Free Download Joseph Horowitz, "The Propaganda of Freedom: JFK, Shostakovich, Stravinsky, and the Cultural Cold War "
English | ISBN: 0252045270 | 2023 | 248 pages | PDF | 2 MB
The perils of equating notions of freedom with artistic vitality
Eloquently extolled by President John F. Kennedy, the idea that only artists in free societies can produce great art became a bedrock assumption of the Cold War. That this conviction defied centuries of historical evidence-to say nothing of achievements within the Soviet Union-failed to impact impregnable cultural Cold War doctrine.
Joseph Horowitz writes: "That so many fine minds could have cheapened freedom by over-praising it, turning it into a reductionist propaganda mantra, is one measure of the intellectual cost of the Cold War." He shows how the efforts of the CIA-funded Congress for Cultural Freedom were distorted by an anti-totalitarian "psychology of exile" traceable to its secretary general, the displaced Russian aristocrat/composer Nicolas Nabokov, and to Nabokov’s hero Igor Stravinsky.
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