I don't need to speak of Stalin, Zhdanov, or Khrushchev here. Everyone knows of their dissatisfaction with my music. Should I have been upset? It seems a strange question. Of course not! That would be the simplest answer. But the simple answer isn't enough. These weren't mere acquaintances, men on the street. They were men wielding unlimited power.
And the comrade leaders used that power without thinking twice about it, particularly if they felt that their refined taste was off ended.
An artist whose portrait did not resemble the leader disappeared forever. So did the writer who used "crude words." No one entered into
•Anatoly Vasilyevich Lunacharsky (1875-1 933), a Communist Party leader, People's Commissar of Education. The first and last educated Soviet "culture boss," he wrote many lively articles on music and would never have given orders, as did a later minister of culture, to organize "a quartet of ten men." In l 921 , on Lunacharsky's personal orders, young Shostakovich was awarded food rations.
tSergei Mironovich Kirov (Kostrikov; 1 886-1 934), a Communist Party leader, the "boss" of Leningrad. He was killed by a terrorist (the murder is now thought by most historians to have been engineered by Stalin), and Stalin used this terrorist act as an excuse for a wave of massive repressions, long remembered by Leningraders. In l 935 the famous Maryinsky Theater of Opera and Ballet was renamed after Kirov.
95
aesthetic discussions with them or asked them to explain themselves.
Someone came for them at night. That's all.
These were not isolated cases, not exceptions. You must understand that. It didn't matter how the audience reacted to your work or if the critics liked it. All that had no meaning in the final analysis. There was only one question of life or · death: how did the leader like your opus. I stress: life or death, because we are talking about life or death here, literally, not figuratively. That's what you must understand.
Now you see why it's impossible to answer the question was I upset.
Of course I was.
Upset is the wrong word, but let's let it stand. Tragedies in hindsight look like farces. When you describe your fear to someone else, it seems ridiculous. That's human nature. There was only one single person with supreme power who sincerely liked my music, and that was very important for me. Why it was important should be self-evident. He was Marshal Tukhachevsky, the "Red Napoleon," as they liked to call him.
When we met, I wasn't even nineteen and Tukhachevsky was over thirty. But the main difference between us wasn't age, of course. The main difference was that by then Tukhachevsky had one of the most important positions in the Red Army and I was just a beginning musi·
cian.
But I behaved very independently. I was cocky, and Tukhachevsky liked that. We became friends. It was the first and last time that I was friends with a leader of the country, and the friendship was broken tragically.
Tukhachevsky was probably one of the most interesting people I knew. Of course, his military glory was irresistible. Everyone knew that at twenty-five Tukhachevsky was commander of the army. He seemed to be fate's favorite. He had fame, honors, high rank. It lasted until 1937.
Tukhachevsky enjoyed being attractive. He was very handsome and he knew it. He was always dressed flashily. I really liked that about him. When I was young I enjoyed dressing well myself. I rather envied another of his qualities-his unshatterable health. I had a long way to go to be like him. I was a sickly youth, while Tukhachevsky 96
could put a man on a chair and then lift the chair, yes, lift the chair and its occupant by one leg with his arm outstretched. His office in Moscow had a gym with beams, a horizontal bar, and other incomprehensible equipment.
Undoubtedly, Tukhachevsky was a man of outstanding ability. It's not for me to judge his military talent, and I didn't always feel like falling into raptures over some of Tukhachevsky's famous military operations-for instance, the suppression of the Kronstadt Uprising.
But I often witnessed people singing dithyrambs to his military achievements. He had more than enough flatterers around him. I kept quiet.
Tukhachevsky was a very ambitious and imperious person-a typical military man. In these traits the marshal resembled Meyerhold, who adored military masquerade. He wore a Red Army uniform.
Meyerhold proudly bore the ridiculous title "Honored Red Army Soldier." He had a passion for cannons, decorations, drums, and all the other military paraphernalia.
That was Meyerhold's weakness, let's put it that way. Tukhachevsky's weakness was art. Meyerhold looked silly in a uniform, but many were impressed. Tukhachevsky looked just as silly when he picked up his violin, but many were charmed. By the way, we're dealing here with pure and simple phoniness in both cases.
Strange: Meyerhold played the violin and so did Tukhachevsky.
(Tukhachevsky also made violins with great passion.) Each of them recalled the craft not long before his tragic death. That, of course, is merely a coincidence. One of life's cruel jokes.
Meyerhold, as he awaited arrest, regretted that he hadn't become a violinist. "I'd be sitting in some orchestra now, sawing away at my fiddle, and I wouldn't have a care," Meyerhold said with bitterness and fear. He was sixty-five then. Forty-four-year-old Tukhachevsky said almost the same thing before his arrest. "How I wanted to learn the violin as a child! Father didn't buy me a violin. He never had the money. I would have been better off as a violinist."
The coincidence amazes and horrifies me. A renowned director and a famous military leader-both suddenly wanting to become little, unnoticeable. Just sit in some orchestra and saw at a fiddle. The marshal 97
and the maitre would have traded their biographies with almost anyone, with any drunkard who amused the crowds in the cinema lobbies.
But it was too late.
Tukhachevsky liked being a patron of the arts. He liked finding
"young talents" and helping them. Perhaps because the marshal himself had been a military Wunderkind, or perhaps because he liked demonstrating his enormous power.
From the very first day we met, Tukhachevsky demanded that I play my compositions for him. He praised them and criticized some.
Often he asked me to repeat things-which is torture if music gets on your nerves. So Tukhachevsky probably did like my music.
Sometimes I think about how my life would have been if Tukhachevsky hadn't been shot on Stalin's orders. Maybe everything would have gone differently? Better, happier? But let's cast off dreams. After all, Stalin didn't consult Tukhachevsky. When the wise leader and teacher had them harass me over Lady Macbeth, Tukhachevsky hadn't known anything beforehand. He learned it with everyone else, in a notorious article in Pravda. And what could he have done? Talked Stalin out of it?