I've read Solomon Volkov's book on Shostakovich and Stalin. I can only recommend it, it's a fascinating read, although one gets the impression that Stalin was completely preoccupied with culture politics and didn't do much else. Surely, he had to care about other things too.
But I guess it is true that Stalin wanted to advance the arts and culture in order to change the image of Russia as a country of illiterate peasants. Because despite the great Russian writers of the 19th century, that was probably still the public perception abroad. At least in my country it was, which led to our nasty theories of the "brutish slavic subhuman".
I admire Shostakovich for his persistence and courage, although I'm not really sure whether he actually had much of a choice. But I also admire him for his music, which to me is not second-rate Mahler. The fact that the bulk of his output is dominated by his struggle with/against a repressive regime, to me, renders it an even more valuable artistic statement.
There are German and Russian translations of this book. So, I suppose that Andreas can read it in his native language.
I think Richard Taruskin has quite interesting chapter on Shostakovich in his History of Western Music. Taruskin discusses Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk case.
It's a brief review essay about recent work assessing Stalin's work as an editor. It makes some questionable connections between the power of the editor and of the dictator, but it's well written and left me wanting to learn more.
In any case, still more corroboration of the brutal, narcissistic, detail-oriented, and weirdly aesthetic sensibility the Soviet composers had to deal with.
I guess he was in the 20s. Taruskin wrote very good about Lady MacBeth of Mtsenks in his "History of Western music".
Prokofiev was another matter. He supported the Whites during the Civil War and even said that Great Britain should have bombed the Reds.
But it's Shostakovich who got the reputation of a secret dissenter, not Prokofiev. What Prokofiev thought, is difficult to understand. Probably, he thought that he would be like a composer at the king's court. Probably, he just didn't like America (too much rivals). But the tastes of the "king" were more simple than he thought.
Prokofiev, it seems to me, paid no attention to the hardships of peasants and other people. Their tragedy was unnoticed by him.
Such things happen. Karajan was an excellent conductor of Richard Strauss, Italian opera and sometimes Mahler and Bruckner. But he "didn't notice" (I put it in commas) a lot of things.
Shostakovich noticed something bad, when it came to him, not earlier.
Don't know, why I wrote the last part of the sentence. Actually, he said (in an interview to Daily Times, Ann Arbor) that Entente should send more troops here to support the Whites. He said that only the poor peasants support the Reds, while the rich one support the Whites.
I'm not sure that he was right in this statement. Peasants finally chose the Reds (or fought against the both sides), so did the national minorities and so did some Imperial Army officers.
Among the last was an intereresting and controversial figure. Mikhail Tukhachevsky. A friend of Shostakovich. He believed that the revolution would bring the strong figures such as Napoleon or Peter the Great.
DavidA
Well, I didn't condemn or excuse anyone, I just compared. Taruskin wrote some interesting things about Webern and politics in his book too. Webern was a German patriot and it was difficult for him to take critical approach, despite he disliked Nazi's cultural politics.
Shostakovich and Prokofiev behaved with dignity in that difficult conditions. Prokofiev tried to be independent. But Prokofiev was a type of a pure artist, it seems to me and paid little attention to politics. Probably, he didn't think that all would be so bad for him, when he decided to return. He was frustrated with that he had the rivals in the USA: Stravinsky was more popular among avant-garde artists, while Rachmaninov among the public.
Well, people at that time got used to brutality. The brutality of pogroms (and no reaction to this atrocity from the Emperor, who liked "patriotic people"), the brutality of the WWI. I don't want to advocate anyone, but when you condemn the left, you seems to forget these simple facts. You see from today perspective, it's ok, but in 1917 a lot of people saw it in a different way. Just a fact.
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