Cultural Policy

Abstract

Cultural values are a matter that does not concern governments very much in the West. The Soviet regime however has always taken a keen interest in what is written, said and broadcast in their country. On the one hand this reflects a long Russian tradition of preoccupation with the arts. The casual visitor to the USSR even today cannot help being struck by the breadth of interest in literature and the cinema. The communists have strengthened the link between the writer and film-maker and the political system. As we shall see, even music and such remote academic studies as linguistics came to the centre of political attention during Stalin’s last decade.