Surviving Stalin

Abstract

The story of Dmitri Shostakovich is the story of Soviet music, official and unofficial. His life dominates the whole central arch of this story, from his eruption onto the world stage with his First Symphony in 1926, through Stalin's repression of the mid-30s to the renewed onslaught on composers following World War 11 and, in the end, through to Kruschev and Brezhnev