"discussions" of formalism in music instituted in 1948. Unlike. the "antiformalist" campaign_, of 1936, which had struck at many victims but then paled before the mass repressions, the "formalism" theme of 1948 �came the most important issue in the public life of the times and dominated every conversation.
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thing they could to get their comrades on it.* They were real criminals, whose philosophy was: you die today, and I'll go tomorrow.
Well, they worked and worked on the list. They put some names on, crossed others off. Only two names had the top spots sewn up. My name was number one, and Prokofiev's number two. The meeting was over, and the historic resolution appeared. And after that . . .
Meeting upon meeting, conference upon conference. The , whole country was in a fever, the composers more than anyone. It was like a dam breaking and a flood of murky, dirty water rushing in. Everyone seemed to go mad and anyone who felt like it expressed an opinion on music.
Zhdanov announced, "The Central Committee of Bolsheviks demands beauty and refinement from music." And he added that the goal of music was to give pleasure, while our music was crude and vulgar, and listening to it undoubtedly destroyed the psychological and physical balance of a man, for example a man like Zhdanov.
Stalin was no longer considered a man. He was a god and all this did not concern him. He was above it all. The leader and teacher washed his hands of it, and I think he did so consciously. He was being smart. But I only realized this later. At the time it seemed as though my end had come. Sheet music was reprocessed; why burn it?
That was wasteful. But by recycling all the cacophonic symphonies and quartets, they could save on paper. They destroyed tapes at the radio stations. And Khrennikov said, "There, it's gone forever. The formalist snake will never rear its head again."
All the papers printed letters from the workers, who all thanked the Party for sparing them the torture of listening to the symphonies of Shostakovich. The censors met the wishes of the workers and put out a blacklist, which named those symphonies of Shostakovich's that were being taken out of circulation. Thus I stopped personally off ending Asafiev, that leading figure of musical scholarship, who complained, "I take the Ninth Symphony as a personal insult."
From now unto forever, music had to be refined, harmonious, and melodious. They wanted particular attention devoted to singing with
*The reference is in part to the desperate attempt by Dmitri Borisovich Kabalevsky (b. 1904) to replace his name in a blacklist, prepared by Zhdanov, of composers "who held formalistic, anti-People tendencies" with that of Gavriil Nikolayevich Popov (1904-1972). The attempt was successful. The final text of the Party's "historic resolution" does not mention Kabalevsky. The talented Popov eventually drank himself to death.
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words, since singing without words satisfied only the perverted tastes of a few aesthetes and individualists.
Altogether this was called: The Party has saved music from liquidation. It turned out that Shostakovich and Prokofiev had wanted to liquidate music, and Stalin and Zhdanov didn't let them. Stalin could be happy. The whole country, instead of thinking about its squalid life, was entering mortal combat with formalist composers. Why go on talking about it? I have a musical composition on that theme, and it says it all.*
There were further developments: Stalin was rather deflated by the reaction in the West to the historic resolution. For some reason, he thought they'd be tossing their hats in the air as well, or at least be silent. But they weren't silent in the West. During the war, they had come to know our music a little better and thus they saw that the resolution was the delirium of a purple cow.
Naturally, Stalin didn't give a damn about the West, and the Western intelligentsia in particular. He used to say, "Don't worry, they'll swallow it." But the West did exist and he had to do something with it. They ha� started a peace movement, and they needed people for it.
And Stalin thought of me. That was his style completely. Stalin liked to put a man face to face with death and then make him dance to his own tune.
I was given the order to get ready for a trip to America. I had to go to the Cultural and Scientific Congress for World Peace in New York.
A worthy cause. It's obvious that peace is better than war and therefore struggling for peace is a noble effort.�ut I refused, it was humiliating . for me to take part in a spectacle like that. I was a formalist, a representative of an antinational direction in music. My music was banned, and now I was supposed to go and say that everything was fine.
No, I said. I won't go. I'm ill, I can't fly, I get airsick. Molotov t talked to me, but I still refused.
•A reference to the still unpublished satiric vocal work of Shostakovich mocking the antiformalism campaign of 1 948 and its main organizers. The existence of this composition is one of the reasons why the forthcoming multivolwne collection of Shostakovich's works will not in fact be complete.
tVyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov (Skryabin; b. 1890), Soviet government leader. In 1949
Stalin sent Molotov's wife, Polina Zhemchuzhina, to the camps for "Zionist activities." Molotov's career ended in 1957, when Khrushchev had him removed from power as a member of an
"anti-Party group."
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Then Stalin called. And in his nagging way, the leader and teacher asked me why I didn't want to go to America. I answered that I couldn't. My comrades' music wasn't played, and neither was mine.
They would ask about it in America. What could I say?
Stalin pretended to be surprised. "What do you mean, it isn't played? Why aren't they playing it?"
I told him that there was a decree by the censors, that the�e was a blacklist. Stalin said, "Who gave the orders?" Naturally, I replied, "It must have been one of the · leading comrades."
Now came the interesting part. Stalin announced, "No, we didn't give that order." He always referred to himself in the royal plural
"We, Nicholas II." And he began rehashing the thought that the censors had overreacted, had taken an incorrect initiative: We didn't give an order like that, we'll have to straighten out the comrades from the censorship, and so on.
This was another matter, this was a real concession. And I thought that maybe it would make sense to go to America, if as a result they would play the music of Prokofiev, Shebalin, Miaskovsky, Khachaturian, Popov, and Shostakovich again.
And just then, Stalin stopped going on about the question of the order and said, "We'll take care of that problem, Comrade Shostakovich.
What about your health?"
And I told Stalin the pure truth: "I'm nauseated."
Stalin was taken aback and then started mulling over this unexpected bulletin. "Why are you nauseated? From what? We'll send you a physician, he'll see why you are nauseated." And so on.
So finally I agreed, I made the trip to America. It cost me a great deal, that trip, I had to answer stupid questions and keep from saying too much. They made a sensation out of that too. And all I thought about was: How much longer do I have to live?
Thirty thousand people were jammed into Madison Square Garden when I played the scherzo from my Fifth Symphony on the piano, and I thought, This is it, this is the last time I'll ever play before an audience this size.