In the Language of Half-Truth: the Musical-Theatrical Scene of Khabarovsk in the 1930s as a Platform of Anti-Religious Propaganda
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Abstract
The article is devoted to the study of the propagandist ideas and methods of Russian art in the 1930s on the example
of D.D. Pekarsky’s comedy “A Million Antonys.” The need for a renewal of the repertoire of the Khabarovsk Theater
for Musical Comedy caused the composer from the Russian Far-East to turn to the publications of the Union of
Militant Atheists and to create a musical-theatrical composition corresponding to the greatest degree to the agitational
conception of art (to use the term of E.S. Vlasova) which had been established a decade earlier. The composer who has
accepted the anti-religious and anti-clerical paradigm manifests in his music the ideas set forth in the literary source:
refutation of religious knowledge by means of scientific knowledge, evaluating the way of life of religious clerics
and parishioners as being a masquerade, and the amalgamation of the spiritual element with commerce and politics.
Analyses of separate solo and choral numbers from Pekarsky’s musical number show that the portrayal of the church
vergers and benefactors presented as “class enemies,” being grotesquely distorted, is endowed with negative traits, at
that, the illusion of the reality of presentation being preserved. Such an approach reveals the phenomenon of half-truth,
making it possible for the government in the apprehended historical period to impact the consciousness of the citizens.
Present-day humanitarian knowledge includes in itself concepts, according to which the anti-religious subject matter
of works of art compels these works to contradict their own inner nature, impeding their artistic viability.
Keywords: D. Pekarsky, the musical comedy “A Million Antonys,” the Khabarovsk Theater for Musical Comedy,
anti-religious propaganda in art, Soviet art, agitational art, musical grotesque.
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