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Here lies Fedor
Ivanovich Chaliapin, the person who bears the most responsibility
for my trip to Russia in summer 2000. Chaliapin was world famous in his
lifetime as the creator of many roles in Russian opera and as a singer
of Russian songs in general.
Chaliapin is of such
great importance in Russian culture that the Soviet authorities arranged
to have his remains repatriated to Moscow in the mid-1980s after 40 years
of eternal rest in Paris.
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Nikolai Nikolaevich
Sokolov has dedicated the last decade of his life to preserving the memory
of Chaliapin in Moscow. Sokolov directs the Chaliapin
House Museum. He told me that his guiding principle is wondering what
Chaliapin would think about his house and the music played in it.
Hearing Sokolov play
Chaliapin's piano was one of the highlights of my trip.
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Writing about Chaliapin
leads me inevitably to the question of historical memory in present-day
Russia. The Memorial Society, which began
in Moscow in the late 1980s, has devoted itself to the recovery of the stories
of those who were repressed during the Soviet period. Memorial also works
to defend the human rights of those living in Russia and the Newly Independent
States. Galina Shavrina generously cooperated with my research on Memorial's
human rights radio program. |
| The staff of the Center
for the Sociology of Culture at Kazan
State University provided me an intellectually stimulating environment
in which to discuss my work. Zulya, Sergei Yerofeev, and Mikhail Rudenko
facilitated my research in so many ways. |
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Svetlana
Shaikhitdinova and I have ambitious plans for collaborative research on
ethics in the media.
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