Eesti nõukogudeaegse kultuuri tähendusväljadest hilisstalinismiaegse džässiajaloo näitel
Making Meaning about Soviet Estonian Culture: The Example of Jazz History in the Late Stalinist Era

Summary/Abstract: By the example of Estonian jazz culture of the late Stalinist era, this study offers new insights into the possible meaning making processes of Soviet culture. I argue that the meaning of jazz culture in Soviet Estonia emerges from the dynamic interaction between Soviet state power, the traditions of jazz culture and the actions of cultural agents. The space for meaning formation is called here a socio-individual field where social structure, cultural practice and cultural actor as the analytical categories merge. An important aspect of the state–jazz linkage was its dynamism. This connection was not fixed, but changed according to changes in the Soviet ideological paradigm. Rapid shifts in Soviet political discourse turned the status of jazz from a tolerated musical form at the close of World War II to musica non grata by 1950. Soviet authorities treated culture first as a propaganda and educational channel for shaping peoples’ consciousness to fit the Soviet mentality. This was why the Soviet cultural model was manifested through rigid regulations aimed at controlling the production and dissemination of music. The main regulative ‘tools’ were the aesthetic doctrine of Socialist realism, public media, censorship and a bureaucratic and complex system of cultural governance. As part of the early 20th century global trends, jazz was first received, then adopted and finally practised by musicians of diverse nationalities all over the world. However, the reception of the music in non-US territories was never homogeneous; the music has always been in open dialogue with different traditions during the acculturation process. The appropriation of jazz to Soviet Estonian cultural contexts, the evolution of its identity involved negotiations between jazz tradition and local socio-cultural contexts. The core aspect of Soviet Estonian jazz of the late Stalinist era was its multivocality. Important schemata identifying the music include classical/light, professional/amateur, bourgeois/proletarian, swing/bebop and dance/concert. Although jazz qualified as a light dance and estrada music genre, Soviet cultural policy tried to classicise jazz. The professional/ amateur distinction remained an important feature distinguishing primarily the status rather than the artistic level of jazz collectives; bourgeois/proletariat served as a distinction for drawing boundaries around jazz; even though the late 1940s is considered a bebop era, Estonians disliked bebop and found musical models in swing. Ann Swidler’s actor-centred model of culture enabled to emphasise the role of the actor in shaping culture. In acting the musicians selected their strategies for action drawn from a cultural repertoire particular to specific situations. For musicians, the primary motivator was their desire for musical self-actualisation through jazz. Musicians’ everyday strategies for self-actualisation included touring, musical learning and listening, ritualising, humour, inventiveness, curiosity, dedication and intellectualising jazz. In summary, within the framework of clear-cut demarcations in the social realm, culture on the one hand was meant to be a ‘cultural educator’ for the populace and was rigorously governed by the communist party, but on the other hand continued to be developed further by creative intelligentsia. As such it functioned as a mediator between the public and private spheres. In that context I see culture as a buffer zone between the forces ‘from below’ and ‘from above’. Although the apparent goals of the ideology and cultural actors diverged, their aims coincided in terms of their content. The aim from above was to raise the level of the people’s kulturnost (in English something like ‘culturedness’), while the people’s intense desire for cultural involvement was the initiative ‘from below’.

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