Much of the music composed during this time period was considered to be “leftist” rather than natural human music. Much like the theatre this is portrayed as the negative affects of “Meyerholdism”. Many blame the “petty-bourgeois” for allowing natural human arts and music to be revealed to the soviet citizens.
The article states.
“The composer of Lady Macbeth was forced to borrow from jazz its nervous, convulsive, and spasmodic music in order to lend “passion” to his characters. While our critics, including music critics, swear by the name of socialist realism, the stage serves us, in Shostakovich’s creation, the coarsest kind of naturalism.”
This shows us that the soviets were influenced heavily even in their music, arts, poetry and so much more. They never had naturalistic experiences.
This is an interesting thought considering that Schwarz makes the point clear that the articles in “Pravda” are not suggestions but are direct orders. Shostakovich came out with his work and the elites and even possibly Stalin himself rejected it. Reading the orders that are given the idea is that experimentation is bad in the way that Shostakovich did it. I don’t think that naturalistic experiences are not allowed, I think that the government rejected this one in particular.