Authors

Richard Gillies¹;  ¹ University of Nottingham, UK

Discussion

This paper focusses on the challenges of researching and teaching Russian musical culture in the context of the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian conflict. It is in many ways a self-reflective paper, which focusses on my own recent experiences of working in the field of Slavonic and East European Music. The paper takes two of my recent research topics as case studies: the Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov (b. 1937), on whom much of my work since 2014 has focussed, and my current research on the production, distribution, and consumption of early recordings (wax cylinder; shellac disc) in the Romanov Empire. Through these case studies, I reflect both on the ways in which cultural historians might productively decentre Russian cultural hegemony, and on the very sensitive issue of cultural ideology and propaganda which, in some extreme cases, has resulted in the complete exclusion of Russian culture from public discourse. Although it remains obvious why the rejection of all things Russian is a natural consequence of the war (particularly within European and US media), I argue that to undertake a cultural study of a figure like Silvestrov that contains no mention of his life-long engagement with Russian culture as I have recently been asked—and refused—to do, is to write a completely skewed and ideologically motivated history of his career and aesthetic philosophy that does not fulfil what I believe is an ethical and moral obligation of honest scholarship.