Soviet War Songs in the Context of Russian Culture
This volume presents a unique study of war songs created during and after World War II, known in Russia as the “Great Patriotic War”. The most popular war songs, such as “Katyusha”, “The Sacred War”, “Dark Night”, “My Moscow”, “In the Dugout”, “Victory Day”, provide illuminating insights into the musical culture of the former Soviet Union and modern Russia.
In the year of the 70th anniversary of victory in the war, the book studies the cultural heritage of famous war songs from a new perspective, exploring the historical background of their creation and analysing their lyrics as part of Russian cultural heritage.
The book also discusses the modifications required when translating the songs from Russian to English. It concludes with a description an educational project studying war songs at Moscow schools run under the auspices of UNESCO.
Dr Elena Polyudova has published a number of articles and books in various areas of the humanities, from linguistics to cultural studies. Her current research interests include art education, educational psychology, and models of cultural patterns. This book is the result of more than five years’ research of Russian cultural traditions based on her teaching and personal experience.
"This volume provides valuable insight into a topic which is less known for the contemporary Western public, the Soviet war songs. A strength of the volume derives precisely from the topic discussed, as the book fills a significant gap regarding English-language studies on Russian musical culture. A second strong point consists of the bibliography used by the author, which is widely in Russian language. The volume therefore provides the readers with a large amount of scientific and documentary information which would have been difficult to access otherwise. [...] In fact, the general message of the entire work can be interpreted as an appeal for an approach that is personalized and centered on moral values, either in the specific act of teaching, or in the interpretation and transmission of cultural information. The domains to which this work contributes are, therefore, varied, ranging from musicology, educational sciences, art teaching or Russian language teaching to more general areas such as cultural studies, cultural history, European modern history or the modern history of Eastern Europe."
Raluca-Mihaela Levonian University of Calabria, Cosenza; Centre for Romanian Studies, University of Bucharest Review of the Air Force Academy, 14: 1 (2016)
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