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“Music illuminates a person and provides him with his last hope; even Stalin, a butcher, knew that.” So said the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich, whose first compositions in the 1920s identified him as an avant-garde wunderkind. But that same singularity became a liability a decade later under the totalitarian rule of Stalin, with his unpredictable grounds for the persecution of artists. Solomon Volkov—who cowrote Shostakovich’s controversial 1979 memoir, Testimony—describes how this lethal uncertainty affected the composer’s life and work.
Volkov, an authority on Soviet Russian culture, shows us the “holy fool” in Shostakovich: the truth speaker who dared to challenge the supreme powers. We see how Shostakovich struggled to remain faithful to himself in his music and how Stalin fueled that struggle: one minute banning his work, the next encouraging it. We see how some of Shostakovich’s contemporaries—Mandelstam, Bulgakov, and Pasternak among them—fell victim to Stalin’s manipulations and how Shostakovich barely avoided the same fate. And we see the psychological price he paid for what some perceived as self-serving aloofness and others saw as rightfully defended individuality.
This is a revelatory account of the relationship between one of the twentieth century’s greatest composers and one of its most infamous tyrants.
From the Hardcover edition.
- Sales Rank: #133354 in eBooks
- Published on: 2007-12-18
- Released on: 2007-12-18
- Format: Kindle eBook
From Publishers Weekly
Shostakovich's tortured relationship to the Soviet authorities was a main subject of Testimony, a book published after the composer's death by Volkov, who claimed that it contained Shostakovich's own remembrances. Controversy about the authenticity of Testimony swirled for years, until the publication in 1999 of Laurel E. Fay's Shostakovich: A Life, accepted by many scholars as decisively countering Testimony's claims to accuracy. The appearance of a new study by Volkov on Shostakovich (1906-1973), then, is sure to raise critical hackles. Volkov argues that Shostakovich survived the denunciation of his 1934 opera Lady Macbeth of Mtensk, and more minor controversies thereafter, in part by relying on a Russian tradition of playing the "holy fool" when under political pressure. When Stalin asked that Shostakovich henceforth submit operas and ballets for approval, the composer solved the problem by refraining from writing these musical forms. Volkov finds that luck played a role as well in Shostakovich surviving while so many other artists were killed or banned, but the "holy fool" argument as a whole only partially convinces: at times, Shostakovich's reticence regarding the regime seemed to turn into compliance, as when he signed a letter late in his life that denounced human rights activist Andrei Sakharov, an act Volkov says Shostakovich regretted. The book assumes a lot of knowledge of Soviet history for a general readership; nonspecialists interested in the composer and his work will still be better served by Fay.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From The New Yorker
After hearing Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony, an envious Boris Pasternak wrote, "He went and said everything, and no one did anything to him for it." The extent of the composer's complicity or dissidence under Stalin has been much debated. Volkov, a prominent adherent of the latter view, marvels at this timid man's ability to express suffering in music that was nonetheless outwardly optimistic, and suggests that Shostakovich found an important model in Pushkin, who survived the cruelties of Tsar Nicholas I by juggling three classically Russian roles—"pretender," " chronicler," and "holy fool." Volkov's story depends too often on hunches and assumptions, but he is illuminating when he places the composer in the context of other artists (Pasternak, Bulgakov, and Mandelstam) who attempted dialogue with Stalin and were alternately supported and persecuted by him.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker
From Booklist
Like Czar Nicholas I a century before him, Stalin was a tyrant who ruled with an iron fist, using people like pawns in a game. During his era of fear and yearning for freedom, Soviet cultural figures, taking the writer Pushkin as a model, resorted to subterfuge and double entendre to express their true beliefs. Volkov, coauthor of Shostakovich's memoirs, speaks from firsthand knowledge of the composer vis-a-vis Stalin, and he compares Shostakovich to the poet Pimen in Pushkin's play Boris Godunov, who embodied the holy fool, the pretender, and the chronicler. With the opera Lady Macbeth of Mtensk, Shostakovich ran afoul of Stalin. Thereafter, to express his covert rebellion, he quoted extensively from Berlioz, Tchaikovsky, and others who composed, as he often did, with death in mind. Volkov includes material about all the noted writers, artists, and composers of Shostakovich's era to describe the repressive environment and how it shaped Soviet culture, thereby offering invaluable insight into the subversive life of the intelligentsia of the time. Alan Hirsch
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Most helpful customer reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
Portrait of an artist under socialism
By M. A Newman
This book is a very interesting way of looking at the history of the relationship between authority and artistic freedom in Russia, both in the pre- and post-revolutionary period. The book emphasizes a sense of continuity of how the artist survived the pressures of the state. Shostakovich was arguably one of the two leading composes of the Soviet era, the other being Prokofiev. Shostakovich's talent was on a collision course with Stalin's intellectual pretense to understand what was best for Russian culture. There almost seems to be a sense of frustration on the part of the dictator who by playing the role of chief taste-maker reduced Russian culture in the Soviet period to one long banality. Volkov believes that Shostakovich managed to survive by playing the role of the holy fool. While this is an interesting thesis, there are inconsistencies. What one can infer from this book is that Shostakovich was very much a creature given to bursts of irrationality. This fits with some of his behavior where he tended to test the limits of what he could get away with in his relations with the regime. In a way he resembles Mozart as portrayed in the play and movie Amadaeus, somewhat infantile in his approach to life. Volkov does not appear that comfortable with exploring this idea and I think that this undermines the overall effectiveness of the work, making it merely good, and not necessarily excellent. This is not to say that the book does not have very strong merit. Volkov is very strong with putting the conflict between Shostakovich and Stalin into the larger historical conflict. He also provides a good sense of the era in which Shostakovich functioned as well as really good insight into Shostakovich's compositions. This is a worthwhile book for anyone interested in learning more about cultural life in the Soviet period.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Page-turner!
By Kell
This is a thoroughly engrossing tale of life as a writer, composer, director, etc under Stalin. Shostakovich is the focal point but the information about him is put into the context of the overall situation of the artist in USSR under Stalin. I have completed this book and have started Wilson's biography of Shostakovich.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful.
Complex, Thrilling and Personal
By Jeremy Wong
Solomon Volkov's "Shostakovich and Stalin" is a complex and thrilling work that takes the reader inside the intricacies of Dmitri Shostakovich's psyche as well as Joseph Stalin's rigid regime. The reader is given a perspective of Russian music within the overarching theme of politics and history. It is an elaborate work - a slalom course of topics - reflecting a complex political environment as well as the involved role of music. It does not make for light reading, but it is incredibly illuminating. It puts music - as it always should be - in its proper social, political and historical context. It reminds the reader - in a blunt and forceful manner analogous to the brutal nature of Stalin's regime - that music exists as more than notes on a page or sounds from an instrument. In Shostakovich and Stalin, Volkov reminds us that the true meaning of music is only revealed when we understand the environment where it was created.
Throughout the book, Volkov's admiration for Shostakovich is evident. He writes glowingly of Shostakovich's music and seemingly admires him for absorbing Stalin's constant abuse. Volkov's disdain for Stalin and his regime is clear. He mentions Stalin's cruel treatment of many of Shostakovich's contemporaries as well as his manipulation of Shostakovich. Volkov highlights Stalin's "dabbling" in the arts as megalomaniacal and treats it as a condemnation of his entire regime. Through it all, Shostakovich is clearly affected - yet he survives. Because of his own experience as a musician in Communist Russia, Volkov is, at once, in awe of Shostakovich and deeply moved. He uses Shostakovich's life as the "agricultural base" to delve more deeply into the persona of the great composer. Thus, the labyrinth-like portrayal of his life is enriched and fuliflled by this technique. Despite this being a historical and musical work, the author's emotions often bubble to the surface. As a result, the book's effect on the reader is enhanced. This personal nature of the work makes it especially unique.
Much of "Shostakovich and Stalin" focuses on the clash of artistic philosophy between the two men. Unsurprisingly (as is the case with many authoritarian rulers), Stalin was a proponent of using music as propaganda to bolster his political strength. As a corollary to this, he was suspicious of artistic works lest they make a political statement questioning his authority. Shostakovich, as any great artist would, resented this and refused to fully submit to this existence. This formed the basis of tension and conflict between the two men. Of course, Shostakovich had to balance his fundamental artistic beliefs with self-preservation. That is, to completely fly in the face of Stalin's orders would result in personal tragedy - as was the case for far too many Russian artists under Stalin's rule. So it is within this context that the basis of their tortured relationship. Stalin, the megalomaniac that he was, was in control and sought to manipulate the composer. Shostakovich, with all his considerable courage and integrity (that Volkov describes so elegantly), did all he could to resist this manipulation. Yet it was impossible. This primary relationship in the book is simply gripping. It plays out better than any fiction - the reality of it both compelling and tragic for the reader. Thus, the very basis of this book - as stated in the title - fascinates and spellbounds the reader throughout.
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