Composers’ Unions and Cultural Policy in State Socialist Countries in the 1950s and 1960s

Lenka Křupková, PhD, is Associate Professor at the Department of Musicology, Faculty of Arts, Palacký University Olomouc. Her research focuses on Czech music of the 19th and 20th centuries, musical theatre, the sociology of music, and the relationship between music and politics. Rüdiger Ritter, PhD, is historian and musicologist. His research interests include oppositional movements in state socialist societies and the intersection of music and cultural politics in East and East Central Europe.

• Rüdiger Ritter, Lenka Křupková 1 Introduction: Composers’ Unions in the Eastern Bloc as Part of State Socialist Cultural Policy - Rüdiger Ritter 2 The Union of Soviet Composers - Lenka Křupková (1–4, 7), Vladimír Zvara (5), Jan Blüml (6) 3 The Union of Czechoslovak Composers - Rüdiger Ritter 4 Between Party and Public: The Composers’ Union of the GDR - Magdalena Dziadek 5 The Polish Composers’ Union in the Years of Communism - Ádám Ignácz 6 “Our Music and the Masses”: Discussions on the Socialist Transformation of Music Culture in The Union of Hungarian Musicians in the 1950s - Florinela Popa 7 The Composers’ Union of Romania Under the First Two Decades of Romanian Communism - Milena Bozhikova 8 The Union of Bulgarian Composers and its Influence on Bulgarian Music and Musical Life in State Socialist Bulgaria - Melita Milin 9 Republican Unions of Composers and their Umbrella Association in State Socialist Yugoslavia after WWII (1945–1960)