JAVS Spring 2026

Featured Article

The Viola Behind the Iron Curtain, Pt. III: Mr. Stepanov and Ms. Stepanova—the Generically Utopic World of Small-Scale Socialist Realist Repertoire by Nethanel E. Pollak, DMA

“War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.” George Orwell, 1984

differently across multiple disciplines, and its definitions remain intentionally vague, reflecting the nature of the ideology itself. Yet, as many authors agree, socialist realist art—whether literary, visual, musical, or cinematic—is immediately recognizable upon encounter, just as it is generally evident when a work bears no relation to the concept at all. 2 Socialist realism emerged from currents of thought already present in nineteenth-century socialist writings and developed into a dominant artistic doctrine in the Soviet Union during the 1930s, actively promoted and shaped by Stalin himself. 3 Its goal was to present the most “truthful” (and thus “realist”) depiction of life in a socialist society, while deliberately distancing itself from other contemporary artistic movements that were deemed incompatible with Soviet Communist values. The foundational principles of socialist realism in literature were officially articulated in 1934 at the First Soviet Writers’ Conference—although earlier discussions can be traced across various disciplines—and were soon extended to all artistic fields. 4 In practice, socialist realism transformed art into a vehicle for propaganda, and artists who failed to conform to its expectations faced serious repercussions. In music, this ideological enforcement was brought sharply into focus with the public denunciation of Shostakovich in 1936 following the premiere of Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, as discussed earlier in this series. 5 Within this historical framework, the present article invites today’s performers and educators to approach this ostensibly “generic” repertoire not just as a curiosity or ideological artifact, but as a meaningful site of musical practice. One that demands informed listening, ethical awareness, and interpretive responsibility.

“A crocodile named Gena lived in the town. And he worked at the zoo, as a crocodile.” Eduard Uspensky, Gena the Crocodile (Cheburashka) Introduction Following the first two parts of this series, which introduced research on original works for viola from the Soviet era, this third part focuses on one of the more distinctive phenomena in the field, offering a refreshing addition to the viola repertoire. The corpus-based portion of the research—comprising more than 320 catalogued and annotated works—reveals a substantial body of small-scale compositions for viola and piano, written between the 1930s and the 1970s, unified by stylistic features and shared artistic content. 1 These works are tonal, neo-Romantic, and simply structured; they are often programmatic, with easily identifiable musical subjects and ideas, and frequently serve a straightforward pedagogical purpose. Taken together, they form a musically recognizable and ideologically legible sound world—what might be described as a generic utopia —in which aesthetic uniformity, accessibility, and optimism function as both artistic strategy and cultural mandate. Considering their historical and geographical context, the works discussed in this article all represent, to varying degrees, the aesthetic and ideological framework of Soviet socialist realism.

Attempting to define Soviet socialist realism succinctly is an impossible task. The concept has been articulated

Journal of the American Viola Society / Vol. 42, No. 1, Spring 2026

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