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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 October 2013
John Cage's music was little known in the Soviet Union until the late 1960s, as official communist cultural policy would not allow his music to be performed or researched. This makes it all the more surprising that the only visit by the composer to Soviet Russia had become possible by 1988. The Soviet officials were planning a large festival of contemporary music in St Petersburg in 1988. With the changing climate Tikhon Khrennikov, the secretary of the All Soviet Union League of Composers, appointed by Stalin in 1948, was keen to be seen as a progressive at the time of Gorbachev's perestroika, and he approved the invitation for Cage to be present at the performances of his works in St Petersburg. This article includes interviews with the composer conducted by the author in 1987–1989, as well as recollections of the meetings with Cage at his home in New York City and in Moscow.
1 See the Stravinsky correspondence at the Paul Sacher Stiftung in Basel, particularly before his trip to the USSR (correspondence1961–62).
2 By firing on the Winter Palace on the opposite bank of the Neva: cf the third movement of Shostakovich's Symphony No. 12. The Aurora is maintained to the present day as a museum. – (Ed.)