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The Ivan Aufulich Papers
23. Naina Intshnayls
In a surprise move, the All-Union Musicians' Union (that sounds better in Russian) awarded its Grand Prize -- and a fat recording contract -- to up-and-coming rock singer Naina Intshnayls. This was seen, by those in the know. as a blow to the cultural (and economic) purity campaign of V. R. Nahtamyuzd, who has long sought to extirpate all things Western. Of course Intshnayls sought to ward off such criticism, preemptively, by claiming that rock-and-roll was a glorious Soviet invention, stolen and perverted by America. But nobody expected that Nahtamyuzd would be fooled; only that he would be somewhat restrained -- for a while. That the Musicians' Union would take such a step, in blatant (well, blatant to cognoscenti) defiance of Nahtamyuzd, is astonishing to many; it puts the Union's own leadership at risk. Those more deeply sophisticated in the ways things are done realize that the Union would never have taken such a step were they not put up to it by Nahtamyuzd's enemies, who are now exposed and ripe for his plucking. The most thoughtful observers of all wonder (though of course not aloud) if the entire career -- perhaps even the upbringing, perhaps even the birth and conception -- of Intshnayls was managed with a view toward this very end. Of course nobody knows for sure; but the dissident poets in Kazakhstan are keeping a low profile (in so far as that is possible for a poet and a dissident). At any rate, it is certain that Naina will suffer a tragic accident; perhaps that, too, was one of the deals she made to further her career.
©1997 Grant Schampel