I’m reading a book about #Shostakovich’s 7th, LENINGRAD: SEIGE & SYMPHONY, and a good portion of the opening chapters concerns Stalin’s myriad purges of his own people.
But this story of life battered by an unyielding autocracy really stands out among the others.
But this story of life battered by an unyielding autocracy really stands out among the others.
Here are (I presume) the 24 Preludes & Fugues Zaderatsky composed in a frozen logging camp on scraps of telegraph paper.
Most of the horrors in the book are much shorter and go something like:
1) Someone wants a nice apartment, so
2) another is falsely accused of conspiring against the state, and
3) is shot a few days later, then
4) his wife or child is also killed or ruined a little later.
1) Someone wants a nice apartment, so
2) another is falsely accused of conspiring against the state, and
3) is shot a few days later, then
4) his wife or child is also killed or ruined a little later.
One of so many tales of artistic ruin under Stalin.
Bilateral pact of rogues.
