All this torture took place not so long ago, a few centuries, that's all.
They had court trials for cows and horses, dogs, monkeys, even mice and caterpillars. They thought they were devils. Enemies of the people. They tortured the animals, blood flowed in rivers, cows mooed and dogs howled and moaned, horses neighed. They were being interrogated and specialists in mooing acted as translators. I can imagine
•Oprichniki were a kind of personal guard created by Tsar Ivan the Terrible (1 530-1 584) to fight the powerful feudal aristocracy. In Russian historiography and literature, the oprichniki were a symbol of lawlessness and terror. However, they were "rehabilitated" in the Stalinist period. The second part of Eisenstein's film /IJ(Jfl the Terrible angered Stalin, in part because of the ambiguous ponrayal of the oprichniki.
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how it went. "Does the enemy of the people admit to such-and-such and so-and-so?" The cow is silent. They stick a spear into its side. It moos and the specialist translates, "It fully admits culpability in all the acts it performed against the people."
Silence is a sign of guilt and so is mooing. Bonfires, blood, overheated executioners. Time? Seventeenth century. Place? Russia, Moscow.
Or perhaps it was yesterday ? I don't know. Which is the beast here, which is the human being? I don't know that either. Everything is confused in this world. Later I heard about this more than once, the trials of animals. But that memorable night I stared in· horror at the man, my guest. He was beside himself, his face blazing. He was usually calm and rational, but now there was another man before me. I clearly saw that he was of the same breed as the executioners, vile scum. He · waved his arms, his voice trembled and broke, but not from indignation, from excitement.
And then he grew quiet, losing steam all at once. I looked at him with repugnance, but without pity. No, there was no pity. I thought, You're a finished man. You crave power, you dream of torturing others, and the only reason you don't become an executioner is that you're a coward.
And I told him this to his face. That's my rule, say it and say it all.
He cried and repented, but from that moment he ceased to exist as a musician for me. I realized that I <had been mistaken about him, because this craving for blood is a perversion and a perverted creature is incapable of understanding art, and music in particular.
Sometimes they say or write that the directors of the German death camps loved and understood Bach and Mozart. And so on. That they shed tears over the music of Schubert. I don't believe it. It's lies, made up by journalists. Personally, I've never met a single executioner who truly understood art.
But where do these persistent stories come from? Why are people so eager for tyrants to be "patrons" and "lovers" of art? I think there are several reasons. First of all, tyrants are base, clever, and cunning men who know that it is much better for their dirty work if they appear to be cultured and educated men rather than ignoramuses and boors. Let the ones who do the work be boors, the pawns. The pawns are proud to be boors, but the generalissimo must always be wise in all things.
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And such a wise man has a huge apparatus working for him, writing about him and writing speeches for him and books too. A huge team of researchers prepares papers for him on any question, any topic.
So you want to be a specialist in architecture? You will be. Just give the order, beloved leader and teacher. Do you want to be a specialist in graphic arts? You will be. A specialist in orchestration? Why not? Or in languages. You name it.
And as for that death camp director who supposedly adored Mozart, he had an assistant in ideology. And that assistant had his own assistant. In general, just look for a victim who did actually say that Mozart was a good composer, and the executioner was on the spot. · He strangled the victim and said the words about Mozart, but as though they were his own. He robbed the victim twice. He took his life and got an inheritance. And everyone around him said, "How cultured, how wise, how refined."
All the pawns, toadies, screws, and other tiny souls also desperately want their leader and teacher to be an undisputed and absolute titan of thought and pen. This is the second reason that these dirty inventions continue to live.
It's all marvelously simple. If the leader doesn't write books but cuts up people instead, then what is he? You don't need to look up the answer in an encyclopedia or wait for the next issue of the magazine with the answer to the crossword puzzle. The answer is simple: a butcher, a gangster. And that makes the toadies the henchmen of a butcher and gangster. And who wants to think of himself in those terms? Everyone wants to be clean, now that the new dawn has come.
(All tyrants always proclaim that the long-awaited dawn has come, always under the rule of the given tyrant. And in the darkest night people act out the comedy of the day that has come. Some enter their roles following Stanislavsky's precepts and that really impresses the uninitiated.)
It's a completely different picture when the leader loves Beethoven, is it not? That alters the landscape somehow. I've met many musicians who insisted seriously that Stalin loved Beethoven.
"Of course, he doesn't understand contemporary music," they said.
"But then there aren't many who do. Even professionals don't, even many composers, and some good ones, who write in a more traditional 1 26
style, consider the music of their more avant-garde colleagues to be delirium, muddles, and cacophony. You see, there is dissension among musicians on this complex issue. And losif Vissarionovich has many other concerns besides music, you know that. But he does love classical art. The ballet, for instance. And loves classical music, Beethoven, for instance. He loves everything exalted, like the mountains. Beethoven is exalted, that's why he loves him too."
I had my fill of speeches like that, thank you. It made my ears vomit. They shoved proof of Stalin's great love for the classics at us from all sides, front and back, above and below.
For instance, I heard the following story. Supposedly at the end of some Party Congress, it was decided to have a gala concert so that the delegates who had worked so hard could have a good rest. The program was· a typical one for these occasions. "Ensembles of dance and prance," combined choirs-to give a volume level that will knock out windowpanes-and a full collection of swans. The dance of the little swans and the big ones, dying ones and · recuperating ones, dances about swans and songs about eagles. You know, an avian, zoological theme for the program.
And they brought the program to Stalin for approval. Approving programs and lists was a hobby of his. The Party's program, lists of condemned men. He also liked approving menus, with Caucasian wine lists.