Soviet Administrative Practices in Culture : The Example of the Tallinn’67 Jazz Festival

Abstract

According to the common understanding, Soviet era governance was a system of state “command control” over production and distribution, where the administrative mechanism of the entire economy was based on a system of state ownership of the means of production and state control of investment, industrial manufacturing, and centralized administrative planning. However, the government regulative body existed in parallel with bottom-up initiatives by cultural participants who, for the sake of realizing their goals, had to negotiate with the state structures. Using the Tallinn ’67 jazz festival as a case study, this article investigates the practices of Soviet cultural administration. By examining the details of the procedures for organizing the festival, closely reading archival documents, and complementing them with excerpts from interviews with the participants, it discusses the procedural acts of cultural planning, shows how jazz festivals and culture were molded into the Soviet cultural model, and introduces the people who implemented their musical goals within this framework. Keywords: Soviet jazz culture, administrative practices, Tallinn ’67 jazz festival.