After it was auditioned by Joseph Stalin in 1938, a number of similar state-sponsored musical ensembles were created across the country.
[2] S. Frederick Starr comments in his book on the Soviet jazz that the band "played with a polish and precision any Western pop orchestra might have envied".
Tsfasman's Americanism and his unpopularity with the bureaucrats had disqualified him for the position of conductor, which went instead to Victor Knushevitsky, a capable musician with absolutely no feeling for jazz.
Knushevitsky's classical background and ignorance of jazz predisposed him to turn the band into a kind of chamber orchestra with saxophones.
What began as a small group rapidly snowballed into a forty-three piece ensemble, quite enough to stifle any jazz feeling or spontaneity that individual musicians might have spirited into the group.Boris Schwarz's book Music and Musical Life in Soviet Russia, 1917–1970 describes The State Jazz Orchestra of the USSR as "essentially" a "„light“ music" (easy listening) orchestra.