In 1973, a manuscript of a comprehensive research “On composing technique and language of modern music” carried out by a multi-national group of authors (over 40 people from Russia, Ukraine and the Baltic countries) was submitted to the publishing house “Sovetskiy kompozitor” (“Soviet Composer”). The newest problems of thematicism, harmony, polyphony, rhythm, timbre and texture were considered in it on the musical material of Soviet and foreign composers. After the agreement was concluded, the content of the book continued to be modified and adjusted, but in 1983 the project was stopped. The article researches the reasons for this outcome stipulated by old-established ideological attitudes of the 1920s—1930s. Having become more rigorous and seriously influencing art in the 1940s—1950s, they gradually lost their power during subsequent decades. Attempts to confine modern art within the frames of a primitively understood “socia­listic realism” aroused opposition from composers and audience already prepared enough owing to musi­cal enlightenment in the Soviet Union and striving for new discoveries. Even the unpublished book had a favourable influence on the development of Russian musicology.