Other Music Censorship
While folk and ethnic music was hardest hit by censorship, other genres and related areas were attacked as well, some of which had repercussions in the folk world. Classical pieces, while not as linked to ethnicity and therefore a lesser threat, were sometimes changed after the fact and without notification. In an early soviet recording of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture, “God Save the Czar” (being doubly-banned for mentioning a former government and a deity) had been replaced with an appropriately patriotic Russian tune (Perris, 1985) . Some composers were actually forced to create songs at gunpoint. In the Soviet Union , several prominent folk narrators were threatened with a revolver and deportation to Siberia if they did not produce a new folk song within six hours (Porter, 1994). These songs were nonetheless promoted as a free expression of the people's will.
An unavoidable reaction to such threats and sabotage is self-censorship. The classical realm was more susceptible to self-censorship, because composers wrote their own material. Folk musicians dealt with old material that was organized for a group, so they did not have much say in the content or style of the material performed. In need of work and afraid of retaliation, composers created pieces that were inoffensive, homogenous, melodic and cheerful. By 1936, the most advanced composers in the Soviet Union had reverted to nineteenth century styles.
Those who did not, such as Shostakovich, were reprimanded. His hugely successful opera Lady Macbeth infuriated Stalin, who had an anonymous article appear in the party-controlled Pravda (Truth) denigrating it as vulgar and dissonant. Artist groups supported the review and began to avoid Shostakovich (Perris, 1985) . He subsequently apologized and wrote the more traditional and uplifting Fifth Symphony , which was well received. Less lucky musicians include Lovro Matacic, a well-known composer and principal for military music in the Independent State of Croatia . Due to his bourgeois and political affiliations, he was sentenced to death in 1945 (it was converted to a prison sentence) (Pettan, 1998). Other musicians were blacklisted, forced into menial labor jobs or protested.
These situations were particularly common for Czechs, as they endured the most severe rock censorship laws in eastern Europe, particularly in the 1970s (a result of the soviet crackdown following the Prague Spring in 1968). In 1976 twenty-seven musicians were arrested after a festival put together by the seminal punk band Plastic People of the Universe, and many were jailed for up to six months without a trial. The next year a few incensed artists drafted Charter 77, including playwright Vaclav Havel. Thousands of artists signed this declaration of human rights, which was eventually translated and printed around the world. The signers were threatened and forced to sign an anti-charter praising socialism. Those who refused were blacklisted or worse. Havel, a co-founder and central figure, was thrown in jail.
Marta Kubisova, the most popular Czech singer of the late 1960s, was one singled out as a warning. Working through promoter Pragokoncert, the soviet government barred her from performing for 20 years, shredded her recording contract, circulated pornographic pictures they claimed were her and confiscated her passport. Until the regime fell, she was forced to work for a company building socialist tower blocks (Andress, 2002) . Today, those who braved ruined careers and prison are revered. Havel became Czechoslovakia 's first president in 1989 and was the president of the Czech Republic from 1992 to 2003.
The government also targeted ethnomusicologists. They were not allowed to publish or promote traditional folklore, and many were forced under threat of violence to write fabricated papers. Their only hope was smuggling work out of the country to be published in the United States or western Europe. This echoes the well-known book bannings all over eastern Europe and the Soviet Union . In the strictest era, the 1950s and 1960s, the local KGB sent for Lithuanian ethnomusicologists and told them not to propagandize or teach youth about folklore, not to arrange festivals or concerts, and not to establish folk ensembles in the cities: “Be quiet and calm, and we will tolerate you!” (Porter, 1994). Scholars with international ties were deprecated and expelled from universities. Many scholars have since written about the connections between cultures and misinformation of the Communist era. Their aim is to set the record straight and right the wrongs done to minorities, particularly Turks and Roma.