the Procurator General of the U.S.S.R., the opera was brought into proper shape. He was satisfied that in terms of plot the opera was suitable; all it had required was playing down the Germans, or occupiers, or whoever. Let the White Guard be the enemy. "Where is the enemy?" as they sing in another opera, A Life for the Tsar, which was retitled Ivan Susanin in our day. As. long as there are enemies, it's fine. Any enemy. As long as there is someone to fight, there's ·no need to get overly specific about who it is.
And so this half-dead production came to life and no one liked it.
Everyone liked Wagner because Wagner, as was very obvious, was beloved by Stalin. And then suddenly, war again! And National Socialist Wagner was dropped from the repertory once more. He had fallen into bad company again. And all our professors and assistant prof essors and the leading and following music critics started teaching Wagner a thing or two, the way you do underage criminals in reform school colonies. They said Wagner had the wrong friends, went to the wrong places, and did the wrong things. And as for their love-it had never existed.
And so here is the sad story in two acts with a prologue and epilogue. History, as we see, repeats itself. You can see the same farce reenacted two, three, sometimes four times in a lifetime, particularly if you're lucky and if you've managed to live more than sixty years in our troubled times, jumping over several terrible barriers.
Every leap takes your last ounce of strength and you're sure that it's your last leap. But it turns out there's more life to live and you can take a rest and relax. And they show you the same old farce. You don't find it funny any more. But people around you are laughing, the young people who are seeing this vulgar show for the first time. It's pointless trying to explain anything to them, they won't understand anyway. You seek out spectators your own age, they know, they understand, and you can talk to them. But there aren't any, they have died off. And the ones who survived are hopelessly stupid, and that's probably why they survived. Or they pretend to be stupid, which also helps.
I will never believe that there are only idiots everywhere. They must be wearing masks-a survival tactic that permits you to maintain a minimal decency. Now everyone says, "We didn't know, we didn't un-1 34
derstand. We believed Stalin. We were tricked, ah, how cruelly we were tricked."
I feel anger at such people. Who was it who didn't understand, who was tricked? An illiterate old milkmaid? The deaf-mute who shined shoes on Ligovsky Prospect? No, they seemed to be educated peoplewriters, composers, actors. The people who applauded the Fifth Symphony. I'll never believe that a man who understood nothing could feel the Fifth Symphony. Of course they understood, they understood what was happening around them and they understood what the Fifth was about.*
And this makes it even harder for me to compose. It must sound odd: it's hard to compose because the audience understands your music. It's probably the other way around in most cases: when they understand, it's easier to write. But here everything is back to front, because the larger the audience, the more informers there are. And the more people who understand what it's about, the more likely that they'll inform.
A very difficult situation arose, which became more difficult with time. It's sad to talk about it, unpleasant, but I must if I am to tell the truth. And the truth is that the war helped. The war brought great sorrow and ma:de life very, very hard. Much sorrow, many tears. But it had been even harder before the war, because then everyone was alone in his sorrow.
Even before the war, in Leningrad there probably wasn't a single family who hadn't lost someone, a father, a brother, or if not a relative, then a close friend. Everyone had someone to cry over, but you had to cry silently, under your blanket, so that no one would see. Everyone feared everyone else, and the sorrow oppressed and suffocated us.
It suffocated me too. I had to write about it, I felt that it was my responsibility, my duty. I had to write a requiem for all those who died, who had suffered. I had to describe the horrible extermination machine and express protest against it. But how could I do it? I was constantly under suspicion then; and critics counted what percentage of
*The Fifth Symphony was composed and performed in 1 937, at the height of mass terror.
The premiere, at which many members of the audience wept, took place in Leningrad, a city that had suffered particularly harsh repressions.
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my symphonies was in a major key and what percentage in a minor key. That oppressed me, it deprived me of the will to compose.
And then the war came and the sorrow became a common one. We could talk about it, we could cry openly, cry for our lost ones. People stopped fearing tears. Eventually they got used to it. There was time to become used to it-four whole years. And that is why it was so hard after the war, when suddenly it all stopped. And that's when· I put many major works in my desk drawer, where they lay for a long time.
To be able to grieve is also a right, but it's not granted to everyone, or always. I felt that personally very strongly. I wasn't the only one who had an opportunity to express himself because of the war. Everyone felt it. Spiritual life, which had been almost completely squelched before the war, became saturated and tense, everything took on acuity, took on meaning. Probably many people think that I came back to life after the Fifth Symphony. No, I came back to life after the Seventh.
You could finally talk to people. It was still hard, but you could breathe. That's why I consider the war years productive for the arts.
This wasn't the situation everywhere, and in other countries war probably interferes with the arts. But in Russia-for tragic reasonsthere was a flowering of the arts.
The Seventh Symphony became my most popular work.* It saddens me, however, that people don't always understand what it's about, yet everything is clear in the music. Akhmatova wrote her Requiem and the Seventh and Eighth Symphonies are my requiem. I don't want to linger on the brouhaha connected with these works. Much has been written about it, and from an external point of view, this is the bestknown part of my life. And in the final analysis, this brouhaha had fateful repercussions for me. It was to be expected. And I had guessed that it would be so, almost from the very beginning.
At fi�st it seemed that a wider celebrity might help me, but then I
• "The Seventh Symphony arose from the conscience of the Russian people, who unwaveringly accepted mortal combat with evil forces." This is a typical reaction to the symphony's premiere, from the writer Alexei Tolstoy. The symphony, written and performed during World War II, found itself a subject of world public opinion for many reasons. In the Soviet Union it was raised to the status of symbol, and excerpts from it can be heard in many films and plays devoted to the war. The American radio premiere of the symphony, conducted by Toscanini on July 19, 1 942, was heard by millions of Americans. This was probably the first time in musical history that a symphony played so political a role. Shostakovich was not responsible for this, yet even to this day the political resonance of the Seventh interferes with an objective evaluation of its musical merits.