DECLINE AND FALL—It is Easy for Countries to Lose Their Pre-Eminence in the Arts. Could We be Next?
By Thomas Wolf
The telltale signs are here. The United States may well lose its leadership position in the arts if current political events continue. The trends follow a dismal historical pattern. Given the urgency of the situation, immediate action is required.
What causes the decline in the pre-eminence of the arts in a nation? Based on the experience of Russia and Germany in the last century, certain events can be give-aways. These include the emergence of an autocrat, the selling of a utopian vision, the demonization of marginal groups who can then be persecuted, the weakening of institutions that would normally provide resistance, the takeover of cultural organizations by the autocrats and their henchmen, the cancellation of programs that do not align with the autocrat’s vision, and the self-censorship of individuals and institutions out of fear. At the end of this blog, after looking at historical precedence from other countries, I am quite specific about the obvious tell-tale signs today in the United States.
What have the results looked like based on the Russian and German experience?
First Russia: On February 20, 1877, the Bolshoi Ballet premiered Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake in Moscow. This would be the first of the composer’s ballet masterpieces—works that are still part of the ballet repertory after a century and a half. When Alexander Gorsky became Ballet Master in 1900, the Bolshoi Ballet would continue to enhance its world-wide reputation and leadership with acclaimed productions of such ballets as “Don Quixote” (1900), “Coppélia” (1901), a restaged “Swan Lake” (1901), “La fille mal gardée” (1903), “Giselle” (1911), “Le Corsaire” (1912), and “La Bayadère” (1917).
The set for Petrushka as rendered by Alexandre Benois for the Ballets Russes in Paris. The company was under the direction of Sergei Diaghilev and the music was by Igor Stravinsky—both, like Benois, Russians by birth. (Photo credit: unknown photographer, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.)
But by 1909, a geographic shift had occurred in the ballet world, one that would intensify after the Russian Revolution of 1917 when Soviet political leadership commandeered the arts as an instrument of state-controlled ideology. This was not the time for innovation in Russia. It is true that a Russian-led ballet company made headlines with dramatic new productions, but its address was Paris—not St. Petersburg or Moscow. And for a time, nothing could compete with the scope of its creative innovation. Les Ballets Russes under the Russian émigré, Sergei Diaghilev and featuring the incredible Russian dancer Vaslav Nijinsky, would produce such masterpieces as The Firebird (1910), Petrushka (1911), The Rite of Spring (1913), Pulcinella (1920), Mavra (1922), and Les Noces (1923)—all with music written by another Russian émigré, Igor Stravinsky. Its repertory sparkled with scores by Russians as well as music by other important composers like Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel. Pre-eminence in ballet was no longer centered in Russia.
The leadership flame of Les Ballets Russes was short-lived. By 1935, there was another geographic shift in the ballet world that moved it even further away from Russia. Russian émigré, George Balanchine, moved the center of innovation from Paris to New York City. Born and trained as a dancer in Russia, later commissioned by Diaghilev to dance and choreograph for Les Ballets Russes in Paris, Balanchine relocated his creative activity to the United States where he found a new kind of openness and opportunity, as well as generous patronage from the American philanthropist Lincoln Kirstein. Together, they would establish first the School of America Ballet in 1934 and then a company—the New York City Ballet. Both institutions became major influences in the ballet world for decades. It should come as no surprise that the first work that Balanchine choreographed in the United States—Serenade—was to a score by his countryman, Peter Illych Tchaikovsky. It also should not come as a surprise that in time this kind of direct Russian influence faded and was replaced by the emergence of U.S. and international themes. Pre-eminence in the ballet world had moved half way across the globe.
“The Death of Boris” from the premiere production of the opera Boris Godunov at the Mariinsky Theatre in Moscow (1874), part of the golden age of Russian opera. Political ideology would severely undermine such creativity after the Russian Revolution of 1917. (Photo credit: Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.)
The world of opera saw similar shifts. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, prior to the 1917 Revolution, great Russian traditions were built and carried forward by such operas as Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin (1879), Modest Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov (1874) (with its most famous operatic superstar singer, Feodor Chaliapin in the title role), Alexander Borodin’s Prince Igor, and Le Coq d’Or by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1909).
But this flowering of creative genius was brought to a screeching halt with the banning in 1936 of Dmitri Shostakovich’s opera Lady Macbeth in the Mtensk District. The rejection was trumpeted by a harsh denunciation of the composer’s music in an official publication by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, most probably instigated by its General Secretary, Joseph Stalin. It would take almost three decades before the opera would be performed again in the Soviet Union, by which time the center of operatic creation had moved elsewhere. As for Chaliapin, he had long since departed Russia. Indeed, his world-wide reputation had been enhanced by his introduction to Paris audiences by none other than Sergei Diaghilev in 1913.
Arnold Schoenberg in 1948, well after he immigrated to the United States after fleeing the Nazis who considered his music “degenerate.” (Photo credit: Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.)
Germany and Austria suffered similar declines in their centuries-long, world-wide pre-eminence, especially in music. With the ascendence of Hitler and the Third Reich, almost all compositional innovation was shut down. Composers and performers—many of them Jewish—feared for their lives. Many fled, including Arnold Schoenberg, born in Vienna in 1874, who was among the most influential composers of the twentieth century.
With his ground-breaking composition Pierrot Lunaire in 1912 and his writing of Harmonielehre (Theory of Harmony) in 1922 (an influential music-theory book), his world-wide reputation was firmly established. But with the coming of the Nazis, he was denounced as a Jew and his works were labeled “degenerate.” At one of these events in Düsseldorf, it was claimed that the decay of the great national tradition of music was due to the influence of Judaism and capitalism. The event (including an exhibit) was organized into seven sections: The Influence of Judaism; Arnold Schoenberg; Kurt Weill and Ernst Krenek; Minor Bolsheviks; Leo Kestenberg (director of musical education before 1933); Paul Hindemith; and Igor Stravinsky. Many of those denounced had already fled to the United States. In 1933, Schoenberg was among those who emigrated, settling with many of his countrymen in Southern California. There he would soon compose two of his most important works—his violin concerto and fourth string quartet. He became a U.S. citizen in 1941 and never returned to Germany.
The music for the 1938 film, “The Adventures of Robin Hood,” was composed by Erich Wolfgang Korngold. Like so many film scores by German émigrés, this one received an Academy Award. (Photo credit: Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.)
Several émigré composers found the continued creation of works in the Germanic classical tradition challenging in the United States thus continuing the decline of German influence. These composers eventually found a new musical genre—the movie score. Miklos Rozsa was a Hungarian composer, who studied in Leipzig (Germany), living there from 1925 until 1931, later departing for Paris given the political situation and eventually to the United States. He scored several important films including “Double Indemnity” and “Spellbound.” Later, his music, would come to be associated with such epic films as “Ben-Hur,” “El Cid,” “King of Kings,” and “Quo Vadis.” He was part of a whole generation of displaced composers (including Max Steiner, Erich Wolfgang Korngold and Franz Waxman) who essentially invented the genre of the film score, winning numerous Academy Awards. Other highly regarded German émigré composers such as Ernst Toch and Ingolf Dahl, who taught at USC, and Ernst Krenek, a celebrated composer of Weimar Germany, wound up in Southern California as well.[1]
My own special interest in the decline of great national centers of the arts has focused on violinists, given the fact that my grandmother, Lea Luboshutz, was an émigré who fled Russia after the Bolsheviks took over. Lea was already an international star at the time of the 1917 Revolution. Living with an affluent lawyer, Onissim Goldovsky, she enjoyed an opulent life style. But with the victory of the Bolsheviks, Lea endured poverty and experienced great uncertainty as to the safety of her family given Goldovsky’s politics. When officials came after Lea’s violin, threatening to make it part of a State collection, Lea made the heart-rending decision to leave the country and was lucky to be able to do so in 1921. She moved first to Berlin, then Paris, eventually settling in the United States to teach at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. There, it appeared, a female performer, free from political and economic hardship, could relaunch a successful career.
Lea Luboshutz at about the time she fled Russia in 1921. After a few years in Berlin and Paris, she moved permanently to the United States, teaching for many years at the Curtis Institute of Music alongside fellow Russians Leopold Auer and Efrem Zimbalist. (Photo courtesy of the Luboshutz/Goldovsky/Wolf archive.)
My grandmother had once played for one of the most influential violinists and teachers of all time, Joseph Joachim (1831–1907), and it was two of Joachim’s students who would create the most important schools of violin playing—Leopold Auer at the St. Petersburg Conservatory and Jakob Moritz Grün at the Vienna Conservatory. Among Auer’s students were Jascha Heifetz, Mischa Elman, Nathan Milstein, and Efrem Zimbalist—four of the greatest violinists of the twentieth century—all of whom, like my grandmother, left Russia and settled in the United States. Among Grün’s students were Carl Flesch (who came to the United States to teach at the Curtis Institute), and Franz Kneisel, who became concertmaster of the Boston Symphony and formed the first touring string quartet in the United States.
Building on the contributions of these and other immigrants, the U.S. came to play a dominate role in the performing arts. Its institutions in music, dance, and theatre, became some of the most important in the world. Its educational institutions and performing companies today are destinations for many who hope to find themselves in the top tier of their artistic professions.
The Curtis Institute of Music, founded a century ago, benefitted tremendously from the mass immigration of musicians from Russia and Western Europe to the U.S., as did so many American conservatories. As a result, their superb faculties attracted and continue to attract the most talented students from around the world. (Photo courtesy of Curtis Institute of Music archive.)
But to a large extent, the U.S.’s dominant position did not emerge through a long tradition created by home-grown creators and performers. In fact, its richest traditions, like jazz, gospel, indigenous dance that fueled an innovative choreographic heritage, were often ignored, belittled, or long denied.[2] But in the “classical,” or concert hall performing arts, its strengths were in major ways the result of an influx of determined creators and not-to-be-denied performers from elsewhere. The so-called “fine arts” in the United States flourished in large part because of the regressive and oppressive political and cultural ideologies and policies that encouraged, and in some cases forced, the mass defection of other countries’ most important creative and performing artists. Those artists and performers taught in institutions in their new homes, creating the generational creative wealth that has been a major source of cultural vitality. Once a country has influential performing arts training institutions, sustained by generous philanthropy, staffed by skilled pedagogues, and with performing institutions where the most gifted young people can find work, it becomes a world-wide magnet for talented individuals, contributing to the energy of an international cultural community. Such has been the situation in the United States for decades.
But cultural preeminence is fragile. It can be fractured, confined, and eroded—perhaps not all at once, but over time if the conditions are not right for genius to flourish. Politicians can exercise their influence for short-term gain but if we look at the experience of the Soviets and the Nazis, such influence leads to long-term loss.
Are we in the United States at just such a critical moment?
The beginning signs (as enumerated at the beginning of this blog) are clear:
the emergence of an autocrat (President Donald Trump),
the selling of a utopian vision (Make America Great Again, a.k.a. MAGA),
the demonization of marginal groups who can then be persecuted (immigrants, the LGBTQIA community, educators who teach Black history),
the weakening of institutions that would normally provide resistance (ecumenical leaders, the judiciary, the National Endowment for the Arts),
the takeover of cultural organizations by the autocrats and their henchmen (e.g., The Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.) and the cancellation of programs that do not align with the utopian vision[3]),
the cancellation of programs that do not align with the autocrat’s utopian vision (e.g., the recent cancellation of a show on Artists of African Descent by the Art Museum of the Americas[4]),
and the self-censorship of individuals and institutions out of fear, which we are witnessing daily all around us.
There are already clear signs of resistance. In only a few weeks, some artists have refused to perform at the Kennedy Center. Others have refused grants that require them to change their values. The independent press and bloggers have begun to sound the alarm.[5] And perhaps most significant, some creators and performers have already decided to emigrate. Such an extreme decision as moving permanently from the United States will be taken, at least initially, primarily by younger, less well-known, creative individuals whose roots are not as firmly established in the United States as their elders. The trend may be barely noticeable at first. Yet it is precisely these younger people who will be the next generation’s cultural innovators and leaders. The country will miss them.
The leadership of the Kennedy Center (pictured above) has historically been professional and non-partisan. With its recent take-over by President Donald Trump who promised “NO MORE DRAG SHOWS, OR OTHER ANTI-AMERICAN PROPAGANDA” and with a board led by his loyalists, some artists have cancelled their performances at this, the nation’s capitol’s leading performing arts venue. (Photo credit: The Kennedy Center -- From the Georgetown Waterfront Washington (DC), August 2014, Ron Cogswell, 2014 via Flickr. This image is in the Creative Commons allowing for modifications and commercial use. No changes were made.)
For the rest of us who are going about our daily lives without a lot of thought concerning these issues, the urgency of the situation is extreme… and it is now. It is important for our voices to be heard. We should remember that it was Richard Nixon, no friend of the arts, who was responsible for the largest percentage increase in federal funding for the arts in the United States in the country’s history during his years as President. According to conversations with his staff, as recorded on the Watergate tapes, he believed he needed the votes of those who supported the arts. They were vocal then. We need to be vocal now.
NOTE: Given the urgency and timeliness of this topic, please share this blog with others.
[1] For more about such composers, cf. The Nearly Forgotten Emigre Composers - Los Angeles Times by Mark Swed, February 16, 1997; as well as Michael Kater’s Composers of the Nazi Era: Eight Portraits. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
[2] There is a certain irony in the fact that it was a European composer, Antonín Dvořák, who urged American creators to build on their indigenous musical traditions.
[3] Richard Grenell, the recently appointed head of the Kennedy Center, is an American diplomat, a public official, a former public relations consultant, and Trump loyalist, with a slim resume when it comes to the arts. His first announcement about programming at the Center—A Celebration of Christ—presumably delighted evangelical Christians (part of Trump’s base) and worried those who are concerned about excellence in the performing arts. The announcement was reported in a recent New York Times article Coming Soon to Trump’s Kennedy Center: A Celebration of Christ - The New York Times. The new administration has even cancelled programs involving the US Marine Band when they involve collaborations with an organization promoting equity in music. According to a spokesperson: “…due to the executive orders impacting DEI-related programing for several agencies, the Marine Band was instructed to cancel the collaboration and therefore cancel the entire concert.” Please see Washington Post article: Following orders, ‘The President’s Own’ Marine Band cancels concert - The Washington Post.
[4] Please see the recent cancellation of a show on Artists of African Descent by the Art Museum of the Americas in Washington, D.C., that would have featured works by Afro-Latino, Caribbean, and African American artists (Show on Artists of African Descent Loses Funding Amid Trump DEI Crackdown).
[5] Please see https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2025/feb/22/trump-administration-arts?mc_cid=31b11c60cb&mc_eid=2e1a132b0c and Do Not Obey In Advance: A Moral Crisis in Arts Funding.