AGM & Annual Lecture

Stalin's Playlist, Professor Marina Frolova-Walker

The issue of Stalin’s musical tastes has never undergone any scholarly investigation: it remains a preserve of popular literature, where fact is often mixed with fiction. In this lecture, Professor Frolova-Walker approached it from one particular angle: the awards of Stalin Prizes in music, which are often seen by popular writers as a direct extension of Stalin’s personal preferences. Among the many surviving documents pertaining to Stalin Prizes, she has discovered lists of nominations which include Stalin’s own marginalia. Considering them together with relevant memoir literature allows us to answer the question on whether Stalin was indeed routinely imposing his personal musical tastes on the nation.