Most people, left to their own devices, chose pop and folk art rather than the "high" arts. Old Bolsheviks and intelligentsia distrusted commercialized popular art (music halls; pulp fiction, including romantic novels, science fiction, adventure and detective stories; etc.) and failed to appreciate the richness of folk art forms. But attempts to replace folk and pop art with their own idea of serious or socially relevant art met with a stone wall of disinterest. Most citizens were not looking for intellectual challenges or political education. They wanted a thumping good story, hearty laughter, tears, and a happy ending. They preferred to look at paintings that told a story they could understand, with (in the words of H. H. Munro) "generous help from the title." Soviet art was never creatively free, but many writers, composers, painters, and filmmakers learned how to infuse popular and folk genres with "red" themes. Readers gobbled up pulp fiction with Soviet action heroes who keenly outwitted capitalist villains. People also read nineteenth-century classic Russian novels and government-approved Western popular fiction (such as the novels of Jack London and Upton Sinclair). They flocked to Soviet, Western, and especially American movies that gave them the entertainment and escape they enjoyed: Tarzan, The Mark of Zorro, The Thief of Baghdad, and Charlie Chaplin movies were among American features beloved by Soviet audiences. Western books and movies were never completely banned; the government imported and distributed some American and other Western books and movies that showed capitalism in a bad light.
Popular music and dance, much of it of foreign origin, created an on-again, off-again struggle between what people wanted to hear, sing, and move to and what their government deemed morally proper and politically safe. Jazz, rock, tango, and other exotic music that encouraged "the swaying of female bottoms" set off censorial alarm bells, but Soviet society also had its composers who wrote popular, officially acceptable melodies from patriotic hymns to love songs. The easily memorized words and hummable tunes were embraced by the population and endlessly repeated. Nevertheless, there was always tension between the state's fear of losing control and the people's wish to create and receive art according to their heart's desire.
World History
