Soviet Cultural Empire in Crisis: The National and Imperial in the Soviet Cultural Community, 1956-1957

• In Event: Music and Liberation III: Musical Responses to Political Changes

Abstract

I propose a paper to be part of the panel, "Rethinking moments of liberation; e.g. Prague Spring in 1968, Hungarian Revolution of 1956, Fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Euromaidan 2013-14." The paper examines how Soviet elites in Budapest and Moscow responded to the crisis in the Soviet cultural empire precipitated by the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, revealing both a perhaps surprising willingness to encourage decentralized cultural relations within the empire and important ways in which cultural relations were used as a tool to construct and maintain an empire challenged by efforts at liberation.

Author

• Kiril Tomoff, UC Riverside