Development of the festival movement in the USSR. First and Second “Folklore on Screen” festivals in documentary evidences

Abstract

This article is based on research of the preserved documentary evidence of the work of the All-Soviet Commission on folk music of the Union of Soviet Composers in 1972–1979. During that period the Commission worked intensely on establishing one of its most important projects – “Folklore on Screen”, led by E.E. Alekseev and supervised by E.S. Novik. Informatsionnye pis’ma 1972–1979 [“Letters of Information”] is the only documentary evidence that not only allows to reconstruct the chronology of events, but also provides an insight into the full scale of the Commission’s creative and research potential and of the creative element put in its work. Administrative leverage and modest, yet steady financial support proved very important for the task as those provided independence from unnecessary pressure and dubious opinions.

Preparation of all issues of the Letters of Information was left to the staffers. Back in the day it looked like a formal routine job, a waste of time. Because of that, those “chronicles of our history” were being created without zist and half-heartedly. However, further events in our country have turned a presumably useless archive source into something of great research and cultural value.