Shostakovich and Stalin

By Solomon Volkov

Knopf, 313 pp., $30

Like Barry Bonds’ home-run record, Solomon Volkov’s works on Shostakovich seem destined to have an asterisk affixed to them. Controversy has roared unabated since the publication of Volkov’s Testimony: The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich in 1979. Some scholars consider the book one of the biggest frauds in critical music history, while others defend it as the most important primary resource available on the Russian composer (1906-1975). The hubbub has not deterred the author, who has resolutely stood by his book. Now, with Shostakovich and Stalin, he goes further down his path of contentious Shostakovich scholarship. Despite the controversy, Volkov always makes for an engaging read. This is no dry academic striving for cold objectivity; Volkov has a flare for the dramatic, painting Shostakovich’s life in bold colors (or rather, a bleak and depressing gray). The author’s Stalin is an obsessive micromanager, personally making phone calls to poets, authors, and composers in order to manipulate them toward his goals. The book details not only Shostakovich’s relationship to the dictator, but Stalin’s intricate relationship with Soviet and Russian culture and its creators, as well. Aided by his Russian heritage and using many primary resources and personal interviews, Volkov gives an intimate insider’s perspective to an area of history most Americans have been taught in black and white. That said, this may not be the first book you want to read about Shostakovich; as a work of cultural and social history, it focuses on personal relationships, politics, and the wielding of power while spending little time on the composer’s musical output or background. There are many other books on Shostakovich, from the gripping, critically questioned Testimony to the thoroughly researched, intimately anecdotal Shostakovich: A Life Remembered by Elizabeth Wilson, a chronology of the composer’s life based on interviews with those who knew him. Any of them will deepen a listener’s understanding of the rich and complex world of Shostakovich and his music.

This article appears in May 28 • 2004.

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