Musical Cultural Exchanges in the Age of Detente: Cultural Fixation,Trust,and the Permeability of Culture

Abstract

The 1970s era of detente represented a critical period in cultural exchanges between the United States of America and the Soviet Union. The 1960s set in motion socially liberalizing forces to which Soviet authorities were forced to respond. The Brezhnev era brought greater emphasis on orderly, rational consumption as a marker of mature socialism, including cultural products as well as standard consumer items, as formal state-sponsored cultural exchanges coexisted with more subterranean consumption. Musical cultural exchanges, featuring the Duke Ellington band, the Roy Clark Show, and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, emerged as key sites of trust and distrust and impacted efforts to maintain a stable social order. Barbara Misztal's contention that ‘the weakness of undemocratic states lies in their lack of social trust’ paired with historian Sergei Zhuk's observations about how consumption of Western cultural products shaped identity formation under late Soviet socialism suggests the transformative power of cultural exchanges to undermine official efforts to enhance cultures of trust. As state authorities extended limited exposure to American musical performers and styles in a bid to accommodate the need for trust culture, the Soviet citizenry adapted and transformed them into opportunities for deeper expressions of identity and connection to diverse exemplars of US musical culture.