Yves Montand in the USSR Cultural Diplomacy and Mixed Messages

This volume is the first book-length account of Yves Montand’s controversial tour of the Soviet Union at the turn of the years 1956/57. It traces the mixed messages of this internationally visible act of cultural diplomacy in the middle of the turbulent Cold War. It also provides an account of the celebrated French singer-actor’s controversial career, his dedication to music and to peace activism, as well as his widespread fandom in the USSR. The book describes the political background for the events of the year 1956, including the changing Soviet atmosphere after Stalin’s death, portrays the rising transnational stardom of Montand in the 1940s and 1950s, and explores the controversies aroused by his plan to visit Moscow after the Hungarian Uprising. The book pays particular attention to Montand’s reception in the USSR and his concert performances, drawing on unique archival material and oral history interviews, and analyses the documentary Yves Montand Sings (1957) released immediately after his visit.

Mila Oiva is a cultural historian and an expert on Russian and Polish history. She is currently working as a post-doctoral scholar at the CUDAN Open Lab at the Tallinn University, Estonia. Her research interests focus on circulation of information. She is involved in projects studying the phenomenon through the 19th-century global news flows, contemporary Finnish and Russian internet forum discussions on medieval history, and the Cold War era transnational information circulation.

Hannu Salmi is Professor of Cultural History at the University of Turku, Finland, and was nominated Academy Professor for the years 2017–2021. He is a historian of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and the author of volumes such as Nineteenth-Century Europe (2008) and What is Digital History? (2020).

Bruce Johnson is a jazz musician and has been an arts policy advisor to Australian state and federal governments. With Hannu Salmi, he was the co-founder of the International Institute for Popular Culture, and his current research lies in music, acoustic cultural history, and the emergence of modernity.