Shostakovich and Stalin: The Extraordinary Relationship between the Great Composer and the Brutal Dictator

Contemporary Review, Oct, 2004

Shostakovich and Stalin: The Extraordinary Relationship between the Great Composer and the Brutal Dictator. Solomon Volkov. Antonina W. Bouis, translator. Little, Brown. [pounds sterling]14.99. xiv 370 pages. ISBN 0-316-86141-3. This study, first published in Russia and then, in translation, in the U.S., is written by the Russian historian who worked with the composer on his memoirs and collection of letters.

Because Stalin's regime both praised Shostakovich and threatened him and his family, the composer's life was 'a living hell for many years'. To tell the story of the fraught relationship between Shostakovich and Communist authorities is the task of this book. The author pays particular attention to Stalin's 1936 denunciation of Shostakovich's opera, Lady Macbeth of Misensk and to the 1948 censure of the composer by the Communist Party. He shows how Shostakovich's works and very life fitted into Russian patterns established in history and defined in the work of writers and artists such as Dostoevsky, Pushkin and Mussorgsky. Mr Volkov defines this as a work of 'cultural history' but it is also a unique insight into how a genius and his music survived in the madhouse that was Soviet Russia. (P.P.F.)