National Form and Socialist Content: Soviet Modernization and Making of Uzbek National Opera Between the 1920s and 1930s

This essay explores the Soviet domination of Uzbekistan, achieved through cultural modernization and the creation of a national culture in the 1930s. It investigates the history behind the making of the first Uzbek national operas to be performed at the Bolshoi Theatre during the 1937 Dekada of Uzbek Arts and Music. The 1937 Uzbek dekada reconstructed and recontextualized Uzbek national music, while the dekada premiers of the Uzbek national operas Gulsara and Farhod va Shirin celebrated Soviet modernity and what Marina Frolova-Walker has termed “socialist cultural nationalism”. At the same time, they made obsolete indigenous attempts at modernizing local music which preceded Soviet modernization. This essay investigates the historical and cultural significance of the 1937 Uzbek dekada, and addresses how the dekada rewrote the Uzbek nation’s cultural historiography. It traces a local origin of “Uzbek opera” back to the early 1920s in order to uncover a local discourse on musical modernization and nationalization that was hidden behind the painted curtains of the Bolshoi stage. By connecting the 1920s and 1930s discourses on musical modernization and the making of an Uzbek opera, this essay ultimately engages with the imperialistic nature of Soviet modernization that overrode a local mode of modernity.