DICTATORSHIP AND MUSIC: HOW RUSSIAN MUSIC SURVIVED THE SOVIET REGIME

Author(s): GEORGE G. WEICKHARDT

Source: Russian History , SPRING-SUMMER 2004 / PRINTEMPS-ÉTÉ 2004, Vol. 31, No.
1/2 (SPRING-SUMMER 2004 / PRINTEMPS-ÉTÉ 2004), pp. 121-141
Published by: Brill

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 Russian History/Histoire Russe, 31, Nos. 1-2 (Spring-Summer 2004), 121-41.

GEORGE G. WEICKHARDT (San Francisco, USA)

DICTATORSHIP AND MUSIC: HOW RUSSIAN

MUSIC SURVIVED THE SOVIET REGIME

While Russian composers bore the burden of the Soviet regime, music
composition nonetheless survived surprisingly well despite official policies
against modfernism and "formalism." These policies would have destroyed
serious music if completely, continuously and seriously implemented. None
theless, the years 1917-1990 produced three great composers: Sergei Serge
evich Prokofiev (1891-1953), Dmitrii Dmitrievich Shostakovich (1906
1975), and Al'fred Garrievich Shnitke (Alfred Schnittke, 1934-1998). This
study will analyze their strategies for survival and the regime's reasons for
tolerating them.
While not as radical and innovative as some composers in the West, they
each rank among the great composers of the twentieth century. While not as
important to the historical development of music as Stravinsky, Schonberg,
the other Vienna serialists, and Bartok, Prokofiev and Shostakovich would be
ranked by most musicologists among a second echelon of great but more con
servative composers of the twentieth century. This echelon might also include
Sibelius, Hindemith, Ravel, Copland, Vaughan Williams, Poulenc, and
others. More particularly, Shostakovich and Prokofiev are plainly among the
greatest symphonists of the twentieth century, and Shostakovich arguably the
greatest composer of string quartets along with Bartôk. Because he is more
recent, Schnittke is difficult to "rank" or even categorize, but he is one of the
most critically acclaimed composers of the late Soviet period.1
Shostakovich, Prokofiev, and Schnittke each, moreover, developed origi
nal idioms that were at odds with official policy on music - in the case of
Schnittke radically at odds. They nonetheless each managed to have most of
their works performed even in the Soviet Union and made relatively comfort
able livings as composers. Their careers and their music collectively span the
entire Soviet period. They each had to deal with a variety of political condi
tions, and yet each remained productive throughout his life.

1. For an enthusiastic evaluation of Schnittke, see Alexander Ivaskin, Alfred Schnittke

(London: Phaidon Press, 1996) passim. For a more measured evaluation of Schnittke, see
Richard Taruskin, Defining Russia Musically (Princeton NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1997), 99
104.

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122 Russian History/Histoire Russe

One might legitimately ask how a regime

ciety and subjecting all art and culture to ce
pen. How could such a repressive regime give
unique composers? How did these three com
some extent thrive in a regime that regarde
as subversive, frequently devoting a high lev
marginalizing these three composers in pa
general? By contrast, little great music was
during the Nazi period. Schonberg and Hind
tone music was condemned as cultural Bolsh
prohibited. While Richard Strauss and Anto
they were not as productive as they had prev
In attempting to answer these questions, t
analysis of the music itself, although some
have to accompany this study. It is rather a
society": what effect does society have on m
institutions nurture, encourage, inhibit or re
effect in turn does music have on society?
tivity and artistic creativity is of course a d
even to approach for any nation or period.
ity in a particular individual, for exampl
vironment and native ability that it almost b
will not attempt to grapple with that issue.
But composers generally require social and
tion. The history of music knows few "se
never recognized nor performed during the
posthumously. Music is meant to be perform
out any acceptance or recognition is a spir
sible task. The present study will thus deal w
allowed Prokofiev, Shostakovich, and Schn
nized and performed, which was certainly a
and encouraging their creative instincts. It
courage, resilience, and resourcefulness, but
and "chinks" in official policy.
The present study will briefly survey th
posers with respect to the acceptance of the
will initially focus on Shostakovich until th
iev, then on the remainder of Shostakovich's
In dealing with Shostakovich the present s
spirited debate that has raged, particularly
the "meaning" of his music and whether he
dissident. The publication in the West in

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Dictatorship and Music: How Russian Music Survived the Soviet Regime 123

memoirs as told to Solomon Volkov launched this debate.2 Some of the dis
putants question the authenticity of Volkov's claim to be reporting the words
of Shostakovich. Indeed, Shostakovich's letters to his friend Glikman, pub
lished in 1993,3 reveal a very different personality from that of Volkov's ac
count Volkov's account was one of several works which attribute anti-Soviet
meanings or programs even to works originally approved and adopted by the
Soviet regime, such as the Fifth and Seventh symphonies. Subsequent ac
counts and other friends and associates of the composer reporting his words
have attributed anti-Soviet or dissident programs to almost all of Shostako
vich's works, but anti-Volkov school remains strong as well.4 All of this has
made Shostakovich one of the most "interpreted" composers in the history of
music, at least with respect to the search for "political" meaning in music.
(The fact that such disparate interpretations have been advanced is in fact a
tribute to the profundity of the music.) While the present study shall oc
casionally refer to this battleground of interpretation, it is not the focus of this
study, which shall attempt to avoid taking sides. Rather the goal is to investi
gate how he survived for almost fifty years (1927-75), and why the regime al
lowed him to publish and have performed many works which did not satisfy
its standards.
Both the Volkov and anti-Volkov schools would agree that Shostakovich
was a survivor and that there are, at various times, divergent tendencies in his
works with regard to the regime's expectations for composers. While Shosta
kovich is generally tonal and uses classical forms (symphonies and string
quartets with movements frequently written in sonata form), much of his
music is dark, pessimistic and highly personal and introspective in tone.
Whatever "interpretation" one attributes to Shostakovich, it would not be dis
puted that while some of his best works enjoyed official acceptance (such as
his Fifth, Seventh, Eleventh and Twelfth Symphonies), many of his works,
such as his Fourth, Eighth, Ninth, Tenth, Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth
symphonies and virtually all of his chamber music did not enjoy official fav
or. Some of the latter works were completely suppressed or rarely performed
during Shostakovich's lifetime. But most of his music was performed to
some extent in the Soviet Union dining his lifetime, and the issue addressed
here is how he managed to accomplish that and why the regime tolerated it.

2. Testimony: The Memoirs of Dmitrii Shostakovich as Told to and Edited by Solomon

Volkov, trans. Antonina W. Bouis (New York: Harper & Row, 1979).
. 3. Story ofa Friendship: The Letters of Dmitry Shostakovich to Isaak Glikman. 1941-1975
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press, 1993).
4. For Shostakovich as dissident, see lan McDonald, The New Shostakovich (London: Fourth
Estate, 1990), and Allan В. Ho & Dmitry Feofanov, Shostakovich Reconsidered (London:
Toccata Press, 1998). For the most recent collection of anti-Volkov views, see Malcolm Hamrick
Brown, A Shostakovich Casebook (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 2004).

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124 Russian History/Histoire Russe

In understanding Shostakovich's musical h

that he attended the Petrograd/Leningrad
regime exercised no serious or thorough co
the faculty of the Conservatory still had m
tionary period, including Glazunov and Sht
Shostakovich benefited directly from the he
The regime had in fact decided by default
music intact. Because their were many musi
from the old regime and because Russia ha
to music in the sixty years preceding the
decide early on whether to accept or reject
heritage. It is difficult to pinpoint any part
the Soviet regime allowed the two great
1860's, the Petersburg and Moscow Cons
instruction in harmony, orchestration and t
continued to be available. These conserva
composers under study, but a large conting
Richter, Oistrakh, Rostropovich, Gillels,
Kondrashin. The composers were thus part
would at critical junctures support the great
Because of the relative freedom given to
early thirties, Shostakovich's early works
he preferred or would have preferred to co
of later political control. His First Symp
later tendencies and proclivities, such as "th
movement, the playful Prokofiev-like them
the Mahler-like adagio of the third mov
plainly not a highly innovative work if co
berg, and Bartok were doing at the time. I
was inclined to write somewhat conserva
trols were imposed by the regime.
Shostakovich also entered the realm of
twenties, prior to the time political statem
duty of a Soviet composer. The Second Sym
the Third Symphony ("May Day," 1929) b
of political content. These not very memor
low more lengthy orchestral portions that
the composer's entire oeuvre and in line
trends of Soviet art in the twenties.

5. For Shostakovich's years at the Conservatory, se

Remembered (Princeton NJ: Princeton Univ. Press,

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Dictatorship and Music: How Russian Music Survived the Soviet Regime 125

A more successful, or at least artistically consistent, venture in musical

propaganda was Shostakovich's 1930 music for the ballet The Age of Gold.
While tonal, the musical idiom is fresh and original, as is the instrumentation
(using a soprano saxophone in the second movement and a xylophone in the
third movement of the orchestral suite based on the ballet music). The polka
of the third movement is in fact almost invariably included in collections of
humor in music. The plot of the ballet revolves around the visit of a Soviet
soccer team to a capitalist industrial fair called' "The Age of Gold." The
Soviet athletes, aided by a black boxer, a Komsomol heroine, and various
workers triumph over fascist elements. However seriously the composer took
this plot, he skillfully tailored his music to poke fun at the capitalist world.
Thus Shostakovich's sometimes conservative and sometimes modernist
style, as well as his willingness to enter the realm of musical propaganda,
were already evident in his works written in the relative freedom of the late
twenties and early thirties.
It was not until the establishment of the Union of Soviet Composers in
1932 that the regime began to devote thorough and consistent attention to the
control of music. The Union of Soviet Composers was among the first of
many totalitarian cultural institutions of the twentieth century. The purpose of
this body was to remove music from civil society, where there was a "free
market" in music and where music was published, performed and recorded
by a variety of autonomous non-for-profit organizations and commercial en
terprises. After 1932, if a composer wanted his music to be performed and to
earn fees or royalties for it, he would have to belong to a "union" that was a
non-government organization in name only. He would be expected to present
his works for "discussion" at meetings of the union prior to their publication.
Such discussions often became an occasion for harsh criticism of music that
did not meet the official standards. Music that was not accepted by the union
was generally not performed.
While it is difficult to define the "official standards," from 1932 on the re
gime, even ip the more relaxed periods of censorship, plainly preferred overt
ly patriotic or pro-Soviet music, such as patriotic cantatas or works based on
workers' songs or folk music. While serious composers were allowed to write
non-programmatic music, the regime nonetheless expected music that was
heroic, patriotic or at least optimistic in tone, tonal, classical or neoclassical
in format, and accessible to the masses. (As one of the author's music history
instructors in college once stated, Stalin wanted music "the people could
hum.") Most of the Soviet music meeting these criteria was eminently for
gettable, such as Tikhon Khrennikov's Second Symphony and Violin Con
certo, but it was possible to write good music within this ideological and
artistic straitjacket. Witness for example, Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony
and Prokofiev's music for the film Alexander Nevskii. Whatever personal

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126 Russian History/Histoire Russe

program Shostakovich had for his Fifth S

praise and acceptance.
Fortunately, Shostakovich had already e
tion by the time these controls were imp
some extent had made him a more likely
tolerate independence in music or any
completed the opera Lady Macbeth of t
one of the most popular and frequently p
of the early thirties. The sympathetic an
heroine contrasted with jarring and ofte
other characters, who were from the bo
town in the late nineteenth century. Th
great talent or at least promise as an oper
If he had intended a savage portrait of
Macbeth, as had Leskov in the original st
gime, which harshly criticized and suppr
takovich was singled out for such harsh c
on the opera stated that the whole affair
been and was interpreted by the compos
ceive a knock on his door in the middle o
the basement of the Lubianka. Soon there
already composed Fourth Symphony, a
showing influences of the style of Mahle
Symphony were plainly more modernist
works published in the remainder of Sta
was plainly affected by the suppression o
The story of the Stalin regime's initial
well known, and need not be repeated he
Shostakovich was almost immediately
with his Fifth Symphony. This is one of
about the "meaning" of his music. The su
conclusively attributed to Shostakovich)
to just criticism, and Shostakovich did n
which interpreted this symphony as an a
affirmation of the musical values of the
dent interpretation" would, however, see
and the Mahler like adagio (third movem
Great Terror, that was fully underway b
piece. According to the same school of "i
said to portray the overwhelming menac
necessarily accept this interpretation to
casionally able to give the regime major

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Dictatorship and Music: How Russian Music Survived the Soviet Regime 127

no public dissent from the composer, interpreted as affirming its musical

policies. At the same time these works were interpreted by others as having a
"dissident" program.
It was in the context of this increasing political attention to his music that
Shostakovich composed his first great chamber works, die First String
Quartet (1938) and his Quintet for Piano and Strings (1941). The latter work
cannot be discussed at length, but it would be difficult for anyone to attribute
a political program or political meaning to it. Nonetheless, it was awarded a
Stalin Prize, perhaps suggesting to Shostakovich that his chamber music
would not be expected to serve political purposes.
His symphonies, however, continued to attract political attention and poli
tical interpretation. The Seventh Symphony was interpreted by the regime at
the time to portray the German attack on the Soviet Union in 1941. Shos
takovich of course said nothing publicly at the time to dispel this impression.
It was later interpreted by the "Shostakovich as dissident" school to portray
the suffering and struggles of the Russian people under the Stalin regime.6
The regime was, however, happy to exploit what it believed was the propa
ganda value of this piece, by exporting it to its war allies, Britain and Ameri
ca. The result was to solidify Shostakovich's international reputation. He
soon even appeared on the cover of Time magazine in a firefighter's helmet
along with the Time epithet "Fireman Shostakovich."
In a pattern that would later repeat itself, the Fifth and Seventh Sym
phonies were followed by two symphonies, the Eighth and the Ninth, which
were initially performed, but then consigned to oblivion by the regime. The
Eighth Symphony was initially interpreted by Soviet critics as another war
symphony, and it even bore the subtitle "Stalingrad" for a short period. But if
this symphony is about the war, it is not about its triumphs and glories, but
about its victims, particularly the long adagio that opens the work. If the
martial second and third movements are about armies, they are about brutal
and soulless armies marching through a bombed out landscape. There is no
attempt to inspire and there are no heroics, only utter despair.
The Ninth Symphony premiered shortly after the Soviet victory over Ger
many. Soviet composers were supposed to celebrate the victory and glorify
the Great Leader with heroic music and patriotic themes. Shostakovich in
stead offered one of his sardonic melodies in the first movement, followed by
another of his funereal adagios. With this work, Shostakovich again fell into
a period of official disfavor. In this context he again turned to chamber
music, perhaps realizing that the regime would feel less threatened by smaller
audiences and publicity that chamber works generate. His Third String Quar
tet, one of his greatest chamber works, is filled with irony, bitterness, pain,

6. McDonald, New Shostakovich, 168-72.

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128 Russian History/Histoire Russe

and, in the last movement, one of the co

sophical musings.
The Ninth Symphony was singled out f
attack of the Soviet regime on composers i
novshchina. All other famous composers w
and Khatchaturian. The Party's infamous
extreme than anything from 1936; it's co
"antipeople" music was broad enough to
grammatic music, although it shied away fr
music by name.7 That abstract music was u
Shostakovich in the highly critical react
1950, one of the composer's greatest work o
Ever a survivor, Shostakovich, even durin
above outright musical propaganda, such
and the The Sun Shines over Our Mothe
Stalin's personal invitation, to attend a cult
1949, where propagandistic speeches attack
his name. With most of his works banned
income, he also wrote seven film scores du
did not enjoy. Shostakovich's other primar
"write for the drawer" during the next sev
certo, Tenth Symphony,9 and Fourth and Fif
this period but not released until after Stali
Thus by Stalin's death, Shostakovich, w
poser to begin with, had developed several
to save him and provide a model to other S
an occasional piece of overtly propagandist
(without dissent) his more serious and am
cies, write film music to earn an income, a
national reputation to its advantage, turn
chamber music, and write for the drawer
difficult times in obvious hope that times
part, the regime was reluctant to liquida
international reputation, especially one wh
self portrayed as a Soviet patriot.10

7. Pravda, Febr. 28, 1948.

8. Wilson, Shostakovich: A Life Remembered, 247-5
9. Ibid., 255-56.
10. For a different recent interpretation, see Solom
Extraordinary Relationship between the Great C
Antonina W. Bouis (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2
playing the traditional role of "holy fool."

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Dictatorship and Music: How Russian Music Survived the Soviet Regime 129

One of the key transactions in the history of Soviet music was the return of
Prokofiev to Russia. Educated at the St. Petersburg Conservatory prior to
World War I, Prokofiev had become with Stravinsky one of the infants ter
rible of early twentieth century Russian music. His Scythian Suite (1916) and
Second Symphony (1924), for example, are so full of harsh dissonances that
they could almost be interpreted as modernist manifestos like Stravinsky's
Rite of Spring (1913). Even in his early period, however, Prokofiev showed
conservative tendencies, as in his First Piano Concerto, First Symphony, and
Third Piano Concerto. Prokofiev, however, left Russia in 1918, to live in the
West, mostly Paris, for the next eighteen years. During this time he continued
to produce many radical and innovative pieces, such as the opera The Fiery
Angel (1927) and Fifth Piano Concerto (1932). Stravinsky of course also left
Russia and remained in the West for the rest of his life.
Prokofiev, however, gradually became dissatisfied with his life as a White
Russian émigré and became alienated from both Western music and radical
modernism. He began ever more frequent visits to the Soviet Union in 1927,
and gradually decided that he wanted to return to his homeland. He returned
permanently in 1936 at the very onset of Stalin's Great Terror and the attack
on Shostakovich. One interpretation of this shortsighted decision is that he
hoped that his music would be better accepted in Russia than in the West, and
that his return to his homeland would thus enhance his reputation.11 Indeed,
his musical proclivities had become more traditional before his return: Lt.
Kizhe Suite (1934) and Romeo and Juliet (1935). His reversion to a more
traditional idiom was thus not simply a product of official pressure, but of his
own spontaneous development. He thus probably developed the misguided
feeling that he could fit his own creative tendencies into the crucible of
Soviet music policy. He may have also simply felt that his creativity would
be "fed" by his native surroundings.12
But by the time Prokofiev returned to Russia, he, like Shostakovich, had
an international reputation that could not be disregarded by the Soviet re
gime. For such a great composer to return to the Soviet Union was of course
a great propaganda opportunity for Stalin's regime, and any obvious repres
sive measures would have certainly attracted international attention.
Prokofiev thus brought with him, on his return to Russian, a mature crea
tive intellect nurtured before the Soviet period and then developed outside
Russia, as well as a well-deserved international reputation. He was thus a
dens ex machina for the development of Soviet music. During his years in

11. See, for example, Franks Maes, A History of Russian Music, from Kamarinskaya to Babi
Yar (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 2002), 322-23.
12. For this development in Prokofiev's music, see Harlow Robinson, Sergei Prokofiev
(Boston: Northeastern Univ. Press, 1987), 234-46.

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130 Russian History/Histoire Russe

Soviet Russia, from 1936 to his death i

ductive. His initial works upon his retur
any official formulae for music or challe
Peter and the Wolf, one of his first work
tive, though neither radical nor innovati
for children and had a folkloric theme, it
Great Leader had paid closer attention to
an anti-authoritarian theme in Peter's def
was soon followed by Prokofiev's success
shtein on the films Aleksandr Nevski
which involved an innovative use of g
gandists purposes.
He won a Stalin prize for his Seventh P
with it an award of 25,000 rubles. This w
tas," was portrayed by the regime in mu
Seventh Symphony. The violent theme w
indeed easily be interpreted as an invasio
the last movement as a counterattack
ceived before the German attack on Russ
interpreting it as the struggles of a man
individual with his fate, much as the
interpreted Shotakovich's wartime symp
was able to write music that both the reg
liking. The Eighth Piano Sonata (1944), h
ficial canon: its first movement can be in
There were, however, also works which
for the Twentieth Anniversary of Oct
iev's attempt to curry favor with the re
tion of the revolution is reminiscent in
which concludes the Fiery Angel, and
Union to bear. Interestingly, this cant
musical propaganda, the oratorio On
viously to conform to the demands of t
usually equal in artistic quality) many
works. Shostakovich's propagandists w
the Zhdavovshchina period, are among hi
Perhaps the rejection of his 1937 cantat
Prokofiev, who had little sympathy wit
opera War and Peace, on which he worke
years and which he took very seriously,
work was not performed in its entirety i

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Dictatorship and Music: How Russian Music Survived the Soviet Regime 131

And yet his triumphs, both official and artistic, also continued. In 1946 he
was awarded Stalin prizes for his Fifth Symphony, Eighth Piano Sonata and
Ivan Groznyi (Part I). His Sixth Symphony was also well received by the of
ficial critics in 1947, although this work is more personal and darker in tone
than the Fifth Symphony. In these works, which are generally ranked among
his best, Prokoviev found an idiom for music that was also acceptable to the
regime.
During the Zhdanovshchina, Prokofiev, already failing in health, took the
attacks on him very personally. Again, one could not know whether such
public attacks were the prelude to arrest and execution. His Seventh Sym
phony, completed in 1951, was harshly criticized by the Composer's Union
after a closed performance in December of that year. It is difficult to under
stand the rejection of this work, which is traditional in its themes and stmc
ture and optimistic in tone. Its rejection perhaps typifies the arbitrariness of
the official standards and the often unpredictable reaction of the regime to
music of its greatest composers. Prokofiev, however, was awarded a Stalin
Prize for On Guard for Peace, and enjoyed two public triumphs in 1952, with
the premier of his Second Cello Concerto, with Rostropovich as the.soloist,
and the public premiere of his Seventh Symphony.13
Summarizing Prokofiev's Soviet years, one sees that most of his works
were accepted and performed, and that he received the highest official awards
for several works. He earned handsome fees for his works. By developing an
original but accessible and fairly traditional idiom, he stayed marginally with
in the officially accepted style. He was willing, like Shostakovich, to contrib
ute an occasional propagandists work. His strong international reputation ob
viously afforded him some protective armor. Arresting him or even silencing
him would likely have led to an international outcry. Relatively few of his
works were suppressed, and even most of these were eventually performed
during the years of the Thaw. On the whole, Prokofiev and the regime, as
with Shostakovich, developed a certain modus vivendi, based largely on Pro
kofiev's willingness to write in a traditional idiom much different from his
earlier radical works and occasionally to adopt a posture of public compro
mise or collaboration.
Even with Stalin's death, the Zhdanov Resolution remained in force and
the head of the Union of Soviet Composers appointed under Zhdanov, Ti
khon Khrennikov, remained at his post (he would in fact serve into the
Gorbachev period). The post-Stalin period, however, began on a promising
note with Shostakovich's release of this Tenth Symphony, First Violin Con
certo and Fourth and Fifth String Quartets, all written for the drawer during
the Zhdanovshchina. Most critics, even those who do not generally read a

13. Ibid., 488-91,

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132 Russian History/Histoire Russe

dissident program into his music, see the

spective on the Stalin years and as a me
Concerto also potentially violated offici
Jewish folk melodies (it was not certain w
would be toward continuing his anti-Semit
prosecution of the "Doctors' Plot"). The
signaled Shostakovich's more decisive turn
write ten more quartets and only five symp
Other than the originally subtitled Third
graphical Eighth Quartet, no one has tried
matically. If the regime meant to discoura
vich was willing to ignore it. In the quart
from the first twelve symphonies: they a
introspective works.
The Zhdanov Resolution was finally wi
fifties the Thaw was in full stride. Shosta
vantage of the new permissiveness in h
Year 1905," premiered in 1956) and the
miered in 1960, were both overt propagand
If the regime's treatment of Shostakovic
ambivalent, the same could be said of his
late Stalin years, he had been was elected t
sian Federation, and in 1960 he became the
union of the Russian Federation, allowing
tical statements, including those critical o
sured into joining, reluctantly, the Comm
necessary that he do so to ensure his surv
is thought to be associated with his compos
The year 1962, however, was to be a wate
This year saw the premiere of this Thirte
first movement is a setting for chorus wi
shenko of the same name. The publication
great events of the Thaw. The subject was
of Jews in a ravine outside Kiev, and th
anti-Semitism. The symphony was allowed
suppressed (although it continued to be
Mravinskii, who had premiered many of S
to conduct, but the composer then took it
perform it, even after the Minister of Cult

14. Wilson, Shostakovich: A Life Remembered,

40, 345,350,380-84, 387.

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Dictatorship and Music: How Russian Music Survived the Soviet Regime 133

doing so. This incident is typical of the role of the great performers of the
Soviet period in supporting great music. Another example is the unquestioned
willingness of the Beethoven Quartet to perform the composer's works in that
genre.
Shostakovich of course took the suppression of his Thirteenth Symphony
very seriously, but he was not to be dissuaded thereafter from composing
highly personal and contemplative music which implicitly violated the of
ficial guidelines. While the Zhdanov Resolution had been retracted, Khren
nikov made it very clear in his official pronouncements that the regime con
tinued to favor tonal music based on folk and patriotic themes. Pieces that
were somber or "personal" continued to be disfavored. Shostakovich, how
ever, was to' compose no more musical propaganda. He was to live thirteen
more years and compose two more symphonies and seven quartets. He had
by this point become unassailable by the regime, with his international repu
tation ever growing.
The Fourteenth Symphony (1969) was his most obvious rejection of of
ficial guidelines. It consists of musical settings for bass and soprano of poems
by Garcia Lorca, Appollonaire, and Rilke, which focus primarily on the
theme of death. Shostakovich could not have chosen poetic works more cer
tain to strike the regime as bourgeois and decadent. The Fifteenth Symphony
(1972) is a highly enigmatic work which quotes Rossini and Wagner.

The quartets, as always, remained highly personal? As one study puts it,

The quartets express much of the private, confessional and equivocal

side of Shostakovich. One is tempted to add pessimistic side Shosta
kovich's melodies tend to fall rather than rise.15

The same study observes that new themes are "generated by their pre
decessor in a continuing spiral of growth."16 The Twelfth, Thirteenth and Fif
teenth even experiment with tone rows, but only to offset or disrupt tonal
passages. Tile last two quartets were obviously a contemplation of death. His
post 1963 quartets as a whole are remarkable in their exploitation of the var
iety of sound of string instruments. They contain no patriotic and few op
timistic melodies of the type favored by the regime, and are more dissonant
than his earlier works. For its part the regime felt less threatened by such
chamber music. Chamber music generally draws smaller audiences than sym

15. Eric Roscberry, Ideology. Style. Content and Thematic Process in the Symphonies, Cello
Concertos and String. Quartets of Shostakovich (New York and London: Garland Publishing,
1989), 229.
16. Ibid., 268.

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 134 Russian History/Histoire Russe

phonies and operas, and its performance

Moreover, few of Shostakovich's chamber w
The originality of the Shostakovich's post
with which he continued to ignore the offi
an inspiration to a generation of "undergr
period, most notably Schnittke, Denisov, a
ample, saw "philosophical lyricism" in the la
In short, after the Thirteenth Symphony
of music that pleased him, with little rega
sensed that the regime at this point would n
old and infirm to care.
In sum Shostakovich and Prokofiev emplo
and strategies. They were both able to take
tions established before the first attack on
they both occasionally wrote musical propa
kept the style of even some of their more
official guidelines. Shostakovich occasionall
that official policy would change, and, inde
works were performed during the Thaw. H
chamber music, which apparently was not as
With the death of Shostakovich in 1975,
Soviet music would not have been surprised
in Russia. Both Shostakovich and Prokofiev
lished reputations and of a musical educa
period or with a faculty left over from the
Soviet composer would have either of thes
had ended even before the ouster of Khrus
regime had prosecuted and tried Andrei
Brodskii in the mid-and late sixties. The re
against Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, which even
from the Soviet Union in 1974. Andrei Sak
kii the same year.
There had, however, been an event in 1974
the West and little noticed in Russia. Genn
the city of Gor'kii (now again Nizhnii Novg
First Symphony of Alfred Schnittke wit
work was "polystylist," quoting or modeled

17. Alexander Ivashkin, éd., A Schnittke Reader (B

59.

18. Boris Schwartz, Music and Musical Life in Soviet Russia. 1917-1981 (Bloomington:
Indiana Univ. Press, 1983), 559.

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Dictatorship and Music: How Russian Music Survived the Soviet Regime 135

cludeing the great composers of the classical tradition (Bach, Haydn, and so
on) as well as jazz and other popular music. The premiere of this work would
have probably been totally unacceptable in Moscow, but by going to a
provincial city, Rozhdestvenskii had successfully devised a way to perform a
work by a composer whose every attribute would seem to have been unac
ceptable to the Brezhnev regime.
It was perhaps even more surprising (but again little noticed in the West)
that six months after the premiere of the First Symphony, the periodical
Soviet Music, the organ of the Soviet Union of Composers and the leading
Soviet periodical on music, devoted fourteen pages to various opinions and
reviews of it, all mildly favorable. The contributors included Iu. KOrev, the
editor of Soviet Music, who placed Schnittke's work in the great tradition of
the Soviet symphony. He noted the similarity of the polystylistic approach to
Shostakovich's Fifteenth Symphony, which quoted Wagner and Rossini,
among others. Another reviewer noted that the use of pop music and jazz by
Schnittke was "democratic." At the same time, the initial contributor, whose
review from a Gor'kii newspaper was quoted, observed that some of the audi
ence at the premier were disturbed by the work.19 These reviews were cer
tainly a sign that Schnittke had arrived and received at least some official
recognition. Such lengthy and favorable reviews of a radical work in the
leading Soviet music periodical could have probably only appeared with the
approval of Khrennikov, if not of higher authority.
How had Schnittke achieved this recognition? Indeed, everything about
him would have seemed to work against him. He was half Jewish and half
Volga German, two of the pariah nationalities of the Soviet Union. He spoke
German with his family in his youth. In the first phase of his career, roughly
the sixties, he had experimented extensively with twelve-tone music, which
had been anathematized repeatedly by the Party. In the second phase of his
career, of which the First Symphony is a part, he became a polystylist. The
First Symphony, one of his most famous works in this style, would have
struck even a Western critic in 1974 as a radical work. He never wrote any
patriotic or propagandists oratorios, as had Shostakovich and Prokofiev. He
was never awarded a Stalin or Lenin prize, nor did he earn any substantial
fees through the Composers Union for his serious music, as had Shostakovich
and Prokofiev. And of course he started out with no international reputation
to help him deal with the Soviet regime, as had Shostakovich and Prokofiev.
Unlike Shostakovich and Prokofiev, however, he was to find a way to have
his works performed and to survive economically outside the officially spon
sored channels. How had Soviet Russia given birth to such a musical icono

19. Sovetskaia muzyka. No. 10 (Oct. 1974), 12-26.

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 136 Russian History/Histoire Russe

clast and how had he managed to survive, e

rarely performed in the Soviet Union?
Bom in 1934 and raised primarily in t
German area), Schnittke had benefited f
youth, where he father had served as an i
tioned there. Schnittke had studied at the M
The library of this institution, particularl
quired the scores of a substantial amount of
music, which Schnittke studied and ma
Schnittke had been allowed contact with c
posers, including the Italian Luigi Nono.
Gershkovich, who had been bom in Mold
thirties, and ended up in Russia after the
to publish articles on serial music in provin
Early in his career Schnittke chose the sa
Starting in the early sixties, his music, wh
tone, began to be performed, generally in
audiences in Russia and in concert halls
Sonata No. 1 for violin and piano premie
with his friend Mark Lubotskii on the vio
His Music for Piano and Chamber Orchestr
1964, premiered in Warsaw in September,
tolerated Penderecki and Lutoslawski, was
eastern neighbor in musical matters.) His
was first performed in Moscow in Januar
Violin Concerto was premiered by Lubotsk
performed his First String Quartet in Mos
his Dialogue for cello and ensemble was
Pianissimo for Orchestra received its first
his Serenade for Five Instrumentalists w
1972 his Concerto for Oboe, Harp and Stri
ger in Zagreb.21 Khrennikov did not let him
his works, but the authorities did not prev
way his reputation gradually grew.
He was not, however, able to make a li
dealt with this proem by teaching parttime
in 1962, he began writing music for films
course occasionally employed Shostakovich

20. Ivashkin, Schnittke, 1-80.

21. Levon Hakobian, Music of the Soviet Age, 1
386-408.

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Dictatorship and Music: How Russian Music Survived the Soviet Regime 137

eventually to compose over sixty film scores. He became much sought after,
and earned a comfortable living from this work, which he apparently enjoyed.
During the sixties through the eighties, there were of course many great tal
ents in the Soviet film industry, including Mikhail Romm, Andrei Tarkovskii,
Elem Klimov and Nikita Mikhailkov. The atmosphere in the industry was
much more tolerant than in other arts, and a director was judged in part on the
commercial success of his films. This industry employed Schnittke so regu
larly that he did not have to worry about earning fees or royalties through the
Composers Union.22
Schnittke later acknowledged a great debt to his experience in writing film
scores. He realized from this experience that the "the gap between the labora
tory 'top' of music and the commercial 'bottom'... had to be bridged."23 He
realized that he had to look for a "universal" musical language. The early
seventies thus saw the beginning of Schnittke's polystylistic compositions,
most publicized of which was the First Symphony. There were also obviously
changes in official policy. Those familiar with the sixties and seventies in
Soviet literature are generally surprised to learn of the much more liberal at
mosphere in Soviet music. Khrennikov presided over a relative liberalization
in Soviet music policy. The signs of this liberalization had become unmistak
able by the early seventies. As noted above, Shostakovich had abandoned the
official style and greatly expanded his musical vocabulary after 1963, and
this had certainly helped to soften things up for other composers. Stravinsky
had visited the Soviet Union in 1962, and on his death in 1971, Soviet Music
published a laudatory obituary. Khrennikov himself had experimented with
duodecaphony in 1971. By 1977 the old school musicologist Boris Iarustov
skii conceded that modernism was triumphing.24
Official statements of music policy by officials like Khrennikov continued
to follow the old party line, and occasional attacks and sanctions continued.
For example, in 1978 Iurii Liubimov, whose theatrical productions at the Ta
ganka Theater had become very important cultural events in the seventies,
planned a production of Tchaikovsky's Pique Dame at the Paris Opera. Al
though not qne note of Tchaikovsky's music was to be changed, Schnittke
composed some harpsichord music to be played at intervals during the per
formance. Before the production could open, it was attacked in Pravda, and
had to be cancelled. Even this, however, created much favorable publicity for
Schnittke, and it was said that most of his subsequent concerts sold out.25

22. Ivashkin, Schnittke, 104-08.

23. A Schnittke Reader, 50.
24. Schwartz, Music and Musical Life in Soviet Russia, 1917-1981, 598
25. Ivashin, Schnittke, 148.

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138 Russian History/Histoire Russe

Official outbursts at modernism nonetheless

ample, Khrennikov attacked seven composers,
Sofia Gubaidulina in vitriolic terms.26 Schnitt
mitted to travel abroad.
He was, however, elected to the presidium of
This, was soon followed by another milestone
the works of Denisov, Gubaidulina and Schnitt
cert conducted by Rozhdestvenskii in the Gre
vatory. This event is sometimes said to have en
against avante gard music in Russia.
One could argue that Khrennikov himself eng
his 1994 memoirs Khrennikov in fact paints h
composers from the excesses of the regime.28
testimony must to some extent be discount
Khrennikov began to tolerate ever more radic
Soviet orthodoxy in the eighties.
Schnittke continued to push the tolerance of
example, many of Schnittke's works of the la
are on religious themes or employ Gregorian c
This would include his Second Symphony
(1983) and Three Sacred Hymns (1984). In 19
Catholic, his mother's religion.
Obviously the gradually developing tolera
avant-garde music by the Soviet regime was par
up to Perestroika and then the collapse of
from the above account, however, that Soviet
tively liberalized prior to the relaxation of Sov
toward political dissidents.
When seen in its historical context, this d
standable. Soviet music policy was never consi
Few of Prokofiev's and Shostakovich's work
Except for the crackdowns in 1936 and 1948, t
tolerance: the period prior to the formation
posers, the war years (when the regime wanted
all creative talent in support of the war effor
the Thaw definitely ended in the early sixties
ended for music.

26. Schwartz, Music and Musical Life in Soviet Russia,

27. Ibid., 170
28. Tikhon Khrennikov, Так eto bylo, Tikhon Khren
Muzyka, 1994), 130-38.

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Dictatorship and Music: How Russian Music Survived the Soviet Regime 139

These periods of relative tolerance were obviously founded on some hard

headed realism on the part of the regime. The regime apparently recognized
that the success of Soviet music and its international reputation ultimately
depended on figures like Shostakovich and Prokofiev. It would ultimately
have to enlist their cooperation and allow them some creative freedom if it
was to be able to "use" them for its own purpose of showing that the Soviet
Union was creative force in world culture. Thus even after the 1948 crack
down they were both later awarded Stalin prizes and then Lenin prizes. They
were allowed the greatest creative freedom in chamber music, which with its
small audiences and lack of "program" was probably seen to pose little threat
to the regime. For their part, Prokofiev and Shostakovich were both willing to
pay their political dues with occasional propagandistic music. As long as
their other music was not too radical and as long as they stayed away from
anti-regime themes, they would be tolerated. This is not to say that Stalinism
was an easy milieu for these composers to adjust to: one never knew whether
an attack on a composer in Pravda would be the prelude to his arrest and exe
cution. But the Soviet regime seems to have always realized, unlike Hitler,
that its great composers were an international asset. As a left-handed comple
ment to Prokofiev and Shostakovich, the officially favored composers, such
as Khrennikov himself, would imitate their style in their own works.
That Prokofiev and Shostakovich were able to survive and occasionally
thrive during the Stalin years of course formed the groundwork for the con
tinuing success of Soviet music. Shostakovich's late period (after 1963) was
particularly significant in helping other composers to break out of the con
straints of Socialist Realism. But apparently the Soviet regime also realized
that Western music was changing. In their own time, the music of Shostako
vich and Prokofiev was conservative, but there were also many conservative
composers in the West, such as Sibelius and Hindemith. Shostakovich and
Prokofiev were thus not radically out of step with the development of West
em music. As the Soviet Union entered the sixties and seventies, however,
Soviet composers could not simply continue to produce traditional works in
the style of Shostakovich and Prokofiev. Western music had advanced from
atonality to electronic music, minimalism and other trends. If Soviet music
were to preserve the solid international reputation it had established under
Prokofiev and Shostakovich, it would have to move beyond them.
It was in this context that composers like Schnittke were at least tolerated.
But, at the same time, Schnittke was arguably a conservative composer in
comparison to his Western contemporaries. Other more avant-garde com
posers in Russia did not fare as well. Even Schnittke, however, could not earn
a living through the Composers Union nor could he generally travel abroad
until the late eighties. His orchestral works would not be performed in the
great concert halls of the capital and of Leningrad until the very end of the

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140 Russian History/Histoire Russe

Brezhnev years. But the regime did tolera

works in small concerts and in the comm
Their scores were also allowed to be exp
music of composers like Schnittke remain
type of overt or obvious political or ideolo
ently concluded that it offered little dang
formed to small audiences of other musici
late seventies, indeed, Schnittke was not w
music community of the capital.
The regime had had to make the same dec
avant-garde music as it had about rock and
on a life of their own in the Soviet Union
difficulty of stamping them out were prob
benefits. As long as music stayed out of p
regime understandably could not be as tol
cause the written word is far more overtly
by the regime to be so.
In sum, throughout the Soviet period, the
composers within certain bounds, but it a
them This was an uncomfortable and thre
posers, but not an impossible one. Indeed,
proclaimed that starting with certain cons
and discipline of certain traditions, was th
lenge. While not gainsaying the importa
Stravinsky stated:

A mode of composition that does not as

fantasy. . . . The creator's function is to
from [imagination], for human activity
more art is controlled, limited, worked
everything is permissible to me ..., then
I cannot use anything as a basis.29

This is not to say that repression was

speaking of self-imposed restraints and pr
types of controls imposed on Soviet comp
individual can often use restraints placed
idiom which allows him or her to operate w

29. Igor Stravinsky, Poetics of Music in the Form

1947), 66-67

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Dictatorship and Music: How Russian Music Survived the Soviet Regime 141

The survival of great music under the Soviet regime can thus be explained
as a product of many factors, like most complex historical phenomena: a
strong tradition of musical culture from the tsarist period, the strong reputa
tions of Prokofiev and Shostakovich established before the excesses of the
Stalin years, occasional relaxation of the effort at control and censorship, a
desire on the part of the regime to exploit its great composers, increasing tol
eration after 1974 and, most of all, the resourcefulness of the composers
themselves in finding strategies for survival.

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