To many minds, it is almost a second Russian Revolution.
It is not one carried forth with soldiers and armed peasants and red banners, but with the ballet dancer`s pas de deux, the jazz saxophonist`s haunting wail, the mathematically perfect trills and chords of the concert pianist, even the vivid paintings of the legendary pirates of Robert Louis Stevenson`s ”Treasure Island.” It could soon be manifest in the rodeo rider`s yipping whoop within earshot of the Kremlin.
The Soviet Union and the United States have embraced each other, most warmly. Not the politicians or the arms-control negotiators or the ideologues or the generals and admirals but the artists, musicians, writers, dancers and other performers whose creations make up a nation`s culture.
In the restrained bureaucratese of the diplomatic Sovietologist, it is called ”renewed cultural exchange.” Theatrical critics and arts writers-almost universally agog from it all-call it ”cultural glasnost,” after the Russian term for the ”openness” policies of Soviet party chief Mikhail Gorbachev.
In the sense of positive relations between the Soviet Union and the United States, there has been nothing quite like it since the Roosevelt-Stalin alliance of World War II. No one is quite sure where it will lead or how long it will last-or whether it can have any significant effect on longstanding governmental attitudes.
But even if, in the long run, it does not have any major impact on relations between the two major nuclear powers, it is having a profound effect within the two countries-especially the traditionally xenophobic Soviet Union. How else could an excited Moscow audience find itself watching an American rock star trashing his stage equipment at the end of a performance?
Why else would there be a banjo player from Leningrad in gray suit, blue tie and black shoes bringing down the house at Philadelphia`s Painted Bride Art Center with his combo`s rendition of a little number that translated as
”Dartown Stutters` Ball”?
And at the recent Moscow International Book Fair, once noted for the books that weren`t shown, works by such once-banned authors as Boris Pasternak and Anna Akhmatova were prominently displayed.
”You do have the feeling that a lot`s changing here and the changes are good,” said Robert Bernstein, president of Random House, at the book fair. Bernstein, a human-rights activist, was denied visas to attend the fairs in 1979 and 1985.
In Geneva, Ambassador Max Kampelman struggles in arms control talks that, despite the apparent desire on both sides for some kind of agreement, have stuck on Moscow`s insistence that the United States abandon its ”Star Wars” space-based missile defense program and American fears that the Soviets are playing for propaganda advantage in nuclear-wary Western Europe and are not seriously interested in real strategic arms reduction at all.
In Vienna, Ambassador Warren Zimmerman labors in near anonymity in confrontation with the Soviets on human-rights issues-his success measured in small, incremental expansion of emigration from the Soviet Union but no dramatic change in the Communist Party`s autocratic rule over what was once the Russian Empire.
But, in Washington and on frequent trips to the USSR, Ambassador Stephen Rhinesmith, coordinator of the President`s United States-Soviet Exchange Initiative, has, since January, 1986, presided over an explosion of renewed friendship and appreciation of the other country`s culture.
It is a phenomenon that has surpassed everyone`s expectations. Involving corporations, foundations, museums, theatrical companies and all manner of private groups and individuals in addition to officialdom, it has, in many ways, grown beyond the means of government agencies and officials to control it, including those on both sides of the Iron Curtain who take a dim view of it.
Perhaps the most astounding thing about this explosion of ”glasnost”
and invasion of Soviet culture into the American mainstream is how uncritically and unquestioningly it has been received. It is almost as though Americans in the arts are afraid to prick the magic bubble; as though an untoward word about a Russian ballerina or pianist or painter would stem the westward flow of Soviet exchange.
The Russian Bolshoi, for example, has overwhelmed the 1987 New York and Washington ballet season. Yet its repertoire consisted almost entirely of classical and arcane Stalinesque pieces. Is it healthy for either the American or Soviet stage for this to long continue?
The first postwar Soviet-American exchange agreement-limited almost entirely to cultural matters-was signed in 1958 as part of the Eisenhower administration`s attempt to ease Cold War tensions in a world in which school children routinely did duck-and-cover drills in preparation for nuclear war.
Tensions were only increased, however, by the subsequent U-2 spy plane incident, the building of the Berlin Wall, the Vietnam War and the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. Further stresses were placed on the relationship by a number of major defections of Soviet performers to the West, most notably those of Rudolf Nureyev, Natalia Makarova and Mikhail Baryshnikov of Leningrad`s Kirov Ballet, and those of Leonid and Valentina Kozlov and Alexander Godunov of the Bolshoi.
The ultimate break came with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, when the exchange agreement was severed by President Jimmy Carter`s administration as a symbolic gesture.
It took Ronald Reagan-who has baited the Soviet Union as ”the Evil Empire”-to repair the rupture. At the November, 1985, Geneva summit, Secretary of State George Shultz and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze worked out a new agreement calling for a resumption of traditional exchanges.
But in addition to this, Reagan and Gorbachev went a step farther and called for a ”broader dialogue” between the two countries that would establish exchanges on a ”people to people” basis as much as possible. This led to the creation of Rhinesmith`s agency, whose principal mission is to coordinate exchange projects rising from the American private sector and coordinate these efforts with the Soviet government.
In January, 1986, just two months after Reagan and Gorbachev set their programs into motion, Soviet pianist N. Petrov held a concert in New York. In April, 1986, famed American pianist Vladimir Horowitz played to standing ovations in Moscow and Leningrad in a historic concert tour that drew world attention.
During the next two months, the Kirov Ballet-experiencing no new defections-received similar acclaim in a tour that took it to Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Trenton, N.J. The Soviets also sent a delegation to the U.S. International Ballet Competition conducted that June in Mississippi.
And during that summer at Tanglewood, Gennady Rozhdesvensky conducted the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
The following September saw the Soviets` incomparable Moiseyev Dance Company make a triumphant return to the United States after more than a decade`s absence. With a new repertoire that included a highly risque (by Soviet standards) mass jazz dance number based on Gogol`s folk tales, the troupe played to wildly cheering crowds in 16 American cities, including Chicago, where company director Igor Moiseyev visited one of his favorite cultural attractions in the world, the Art Institute.
At the same time, the USSR`s Romen Gypsy Theater performed in Chicago, New York and five other cities, and the Kiev Ballet on Ice toured five cities, including Milwaukee.
Later that fall, the Manhattan String Quartet performed in six Soviet cities, while the Moscow State Symphony played in Washington, Philadelphia and New York.
This year, American pianist Daniel Pollack braved the Russian winter with a five-city Soviet tour, and the Dave Brubeck Quartet played 13 sold-out concerts in three Soviet cities.
The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra was a hit playing four concerts in Moscow and Leningrad. The Yale Russian Chorus, singing folk songs and old religious music, made its 11th tour to the Soviet Union in May and June.
American guitarist Pat Metheny and his six-member band proved a major hit in Leningrad, Moscow and Kiev in June.
Although rock is hardly new to the Soviet Union-and in fact has been commonplace in big-city discos-Soviets are still shaking their heads in amazement over the performances of American rock singer-musician Billy Joel, who concluded one last month by smashing stage equipment and instruments in climactic frenzy.
Rock stars in the U.S.S.R. teamed up with such American contemporaries as the Doobie Brothers, James Taylor, Santana and Bonnie Raitt for a huge, open- air concert on July 4, sponsored by the Soviet Peace Committee.
There are plans underway for future appearances in the Soviet Union by the Dance Theater of Harlem, `50s rock reprisers Sha Na Na, the Modern Jazz Quartet and the Johnson Mountain Boys.
The Soviets this year sent pianists Nikolay Petrov and Lazar Berman, as well as an ensemble of 27 teenage dancers who appeared in Lancaster, Pa., and Evansville, Ind., in addition to New York and Washington.
The Kirov Ballet returned last spring. The gray-suited, blue-tied Leningrad Dixieland Jazz Band, now in its 25th year, wowed audiences from Philadelphia to Sacramento in June with a genuine Bourbon Street sound and such lyrical translations as ”when das zaints, come marchen in,” and ”dance ott bose my shoes, when they play das yellyroll blues.”
The most important event of the Soviet-American cultural embrace was the return this summer of the Bolshoi Ballet to American stages for the first time in eight years.
Its premiering three-week run at New York`s Metropolitan Opera was sold out instantly. The same thing happened for its subsequent two-week appearance at Washington`s Kennedy Center-in large part because of New Yorkers who descended on the capital because they were unable to get tickets in their own city. Although tickets cost as much as $60 (much more when purchased from scalpers), the San Francisco and Los Angeles performances were jam-packed as well.
Unlike the fey, feisty and very innovative Moiseyev troupe, the Bolshoi is the embodiment of Russian dance tradition and the Bolshoi`s American program reflected this.
In addition to selected numbers from ”Romeo and Juliet,” ”Spartacus,” ”Legend of Love,” ”The Nutcracker,” ”Swan Lake” and other classics, Bolshoi artistic director Yuri Grigorovich presented three full ballets: the perennial ”Giselle,” a new version of ”Raymonda” and Grigorovich`s ”The Golden Age.”
In general, the response to the Bolshoi was rhapsodic. The New York Times printed one or more stories or commentaries on the troupe virtually every day of its run.
