RUSSIA: Slavs Without Limit

“What is it about Russian music that creates such a tension in you?” asked famed Polish-English Conductor Leopold Stokowski in Manhattan last week, after stating that he will soon be off on his first visit to the Soviet Union. Answering his own question, the Conductor continued:

“Slavic art, unlike others, covers the whole range of emotions and imagination. The artistic nature of the Slav is without taboos, without limits. The Slav allows his feeling to project itself in any direction. There is no such thing as ‘bad form’ in Russian art. It expresses to the utmost limit fear, filth, divine vision, radiance, all possible feelings and emotions. . . .

“We of the West fear to say certain things. We do not permit ourselves certain emotions, or at least we do not permit ourselves to admit having them. Not so the Slavic nature. The Slav feels that everything in his inner life is possible of expression, and that its expression is justified by his sincerity. It is that illimitable range that makes his art so rich, and that moves us so profoundly.”

In Soviet statecraft this same ability of the Slav to act “without limit” has resulted in such daring extremes of policy as the attempt to wipe out the whole kulak or “rich peasant” class, complete the Five Year Plan in four years, and suppress all political parties except one, the Communist Party.