The Horror of Stalinism:  the Life and Work of Dmitri Shostakovich

…he seemed like a trapped man, whose only wish was to be left alone, to the peace of his own art and to the tragic destiny to which he, like most of his countrymen, had been forced to resign himself.

(N. Nabokov on meeting Shostakovich in 1949 in New York)

The beginning of the Twentieth Century marked the start of a new era in Russian history: the beginning of a socialist regime and the end of the tsarist rule. The Bolsheviks, under Lenin’s control would progressively become the Russian Communists, under Stalin’s control. Russia was to soon experience something unprecedented; a completely new and original regime that would take tens of millions of lives. The Russian form of communism under Stalin, also known as Stalinism, is debatably, the most destructive, sinister, manipulative, and propagandistic form of communism the world has ever seen. The great degree of deception and how it could have continued for so many years is the subject of a myriad of books; the extent of lies, manipulation, bureaucratic inefficiency, economic corruption, and terrorism has possibly not yet been completely understood. Perhaps it will never be.

Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich was born in 1906, in St. Petersburg Russia amidst a new wave of social unrest. This was the year that the first Duma was created, the year that the First Constitution was adopted, and the beginning of Stolypin and his reforms. Only a year later, the Triple Entente was to emerge, yet more importantly, it was to be only eleven more years until the complete cessation of the rule of the tsars - the end of the Romanov Dynasty, thus marking the beginning of the rule of the Soviet regime.

The turn of the century began with many great events in the history of Russia. Russia’s occupation of Manchuria, the northeastern region of China, followed by Russia’s subsequent retreat from the area, due to the defeat of Russia by Japan in 1905. Soon would follow the general strikes of 1905 that lead to Bloody Sunday, ‘a Sunday march of the St. Petersburg workers,’ where still it is unknown how many innocent individuals were massacred. This was just the beginning of the bloodshed that would occur, much of it the spilled blood of innocents. These were highly chaotic times to be born into. Yet history would show a few years later, the chaos was just beginning.

A major event, that would shape the world, would be the slow rise to power of Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov, better know to the world as Lenin, who with his Bolshevik Party, rose to power to bring in the new Soviet system. The political situation in Russia, during the rise of the Bolsheviks, could not have left one life untouched or unaltered. Shostakovich was no exception. He expressed political ideas at a very young age, for at the age of only twelve years, Shostakovich wrote a funeral march in memory of two leaders of the Kadet party, who were murdered by Bolsheviks sailors. Although Shostakovich had a quite liberal upbringing, members within his family where known to have ‘far-right extremist view’, ⁱⁱⁱ and were possibly an influential force within Shostakovich’s life. It is clear that this revolutionary period was a time when no one could avoid having a particular political adherence.

His musical education began at a very early age. His mother, ‘a professional pianist’ taught him, until he entered the Glassner School of Music. Later, he entered the Petrograd Conservatory and graduated with his ‘Symphony No.1, which brought him early international attention.’ His career would be a prolific one, including many symphonies, concertos, and suites. The majority of his career he spent in good favour with Stalin, living in the comfort only reserved for a very few. Yet, there would come a time when he became disliked by Stalin. This was a dangerous time for Shostakovich. Twice he purposely fell out of the public radar, fearing for his and his family’s life; he would permanently emerge only after the death of Stalin in 1953.

Shostakovich became a communist himself in the 1960s. Whether or not he supported Stalinism at any point in his life is not clear. In some way he must have whether it was merely with his silence. What is clear is that he experienced a devastating time in Russian History, which began with the rise of the Bolsheviks under the rule of Lenin.

The road to the top was by no means an easy journey for Lenin; yet, he eventually led the Bolsheviks to power in October of 1917. This event marked the chaotic transition from what was a hereditary autocracy to a totally different, yet similar in many respect, totalitarian regime. What Lenin did was set the stage for the tyranny of the infamous Stalin. And Stalin had a gift for attaining and holding onto power. Even Lenin, nearing the end of his rule, realized that Stalin would not be the best candidate for leading the party. Just before his own death, Lenin left a few interesting comments about Stalin. Lenin’s most quoted comment is:

Comrade Stalin, having become General Secretary, has concentrated
unlimited authority in his hands, and I am not sure whether he will
always be capable of using that authority with sufficient caution.

After ‘a series of major and minor strokes,’Lenin died in 1923, and Stalin eventually took power. Thus a tyrant was born, and it was not long before Stalin demonstrated his tyranny. Ironically, this was the same man that studied to become a priest in his younger years. Stalin a native of Georgian, was born, ‘Iosif Vissarionovich Djugashvili [who] adopted the name Stalin as a pseudonym.’ Later, he was to subjugate his own people to Soviet control when we accepted the annexation of Georgia, something Lenin had opposed. Under this man is where Shostakovich’s music flourished and became what it was. What can be said is that despite the harsh regime over which Stalin ruled, such artists somehow survived.

Stalin’s first task was to get rid of his opposition. It is even recorded that Trotsky, an original Bolshevik, stated that Stalin ‘poisoned Lenin,’ which does not seem so unlikely when taking into account the many evil and sinister things that Stalin would undertake before his own assassination. This was done through smear campaigns, the undermining of many top leaders, followed by expulsions and exiles, and eventually murder in the form of executions. According to Davies, ‘he outmanoeuvred all senior rivals, setting them on policy issues which he coolly adopted for himself or used to discredit them.’ Senior rivals were his targets, as they were the only ones that had any real ability to ‘dethrone’ the Twentieth Century Tsar. It was not that easy to take care of every one of Stalin’s critics, but eventually all would be silenced. For example, Trotsky was removed from the Soviet government and even expelled from Russia to silence him. While in exile in Mexico, Trotsky was eventually executed on the orders of Stalin. Despite Trotsky’s high security bunker, and the armed guards that were to perpetually protect him, he was successfully disposed of. Trotsky’s death was probably due to the fact that he continued to criticize Stalin. He had ‘published a succession of damaging anti-Stalinist books and articles.’ Later, as more and more individuals within Stalin’s own party started turning against Stalin, a possible successor and replacement of Stalin was identified as S. M. Kirov, a young and handsome party member. He too would be disposed of. The paranoia that Stalin himself created, became a vicious circle. As Stalin eliminated more and more dissidents his paranoia grew. As his paranoia grew, more and more individuals would need to be removed in order to not pose a threat. Some clear examples of his paranoia was the way in which he always travelled with ‘doubles’, and of course, the constant and indiscriminate murder of the individuals who posed or merely could pose a threat to his power. It seems that Stalin set off a chain-reaction that could not be stopped. It would take at least another three decades before anyone would even attempt to voice the atrocities committed under Stalin. Furthermore, it would take a further two decades for the Soviet government to even acknowledge what had happened during the dangerous Stalinist years.

After the silencing of top officials and therefore securing his rule, Stalin turned to reforms in agriculture, which became just another wave of mass murder. The Bolsheviks had freed the peasants of serfdom, yet it was not Stalin who reintroduced serfdom. He simply made the lives of the peasantry a worse hell than previously seen. ‘Not only did production fall, but the food which was produced tended to be eaten by the peasants rather than sold.’This was due to the fact that Stalin caused land to be divided into even smaller areas among the peasants. In response,

Stalin went to Siberia with a retinue, which included police officials…
Using the Criminal Code’s article on hoarding and speculation… it
was possible to assert that any peasant with stocks of grain had broken
the law, and that his grain was therefore liable to confiscation.

This program was by no means instituted in a just or fair way. ‘Sometimes violent programme of grain confiscation was carried out on these lines.’ This meant not only the desertion of many people to cities in search of jobs and food, but also a completely preventable period of starvation.

Stalin had many more murder tactics ready to be unleashed. Stalin soon placed his gaze on the class of people known as the kulaks. The only problem in the identification of the kulaks as a new enemy was that they did not really exist as a class. Previously, during the tsarist era, they were the better off peasants, and this is what Stalin knew them to be. Yet ‘these kulaks were hardly a class; they were an integral part of the villages.’Thus, by the time the raid was over, ‘at least a million families, or about 6 million people, were transported or expelled from their home villages as kulaks.’

His ‘brilliant’ economic mind led the U.S.S.R. to one economic disaster after another. This could have been due to the fact that his main interest was his preservation of power. The economic well being of the country could only come in second. Stalin’s, as it was with Lenin’s economic ideas were based on the ‘great economist and political philosopher, Karl Marx.’ Although, it would take until at least the dismantling of communism in the U.S.S.R. and the former Iron Block countries to fall to reveal the complete inefficiency of the communist or planned economy, there were obvious signs very early on. These signs were completely disregarded in favour of Stalin’s desire to have complete and total control of his people and his country. Yet, perhaps Stalin did have something to boast of; ‘by 1939, the Gulag [Glavnoye Upravlenie Lagerey or Soviet labour camp organization], was the largest employer in Europe, [with] camps containing up to 10 per cent of the population.’These ‘concentration camps’contained ‘enemies of the state’, which were in fact innocent individuals arbitrarily classified as enemies for whatever reason this totalitarian government could fabricate. A parallel can be made to Nazi concentration camps, yet it was in fact the gulags that killed the most individuals. In contrast, in Nazi concentration camps death was the ultimate aim. In the gulags death was merely an all-too-often effect but not the aim. The aim was actually to terrorize individuals into submission. ‘The main instrument of coercion and terror [was] the Cheka (OGPU, then the NKVD, and finally the KGB) [with their use of the concentration camp], the gulag…’Thus, a variety of individuals were contained within these camps. Undesirables like the mentally retarded, thieves, prostitutes, kulaks, priests, intellectuals, former tsarists, liberals, Mensheviks, and even Bolsheviks, to whole ethnic groups like the gypsies, Chechens, Jews, Poles, and a myriad of others, were contained in these camps. ‘Innocent victims were rounded up in their homes and villages; others were charged with imaginary offences of sabotage, treason, or espionage, and tortured into confession’

The threat of expulsion to the gulags or execution became a real possibility during a performance in 1936 of ‘his important work, the opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District (also known as Katerina Izmailova), [when] Stalin himself, with other Party officials in tow, in the middle of the performance, the Leader and his henchmen walked out.' The system under Stalin ensured that anyone who could influence the public in any way other than pro-Stalin and pro-communism, could be sure of a horrible fate. For a composer as popular as Shostakovich, to have Stalin publicly walk out of a performance meant such a fate. Shostakovich was well aware of this and decided that disappearing out of the stoplight and ceasing the publicity of his work would be, most probably, lifesaving.

Whether or not his opera Lady Macbeth was even expressing anti-Stalinism, whether Stalin was able to decipher the dissident, or whether Stalin was simply expressing personal dislike is debatable. This would be the first but not the last time that Shostakovich would feel danger for his own life, and the life of his family.

In 1948, the regime waged a vicious war against the Soviet intelligentsia; Shostakovich was among the most prominent victims. He was fired from the Leningrad Conservatory, his works were banned, and he was accused by the All-Union Congress of Composers of being "anti-people."

Again Shostakovich was in fear of his life, and he could not have taken comfort in the fact that it would only be another five years that Stalin would live, as his own execution tactic to get rid of an undesirable would eventually be used on him.

Stalin did die in 1953. This changed the degree of danger in the U.S.S.R. to a substantial degree. Shostakovich emerged with his 10^th Symphony. ‘The scherzo of the 10^th Symphony is said to be a portrait of Stalin.’ Even though Shostakovich had joined the Communist Party, he had nothing but, at the least, unflattering comments about Stalin. Although he was a communist he was not a Stalinist. Shostakovich is quoted as saying, ‘Music illuminates a person and provides him with his last hope; even Stalin, a butcher, knew that, and that was why he hated music’

In the end the Stalinist regime was toppled. Unfortunately, it would take almost another fourty years to dismantle the communist system that to this day has remained imbedded in the psychy of many people. Just as this regime has passed on into history, the life of Shostakovich did pass in 1975. Yet it is perhaps his work that will remain long after the memory of the terror of Stalinism, just as it should be. And it is hopeful that the world will learn of the history of Stalin, for those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it.