The standard term used in Russian to refer to ‘foreign music’, zarubezhnaya muzïka , has an interesting history, as zarubezhnaya literally means ‘music from outside the border’—the border in question being that of the USSR. The term was coined in 1948 as one of the measures taken in the ideological campaign to purify Soviet music of ‘cosmopolitan’ influences. This chapter sets out to explore the concept of zarubezhnaya muzïka and trace how this canon was formed, to examine the strategies that it was necessary to adopt to carry out research on European and American music, and to assess the implications for the lives and careers of Soviet musicologists.