Ingenious Soviets always found ways of circumventing the control of their cultural warders - either directly via illegal means such such making and playing x-ray bootlegs or indirectly by ‘hiding in plain sight’. The banned film maker Mikhail Khalik told me that he would place very obvious controversial elements in the screenplays he submitted to the film censor knowing they would draw attention and be rejected, allowing more subtle things to sneak though unnoticed. Even mainstream movies such as The Irony of Fate took subtle ironical pokes as the oppressive uniformity of the the Brezhnev era - the plot revolves around the drunk protagonist mistaking Leningrad for Moscow because each city has an identical apartment in an identical block with exactly the same street address, number and door key. The audiences got these references though the censor might not. Even Shostakovich was able to insert jazz and cabaret music into his scores on the basis of parodying what ‘the bad guys’ were listening to in underground speakeasies.
Stilyagi dancing in Krokodil magazine
Censorship didn’t just apply to movies, music and literature. Dancing always drew the attention of the authorities - especially if it was wild and western. Dancing at official youth events was supervised and patrolled by Komsomol members to stop infringements. Various propaganda news reels and satirical magazines like Krokodil regularly lampooned the Stilyagi and other kids who wanted to spend their nights boogieing to swing and rock’n’roll. Even Khruschev, who was credited with ushering in an era of relative liberality, was withering about The Twist:
”What is this dance called? The Whistle? the Whist? The Twist? Well, what is it? They say they dance to a frenzy, you know. Then they fall down. And this is a dance? Why should we give up our folk dances? I’m not just talking about Russian and Ukrainian dances; take Uzbek, Kazakh, any peoples’ dance - it is smooth and beautiful. And this, this is indecent! Such gestures with certain parts of the body. It is offensive to society… think, comrades, let’s stand up for the old days. Yes, for the old days and not to succumb to this decadence..”
But disapproval by the old men of the revolution didn’t work. Nureyev claimed he danced to jazz on bone records and the stilyagi kids met to twist and and to jive to rock’n’roll on x-rays in private - there were even some establishment figures who managed to get away with jazzy dance moves in public - again on the pretence of parody.
In the early 60s, the choreographer Igor Moiseev took his celebrated folk dance ensemble on an international tour - part of the culture exchange of the Khruschev years. To show off their versatility - and in the spirit of detente - they prepared a dance specific to the music of each country they visited - and what could be more American in America but rock’n’roll? After returning from the tour, they performed the very same rock’n’roll routine at the end of their program in the Tchaikovsky Hall. It was now called "Back to the Monkey” (a title with pretty obvious racist overtones) and described as a parody to illustrate the complete cultural decay of the West.
Needless to say Audiences loved it.
Lev Golovanov and the Moiseev Ensemble on the stage of the Concert Hall. Tchaikovsky. Courtesy Nikita Golovanov
A recent conversation prompted me to reflect on how significant the authorities fear of uncontrolled dancing really was. One aspect of the prohibition of the emigre singers was the flamboyant Russian or ‘Gypsy’ tango they performed and I wrote HERE about Gorky’s inflamed condemnation of Jazz as the music of the degenerate - much of which appear to be based upon its ability to make ‘fleshy hips sway’
Then there was the ‘affair of the foxtrot’, a purge which swept a whole group of young people into prison on the basis of their affection for what seems to us a very old-fashioned, harmless dance form. But the significant thing about the foxtrot is that it has a couple dancing ‘cheek to cheek’ - in this intimate private space, the state is excluded, ideology is absent - it is a kind of proto ‘sex crime’ in Orwellian terms.
In the ultimate totalitarian mindset, it is not just the mind and the emotions which must be policed but the autonomy of the individual body. It is not that the minutely choreographed official displays of co-ordinated collective folk dancing and gymnastics didn’t have a power and a beauty of their own - they did - but wild dancing, the joyful outward physical expression of inner individuality was a threat, just as the spontaneous improvisation of jazz soloists was.