Symphony for the City of the Dead
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Tukhachevsky was having an affair: Alexandrov, 166.
When Tukhachevsky was visiting Leningrad . . . : Volkov, Testimony, 100.
“I was a sickly youth . . . he feared prying ears”: Ibid., 96–98.
the composer sat down at the piano . . . : MacDonald, 106.
He stayed in Moscow and waited anxiously . . . : Bartlett, 76; Ross, 251.
“Don’t worry . . . Don’t worry”: Khentova, Mire, 121.
“Even if they cut off . . . writing music”: Glikman, xix.
The Leningrad Composers’ Union held a special session . . . : Fairclough, Credo, 25.
“One after another . . . opened their eyes”: For the account of this meeting, see Radamsky, 216–217.
Lev Knipper, spy for the secret police: Knipper had been working for the secret police in some capacity since 1922 (Beevor, loc. 1366). His connections did not protect him and his music from being denounced in terms similar to those used about Shostakovich (Fairclough, Credo, 32; Sitsky, 150–151). During this meeting, his comments appear to have been motivated more by his competitive spirit than any darker agenda. It should be noted that in 1948, Knipper was supposedly very vocal in defending Shostakovich and the other “formalists” (Tassie, 273).
“You bastard!”: Radamsky, 217.
“If you are smeared with mud . . . circumstances”: Volkov, Testimony, 271.
We know now from the files of the secret police . . . : Volkov, Stalin, 124; Ross, 150.
“I can’t hear you . . . cut you off”: Morrison, 149.
Leningrad poet Anna Akhmatova was also being watched . . . : Nadezhda Mandelstam, 17–18.
That spring, Shostakovich considered suicide . . . : Volkov, Stalin, 124.
“What will happen to my son now?”: Ibid., 249–251; cf. Ross, 250.
“They are driving Shostakovich . . . over the radio”: Tassie, 193.
“The article in Pravda struck him . . . completely depressed”: Volkov, Stalin, 115; cf. 116n.
The head of the secret police admitted . . . : Fay, Life, 97. Gorky died on June 18, 1936. In 1938, when on trial, Genrikh Yagoda, director of the NKVD, admitted to having him killed. It is still unclear whether Yagoda acted independently, whether Stalin ordered Gorky’s death, or whether, in fact, Gorky died of natural causes.
“paced the room with a towel . . . keeping watch”: Volkov, Stalin, 124.
The government had announced in 1935 . . . : Conquest, 75.
“Let me have one night with him . . . England”: Lavrentii Beria, quoted in Montefiore, 276.
“Better that ten innocent people . . . chips fly”: Nikolai Yezhov, quoted in Montefiore, 218.
“It was impossible to tell . . . disappeared as well”: Jones, 66.
“What was he arrested for . . . done anything wrong”: Nadezhda Mandelstam, 10.
“What for . . . arrested for nothing”: Ibid., 11.
“greater sincerity”: Conquest, 85.
He saw his earnings diminish . . . : Fay, Life, 94.
“I was completely in the thrall . . . wanted to disappear”: Volkov, Testimony, 118.
“Speechlessness became my home . . . muteness”: Akhmatova, 767.
“He is an original among us — for he thinks”: Volkov, Stalin, 161. Cf. Hakobian, 130; Garros and Korenevskaya, 346.
“Dear friend! . . . Do not give in to your sadness”: Volkov, Stalin, 161. Cf. Fairclough, Credo, 26.
“said he was incapable of doing anything”: Ross, 250.
“purely infantile act”: Volkov, Testimony, 118.
The celebration was riotous . . . : Glikman, xix–xx.
“I don’t write . . . in my soul and mind”: Fay, Life, 306n34.
“After ‘A Mess Instead of Music,’ . . . my Fourth Symphony”: Glikman, 194.
Experimental composer Alexander Mosolov . . . : Arrested in November 1937. Brooke, 409; Hakobian, 55; Tassie, 200–201, 221n57.
Shostakovich’s friend Gavriil Popov . . . : In March 1935 (Haas, 218). The symphony was later rehabilitated, partially thanks to Shostakovich’s intervention (Fairclough, Credo, 43).
The great Sergei Prokofiev . . . : Schwarz, 117.
“I sing as I cradle . . . Stalin, Stalin!”: Text of Prokofiev’s Zdravitsa by A. Mashistov; translated by Philip Taylor. Recording booklet: Valeri Polyansky conducting the Russian State Symphony Orchestra. Prokofiev: Egyptian Nights; Hamlet; Autumnal; Zdravitsa; Flourish, Mighty Land (Chandos Records CHAN 10056, 2003), 21–27.
The whole generation of ultramodern composers . . . : Arthur Lourié had fled for the West and stayed there. Nikolai Roslavets, the Muscovite atonalist, had been banned from working as a composer as early as 1930 and had been forced to publicly renounce his own work (Hakobian, 29). For more information on the fate of this generation of experimental composers, see Sitsky, passim.
“step on their own song’s throat”: Mayakovsky in “At the Top of My Voice,” quoted in Hakobian, 29; cf. Fanning, “C Major,” 114.
“They blow up mines . . . sons of our country”: Conquest, 163.
wreckers: Ibid., 362.
“I demand that these mad dogs should be shot — every one of them”: Vyshinsky’s final remarks are reproduced in full at: http://art-bin.com/art/omosc22m.html#1. Accessed August 19, 2013.
“Long live the cause of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin”: Montefiore, 192.
One alleged conspirator confessed . . . : The meeting was supposedly with Leon Trotsky’s son. Conquest, 99.
“What the devil did you need . . . always there”: Montefiore, 191.
the musicians of the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra were wary . . . : For a much fuller and more nuanced discussion of the incredibly rich Fourth Symphony, see Fairclough, Credo.
People have tried to hear fanciful scenarios . . . : MacDonald, 110–113.
“detected a strong sense . . . formalist tendencies”: Glikman, xxiii.
“My companion seemed thoroughly downcast . . . symphony”: Glikman, xxiii. For variants and discussion, see Fairclough, Credo, 28; Fay, Life, 95–96.
“Composer Shostakovich appealed . . . a long outdated phase”: Fay, Life, 95.
“Meaning in music . . . without any interest”: Volkov, Testimony, 234.
“Listen, workers . . . march with a million feet”: Recording booklet, Dmitri Shostakovich: The Symphonies, conducted by Bernard Haitink (Decca 475 7413, 2006).
“Shostakovich did not like . . . them”: Wilson, 62; cf. Fay, Life, 40.
Russian symphonies and suites spinning tales . . . : Thrilling examples of the barbarian genre are Rimsky-Korsakov’s Second Symphony (Antar) and his suite Scheherazade, Glière’s Third Symphony (Ilya Muromets), and Prokofiev’s early Scythian Suite. Examples of Soviet-era symphonies that sketch heroic scenes are Miaskovsky’s Eighth (about popular bandit Stepan Razin) and Sixteenth (Airborne) and Steinberg’s Fourth (Turk Sib, depicting the construction of the Turkestan-Siberian railway).
There is no need for us to know names . . . : The latter image is conductor Gennadi Rozhdestvensky’s for the eerie percussion at the end of the second movement. Fairclough, Credo, 165.
“Glory, glory, glory! Praise to Queen Jocasta in pestilential Thebes”: Volkov, Stalin, 137; Fairclough, Credo, 221.
There clearly is some irony in Shostakovich using this fragment . . . : For a discussion of how much specific defiance might be symbolically encoded in the finale, see Fanning, “C Major,” 120–131, and Elizabeth Wilson’s review of Fairclough’s Soviet Credo in Music and Letters 90, no. 3 (August 2009), 512, as well as Fairclough’s book itself.
But we can never be certain exactly what he meant by them . . . : I am thinking here in particular of the Eleventh Symphony, which is overtly about the protests and brutal tsarist repressions of 1905 — but which was also composed as the Soviet government was brutally crushing protest in Hungary, sending tanks through the streets of Budapest. Under those circumstances, the quotation of the Revolutionary song “Death to You, Tyrants” in the symphony, for
example, may have had more than one meaning for Shostakovich. For the debate, see Volkov, Stalin, 40; Bartlett, 5; Wilson, 317–320.
“Pretzels, Buy My Pretzels”: Fay, Life, 248.
At the time, people did not know that this brief motif . . . : For a more in-depth look at the way the DSCH motif and other themes and quotations are used in the Eighth Quartet, as well as the biographical stories surrounding the piece, see Fanning, String.
“There is more to an artwork . . . bottle”: Richard Taruskin, “Shostakovich and the Inhuman,” in Defining Russia Musically: Historical and Hermeneutical Essays (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), 493.
Shostakovich made a melody out of the name . . . : The discovery of this theme’s meaning was due to a couple of incredible feats of musicology. See Fanning, Breath, 51–53, and Nelly Kravetz’s “A New Insight into the Tenth Symphony of Dmitry Shostakovich,” in Bartlett, 159ff.
“Shostakovich hated being asked questions . . . what I’ve said”: Wilson, 376.
The shadow of the Great Terror . . . : Much more so, in fact, than composers: See, for example, Mikkonen, 18.
“I would sing of him . . . sternly kind”: From “Lines on Stalin,” Osip Mandelstam, 71. Cf. “The Ode” in Nadezhda Mandelstam, 198–203.
He never got a chance to say good-bye . . . : Nadezhda Mandelstam, 360–362.
He died on the way there . . . : For the fullest discussion of the debated circumstances of his death, see Nadezhda Mandelstam, 376–397.
“We were capable of coming to work . . . school”: MacDonald, 123; a condensation of Nadezhda Mandelstam, 286 and 304–305.
Elena Konstantinovskaya . . . : Wilson, 121.
Another one of his ex-girlfriends from his youth . . . : Volkov, Stalin, 40.
The man who had written the story of Shostakovich’s ballet . . . : Adrian Piotrovsky, in Wilson, 121.
The head of the Moscow Composers’ Union was executed: Tomoff, 23.
The NKVD thugs beat her so brutally . . . : MacDonald, 133.
Nina’s mother was arrested . . . : Fay, Life, 98.
Shostakovich’s uncle was arrested and disappeared: Wilson, 19.
Her husband was accused . . . : Volkov, Stalin, 139.
where he died: See Fay, Life,145.
Mass rallies were held to celebrate Stalin . . . : Fitzpatrick, 30.
“Life is getting better . . . merrier”: Stalin first used the slogan in a speech to the Stakhanovite workers in mid-November 1935, but it quickly became a catchphrase of the era. Garros and Korenevskaya, 4; cf. Fitzpatrick, 6–7, 90.
Planes spelled out his name in the sky: Montefiore, 165.
One night late in the Great Terror . . . : June 1939. This account combines two similar but distinct versions of the story: see Fay, Life, 114, and Volkov, Stalin, 162.
Meyerhold had defended himself and Shostakovich . . . : Meyerhold, Meyerhold on Theater, trans. Edward Braun (New York: Hill and Wang, 1969), 248–249, which also gives a sample of Meyerhold’s self-defense during the same period.
“Where once there were the best theaters . . . eliminated art”: Conquest, 306; cf. Robinson, 362.
“They beat me . . . whipped by its master”: Braun, 301.
“If you refuse to write . . . mangled flesh”: Ibid., 302.
Indeed, they broke his left arm . . . : Conquest, 306–307.
“coordinated all anti-Soviet elements in the field of the arts”: Braun, 303.
“We all had . . . genius”: Volkov, Stalin, 161.
“saboteur”: Ibid.
“Common Grave Number One . . . inclusive”: Montefiore, 324; Braun, 308.
A few months after he was arrested . . . : This detail — the call that lured Zinaida Raikh to Moscow — was a rumor at the time recorded in the diary of a friend who ran a puppet theater. Garros and Korenevskaya, 373.
She stayed at their old apartment . . . : Braun, 302.
According to Russian superstition . . . : Garros and Korenevskaya, 373.
“Meyerhold loved her madly . . . they’ll survive”: Volkov, Testimony, 78.
Party members were purged . . . : Conquest, 218.
Train operators were purged . . . : Montefiore, 239.
When the NKVD had finished purging other groups . . . : The NKVD head referred to here is Nikolai Yezhov, tried in 1938, shot in 1940. He himself had been instrumental in the purging of his predecessor, Genrikh Yagoda, in 1936/37.
About twenty thousand secret-police officers . . . : There were two distinct purges of the NKVD during the Great Terror; this total covers the whole period (Conquest, 180).
Scientists who taught strict Darwinian evolution were purged . . . : Stalin was very much under the influence of so-called Lysenkoism — the belief that acquired characteristics, as well as inherited characteristics, could be passed down genetically. Service, Stalin, 307.
Collective farmers were purged . . . : Conquest, 283.
Meteorologists were purged . . . : Ibid., 295.
Stalin purged the other Soviet Republics . . . : Ibid., 233.
The government of Ukraine was replaced . . . : Ibid., 227.
“Better too far . . . sorting out”: Montefiore, 229.
In July 1937, Stalin ordered arrest quotas . . . : Ibid., 228; but cf. Fitzpatrick, 127, and Service, Stalin, 350–351, which each supply slightly different quotas.
Before long, half the USSR’s urban population . . . : Conquest, 289.
To conceal the unimaginable reach of the purges . . . : Service, Stalin, 355.
“Everything that divides . . . millennium’”: Fueloep-Miller, 2.
“Son denounced father . . . electrolysis’”: Volkov, Testimony, 267.
One boy who supposedly denounced . . . : Service, History, 245. The story of this boy, Pavel Morozov, was almost certainly fabricated.
“Look what those enemies . . . fathers”: Fitzpatrick, 213.
“The nausea rises . . . the dead”: Garros and Korenevskaya, 352.
The final touch of ghastly cruelty . . . : Montefiore, 198.
They played pranks on one another . . . : Ibid, 528.
“I am a victim . . . dream”: Ibid., 273.
“Here’s to life not getting any ‘merrier’”: Weinstein, 12:50.
One day Shostakovich went to visit a friend . . . : Wilson, 304.
As he watched people vanish . . . : MacDonald, 105. Maxim Shostakovich recalls this detail during the period of the 1948 denunciations, too (MacDonald, 32). Cf. Wilson, 183. It’s not impossible that the story has been transferred from the one period of denunciation to the other — though it is also not impossible that Shostakovich took these precautions in both periods.
Tukhachevsky was a brilliant military thinker . . . : Alexandrov, 73.
He also tried to prepare the Red Army technologically . . . : Overy, 9.
“What the hell do we need . . . horse-drawn gun”: Montefiore, 332.
“Tukhachevsky had done nothing . . . justify his arrest”: Jones, 62; cf. Watt, especially pp. 60–61.
In France, there lived a Russian refugee named Skoblin . . . : This account is based on Conquest, 197–205; Alexandrov, passim; and Watt, 57.
They usually worked as sandwich-board men . . . : Alexandrov, 124.
Through the staged capture of a spy . . . : Ibid., 107.
It seems likely that Stalin knew perfectly well . . . : Conquest, 199.
On May 10, 1937, Tukhachevsky received word . . . : Ibid., 193.
On May 20, Marshal Tukhachevsky . . . : The precise accounts of Tukhachevsky’s arrest vary. I have narrated Alexandrov’s, 163. See also Conquest, 199–200.
“At the halt . . . supplies”: This dialogue is taken from Alexandrov, 163. It should be noted that his dialogue is often speculative.
one who had committed suicide: Yan Gamarnik. Conquest, 200–201.
Tukhachevsky was allowed to see his wife . . . : Conquest, 200; Montefiore, 223.
Shostakovich got an order to meet . . . : This account was supposed
ly given by Shostakovich to Venyamin Basner (Wilson, 123–125). Basner repeated the story in the documentary The War Symphonies (Weinstein, at 23:35), and again in conversation with Maxim Shostakovich (Ardov, 66–68), each time with slightly different details. Solomon Volkov claimed that Shostakovich had also told the story to him, although he did not include it in Testimony (Brooke, 407). Ian MacDonald offers some interesting skepticism about the event and Basner’s narration of it in “‘You Must Remember!’: Shostakovich’s alleged interrogation by the NKVD in 1937,” http://www.siue.edu/~aho/musov/basner/basner.html (accessed May 24, 2013).
“Think harder . . . already”: Ardov, 67.
“I understood this was the end . . . wouldn’t be back”: This is from Basner’s “word for word” account given to the BBC, quoted in MacDonald’s article cited above.
On Monday, he took his suitcase . . . : This detail is from Ardov, 67; it differs slightly from Basner’s account in Wilson, 125. I have tried to dovetail the two versions.
Shostakovich explained he was there to see an investigator called Zakovsky . . . : Basner gives this name in The War Symphonies (Weinstein), but note that in Meyer’s biography, the name is Zakrevsky (194–195), and in Wilson’s version of Basner’s account, it is Zanchevsky (125). There was indeed an NKVD officer named Zakovsky in Leningrad who was liquidated at around this time.
Tukhachevsky confessed to being an agent . . . : For excerpts of his supposed testimony, see Main, 166 and passim — some of which is clearly Tukhachevsky’s real (and quite astute) reading of the international military situation of the time, altered sloppily to prove treasonous intent.
He claimed he had cooked up . . . : Main, 166.
All of these details were specially tailored by Stalin . . . : Conquest, 195.
“I feel I’m dreaming”: Montefiore, 225; cf. Conquest, 203.
He was scolded for wasting time and money . . . : Conquest, 202–203.
“Long live the Party! Long live Stalin!”: Ibid., 203.
After Tukhachevsky’s death, most of his family . . . : Ibid., 204–205.
“Tomorrow I’ll be put in the same place”: Montefiore, 225.
“The spies Tukhachevsky . . . will of the people”: Garros and Korenevskaya, 29.
“It was a terrible blow . . . how bad I felt”: Volkov, Testimony, 116.