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Revolutionary Song from Proletarian Dictatorship to Soviet Empire

Ol’ga Eiges, Long Live the Stalin Constitution! Long Live the Soviet Woman Equal in Rights, 1939, Lithograph on paper, from the Ne boltai Collection

Kiril Tomoff (PhD ’01) returns to the University of Chicago for a presentation that traces revolutionary song from its role in the revolutionary circles of late Tsarist Russia through its appearance as material for the powerful symphony that Dmitri Shostakovich wrote fifty years later to commemorate the events of 1917.

The UChicago Women's Ensemble presents a selection of revolutionary songs as part of the lecture including:

  • Diu vi salvi Regina (Corsican chant/political anthem)
  • Slavery and Suffering (Grigori Machtet)
  • Орлёнок (Eaglet) (lyrics: A. Shvedov, music: V. Beliy)
  • What happens when a woman...? (Alexandra Olsavsky)

The event is presented in conjunction with the special exhibition Revolution Every Day and the University Symphony’s December 2 concert, Echoes of HistoryTomoff's talk poses questions about the many changing and contested meanings of revolutionary songs, as well as about how those changes were related to the professionalization of musical life and the creation of a Soviet patriotic culture over the period of time that the Soviet Union itself changed from a "proletarian dictatorship" into a powerful Soviet Empire that stretched from the Danube to the Pacific.

Kiril Tomoff is Professor of History, University of California Riverside. 

FREE, open to the public. 

Presented in collaboration with the Department of Music

Ol’ga Eiges, Long Live the Stalin Constitution! Long Live the Soviet Woman Equal in Rights (detail), 1939, Lithograph on paper, from the Ne boltai Collection.