First published in 1912, the newspaper Pravda — Russian for “Truth” — was a Bolshevik publication operating under Vladimir Lenin exercising “broad editorial control.” Repeatedly suppressed by the tsar’s police, Pravda would reemerge multiple times, each time adopting different names to dodge censorship. Finally, in 1918 it emerged in Moscow as the official paper of the Communist Party. In this role, Pravda contained little to no scandalizing publications or sleazy tabloids, instead aiming to promote education not only on Communist Party theory, praxis, and policy, but also a breadth of subjects, including science, math, culture, and letters from readers. Very little focus was placed on foreign affairs, except for stories in which foreign affairs directly influenced national issues.
Pravda would remain the official party paper until 1991, after the fall of the USSR, when readership dropped off substantially. Several publications kept the name “Pravda,” though none of them were official until 1997, when the paper was taken over by the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, the version of the Communist Party which emerged after the fall of the USSR.
Joseph Stalin, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, was the leader of the USSR from 1922 to 1953. He aimed to transition Soviet Russia from an agrarian society to an industrial society, which led to the implementation of his infamous Five Year Plans.
During his second Five Year Plan, all areas of life — not just agrarian society — felt the impact of this effort, which often manifested as political oppression and violence. Music was no exception, mainly due to its central role in culture. In 1931, the Central Committee of the Communist Party stated:
“Henceforth, musical works should have a socialist content and should be expressed in a readily understood language and addressed to the people at large. The party also requires the expression of nationalist feelings and the use of folk materials in musical works.”
The committee also closed the Soviet Union to modern Western music. In 1932, avantgarde and jazz were banned. Soviet officials were especially concerned with “Formalism,” which can be described as “a catchword for anything deemed to be modernistic and/or personally expressive, anything that did not reflect the ‘heroic ideals of the Soviet working class.’” The composer Sergei Prokofiev once stated (perhaps cynically, perhaps sarcastically): “‘Formalism’ is the name given to music not understood at the first hearing.”
This ban would fall upon Shostakovich when he composed his opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District. The drama of the opera is based on an 1864 story by Nikolai Leskov about a bored merchant woman who cheats on and kills her husband. She and the “other man” are exiled to Siberia, during which he takes up with another woman. The jealous protagonist proceeds to commit suicide and take the other woman along with her.
Though Lady MacBeth of the Mtsensk District musically “retreated” compared to The Nose, it would still be considered radical to Soviet tastes. Opera historian Donald Grout said this about the music: “...brutal, lusty, vivid in the suggestion of cruelty and horror, full of driving rhythm and willful dissonance.” Audiences loved it and praised the originality of the music. One reviewer wrote that Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District “could only have been written by a Soviet composer brought up in the best traditions of Soviet culture.”
From the premier in 1934 up until 1936, Lady Macbeth had been performed 83 times in Leningrad and 97 times in Moscow, as well as other countries across the globe. Shostakovich became a sort of opera celebrity and a sought-out musical creative and visionary.
This all came to a screeching halt in 1936, when Joseph Stalin and Vyacheslav Molotov came to a performance of Lady Macbeth in Moscow at the Bolshoi Theater. Stalin’s anger toward the content of the show precipitated the official condemnation of Shostakovich and the opera itself.
Following Stalin’s attendance, Pravda published a scathing review of the performance titled “Muddle instead of Music.” Often speculated that Stalin himself dictated this review word for word, “Muddle Instead of Music” criticized Lady Macbeth as a “Leftist distortion” full of “petty-bourgeois ‘innovations,’” with music that is “coarse, primitive and vulgar,"” a “cacophony” of “nervous, convulsive, and spasmodic music.” The review ends with an vague, ominous, and threatening conclusion: “The power of good music to infect the masses has been sacrificed to a petty-bourgeois, 'formalist' attempt to create originality through cheap clowning. It is a game of clever ingenuity that may end very badly.”
Though this review is harsh, many bad reviews have been published before. Why does this one stand out in music history? The political landscape of the day was full of violence and distrust. The USSR was in the middle of what was called the “Great Purge.” During the Great Purge, citizens believed to be “enemies” of the state were severely punished — starved, shipped to the Gulag (labor camps), or, in some cases, executed. “May end very badly” could have very easily been a thinly disguised threat to Shostakovich’s physical safety or even his life. Solomon Volkov, author of Shostakovich and Stalin writes:
“In 1936, the composer and everyone around him were certain that he would be arrested. His friends kept their distance. Like many other people at that time, he kept a small suitcase packed and ready. They usually came for their victims at night. Shostakovich did not sleep. He lay listening, waiting in the dark.”
Despite the physical threat never actually coming to fruition, Shostakovich’s social world was forever changed. Almost immediately he went from being considered a bright artistic mind to a cultural enemy of the people. And from that point on, he would be required to work with the Committee for Artistic Affairs to “rehabilitate” and reject formalism and compose work accessible to masses. In some cases, he was required to submit his work for pre-screening.
Shostakovich himself spoke on the isolation, fear, and change in his social status:
“That article on the third page of Pravda changed my entire existence. It was printed without a signature, like an editorial — that is, it expressed the opinion of the Party. But it actually expressed the opinion of Stalin, and that was much more important. All right, the opera was taken off the stage. Everyone turned away from me. There was a phrase in the article saying that all this ‘could end very badly’. They were all waiting for the bad end to come. It went on as if in a nightmare. Everyone knew for sure that I would be destroyed. And the anticipation of that noteworthy event — at least for me — has never left me. From that moment on I was stuck with the label ‘enemy of the people’, and I don’t need to explain what the label meant in those days. Everyone still remembers that. I was called an enemy of the people quietly and out loud and from podiums. One paper made the following announcement of a concert at which I was to appear: ‘Today there is a concert by enemy of the people Shostakovich.’ In those years my name wasn’t welcomed enthusiastically in print unless, of course, it was used in a discussion about the struggles against formalism.”
Shostakovich, in conversation with a friend, likened Stalinism to a religion himself as a transgressive sinner. “Instead of repenting, I composed my Fourth Symphony.”