Harmony in Flux: the Babajanian—Rozhdestvensky—Magomayev Triad and the Strange Attractor of Soviet Internationalism

Abstract This article examines Soviet internationalism through the long-term artistic collaboration of Armenian composer Arno Babajanian, Russian poet Robert Rozhdestvensky, and Azerbaijani singer Muslim Magomayev. Using the ‘strange attractor’ metaphor from dynamical systems theory, it explores how Soviet cultural policy generated structured contingency: a system in which artistic creativity thrived within ideological bounds. Their collaboration culminated in Nocturne , a fragile elegy and final harmonic signature of late Soviet cultural synthesis—infused with emotional clarity, yet bounded by aesthetic constraint. The case reveals how Soviet ideology fostered bounded unpredictability in cultural production and how its collapse fractured shared artistic legacies across Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Russia. By situating their music within shifting ideological frameworks, this study demonstrates how Soviet internationalism functioned as a generative but volatile system, sustaining cross-national collaboration until its structural unraveling.