Source of book: I own this
First, let’s get the controversy out of the way. According to Solomon Volkov, he met with Shostakovich multiple times during the end of his life, and obtained the material that became this book. He then had Shostakovich sign the pages of his manuscript.
However, it later appeared that some of the book was copied verbatim from prior articles written (or allegedly written) by Shostakovich, and that many of the pages of manuscript had been lost.
Further complicating the issue is that the book was never published in its original language, Russian, because of fear of the KGB.
After it appeared in various European languages, it was criticized by some of Shostakovich’s colleagues as unrepresentative of his own views. His widow rejected it altogether. His children have accepted it as more or less accurate, but “a book about him, not by him.”
I won’t even get into the various scholarly attempts to figure out its authenticity, but to this day, it is unclear where Shostakovich ends and where Volkov begins.
Because of this, I am going to attribute the book to both of them, and let the reader take the book for what it is worth.
The crucial question, of course, is what Shostakovich thought of the Soviets - and Stalin in particular. He couldn’t say anything during his lifetime, as he risked execution or the Gulags. There is no doubt that he was on the outs with the authorities for a time, with his music eviscerated in the state-controlled press. He was also, however, very private and introverted, so all we really have is this book.
I do think that it paints an accurate picture of the Stalin era, and of Stalin himself - that much has been confirmed by multiple dissidents and refugees. Less reliable may be Shostakovich’s opinions of his fellow composers and other artists - how much of that was Volkov? We will never know.
In any event, the book paints a picture of a man who has survived in an impossible situation, who has remained true to his art, and who still aches with loneliness and the isolation that totalitarianism forces on its citizens.
Volkov recounts his interviews with Shostakovich in the preface, and there are some great lines there.
After all, in the Soviet Union the rarest and most valuable thing is memory. It had been trampled down for decades; people knew better than to keep diaries or hold on to letters. When the “great terror” began in the 1930s, frightened citizens destroyed their personal archives, and with them their memory.
…
By the late 1920s the honeymoon with the Soviet government was over for genuine artists. Power had come to behave as it always must: it demanded submission. In order to be in favor, to receive commissions and live peacefully, one had to get into state harness and plug away.
Volkov uses the analogy of the yurodivy - analogous but not identical to the “fool” or “jester.” It is a character who is able to tell the truth to power but indirectly and in a “foolish” manner. To Volkov, Shostakovich was a yurodivy. And perhaps, that is why Shostakovich managed to survive the purges.
In the history of Soviet literature and art there is not a single even slightly significant figure who has not been at one time or another branded a “formalist.” It was an entirely arbitrary accusation. Many of those accused of it perished.
Later, in a footnote, Volkov explains more about the use of the term “formalism” - it has nothing really to do with the actual definition.
“Formalism” has been a “cant” word in Soviet art and literature since the 1920s. As history has shown, this word has almost no real aesthetic content. It has been an epithet for the most varied creative figures and tendencies, depending on the political line and personal tastes of the leaders of the Soviet Union at a particular time.
Along with this go the other epithets: “bourgeois” and “hostile to the Soviet people.”
I actually know from experience exactly how this works. Fundamentalism has its own lexicon, and the equivalent of “formalism” is “worldly.” It has no actual content, and is applied to whatever those with authority dislike at the current time. Primarily, it is applied to anything new - anything the kids like. And also to stuff like the Civil Rights Movement, which challenges the injustices of the glorious past. It’s….very Soviet.
Once we get into the parts allegedly dictated by Shostakovich, the writing becomes fairly rambling - a lot like a random conversation that flits from stories about the past to discussions of composers and music and back again. It takes some concentration, and the book does not read like a typical memoir. There is also a certain amount of repetition of ideas and opinions.
Overall, it is interesting, but ironically it feels like Volkov could have written a more focused book.
I’ll hit some highlights.
Although generally, Shostakovich has a negative opinion of both Stravinsky and Prokofiev personally, he both praises and denigrates their music at times. (Honestly, Shostakovich by the end of his life seemed disillusioned with everything, and this comes across in his opinions of music.)
There is an interesting incident involving Stravinsky, who was an ex-pat, but was invited back for a visit. He made it, but also kept at a literal arm’s length from those fawning over him.
Stravinsky hadn’t forgotten anything - that he had been called a lackey of American imperialism and a flunky of the Catholic Church - and the very same people who had called him that were now greeting him with outspread arms.
Alban Berg also comes in for a bit of a comment. He was afraid of a bomb during his visit, but eventually loosened up, asking to conduct his own work. As any musician can attest, this isn’t usually a good thing.
A composer conducting his own work usually looks ridiculous. There are a few exceptions, but Berg didn’t add to the list.
Shostakovich’s caustic tongue also calls out the mythmakers with their pretty ideas of composers like him.
Probably the authors of such sentimental stories would like everything in life to be pretty and edifying and touching - you know, this century and century past.
This line really struck me, because it is equally applicable to the Evangelical cult. Everything has to be pretty and edifying - no negative emotions allowed.
Here is a more accurate assessment of composing and composers:
Therefore you can’t find a fresh approach, it has to find you. A fresh approach to a work of music, as I have seen time and time again, usually comes to those who have a fresh approach to other aspects of life in general.
This freshness is apparent in Shostakovich’s works, but so also is his deep cynicism.
It makes you think: the best way to hold on to something is to pay no attention to it. The things you love too much perish. You have to treat everything with irony, especially the things you hold dear. There’s more of a chance then that they’ll survive.
I also want to mention a bit from the discussion of King Lear. It’s a perceptive discussion, and Shostakovich gets it right that the central drama of the play is Lear’s slowly crumbling illusions.
Illusions die gradually - even when it seems that it happened suddenly, instantaneously, that you wake up one fine day and you have no more illusions. It isn’t like that at all. The withering away of illusions is a long and dreary process, like a toothache. But you can pull out a tooth. Illusions, dead, continue to rot within us. And stink. And you can’t escape them. I carry all of mine around with me.
Hello, deconstruction, anyone? The 20 year process of this for me - or is it more like 30? - has been a lot like this, and I still feel the pain every day from the process. I wouldn’t choose to remain deluded, but still.
For Shostakovich, the most traumatic point in his life was when Pravda published Stalin’s takedown, entitled “Muddle Instead of Music.” It labeled Shostakovich as an “enemy of the people” - and he was sure he was a dead man. He never got over that fear, and always expected that some day he would just be “disappeared.”
One wonders if Stalin knew the origin of that phrase in Ibsen’s play - and if so, if he realized the irony of how it functioned in Soviet life.
A number of writers are mentioned in the book. One that gets a decent bit of play was Mikhail Zoshchenko, who sounds like an interesting guy. In one place, there is a darkly amusing passage telling of Zoshchenko’s visit to a psychiatrist regarding his terrifying dreams. The expert opinion was that he had a sexual trauma in his childhood. (Thanks, Freud!)
Zoshchenko was certain that the doctor was mistaken. His fear of life stemmed from other causes, he felt, because not all our impulses can be reduced to sexual attraction. Fear can take root in a man’s heart for social reasons too.
Very much true. Just like a lot of older people are clutching their pearls about the mental health crisis in my kids’ generation….but they have zero interest in looking at the circumstances the kids are facing: rising fascism, endless contempt from their elders, climate change, shrinking incomes, rising housing and education costs, and so many more. Sometimes mental health isn’t about internal stuff, but about externals.
Here is another perceptive comment.
Why are people so eager for tyrants to be “patrons” and “lovers” of art? I think there are several reasons. First of all, tyrants are base, clever, and cunning men who know that it is much better for their dirty work if they appear to be cultured and educated men rather than ignoramuses and boors. Let the ones who do the work be boors, the pawns. The pawns are proud to be boors, but the generalissimo must always be wise in all things.
Shostakovich understood how tyrants work - and also the fact that Stalin was essentially fascist in his politics. Communism is an economic system, not a political one, and totalitarianism tends ultimately to become fascist - with its belief in a glorious lost past, demonizing of outsiders, and repression of dissent.
Naturally, fascism is repugnant to me, but not only German fascism, any form of it is repugnant. Nowadays people like to recall the prewar period as an idyllic time, saying that everything was fine until Hitler bothered us. Hitler is a criminal, that’s clear, but so is Stalin.
I feel eternal pain for those who were killed by Hitler, but I feel no less pain for those killed on Stalin’s orders. I suffer for everyone who was tortured, shot, or starved to death. There were millions of them in our country before the war with Hitler began.
The choice isn’t between fascism and communism, as some would have you believe. There is no reason for authoritarianism to be the only option. Rather, democracy, it its truest form - where everyone has a say in how resources are divided in society, not just the rich and powerful - is possible without totalitarianism and authoritarianism. We have proof in the last century of first-world experience.
I have to relate another funny anecdote, this one involving Chekhov. Allegedly, he did not like philosophical discussions. So, when a friend came to him complaining that existential contemplation was ruining his sleep, Chekhov advised him to “drink less vodka.” Thereafter, Shostakovich used that line on any friends who seemed to be too morbidly contemplative.
That said, it is clear that Shostakovich did plenty of thinking himself, but expressed himself primarily in his music.
I have, unfortunately, not had the pleasure of performing many works by Shostakovich. It feels like his era of music has largely fallen out of favor, and, as it is challenging to play, it hasn’t been programmed that often in the regional orchestra I play in.
The one that I have played multiple times is the 5th Symphony. If I recall, the first time, we did an entire season of 5th Symphonies - Beethoven of course, and my beloved Schubert. Probably Prokofiev as well. But Shostakovic’s 5th is a wonderful work. That slow movement is one of the most beautiful things ever written.
And then, there is the finale. Which is arguably the greatest example in history of hiding a meaning in plain sight, obvious to everyone except the apparatchiks who lack imagination. In this case, Shostakovich hides a protest against the Soviet system and its brutality in a way that musicians and those who love music can easily see, but which is not apparent on the surface.
At first listen, it seems to be a triumphal ending. But…those endless repeated A notes in the strings…they go on too long, and are too insistent even as dissonance tries to change the chord. And the hammering tympani doesn’t seem particularly joyful. There is something forced about it all.
Here is what Volkov says Shostakovich said about it - and it certainly fits musically, despite what the Soviet critics thought.
The rejoicing is forced, created under threat, as in Boris Godunov. It’s as if someone were beating you with a stick and saying, “Your business is rejoicing, your business is rejoicing,” and you rise, shaky, and go marching off, muttering, “Our business is rejoicing, our business is rejoicing.”
Give it a listen and decide for yourself. I love Michael Tilson Thomas’ interpretation here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=re2gQXy9C-M
And also, check out the 3rd movement. If you can’t see into Shostakovich’s soul, and his deep trauma, you have a heart of stone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoQayjBDWuc
Another interesting passage is about Stalin. Shostakovich was no fan - that much is well known, although he obviously couldn’t say it out loud until after Stalin’s death. (A particularly poignant passage is Shostakovich’s harrowing trip to the United States - he didn’t want to go, but was forced. During the trip, the aggressive US reporters kept trying to get him to say something negative about the Soviet Union - not fully understanding that he risked being killed if he said anything. His overall impression of the US was very negative for that reason.)
Stalin was, like most autocrats, superstitious. Shostakovich, who was an atheist, but not aggressively so, commented on the phenomenon.
I’m telling this story with a specific aim, which I’m not hiding. I’m not a militant atheist, and I feel people can believe as they wish. But just because a person has a particular set of superstitions doesn’t prove anything good about him. Just because a person is religious, say, he doesn’t automatically become a better person.
If the Trump Era has done nothing else, it has given graphic proof that religion most certainly does not make you a better person. If anything, the kind of white religion that dominates our country demonstrably makes people worse.
There is also nearly an entire chapter devoted to the existence of ghost-artists. In the Soviet Union, there was a demand for “authentic” art, poetry, and music from the various “Stans” on the outskirts of the empire. These were seen as more authentically “proletarian” than art from the educated classes in the big cities.
The problem was, there wasn’t such art, poetry, or music in existence. How to solve the problem? Ghost writers! All you need is someone to translate, to transcribe, to bring into existence what was needed. Many Soviet artists - composers included - who couldn’t sell their own works under their own name, gravitated toward these hack jobs.
Fiction triumphed because a man has no significance in a totalitarian state. The only thing that matters is the inexorable movement of the state mechanism. A mechanism needs only cogs. Stalin used to call all of us cogs. One cog does not differ from another, and cogs can easily replace one another. You can pick one out and say, “From this day you will be a genius cog,” and everyone else will consider it a genius. It doesn’t matter at all whether it is or not. Anyone can become a genius on the orders of the leader.
And yet, these manufactured “genius cogs” have now been forgotten, and only the true geniuses - the ones who tended to fall afoul of Stalin - have survived.
Shostakovich also struggled with something that has haunted me since I left organized religion. In addition to my classical gigs, I used to lead worship. I can play CCM pretty well on multiple instruments. And I really, truly thought that I was making a difference, causing people to think, leading them toward a greater love of God and neighbor. And yet, in the end, I apparently did not - their morality was determined by Fox News more than anything that went on in church.
Meaning in music - that must sound very strange for most people. Particularly in the West. It’s here in Russia that the question is usually posed: What was the composer trying to say, after all, with this musical work? What was he trying to make clear? The questions are naive, of course, but despite their naivete and crudity, they definitely merit being asked. And I would add to them, for instance: Can music attack evil? Can it make man stop and think? Can it cry out and thereby draw man’s attention to the various vile acts to which he has grown accustomed? to the things he passes without any interest?
Shostakovich and I both believe that it can, but it isn’t simple. Anthems have caught the imagination, from Yankee Doodle to Nabucco to Finlandia. I truly hope my music touched at least someone in a positive way. The music of Shostakovich certainly has.
As a result of reading this book, I have added a few authors to my list - I like to read books in translation, and Russian is again tied for second place (with Japanese and Spanish) for languages I have read in translation since starting this blog. (French is in first place by a lot.)
One of those I have now added is the poet, Vladimir Mayakovsky. As with so many figures of the time, Shostakovich’s opinion of him is mixed - he loved the early poetry, but disliked his toadying up to the Soviet government.
Ironically, for all that, Mayakovsky died under controversial circumstances. It was officially a suicide, but there are so many discrepancies that it seems plausible he was murdered by Stalin’s thugs. Here is what Shostakovich says about him, after praising his poetry:
I can readily say that Mayakovsky epitomized all the traits of character I detest: phoniness, love of self-advertisement, lust for the good life, and most important, contempt for the weak and servility before the strong. Power was the great moral law for Mayakovsky.
That’s a harsh burn. I think the record is more complicated than that. True, many of his later works are propaganda, but as Shostakovich makes clear elsewhere, you did what you had to in order to stay alive, and just hoped that those in power didn’t turn on you.
Unfortunately, Mayakovsky failed to walk that line - and it may have been impossible. After his death, the mood changed, and he was hailed as a great Soviet poet. The changing winds of totalitarian power.
Shostakovich learned some techniques for survival, including this one:
When I was younger, I did make such imprudent remarks, and people still ask me when I am going to complete my opera The Quiet Don. I’ll never finish it because I never started it. It was just that, to my great regret, I had to say so to get out of a difficult situation. This is a special form of self-defense in the Soviet Union. You say that you’re planning such-and-such a composition, something with a powerful, killing title. That’s so that they don’t stone you. And meanwhile you write a quartet or something for your own quiet satisfaction. But you tell the administration that you’re working on the opera Karl Marx or The Young Guards, and they’ll forgive you your quartet when it appears. Under the powerful shield of such “creative plans” you can live a year or two in peace.
There is another passage in the book that reminded me of our own would-be dictator. Stalin wasn’t particularly tall, he was a bit rotund, and he had a small hand. But he was really vain, and his portraits had to play down his less attractive traits. But there too, was a line. It had to be realistic without being truly real. Shostakovich noted that in person, Stalin didn’t look much like his pictures. The same might be said about the Orange Felon.
As a final quote, I want to mention the fact that every totalitarian system eventually becomes puritanical. (Many start out that way.) Once you start looking at people as cogs, then forced reproduction becomes inevitable. Best known is the debacle in Romania, where the forced births led to hundreds of thousands of children raised in orphanages and traumatized so badly that they struggle to even bond with other humans. Or the various (and changing) policies in China, from the One Child policy and its forced abortions, to a new (and unsuccessful) push to increase family size.
Stalin was no exception. Originally, the Communist movement contained an element of progressive feminism: no gender roles, stop the sexual abuse of women by the powerful, comrades before family, and so on. But by Stalin, we were back to “tradition.”
Having destroyed the family unit, Stalin began resurrecting it, that was his standard pattern. It’s called dialectics. He destroyed barbarically, and he resurrected barbarically too. Everyone knows the shameful laws on family and marriage promulgated by Stalind. And it got worse. A ban on marrying foreigners, even Poles and Czechs, who were our own people, after all. Then the law on sexual segregation in schools. Boys and girls separated, in order to maintain morality, and so that they wouldn’t ask teachers stupid questions about “things” and “holes.”
Funny how authoritarians eventually come for sex, isn’t it? The lust for power tends to focus on the less powerful, and that usually means women and LGBTQ people - note Putin’s crackdown in recent decades.
Whatever the provenance, this book is a fascinating inside look at the Soviet arts scene, the nature of totalitarianism, and the quest to remain true to art in the face of arbitrary power. It’s worth reading for anyone who loves music, particularly of the first half of the 20th Century.
But beyond that, I encourage everyone to listen to Shostakovich, one of the most brilliant and thoughtful composers of his era, and a true musical genius.
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