The article focuses on N. A. Roslavets’ social and creative activities after the October Revolution in the sphere of proletarian music. A comparison between the composer’s creative work and the events of his biography shows that his musical works for the proletarian masses (from about 1922) began markedly later than his social work (from 1917). Public manifestations of Roslavets’ creative intentions indicate that he engaged in proletarian music to counteract the agitational music-making for the proletariat of the early 1920s. An analysis of his music demonstrates, however, that Roslavets used his unconventional style in his proletarian music as well. As a result, the author draws three conclusions. First, Roslavets’ participation in proletarian music was not a compromise but was positioned by him as a new ideological and aesthetic direction of creativity. Second, Roslavets’ proletarian music differs markedly from that of other “proletarian composers,” above all in his enduring commitment to his atonal technique and its unexpected juxtaposition with tonal means. Finally, the phenomenon of proletarian music in Roslavets’ interpretation does not look like the opposite of modernism but is a derivation of its ideological and artistic foundations.
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