“No Anthem Linked to Russia”: Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 at the Olympic Games

The Politics of National Anthems in Russia

Before examining the use of Tchaikovsky’s piano concerto as a substitute anthem, it is valuable to consider the history of Russia’s national anthems, as all these musical works illustrate dimensions of Russia’s imperial legacy. Further, though it is widely understood that national anthems are political documents, this article argues that the choice of the Tchaikovsky as a substitute anthem (like the Russian Federation’s present national anthem) reflects the Putin administration’s political and military campaign to reclaim parts of the former Russian Empire or Soviet Union. The reworkings of Russia’s national anthem in the present day are thus part of a much longer history.

Like many other European nations, Russia initially adopted the English anthem, “God Save the King” during the Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815).⁶ While “Molitva russkogo Naroda” or “Prayer of the Russian People,” as the hymn was known in Russian, served to unite the nation under Alexander I, his successor Nicholas I is said to have disliked the use of an English melody. He commissioned a new anthem—”Bozhe tsaria khrani,” or “God Save the Tsar”—from composer Aleksei L’vov, the director of the court capella.⁷

“God Save the Tsar” was closely associated with Russia’s victory in the War of 1812. First performed for Nicholas I in December 1833 on the twenty-first anniversary of the expulsion of Napoleon’s forces from Russian soil, its official debut was at a ceremony to mark the opening of the Alexander Column, a monument to Russia’s military might in Saint Petersburg’s Palace Square. Tchaikovsky further cemented the association between “Bozhe tsaria khrani” and what Russians called the Patriotic War by quoting the anthem’s melody in The Year 1812, Solemn Overture, Op. 49, written for the 1880 consecration of the Church of Christ the Saviour in Moscow, which had been built to “signify Our gratitude to Divine Providence for saving Russia from the doom that overshadowed Her” during the military clashes with Napoleon, according to Alexander I.⁸ The Russian anthem is quoted in several of Tchaikovsky’s other compositions, including the 1876 Marche Slave in B-flat minor, Op. 31, commissioned by the Russian Musical Society to raise funds for the benefit of Serbian soldiers wounded during the Serbian-Ottoman War (1876–1877).⁹

“Bozhe tsaria khrani” remained the national anthem of the Russian Empire—which encompassed part or all of the modern-day states of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Finland, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the Republic of Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan—until 1917. Following the February Revolution and the abdication of Nicholas II, efforts to revise the text of “God Save the Tsar” failed to gain support.¹⁰ Eventually, the “Internationale,” a standard of the socialist movement, became the unofficial anthem, first of the independent federal socialist state of Russia, and then of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).

In May 1943, the USSR announced a competition for a new Russian-authored anthem to replace the French “Internationale,” which would promote wartime patriotism and support the increasing Russo-centrism in Soviet ideology and policy.¹¹ The “State Anthem of the Soviet Union” was publicly premiered on Soviet radio at midnight on December 31, 1943—just six months from the start of efforts to replace the “Internationale”—and officially adopted as the anthem in March 1944.¹² After Khrushchev’s infamous denunciation of Stalin in 1956, the anthem’s lyrics, which extolled the former Soviet leader, were abandoned. For nearly two decades after 1956, the anthem was officially performed without text before revised lyrics were adopted in 1977 to mark the sixtieth anniversary of the October Revolution.

The last decade of the twentieth century once again proved momentous in Russian politics—and, along with it, the history of the state’s anthem. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, President Boris Yeltsin decreed Glinka’s “Patriotic Hymn,” which had briefly served as the Russian State Federative Socialist Republics (RSFSR) regional anthem from 1990–1991, as the new national anthem of the Russian Federation. Despite the enduring popularity of Glinka’s music, his “Patriotic Hymn” was an unpopular replacement for the earlier anthem, in large part because the original hymn had no lyrics and an agreement on a suitable text for the melody was never reached.

Seeing an opportunity to define Russia symbolically shortly after his first presidential election in 2000, Vladimir Putin proposed replacing the Glinka melody with none other than the “State Anthem of the Soviet Union,” albeit with new text. Reinstating the Soviet anthem enjoyed broad public support, but critics in government and Russia’s cultural intelligentsia raised concerns about the glorification of a repressive regime and the Putin administration’s nostalgia for Soviet totalitarianism.¹³ Despite fierce debate, deputies voted overwhelmingly in favor of reintroducing the Soviet anthem, as well as adopting the Muscovite two-headed eagle and the white, blue, and red flag originally devised by Peter the Great as official symbols.¹⁴ In short, the Putin administration embraced a mélange of national symbols glorifying Russia’s imperial legacy and colonialist history.¹⁵

A new text for the old anthem was approved by Putin and premiered at the Kremlin during a New Year’s reception on December 31, 2000.¹⁶ Much was made in Western media about the references to God in the anthem, often called “Rossiya—Svyashchennaya Nasha Derzhava [Russia, You Are Our Sacred Power].” This overt rejection of Soviet state atheism and Putin’s embrace of the Orthodox Church have disguised what some scholars have termed the “re-Stalinization” of modern Russian society.¹⁷ The autocracy of the Soviet era is further recalled in the strict law regulating performance of and behavior during the Russian anthem.¹⁸ In addition to mandated performances at the opening and closing sessions of the legislature, official state ceremonies, and during sporting events, the anthem is broadcast twice daily on television and radio. Men are prohibited from wearing head coverings during performances of the anthem, and everyone must turn and face the flag if one is present. Further, Russian legal code states: “Any performance or use of the anthem in violation of this law, and also disrespect toward the anthem will be subject to prosecution in accordance with the legislation of the Russian Federation.”¹⁹ Today, it is difficult to ignore how Putin’s campaign to resurrect music and other symbols representing Russia’s imperial ambitions seems to presage his administration’s politics, specifically his insistence on the restoration of what he terms Russia’s “historic frontiers.”

“A Symbol of Putin’s Imperial Russia”

These tumultuous debates about the Russian anthem and its cultural significance informed the Russian response to the 2020 ban on its national symbols in international sport. Although Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto has proven popular (and politically effective), it was not the first choice of Russian officials when they were asked to offer an alternative anthem. According to Stanislav Pozdnyakov, President of the ROC, the ROC’s Athletes’ Commission voted for “Katyusha,” a popular mass song composed in 1938 by Matvey Blanter with lyrics by Mikhail Isakovsky about a Russian woman waiting for the return of her beloved, a soldier protecting the Motherland.²⁰ One of the few Soviet mass songs that achieved international recognition, “Katyusha” is strongly identified with the Soviet fight against Nazi Germany in World War II.²¹ Many Russians supported the athletes’ choice of “Katyusha,” citing its popularity as well as the democratic nature of their vote. Despite this, “Katyusha” was rejected by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), an international body established to settle disputes related to sport. In its decision, the Court cited the rule that “the Russian national anthem (or any anthem linked to Russia) shall not be officially played or sung.” In a statement to the Associated Press, the Court clarified that “The CAS panel considers that ‘any anthem linked to Russia’ extends to any song associated with, or with links to, Russia, which would include ‘Katyusha.’”²²

Before the CAS’s decision was announced, People’s Artist of Russia Dennis Matsuev—who performed during the Closing Ceremonies of the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi—confessed to state news agency RIA Novosti that he, personally, would have selected a classical composition to represent Russia. “Nothing unites athletes, and indeed people in general,” Matsuev said, “more than the music of Pyotr Tchaikovsky or Sergei Rachmaninoff. We have a large repertoire: Tchaikovsky’s symphonies, Romeo and Juliet, the 1812 [Overture], Rachmaninoff’s Bells or Sergei Prokofiev’s cantata Alexander Nevsky. After such music, it is impossible to lose.”²³ In February 2021, one month after Matsuev’s comments and while the CAS was still deliberating the choice of “Katyusha,” the International Skating Union (ISU), the governing body for competitive ice skating disciplines, announced that Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto could be used at award ceremonies for Russian athletes during the 2021 World Figure Skating, Speed Skating, and Short Track World Championships.²⁴ Not long after, the ROC and CAS agreed that the same composition could be used for award ceremonies at the Olympics Games; Matsuev was the pianist tapped to record the Tchaikovsky staple.²⁵

The perceived lack of representational function in music, and particularly untexted classical music, seems to have appealed to the CAS when they agreed to the popular concerto as a substitute anthem. Music can, of course, convey a wealth of meanings through the context of its creation, text, setting and performers, or our associations with similar musical sounds. Its malleability and the difficulty in regulating its use is part of what has made music such an effective—albeit imprecise—political and propagandistic tool. Without explicit patriotic sentiment in a text, the concerto was not understood as “an anthem linked to Russia” in the manner of “Katyusha.”²⁶ But, in fact, this work features Ukrainian tunes that represent the political realities of the late Imperial period in which it was composed, and its use as an anthem resonates with the Putin administration’s attitude toward Russia’s former colonies and republics. To that end, the use of the concerto partakes of a longer history of Tchaikovsky and his oeuvre’s fraught relation with Russian nationalism since the nineteenth century. Often “denigrated for not being as ‘national’ as his ‘kuchkist’ rivals,” the composer came to detest what Richard Taruskin has termed “the myth of Russian autochthonism,” particularly in Western scholarship, where Tchaikovsky’s blend of European compositional practices and musical material from the Russian Empire (which have made him an enduring concert hall favorite) has often relegated him to the sidelines of scholarship on nineteenth-century music.²⁷

Although the composer’s place in musical scholarship has sometimes been precarious, his position in Imperial Russia was relatively stable. Tchaikovsky nurtured several politically and financially important relationships with the Russian monarchy, including with Tsar Alexander III.²⁸ Though best known as an autocratic emperor who reversed many of the liberal reforms instituted by his father, Alexander III was also an enthusiastic amateur musician and ballet patron. In 1884, the tsar personally awarded Tchaikovsky the Order of Saint Vladimir (fourth class), which included a title of hereditary nobility. The honor is understood as an official seal of approval that permitted the composer to recover from the scandal of his failed marriage to Antonina Ivanovna Milyukova in 1877.²⁹ The composer dedicated several works to the tsar and his wife, Maria Feodorovna, including the Festival Overture on the Danish National Anthem, Op. 15, which honored the bride’s Danish heritage. Some of Tchaikovsky’s most enduring stage works, including The Sleeping Beauty (1890), The Queen of Spades (1890), and The Nutcracker (1892), were commissioned by the Imperial Theatres. At the instigation of Ivan Vsevolozhsky, Director of the Imperial Theatres, the composer was awarded a lifetime annual pension from the Tsar, “thus making Tchaikovsky the premier court composer, in practice if not in name.”³⁰

Tchaikovsky’s close relationship to the monarchy and its institutions did not substantially complicate his position as “a core element of Soviet mainstream repertoire” in the early Soviet period.³¹ In her work on musical assimilation of nineteenth-century Russian music in the Soviet Union, Pauline Fairclough notes that “the huge rise in his popularity in the mature Stalin era merely built upon a performance tradition that had never gone away, rather than requiring a full-blown ‘rehabilitation’ of the composer.”³² Indeed, by the late 1930s and early 1940s, “Tchaikovsky occupied the prime position as the Number One Soviet favorite” of all the Russian composers—much as he had in Imperial Russia by the late 1880s.³³ A committee was formed to organize celebrations for the centennial of his birth in 1940; the plan, personally approved by Stalin, included publications, performances, and the renaming of the music conservatories in the capital cities of both Russia and Ukraine in honor of Tchaikovsky.

Tchaikovsky’s national identity remains debated in Ukraine, where some believe that the composer is “a Ukrainian in creative spirit.”³⁴ In a Washington Post report about a wartime concert at the conservatory in Kyiv, correspondent-at-large Sudarsan Raghavan wrote, “For decades, Ukrainians have cringed as Russians embraced Tchaikovsky as their own. Ukrainians argue that the great composer saw himself as Ukrainian and spent many years visiting Kyiv and other parts of Ukraine.”³⁵ It is true that Tchaikovsky’s paternal lineage can be traced to a small village in the Poltava region in modern-day Ukraine. His great-grandfather, a Cossack named Fyodor Chaika, distinguished himself under Peter the Great at the Battle of Poltava in 1709,³⁶ a decisive Russian victory over Sweden and a faction of the Ukrainian Hetmanate led by Ivan Mazepa that ultimately established Russian Imperial supremacy in Northern Europe.³⁷ Tchaikovsky’s beloved sister Aleksandra (Sasha) and her husband Lev Davydov lived in Kam’yanka, near Kyiv, and the composer typically spent summers on their estate. His patron Nadezhda von Meck had a country estate in Braïliv, in the Vinnytsia oblast of Ukraine, where the composer regularly worked.³⁸ In the summer of 1864, Tchaikovsky composed his first significant orchestral work, The Storm, Op. 76, at the family estate of Prince Aleksey Golitsyn in the Ukrainian city of Trostyanets, near the Russian border; a number of the estate’s structures were damaged during the Russian invasion and capture of the city on March 1, 2022, though it was liberated in April 2022 after several weeks of occupation.³⁹

Several of Tchaikovsky’s important compositions were either fully or partly composed in what is now Ukraine, feature Ukrainian settings, and explore scenes in Ukrainian history as well as contain Ukrainian musical material, namely folk songs. In addition to The Storm and the First Piano Concerto, discussed in depth below, these works include Mazepa (1884), an opera set in eighteenth-century Ukraine and based on Pushkin’s poem about the Battle of Poltava, which features Ukrainian as well as Russian folk tunes; and Cherevichki (1887), a revision of an earlier opera titled Vakula the Smith (1876), set in part in a Ukrainian village during the reign of Catherine the Great that, like Mazepa, features a mix of Ukrainian and Russian folk songs. The composer’s Symphony No. 2 in C minor, Op. 17 (1872), composed primarily at his sister’s estate in Kam’yanka, has garnered attention recently for its nickname, “Little Russian,” the prevailing term until the end of the nineteenth century for much of the modern territory of Ukraine. The moniker was bestowed by critic Nikolay Kashkin because the work incorporated several Ukrainian folk songs.⁴⁰ Today, however, “Little Russia” is used in Russian nationalist discourse to deny Ukrainian sovereignty. Unsurprisingly, the term is widely rejected by Ukrainians, who object to the denial of Ukrainian cultural and political independence implicit in this term. For this reason, some Western orchestras have removed this work from planned programs,⁴¹ while others are careful to avoid using the nickname.⁴²

Despite Tchaikovsky’s relationship to and engagement with Ukrainian culture, he was born and raised in Russia and understood himself as Russian.⁴³ For this reason, some Ukrainians have criticized the role the Imperial composer popular with the Putin administration has played in Ukrainian cultural life, particularly since Russia’s invasion in 2022. Students at the Ukrainian National Tchaikovsky Academy of Music in Kyiv, for example, have repeatedly pushed for the removal of the composer’s name from the institution.⁴⁴ An electronic petition submitted to the Office of the President of Ukraine in early November 2022 (after the conservatory’s Academic Council voted against a name change in June) states, in part, “The fact that the academy still bears the name of the Russian composer Tchaikovsky is a spit in the face of the independence of Ukrainian culture, and any attempts to justify it with various myths are another manifestation of the inferiority complex.”⁴⁵ Pushing back against the narrative of Tchaikovsky as a native Ukrainian, these students argue that measures to “de-Russify” Ukraine, including the removal of monuments and the renaming of streets honoring authors like Alexander Pushkin and Maxim Gorky, should include the composer as well.

Members of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s administration have also raised concerns about Tchaikovsky’s appropriation by the present Russian regime. Oleksandr Tkachenko, Ukraine’s Minister of Culture, called for a boycott of “Kremlin-favoured works” in an op-ed for The Guardian published in early December of 2022. Tkachenko specifically invoked Tchaikovsky in his plea that Western allies “paus[e] performances of his works until Russia ceases its bloody invasion,” citing “more than 800 cases of destruction: monuments and works of art, museums, valuable historical buildings” in what he termed “a civilizational battle over culture and history.”⁴⁶ Ukrainian scholar and cultural critic Maksym Strikha summarizes the situation thusly: “Whether we like it or not, today Tchaikovsky is one of the symbols of Putin’s imperial Russia.”⁴⁷

Musical Russification and Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1

The Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-Flat Minor, Op. 23 is one of Tchaikovsky’s many works that contain Ukrainian musical material. It was composed between November 1874 and February 1875, often while the composer was in modern-day Ukraine, and premiered by the German pianist Hans von Bülow in Boston, Massachusetts, on October 25, 1875. Today the concerto is one of Tchaikovsky’s most popular compositions and a concert hall staple. The work begins with a substantial introduction, a “grand initial flourish” that was excerpted for performance at the Summer and Winter Olympic Games.⁴⁸

The first movement’s main theme was inspired by a singer Tchaikovsky heard during a visit to present-day Ukraine. In the spring of 1879, while working on revisions to the concerto at the von Meck estate in Braïliv, Tchaikovsky confided to his patron the source of his musical inspiration. He wrote:

I heard a blind lyrical singer. He called himself “lyrical” after the name of the accompanying instrument—a lyre, which nevertheless had nothing in common with the traditional lyre. It’s remarkable that all the blind singers in Little Russia [sic] play one and the same folk-melody endlessly. I partly used this tune in the first movement of my Piano Concerto.⁴⁹

Here, Tchaikovsky describes an encounter with a lirnyk, or itinerant Ukrainian musician. Lirnyky were typically blind and performed songs to the accompaniment of a crank-driven hurdy gurdy called a lira.⁵⁰ Like the kobzars, who played the bandura or kobza, lirnyky were members of well-organized guilds with extensive training expectations and shared repertoire—hence Tchaikovsky’s claim that “all the blind singers in Little Russia play one and the same folk-melody.” As was typical in the nineteenth century, the composer uses the term “Little Russia” to refer to Ukraine. Tchaikovsky includes a brief transcription in his May 9 letter: the contours of this musical motif in Figure 1 are quite legible in the Allegro con spirito theme below in Figure 2.

Figure 1:

Transcription of Ukrainian folk tune by Tchaikovsky.

This tune, though brief, represents a rich source of melodic fragments on which many of the concerto’s themes are based.⁵¹ While both G. A. Tumenev and Francis Maes assert that this folk melody was “Oi, kriache, kriache, chernyi voron (Oh, caw, caw, black raven),” the transcription in Tchaikovsky’s letter as well as the concerto’s theme bear little to no resemblance to versions of the tune published in circulating song collections of the period, including Vasily Fedorovich Trutovsky’s Sobranie ruskikh prostykh pesen s notami, published in 1779, or Jan Bogumil Prach’s Sobranie narodnykh ruskikh piesen, dated 1790.⁵² Of course, as Tchaikovsky’s letter was written several years after the composition of the concerto (and ostensibly his encounter with the lirnyk), he may have misremembered what he had heard or transcribed it incorrectly. But the motif in Figure 1 is different enough from the sonata’s main theme pictured in Figure 2 to suggest that Tchaikovsky may have revisited earlier sketches or even heard the tune again during his present working retreat in Ukraine, as his marveling over the shared repertoire of these singers in his letter to von Meck might indicate. Whatever song Tchaikovsky heard, the composer was explicit about his use of folk music from Ukraine within the piano concerto.

Figure 2:

Allegro con spirito theme.

Further, Tchaikovsky’s use of Ukrainian music was not limited to the work’s first movement.⁵³ In the third and final movement, he employs the Ukrainian song “Viidi, viidi, Ivanku” (Come, come, Ivanka), a round dance about the arrival of spring. Tchaikovsky borrowed the tune from former classmate Aleksandr Ivanovich Rubets’s collection of Ukrainian folk songs published in 1872.⁵⁴ Its melodic and harmonic repetition, both notable features of Ukrainian dance tunes, as well as the song’s two-voice character are preserved in Tchaikovsky’s quotation, indicating his understanding of the music’s style and structure.⁵⁵

The distinctly Ukrainian musical heritage Tchaikovsky mines, however, was classified as a “sub-species” of Russian song by folk song editors and arrangers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.⁵⁶ The long-term effect of this musical Russification is that only now are Western scholars beginning to engage with the wealth of distinct traditions and practices that make up so-called “Russian” music, which flattens the music of regions of the former empire or USSR. (Igor Stravinsky’s “Russian” period, during which he made use of folk materials from across the empire, is a familiar example.) The Russian language has terminology to differentiate between the multiethnic empire—rossiiskii—and the ethnic Russian—russkii—though admittedly, these terms are porous and often represent political ideologies.⁵⁷ Such distinctions, however, are lost in much English-language scholarship. This is in part for lack of terminology, but also to avoid the complex historical and contemporary issues such distinctions raise around nationality and identity. Beyond the significant cultural differences and political ideologies unexplored, musical Russificiation suggests that Ukrainian music is inferior to Russian music, a mere regional curiosity that can lend “local color” to serious compositions.⁵⁸ Tchaikovsky scholar David Brown’s assessment of the piano concerto’s first movement captures such attitudes toward Ukrainian music. Though he acknowledges some censorious comments about the concerto’s “huge opening tune,” he dismisses the idea that “the first (and comparatively very trivial) Ukrainian folksong” that follows it could be an appropriate introduction, writing, “In any case, can you really imagine beginning the concerto with the Ukrainian folktune?”⁵⁹

The marginalization of Ukrainian music, language, and culture, first under the Russian Empire, then during the Soviet period, and now during Putin’s administration, helps to justify the assertion that Ukraine is a territory rightfully belonging to Russia rather than a sovereign state. In July 2021, Russia’s Office of the President published an article titled, “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians,” which repeatedly described citizens of the two nations as “one people” and characterizing Ukraine’s attempt to establish national sovereignty as a plot to “sow discord” and “divide and then to pit the parts of a single people against one another.”⁶⁰ The article, attributed to Putin, almost entirely avoids acknowledging repeated efforts to suppress the Ukrainian language,⁶¹ falsely inferring that Ukrainian is a dialect of Russian.⁶² This linguistic erasure serves “to ensure that Ukrainians are not a separate ethnic group, but rather a kind of Russian,” just as the distinct traditions of Ukrainian folk music were collapsed into the broader category of Russian song.⁶³

While ignoring centuries of cultural Russification in Ukraine, Putin’s article is quick to cry foul over recent attempts to promote the use of the Ukrainian language in that country, including the 2019 “Law on Supporting the Functioning of the Ukrainian Language as the State Language.” Although the European Commission for Democracy through Law has judged that the 2019 statute “fails to strike a fair balance between the legitimate aim of strengthening and promoting the Ukrainian language and sufficiently safeguarding minorities’ linguistic rights,”⁶⁴ such a law is hardly evidence of the “genocide” of ethnic Russians in Ukraine, one rationale Putin has offered for Russia’s invasion.⁶⁵ In a premature announcement of Russia’s military victory in Ukraine published by RIA Novosti, contributor Petr Akopov praised Putin for restoring Russia’s “historical fullness, gathering the Russian world, the Russian people together—in its entirety of Great Russians, Belarusians and Little Russians [read: Ukrainians].”⁶⁶ While Putin offered several justifications for the invasion of Ukraine—some profoundly untrue, others simply spurious—the belief that the territory rightfully belongs to Russia and a desire to reunite all ethnic Russians (as Putin understands “Russian” identity) animated the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.⁶⁷

#WeWillROCYou: Tchaikovsky’s Concerto as Nationalist Musical Motif

Whatever the nineteenth-century imperial realities that informed the creation of Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto, its use as a substitute Russian anthem at the Olympic Games and other international competitions offers it as a symbol of the modern Russian state.⁶⁸ In the summer of 2021, officials, athletes, and musicians completed the process of entrenchment to ensure that the music would be read as Russian. In fact, this was critical to guaranteeing that sports fans and Russian supporters would have no problem seeing through the thin fiction of the state’s “neutral” status at the Olympics. This process began obliquely when Russian journalist and social media influencer Tina Kandelaki created the #WeWillROCYou hashtag—a nationalistic social media campaign that cleverly plays on the acronym for the Russian Olympic Committee and the fact that when transliterated from Cyrillic, “ROC” reads “Rus.”⁶⁹ Rus, the medieval Slavic state based in the capital of present-day Ukraine, has been framed by both Imperial historians and contemporary Russian nationalists as the predecessor of an indivisible Russian state that encompasses Ukraine and Belarus.⁷⁰ Thus, even this social media campaign buttressed the state’s aim to restore an imagined “Russian world.”

Music was gradually incorporated into this nationalist campaign. After #WeWillROCYou was promoted by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, the campaign was featured prominently in an Instagram video posted by Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova. In the video, Zakharova is seen boxing with a training dummy labeled “PRESS” before taking questions about the Olympics at a mock press conference. When asked about the substitution of the Russian national anthem with music by Tchaikovsky, Zakharova replies glibly, “We respect our rivals on the pedestal, so let them listen to the classics,”⁷¹ insinuating Russia’s dominance at the Games. The roughly one-and-a-half-minute clip ends with a direct address to Russian athletes: “We love you, we believe in you, we wish you victory. And I want to quote our foreign friends, and all say together, ‘we will rock you.’ From Russia, with love.”

Despite the references to Tchaikovsky’s concerto, when the video cuts to black and #WeWillROCYou appears, it is accompanied by Queen’s “We Will Rock You.”⁷² Given the ubiquity of Queen’s anthem at major sporting events throughout North America and Europe, “We Will Rock You” offers a high-energy soundtrack easily appropriated in support of the ROC. Further, “the role of the sports rock anthems such as ‘We Will Rock You’. . . directly evokes the relationship to the spectacle surrounding the singing of actual national anthems at sporting events.”⁷³ In place of their own anthem then, Russian state media prepared audiences to make use not only of an alternate musical symbol—Tchaikovsky’s concerto—but also Queen’s stadium rock favorite, now reimagined as a nationalist emblem.

Shortly after the creation of the hashtag, Andrey Leonidovich Shirman, a Russian producer better known as DJ Smash, debuted a mashup of the Queen song and the Tchaikovsky concerto on TikTok. The introduction’s triumphant horn theme is heard eight times against the backdrop of Queen’s “stomp, stomp, clap,” the most recognizable elements of both works presented immediately to the listener. Shirman, in ever-changing ensembles meant to represent Summer Olympic events, walks toward the camera before stomp, stomp, clapping in time with the track. The clip continues by flipping the musical relationship, foregrounding a breathy female voice speak-singing the first verse—”Buddy, you’re a boy, make a big noise playing in the street, gonna be a big man someday”—punctuated by Tchaikovsky’s thunderous orchestral chords. During the verse, Shirman mixes and dances behind an elaborate DJ rig, a pair of black headphones slung around his neck. In the last twenty seconds of the clip, dominated musically by the cover of the Queen chorus, Shirman appears again in costume, pantomiming playing tennis and soccer, boxing, weightlifting, cycling, and horseback riding. The music fades to silence as the video cuts back to Shirman at his rig, arms raised triumphantly, his silver Double G buckle Gucci belt indicating status and wealth just visible beneath his boxy black t-shirt. The overall effect of the video is at odds with the ingenuity of the mashup itself. Shirman’s costumed pantomime seems to highlight his age on a youth-oriented social media platform, and while his movements behind the rig read as contextually appropriate, one feels a shiver of self-consciousness watching him dance dressed as an equestrian and martial artist.

Both Shirman’s performance and the mashup’s unexpected but highly effective blending of Tchaikovsky and Queen evoke Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of the carnival, TikTok serving as the digital square for active participation and communal engagement.⁷⁴ The caption of this fifty-second clip encouraged DJ Smash’s TikTok followers to engage with the hashtag and create videos featuring the artist’s mashup: “Well, Tiktok, let’s go! We support the #wewillROCyou movement.” Dance videos to this audio by Russian social media influencers—almost entirely young and female—began to appear shortly thereafter, frequently featuring flag emojis, patriotic outfits, and tri-color face paint. Their own captions amplified DJ Smash’s message and encouraged millions of followers to shoot videos to the mashup in support of Russian Olympic athletes, the nationalistic hashtag a prominent feature. As one Russian outlet declared, “DJ Smash launched a musical flash mob in defense of the Russian national team, and no one can resist his track.”⁷⁵ The chanting, clapping, and stomping “directly reinforce[d] a collective and affirmative sociability” that united Russian spectators and fans despite the prohibitions against Russian national symbols at the Olympics.⁷⁶ This mashup and its rapid dissemination on social media cemented the association between the Tchaikovsky concerto, #WeWillROCYou, Queen’s popular anthem, and Russia’s performance at the 2020 Summer Olympics. As of May 18, 2022, #WeWillROCYou had 450.3 million views on TikTok. Though Brian May’s song was a popular refrain for celebrating ROC’s success at the Olympics, DJ Smash’s mashup as well as Russian state content about the Tchaikovsky concerto like Zakharova’s Instagram video helped to remake the concert hall staple into a nationalist musical motif.

Several sentiments appeared in social media commentary on YouTube and Twitter about the Tchaikovsky concerto serving as Russia’s substitute anthem at the Olympics. Russian users—primarily on Twitter—boasted that despite being denied their anthem and flag, ROC athletes were nonetheless performing strongly. A small contingent on both Twitter and YouTube expressed disappointment at the absence of the Russian anthem; many of them also argued against the legitimacy of sanctions that required an alternative anthem in the first place. A related theme, often shared by journalists and sports commentators, was how strange it was to hear a piano concerto in place of the familiar Russian anthem. Suggestions for alternatives were fairly popular, with the “Internationale,” “Katyusha,” and the USSR’s anthem regularly offered. (Such suggestions were sometimes accompanied by debates over whether the Soviet and present Russian anthems were the same.) The majority of commenters, however, praised the excellence of Tchaikovsky’s concerto. While Russian-language comments typically reflected a sense of pride at hearing the work, some users, mostly English-speaking, suggested that it was an improvement upon the existing Russian anthem, echoing the long history of revisionist discourse around Russia’s anthems explored above.

Figure 4:

Social media responses to Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 as substitute anthem.⁷⁷

In addition to jokes about how the concerto’s beauty would only encourage doping and win Russia unexpected fans during the Olympics, these commenters framed the choice of Tchaikovsky in terms of Russia’s broader contribution to the classical music canon. Using terms like “backup” and “spare,” there was a sense of amazement that this “gem” or “jewel” was available for use as an alternative. Further, they marveled at the abundance of great compositions from which the ROC might have chosen an alternative anthem.

There was another response, albeit infrequent, to the recording of the piano concerto used at the 2020 Tokyo Games that echoed my own feeling upon viewing medal ceremonies: one of bewilderment. In videos from the Summer Games, including a montage of ROC’s gold medal moments posted to the Olympics’ official YouTube page, the excerpt begins with an inexplicable modulation, as though facilitating a shift from one composition to the Tchaikovsky.⁷⁸ The recording begins with G#-E-D#-C#—a minor third above the notated pitches—before the second and third statements of the memorable horn motif sound as written. Russian pianist Denis Matsuev was tapped to record several versions of the excerpt for use during Victory Ceremonies, though neither the ensemble nor the conductor on the recording are identified by Russian state media or during coverage of the Olympics.⁷⁹ It seems difficult to imagine such precise and limited corruption of a sound file; perhaps this was an attempt to preserve copyright on a recording by Matsuev that would be heard globally, or the result of a rushed recording session in light of how quickly the ROC needed to produce an alternative anthem? Whatever the reason, the error was corrected for the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing, where the three statements of the opening motif were played as notated.

Both Queen’s “We Will Rock You” and Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 came to represent the ROC’s strong performance at the Summer and Winter Games, no doubt aided by the state-sponsored hashtag and DJ Smash’s mashup—but the combination of these two works was not limited to social media. They also served as musical inspiration for an event in Moscow’s Red Square welcoming ROC athletes returning home from Tokyo. A video from Match TV showed the Russian team arriving from the airport to the iconic square in two open-topped buses. They are greeted by family—most of whom had been unable to attend the Games because of COVID-19 protocols—along with cheering fans and journalists. During the celebration that followed, a children’s chorus sang the Russian anthem while the tri-colored flag was raised, compensating for the notable absence of these symbols at the Olympics. In an address, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov invoked the #WeWillROCYou campaign, saying, “There is no doubt that your detractors wanted an evil fate to dominate the Russian Olympic Committee and the Russian national team at the games. This idea failed. And in fact, the hashtag #WeWillROCYou will remain as a symbol of your abilities and desire to win.”⁸⁰

A centerpiece of the festivities was a performance featuring Matsuev and conductor Yuri Bashmet, featuring a mashup of Tchaikovsky and Queen. In the video, Matsuev is seated behind a black Yamaha piano in white tie, an orchestra visible behind him. They play the G♭ major chords of the brief closing section at rehearsal number 31 just before the piano cadenza preceding the coda—suggesting that Matsuev had already played the better part of the concerto’s first movement, including the memorable introduction and the Ukrainian tune that inspired the first movement’s main theme. These G♭ major chords are followed by the horn motif from the concerto’s introduction, Queen’s “stomp, stomp, clap” played by members of a military drum corps marching onstage behind the orchestra. Tchaikovsky’s thunderous chords are barely audible as Matsuev forcefully plays the verse of “We Will Rock You,” mouthing the English words as Russian flags wave behind him. The brass section plays Queen’s chorus while the drum corps performs a choreographed routine, the brightly colored domes of Saint Basil’s Cathedral and the red walls of the Kremlin featured prominently in shots that pan the iconic Moscow square.

The performance, along with the rest of the festivities, makes up for much of the nationalist pomp Russia was denied at the Olympic Games themselves.⁸¹ In comparison to the relatively equal treatment Tchaikovsky’s piano concerto and the Queen song received in DJ Smash’s original mashup, Matsuev’s extended performance of the concerto emphasizes Tchaikovsky’s composition. Of course, the musical focus would naturally shift to the headlining soloist, here a classical pianist. This programming decision, however, also allows the Russian composer greater import than the British rock band (sometimes incorrectly identified in Russian media as an American group), thereby highlighting Russian cultural contributions to high art over those of Western popular music. Further, the addition of a military corps and the choice of Red Square lends a gravity to the proceedings, making it clear that this performance is a state project. In addition to shots that emphasize the location of this nationalist celebration (a popular site for outdoor concerts as well as military parades), footage of the concert often cuts to returning Olympians, some filming the performance and clapping or waving flags in time. Most, however, simply look disinterested or even uncomfortable. Overall, the performance is a bit awkward, the mismatch between Matsuev’s enthusiasm and the muted energy of the crowd palpable to the viewer.

Bashmet’s and Matsuev’s participation in this state project is consistent with their public support of Putin’s administration. Like many other Russian artists, both men were signatories on a 2014 petition authored by the Ministry of Culture endorsing Russia’s annexation of Crimea. The four-sentence statement insists that cultural figures cannot remain indifferent observers before asserting that:

Our shared history and shared roots, our culture and its spiritual origins, our fundamental values and language have always united us. We want the commonality of our peoples and our cultures to have a strong future. This is why we firmly declare our support of the position of the President of the Russian Federation with respect to Ukraine and Crimea.⁸²

In response to their support of Crimea’s annexation, both Matsuev and Bashmet faced censure in Ukraine. Bashmet was stripped of his honorary professorship at the Lviv Conservatory,⁸³ which he had attended as a young man, while concert organizers canceled a performance by Matsuev at the National Opera of Ukraine in Kyiv.⁸⁴

Denis Matsuev has proven a particularly active supporter of Putin. A longtime member of the Presidential Council for Culture and Arts, the pianist led the Public Council under the Ministry of Culture from 2012 to 2017. During Putin’s 2018 presidential campaign, Matsuev was registered with the Central Election Commission of the Russian Federation as a proxy, authorized to campaign on the politician’s behalf.⁸⁵ In 2020, Putin tapped the pianist to be part of a working group to consider proposed changes to Russia’s constitution as his presidency comes to an end after four terms in 2024. Among the possible changes are presidential term limits that prohibit anyone from serving more than two terms, as well as a shift of power to parliament and the prime minister.⁸⁶ While Matsuev’s decision to publicly support Putin does not necessarily indicate agreement with that regime, he has done little if anything to distance himself from the increasingly totalitarian policies of the present administration.

Matsuev and other artists experienced some negative consequences for their support of Putin in the past, but these had largely been limited to small protests and limited performance cancellations. In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, however, Matsuev, conductor Valery Gergiev, and soprano Anna Netrebko were publicly replaced in Western concert appearances. London’s Royal Opera House and New York’s Metropolitan Opera House canceled upcoming performances by the Bolshoi and Mariinsky ballet companies, both of which are subsidized by the Russian state and serve as quasi-national companies. Politically-motivated programming changes have not been limited to the West, however. The Bolshoi Theatre canceled two productions by directors critical of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: Timofey Kulyabin’s staging of Donizetti’s Don Pasquale, and the controversial ballet Nureyev by Kirill Serebrennikov about the life of the infamous Soviet dancer and defector.⁸⁷ In place of Nureyev, the Bolshoi programmed the 1968 Spartacus, a classic of Cold War-era Soviet ballet with a score by Aram Khachaturian; proceeds supported the families of Russian troops killed in Ukraine. Meanwhile, both Kulyabin and Serebrennikov have fled Russia.

As this article has examined, Tchaikovsky has emerged as a particularly contested symbol of state following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The composer’s Marche Slave and The Year 1812, Solemn Overture, along with his Second Symphony (the “Little Russian”) were removed from a concert by the Cardiff Philharmonic Orchestra shortly after the conflict began. When explaining the decision to substitute these works for compositions by Antonín Dvořák, John Williams, and Edward Elgar, the organization cited, in part, the militaristic and nationalistic themes of the Tchaikovsky compositions originally programmed.⁸⁸ While some Western opera houses and ballet companies have continued with long-planned performances, the Théâtre Orchestre Bienne Soleure in Switzerland canceled its production of Mazeppa, citing “the current situation in Ukraine,”⁸⁹ and the Prague National Opera canceled its production of Cherevichki, explaining that the fairy tale plot is nonetheless set against the backdrop of and promotes the “great Russian empire.”⁹⁰

By all accounts, the Great Russian Empire is precisely what President Putin aims to restore in his invasion of Ukraine. The reestablishment of the Soviet national anthem in 2000, shortly after Putin’s first presidential election, presaged the Russian leader’s authoritarian politics. Similarly, this article has examined the appropriation of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 as an irredentist anthem that echoes the present administration’s belief that Ukrainian political sovereignty can rightfully be subsumed by Russia. Approved by the CAS because the concerto was not understood as explicitly “Russian,” its use at the Olympics and other international competitions has nonetheless offered Tchaikovsky’s work as a symbol of the state. But framing Tchaikovsky’s concerto as straightforwardly “Russian” marginalizes Ukrainian culture, which has long been deprecated and even legally proscribed in an effort to subordinate the region to Russian rule—whether tsarist, Soviet, or Putinist. The present regime has demonstrated the malleability of musical nationalism and its powerful potential for misuse in its appropriation of Tchaikovsky’s concerto. I believe it is our responsibility as music scholars, therefore, to be more attentive to issues of identity and imperialism in our study and teaching of so-called “Russian” music.