LAUSR

This article aims to temper the myth of the sound and scale of Arsenii Avraamov's city-wide mass spectacle the “Symphony of Sirens”—a myth that has been largely unquestioned in English-language sound and urban studies scholarship on the symphony. Instead of focusing solely on the symphony's dreaded noise, I pay attention to the symphony's silence—to the limits of what can be known about its sounds. Drawing on Avraamov's untranslated writings and personal correspondences, I investigate how the symphony's ideal of proletarian unity collides with the geographic, social, and sonic reality of the cities it sought to compose. I then investigate the roots of this ideal in Avraamov's personal aesthetic philosophy, as well as his idiosyncratic views on mechanical reproduction. This article will be of interest to those who wish to explore the connections between urbanism, colonialism, sound technology, the mass spectacle, and mass media in the Soviet musical avant-garde.