 . . . March 1994
Composer is an apt emblem of ambiguous times By Geoff Earle No one in the former Soviet Union felt the burden of censorship backed up by political terror as much as artists and dissidents. Nevertheless, some of the artistic masterpieces of the 20th century were produced under the Soviet system, and in particular under Joseph Stalin. The work of Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) is a case in point. The world-renowned composer spent his entire career negotiating the ambiguous and sometimes deadly terrain of Soviet cultural politics, sometimes earning favor–he garnered two Stalin prizes–and sometimes weathering unsparing criticism from state cultural authorities, who charged that his music was "cosmopolitan," "formalist," and "anti-Soviet."
"Shostakovich, a Man and His Age," a week-long conference organized by the Center for Russian and East European Studies and the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, was convened at Michigan in January to give scholars the opportunity to discuss these and other issues surrounding the life of the composer. Conference director Rosamund Bartlett, an assistant professor of Russian literature, said the event was designed to provide "an authentic portrait of what Shostakovich was like as a man and as a musician," and to offer "a more accurate portrayal of what it was like to be a creative artist in the Stalin years."
The question of accuracy, Bartlett explains, arises from the fact that much of the essential material regarding the life of Shostakovich and the policies of the Soviet Union was locked in archives for years. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, many documents concerning Shostakovich's career became available for the first time to both Russian and Western scholars.
Exploring relationships between the arts is Bartlett's specialty. She has written about the impact of German composer Richard Wagner on Russian culture (Wagner and Russia, Cambridge University Press, 1993), and she plans to write a book examining Shostakovich's links with Russian literature.
According to Bartlett, Shostakovich's complex life had been distorted because scholars have tried to co-opt it to suit their own causes. Many Western scholars have painted Shostakovich as being more defiant of Soviet authority than he might have been, while Soviet textbooks put forth the "official story" of the loyal Communist artist, which is just now being torn down as a result of the political changes.
But only by comparing the career of Shostakovich to "the whole spectrum of culture," said Bartlett, "can we fully understand the composer."
Why has understanding Shostakovich become such an important path for seeking a deeper understanding of his age, which saw the rise and fall of the Soviet Union? Conference participants agree upon three reasons:
"In Russia," Bartlett said, "some people see Shostakovich as a very tragic figure. Others criticize him for apparently kowtowing to the regime."
Nevertheless, notes Assoc. Prof. Michael Makin, Bartlett's colleague in the Department of Slavic Languages in Literatures and a leading participant in the conference, "Shostakovich was very close to some of the dangerously alternative approaches of the Russian world." Makin organized a conference panel about the tragic fate of some of Shostakovich's contemporaries, and warns anyone who did not endure Soviet life against issuing contemptuous criticism of the composer.
"Who are we to pass judgment?" Makin asks. "There is a big difference between being a lackey and accommodating your life to save your loved ones."
The facts regarding Shostakovich's relationship with leaders of the party and state are mixed. On the one hand, he was a Communist Party member (albeit a forced one) who indeed composed patriotic music.
His music commemorates such pivitol events in Soviet history as the 1917 October Revolution and the defeat of Nazi Germany's onslaught during World War II, and pays tribute to figures such as Lenin and Stalin. And he bowed to party pressure to issue denunciations of modern music as the product of "bourgeois decadence."
But portraying Shostakovich simply as a good soldier obscures the fact that the Soviet authorities were extremely uncomfortable with him and his music, and does not explain why, after condemning him, they restored support in response to his growing and undeniable international recognition.
Despite his government ties, Shostakovich seems to have frequently challenged officials through his music. In 1948, for example, during the most vitriolic Soviet attacks against his music, Shostakovich secretly wrote his Anti-Formalist Rayok.
"Shostakovich's Anti-Formalist Rayok," Yakubov said, "is the satire of a master driven underground, living out his fate painfully, but finding in himself the strength to rise above his persecutors in laughter in order secretly to cleanse himself morally and save himself, while 'repenting' in public."
According to Yakubov, characters in the piece parody the catechistic speaking styles and wordy decrees of Stain, his chief censor Andrei Zhdanov and other officials, and fragments of Zhdanov's infamous decree against Shostakovich are embedded in the text. To compose such politically incorrect music even privately during the Stalin period meant literally risking your life–hardly the actions of a cowardly opportunist.
Sometimes even Shostakovich's most patriotic music masked hidden criticism. But here historians are on shaky ground; they must sort through what constitutes legitimate political commentary intended by the composer and what is merely political intrigue being read into Shostakovich's music by zealous conspiracy theorists.
One piece commonly thought to contain masked criticism is Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony; supposedly a model of Socialist Realist music that rescued his career after his condemnation in 1948, it also contains, Bartlett said, a powerful, sinister theme that can be heard as evoking the horrors of Stalinism. Likewise, the Tenth Symphony, noted Yakubov, evokes a peaceful feeling of springtime and relief that can be heard as ironic commentary on Stalin's death, which the music officially commemorated.
Further evidence of the more defiant Shostakovich can be found in the grave political risks the composer sometimes took when choosing subjects for his music. For example, "in the middle of an horrific anti-Semitic campaign" during 1948, noted Yakubov, Shostakovich finished the cycle From Jewish Folk Poetry.
Obviously, no simplistic assessment of Shostakovich is correct, noted Bartlett. Rather, some sort of synthesis is needed, and she hopes the conference helped people make progress toward that goal.
The conference panel organized by Professor Makin explored the problems faced by several authors who were contemporaries of Shostakovich. Nikolai Klyuev, the peasant poet, was excluded from society, arrested and shot because of his controversial writings, noted Malkin. The poet Osip Mandelstam was exiled and then sent to a prison camp where he died. And Marina Tsvetaeva (the subject of Makin's Marina Tsvetaeva: Poetics of Appropriation, Oxford University Press, 1993), who lived outside the USSR in the 1920s and 1930s, returned in 1939, learned her husband had been shot, and subsequently hanged herself.
Despite the terrible imposition and danger presented by Soviet authorities, Shostakovich did not wish to follow the lead of two other great Soviet composers, Stravinsky and Prokofiev, and flee his country. In fact, on the few occasions when Shostakovich visited the West, he found it unappealing.
And as Marysia Ostafin, conference coordinator, pointed out, the fact that Shostakovich remained a Soviet composer despite his tragic circumstances is one reason his music is so unique and influential.
"He seemed to be somebody who had to function in that context," she said. "In a way he was the one person who was able to sublimate the time and create the music that reflected it. I think it fueled him. It fueled his creativity."
Free-lance writer Geoff Earle '93 is former news editor of the Michigan Daily.
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Shostakovich remains a central figure in Soviet culture. Yet almost two decades after his death, scholars do not quite know what to make of him. Was Shostakovich a coward who sold his musical soul to Soviet power out of political expediency? Or was he more defiant and subtly critical of Communist Party leaders than he is often given credit for? The political stakes are high because of Shostakovich's tremendous role as both an icon of Soviet culture and a giant of 20th century classical music.
The piece, which was not performed until 1989, is a "blistering satire" that ridicules Stalin and other leaders, said Bartlett. The "subtle combination" of musical and literary parody evident in the piece was discussed at the conference by Manashir Yakubov, curator of the Shostakovich Family Archive in Moscow.