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“That's Not the Only Reason We Love Him”: Tchaikovskii Reception in Post-Soviet Russia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 April 2018

Philip Ross Bullock
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Abstract

This article examines the writing and reception of Tchaikovskii's biography in Russia since 1991, arguing that there has been a constant tension between documentary approaches to the composer's life on the one hand, and popular responses that have frequently resisted scholarly narratives on the other. After the Soviet collapse, a number of former taboos relating to Tchaikovskii's life were lifted, including his homosexuality. Documentary sources began to appear in print, including unexpurgated editions of his letters and diaries. Yet this process has not been without its detractors. Alongside a general tendency to decry the publication and citation of intimate personal correspondence, there have been a number of attempts in the popular press to “disprove” that Tchaikovskii was a homosexual. Social media have proved to be a further site for the discussion of these issues, disseminating the findings of scholarly literature to a readership far wider than originally anticipated. By way of conclusion, it will be suggested that one of the fundamental reasons for the frequent denial of Tchaikovskii's sexuality is that the cause of equal rights is in tension with current trends in Russian politics and society.

Type
Critical Forum: Soviet and Post-Soviet Sexualities
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 77 , Issue 1 , Spring 2018 , pp. 53 - 76
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies 2018 

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18. The acronym LGBTQQIAAP—lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex, asexual, allies, and pansexual—is preferred by some activists on the grounds that it suggests a maximally inclusive spectrum of non-heteronormative identities.

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24. People call in to ask Armenian radio: “Is it true that Tchaikovskii was a homosexual?” Armenian radio replies: “Yes, it's true, but that's not the only reason we love him.” On the genre of Armenian Radio jokes (including this one), see E. Shmeleva, “Anekdoty ob armianskom radio: struktura i iazykovye osobennosti,” at http://www.ruthenia.ru/folklore/shmeleva1.htm (last accessed December 19, 2017). A variant of this joke is also included in Olin, Nikolai, Govorit “Radio Erevan”: Izbrannye voprosy i otvety, 3rd ed. (Munich, 1970), 67Google Scholar. Here, the more colloquial “pederast” is preferred to “gomoseksualist,” and an additional phrase (“Some people like his music too”) is included at the end. On the generic conventions of Putin's interactions with the media, see Maslennikova, Anna, “Putin and the Tradition of the Interview in Russian Discourse,” in Beumers, Birgit, Hutchings, Stephen and Rulyova, Natalia, eds., The Post-Soviet Russian Media: Conflicting Signals (London, 2009), 89–104Google Scholar.

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34. Seifert, Marsha, “Russian Lives, Soviet Films: Tchaikovsky, the Biopic and the Cold War,” in Karl, Lars, ed., Leinwand zwischen Tauwetter und Frost: Der osteuropäische Spiel- und Dokumentarfilm im Kalten Krieg (Berlin, 2007), 133–70Google Scholar.

35. Poznanksy, “Tchaikovsky as Communist Icon,” 241.

36. Bullock, Philip Ross, “Not One of Us? The Paradoxes of Translating Oscar Wilde in the Soviet Union,” in Burnett, Leon and Lygo, Emily, eds., The Art of Accommodation: Literary Translation in Russia (Oxford, 2013), 235–64Google Scholar.

37. Poznanksy, “Tchaikovsky as Communist Icon,” 243. Here, Poznansky cites Iurii Nagibin's belletristic “Tchaikovskii: Final tragedii,” published in Megapolis-ekspress in 1990, and “Taina zhizni i smerti Tchaikovskogo,” published in Niva in 1991 by the émigré scholar Aleksandra Orlova, who had first aired her theories about the composer's suicide in the west in the early 1980s.

38. Kuznetsov, Anatolii, “Korotko o knigakh,” Novyi mir 5 (1994): 246Google Scholar. For the republication of Tchaikovskii's diaries, see Tchaikovskii, Ip. I., ed., Dnevniki P. I. Tchaikovskogo, 1873–1891 (St. Petersburg, 1993)Google Scholar. These were also reissued in 2000 as Tchaikovskii, P. I., Dnevniki (Moscow, 2000)Google Scholar.

39. The original publication is Berberova, Nina N., Tchaikovskii: Istoriia odinokoi zhizni (Berlin, 1936)Google Scholar. For the first of several editions published in post-Soviet Russia, see Berberova, , Tchaikovskii: Istoriia odinokoi zhizni (St. Petersburg, 1993)Google Scholar.

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42. They also undoubtedly shaped the storyline and characterization behind Boris Eifman's ballet, Tchaikovskii, first performed in 1993 and restaged as Tchaikovskii: Pro et contra in 2016. See Baer, Other Russias, 101–2.

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47. Poznansky, Aleksandr, Tchaikovskii (Moscow, 2010)Google Scholar.

48. On the ZhZL series (with a particular focus on Pushkin, Dostoevskii, and Tolstoi), see the various contributions to Ueland, Carol R. and Trigos, Ludmilla, eds., “Forum: Literary Biographies in the Lives of Remarkable People Series (Zhizn΄ zamechatel΄nykh liudei),” Slavic and East European Journal 60, no. 2 (Summer 2016): 205–83Google Scholar.

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50. Ibid.

51. Sergei Osipov, “Byl li Tchaikovskii gomoseksualistom?,” Argumenty i fakty, December 3, 2003, 25, (available at http://gazeta.aif.ru/online/aif/1206/25_01 (last accessed December 20, 2017). In his “Waist-Deep: In the Mire of Russian and Western Debates about Tchaikovsky,” Times Literary Supplement, May 1, 2015, 14–15, Simon Morrison cites Buianov's article as it appears on a Russian website in late 2010 (Eva Merkachevo, “Rossiiskie psikhiatry dokazali, chto Tchaikovskii ne byl geem,” November 5, 2010, at http://korolevnews.ru/news/?id=857 (last accessed December 20, 2017), rather than on the basis of its original publication some seven years earlier.

52. Ibid.

53. Dar΄ia Efremova, “Tchaikovskii: Kto prevratil geniia v geia?,” Kul΄tura, November 5, 2014, at http://portal-kultura.ru/articles/sensatsiya/68938-chaykovskiy-kto-prevratil-geniya-v-geya/ (last accessed December 20, 2017.)

54. Stella, Lesbian Lives in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia, 1.

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56. Baer, Other Russias, 36.

57. Amico, Roll Over, Tchaikovsky!, 69.

58. “Tchaikovskii ne byl gomoseksualistom!”

59. Efremova, “Tchaikovskii: Kto prevratil geniia v geia?”

60. Ibid. Here, “genderless parents” renders the admittedly ambiguous Russian phrase pronumerovannykh roditelei, which in a number of online sources is typically juxtaposed with more traditional conceptions of maternity and paternity. Taruskin (“Introduction: My Wonderful World; or, Dismembering the Triad,” 26) prefers “multiple parenthood,” and Morrison (“Waist-Deep: In the Mire of Russian and Western Debates about Tchaikovsky”) opts for “numbered parenting.”

61. Robert A. Saunders, “New Media, New Russians, New Abroad: The Evolution of Minority Russian Identity in Cyberspace,” in Beumers, Hutchings, and Rulyova, eds., The Post-Soviet Media: Conflicting Signals, 203.

62. Oates, Sarah, Revolution Stalled: The Political Limits of the Internet in the Post-Soviet Sphere (New York, 2013), 10CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

63. Ibid., 28.

64. Ibid., 11 (emphasis original).

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67. Ibid.

68. Ibid.

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70. http://www.ozon.ru/context/detail/id/5321993/ (last accessed December 20, 2017).

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72. Ibid.

73. Ibid.

74. Ibid.

75. Ibid.

76. http://www.livelib.ru/book/1000497273/reviews (last accessed December 20, 2017)

77. Ibid.

78. Ibid.

79. Ibid.

80. http://v-mishakov.ru/chajkovsky.html (last accessed December 20, 2017).

81. Ibid.

82. Ibid.

83. Ibid.

84. Ibid.

85. Ibid. There is an untranslatable homonym here, in that the Russian phrase “iz-za bugra” can also be rendered as “from the other side of the bugger.”

86. http://a-glazunov.livejournal.com/31515.html (last accessed December 20, 2017). Glazunov's views are continued at http://a-glazunov.livejournal.com/31819.html (last accessed December 20, 2017).

87. http://www.kramola.info/vesti/rusy/evrei-pripisali-chajkovskomu-merzost (last accessed December 20, 2017).

88. http://v-mishakov.ru/chajkovsky.html (last accessed December 20, 2017).

89. “Byl li Tchaikovskii gomoseksualistom?” Moskovskii komsomolets, September 19, 2013, at http://www.mk.ru/culture/article/2013/09/19/918313-byil-li-chaykovskiy-gomoseksualistom.html (last accessed December 22, 2017).

90. “Glavnyi spetsialist po Tchaikovskomu oprovergla Medinskogo: kompozitor byl gomoseksualistm,” Moskovskii komsomolets, September 19, 2013, at http://www.mk.ru/culture/music/news/2013/09/19/918270-glavnyiy-spetsialist-po-chaykovskomu-oprovergla-medinskogo-kompozitor-byil-gomoseksualistom.html (last accessed December 22, 2017).

91. http://echo.msk.ru/polls/1160360-echo/comments.html#comments (last accessed December 22, 2017).

92. “Kirill Serebrennikov: ‘Eto dazhe khorosho, chto seichas nam plokho,’” GQ Russia, at http://www.gq.ru/culture/theatre/106046_kirill_serebrennikov_eto_dazhe_khorosho_chto_seychas_nam_plokho.php (last accessed December 22, 2017).

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94. The recording is discussed in Vaidman, P. E., “My uslyshali golos Tchaikovskogo,” in Vaidman, P. E. and Belonovich, G. I., eds., P. I. Tchaikovskii: Al΄manakh. Vyp. 2: Zabytoe i novoe (Klin, 2003), 393–97Google Scholar; Denisov, V. N., “O fonograficheskoi zapisi golosa P. I. Tchaikovskogo iz kollektsii sobiratelia Iuliusa Bloka,” Vestnik udmurtskogo universiteta: Seriia istoriia i filologiia 26, no. 4 (2016): 135–40Google Scholar; and—from the perspective of Rubinshtein's involvement—István Horváth-Thomas and Flamm, Christoph, “Es gibt keine Schallaufnahmen von Anton Rubinštejn. Oder doch?,” Mitteilungen der Tschaikowsky-Gesellschaft 23 (2016): 133–39Google Scholar.

95. “Serebrennikov rasskazal o svoei postanovke ‘Nureyev’ v Bol΄shom teatre,” Interfax, February 4, 2017, at http://www.interfax.ru/culture/548474 (last accessed December 22, 2017).

96. “Balet Serebrennikov ‘Nureyev’ v Bol΄shom mogli zapretit΄ iz-za gomoseksualizma,” Moskovskii komsomolets, July 8, 2017, at http://www.mk.ru/culture/2017/07/08/balet-serebrennikova-nureev-v-bolshom-mogli-zapretit-izza-gomoseksualizma.html (last accessed December 22, 2017); and “Medinskii podderzhal reshenie rukovodstva Bol΄shogo teatra otlozhit΄ prem΄eru ‘Nureyeva,’” TASS, July 10, 2017, at http://tass.ru/kultura/4402923 (last accessed December 22, 2017).

97. Peraino, Judith A., Listening to the Sirens: Musical Technologies of Queer Identity from Homer to Hedwig (University of California Press, 2006), 77–92Google Scholar.

98. On the genre of queer biography and other forms of cultural and historical memory, see Healey, Dan, Russian Homophobia from Stalin to Sochi (London, 2018)Google Scholar, especially Chapter 8, “Shame, Pride, and ‘Non-traditional’ Lives: The Dilemmas of Queering Russian Biography,” 177–94.

99. Klein, Drugaia storona svetila, 11.

100. Baer, Translation and the Making of Modern Russian Literature, 159.

101. Ibid., 161.

102. http://svyatoslav.livejournal.com/397157.html and http://moskalkov-opera.livejournal.com/678139.html (last accessed December 22, 2017); Elena Baraban, “Obyknovennaia gomofobiia,” Neprikosnovennyi zapas 5, no. 19 (2001), cited in Baer, Other Russias, 15.