Abstract
Montand’s Soviet tour was a major exercise in cultural diplomacy in the new spirit of the Thaw and peaceful coexistence, a message to the Soviet people about a new attitude of openness to the West by means of cultural exchange. This was the message of the documentary film Yves Montand Sings. But beneath that harmonious surface, there flowed deeper and more ambiguous currents. Montand and Signoret arrived as peace activists sympathetic to the cause of socialism, but experienced increasing disillusionment with the Soviet ‘experiment’, and the way they were being exploited as instruments of propaganda. Even while the movie was playing to Soviet audiences following the couple’s departure, Montand had in fact become irrevocably alienated from the communist project by what occurred during the tour. Nor was the Russian response to the visitors quite as unequivocally adoring as the film represented. At the same time, exposure to the French performer provided a glimpse of a less austere way of ‘performing’ life that would be amplified by the influx of Westerners for Moscow’s International Youth Festival of 1957. Montand’s tour demonstrated the contradictions and perils of cultural diplomacy, particularly in the tensions between a political agenda and its cultural outcome.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Evgenia Gordienko. 1998. Iv Montan. Muzhchina – Mif. Rostov-on-Don: Feniks, 182.
- 2.
Yves Montand, Hervé Hamon and Patrick Rotman. 1992. You See, I Haven’t Forgotten, translated by Jeremy Leggatt. London: Chatto & Windus, 262.
- 3.
Montand, Hamon and Rotman, You See, I Haven’t Forgotten, 164–166.
- 4.
Gordienko, Iv Montan, 205.
- 5.
Simone Signoret. 1978. Nostalgia Isn’t What It Used to Be. New York: Harper & Row, 159.
- 6.
Signoret, Nostalgia Isn’t What It Used to Be, 158.
- 7.
Signoret, Nostalgia Isn’t What It Used to Be, 161.
- 8.
Letter of Yves Montand to Nikolai Danilov, vice-Minister of Culture of the Soviet Union, Russian translation of the original in French, dated Paris March 30, 1957. RGALI f 2329 o 8 e 606, 103.
- 9.
A letter of Nikolai Danilov, vice-Minister of Culture of the Soviet Union, to Yves Montand, dated April [18], 1957. RGALI f 2329 o 8 e 606, 107. See also Gordienko 1998: 62.
- 10.
Montand, Hamon and Rotman, You See, I Haven’t Forgotten, 282.
- 11.
Montand, Hamon and Rotman, You See, I Haven’t Forgotten, 283.
- 12.
Montand, Hamon and Rotman, You See, I Haven’t Forgotten, 407.
- 13.
Montand, Hamon and Rotman, You See, I Haven’t Forgotten, 409.
- 14.
Montand, Hamon and Rotman, You See, I Haven’t Forgotten, 404–406.
- 15.
Interview with Boris Yakovlevich (b. 1939), 7 October 2019, Moscow. Interview by Polina Protasova, peer-review of transcript by Sofia Kuznetsova.
- 16.
‘I togda Iv Montan sprosil Khrushcheva: Zachem?’ Ogonek, 2004. http://www.ogoniok.com/archive/2004/4846/19-60-62/.
- 17.
Interview with Zoya Alexandrovna Fedotova (b. 1926), 7 October 2019, Moscow. Interview by Ilya Lukhovitskiy, peer-review of the transcript by Jana Parshina; Interview with Valentina Bogun (b. 1936), 29 September 2019, Shchokino, Tula region, Russian Federation. Interview by Angelina Naumova, peer-review of the transcript by Darya Umanets; Interview with Tatiana Chaykovskaya (b. 1941), 2 October 2019, Moscow. Interview by Maria Korenko, peer-review of the transcript by Ivan Karnaukhov; Interview with Olga Isaakovna Amosova (b. 1946), 19 and 22 October 2019, Moscow. Interview by Darya Umanets, peer-review of the transcript by Anastasia Kurasheva; Interview with Ludmila Anatolyevna Kozlova (b. 1962), 10 October 2019. Interview by Ivan Karnaukhov, peer-review of interview transcript by Takhmina Kasimova; Interview with a person (b. 1945), 8 October 2019, Moscow. Interview by Yana Parshina, peer-review of the interview transcript by Angelina Naumova; Interview with Elena Dellanoy (b. 1966), 21 September 2019, Lille (France). Interview by Maria Korenko and Marina Zucconi, peer-review of the transcript by Ilya Lukhovitskiy; Interview with Alexander Kolibersky (b. 1946), Moscow, 28 September 2019. Interview by Anna Koliberskaya, peer-review of the transcript by Alexandra Mikhaylidi.
- 18.
Interview with a person (b. 1945).
- 19.
Aleksandra Sergeevna Arhipova and Anna Andreevna Kirziuk. 2018. ‘Krasnaia plenka, chernye ochki i vsevidiashchee oko vlasti.’ Folklor i antropologia goroda No 1 (2018): 134–56, 141–141.
- 20.
Interview with Elena (b. 1966), 10 October 2019, Moscow. Interview by Alexander Bespalov and Sofia Kuznetsova, peer-review of the transcript by Elizaveta Karpova; Interview with Elena Vasilieva (b. 1976), 13 November 2019, Moscow. Interview by Anna Ostapenko, peer-review of the interview transcript by Daria Khokhlova; Interview with Boris Yakovlevich (b. 1939).
- 21.
Barbara Törnquist Plewa, Tea Sindbæk Andersen and Astrid Erll. 2017. ‘Introduction: On Transcultural Memory and Reception.’ In The Twentieth Century in European Memory: Transcultural Mediation and Reception, edited by Barbara Törnquist Plewa and Tea Sindbæk Andersen, 1–23. European Studies, Volume 34. Leiden: Brill, 2017; Pertti Grönholm and Heino Nyyssönen. 2019. ‘Historian käyttö ennen ja nyt – faktana ja fiktiona.’ Kosmopolis 49 (3): 7–27, 9.
- 22.
‘When a Faraway Friend Sings’, Russian Disc 1991. Discogs: https://www.discogs.com/%D0%98%D0%B2-%D0%9C%D0%BE%D0%BD%D1%82%D0%B0%D0%BD-%D0%9A%D0%BE%D0%B3%D0%B4%D0%B0-%D0%9F%D0%BE%D0%B5%D1%82-%D0%94%D0%B0%D0%BB%D0%B5%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%B9-%D0%94%D1%80%D1%83%D0%B3/release/3596411, accessed 21 February 2020; ‘Yves Montand. Grand Boulevards’, Rosmen 2001. Discogs: https://www.discogs.com/%D0%98%D0%B2-%D0%9C%D0%BE%D0%BD%D1%82%D0%B0%D0%BD-%D0%91%D0%BE%D0%BB%D1%8C%D1%88%D0%B8%D0%B5-%D0%91%D1%83%D0%BB%D1%8C%D0%B2%D0%B0%D1%80%D1%8B/release/2307109, accessed 21 February 2020; ‘Yves Montand. The Actor and the Song’, Vostokhim 2001. Discogs: https://www.discogs.com/%D0%98%D0%B2-%D0%9C%D0%BE%D0%BD%D1%82%D0%B0%D0%BD-%D0%90%D0%BA%D1%82%D0%B5%D1%80-%D0%9F%D0%B5%D1%81%D0%BD%D1%8F/release/11275939, accessed 21 February 2020.
- 23.
See, for example Interview with Alexander Kolibersky (b. 1946); Interview with Alexey Veshkin (b. 1961). Interview by Anastasia Kurasheva, 28 September 2019, Moscow. Peer-review of the transcript by Darya Artemova; A narrative by Alexey Derevyakin (b.1983) recorded by the narrator based on the questions sent by Darya Umanets. October 2019, Moscow/Skype. Transcription of the narrative by Darya Umanets, peer-review of the transcript by Lidia Larkina; Interview with Anna (b. 1999), 8 October 2019, Moscow. Interview by Daria Khokhlova, peer-review by Anna Ostapenko; Interview with Iya Pavlenina (b. 1944) and Valentin Pavlenin (b. 1941), 18 October 2019, Yekaterinburg, Russia. Interview by Lidia Larkina, peer-review of interview transcript by Daria Khokhlova; Interview correspondence with Karina (b. 1985), 10 October 2019, Moscow. Interview by Alexander Bespalov and Sofia Kuznetsova; Interview with Oleg Arkadievich Dmitriev (b.1968), 3 October 2019, Moscow. Interview by Alexandra Mikhaylidi, peer-review of the interview transcript by Maria Korenko; Interview with Zoya Alexandrovna Fedotova (b. 1926).
- 24.
Montand, Hamon and Rotman, You See, I Haven’t Forgotten, 283.
- 25.
Montand, Hamon and Rotman, You See, I Haven’t Forgotten, 275–276.
- 26.
Gilburd, Eleonory 2018. To See Paris and Die. The Soviet Lives of Western Culture. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 101.
- 27.
Gilburd, To See Paris and Die, 65.
- 28.
Gilburd, To See Paris and Die, 65–66.
- 29.
Pia Koivunen. 2013. Performing Peace and Friendship: The World Youth Festival as a Tool of Soviet Cultural Diplomacy, 1947–1957. Doctoral dissertation. University of Tampere, the School of Social Sciences and Humanities, 20, 151.
- 30.
Koivunen, Performing Peace and Friendship, 175, 326.
- 31.
Koivunen, Performing Peace and Friendship, 178; see further 179–181, 248–250.
- 32.
Koivunen, Performing Peace and Friendship, 237–238.
- 33.
Koivunen, Performing Peace and Friendship, 238–239.
- 34.
Koivunen, Performing Peace and Friendship, 102–105.
- 35.
Bruce Johnson 2020, Jazz Diaspora: Music and Globalisation, New York and London: Routledge: 67.
- 36.
Koivunen, Performing Peace and Friendship, 104–105, 323–324.
- 37.
Gilburd, To See Paris and Die, 56.
- 38.
Cited in Koivunen, Performing Peace and Friendship, 327.
- 39.
Gilburd, To See Paris and Die, 56.
- 40.
Gilburd, To See Paris and Die, 61.
- 41.
Penny von Eschen. 2004 Satchmo Blows up the World: Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold War. Cambridge Mass, London: Harvard University Press, 63.
- 42.
Bruce Johnson. 2020. Jazz Diaspora: Music and Globalisation, New York and London: Routledge: 71–72.
- 43.
Bruce Johnson. Forthcoming. ‘Blackness, Jazz and Globalization’, in Oxford Handbook of Global Popular Music, edited by Simone Krüger Bridge. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- 44.
von Eschen, Satchmo Blows up the World, 201.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Oiva, M., Salmi, H., Johnson, B. (2021). Conclusions. In: Yves Montand in the USSR. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-69048-9_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-69048-9_9
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-69047-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-69048-9
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)