Europe Central (147 page)

616 The Russians “separated themselves; they had their own place”—In the interview cited earlier (for “The Red Guillotine”), Juliane Reitzig said the following about the Soviet troops: “I think people were afraid of the Russian soldiers, but at the same time you had to like them. They separated themselves; they were in this airbase; they had their own place. Rarely saw them on the street; there were guards in the separate areas.”

616 Information on continuing widespread rape of German women by Russian soldiers in Dresden and other parts of East Germany—Fritz Löwenthal,
News from Soviet Germany,
trans. Edward Fitzgerald (London: Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1950). Bruce (p. 47) tells a nasty story of Red Army men with syphilis who, released from a hospital for a night out, raped East German women in Brandenburg. One reason that so many SED members resisted Russian domination was these rapes. The tale of Vice-Landrat Beda also comes from this source.

OPERATION WOLUND

620 Epigraph: “Was their ill fate sealed when in they looked.”—
Poetic Edda,
p. 164 (“Volundarkvitha,” stanza 21).

OPUS 110

622 Epigraph on the “‘sweet biscuits’ of culture”—
The Soviet Way of Life,
p. 409 (ch. 9: “The Society of Great Culture”).

622 Shostakovich’s cornucopia of food—G. Glikman (1945), in Schmalenberg, p. 182 (trans. by WTV).

623
Sovetskaya Musika:
“It is impossible to forget that Shostakovich’s work . . .”—Walter Z. Laquer and Geroge Lichtheim,
The Soviet Cultural Scene 1956-1957
(New York: Atlantic Books / Frederick A. Praeger, 1958), pp. 13-14, citing
Sovetskaya Musika
, 1956, no. 3, p. 9.

624 Akhmatova: “As if every flower burst into words”—Akhmatova (Hemschemeyer), p. 276 (“Music,” Zh. 452), “retranslated” by WTV.

624 V. Berlinsky on Shostakovich: “a lump of nerves”—Wilson, p. 244.

624 Eighth Symphony as “repulsive, ultra-individualist”—MacDonald, p. 191. The denouncer was Viktor Belyi, and the setting was, of course, the infamous Union of Soviet Composers’ congress in January 1948.

625 A nineteeth-century French traveler: “The Russians are not ghosts . . .”—Dumas, p. 55.

626 Zhdanov: “Leninism proceeds from the fact that our literature cannot be politically indifferent . . .”—Robert V. Daniels, ed.,
A Documentary History of Communism in Russia from Lenin to Gorbachev
(Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of New England, University of Vermont, 1993), pp. 236-37 (Report to the Leningrad Branch of the Soviet Union of Writers and the Leningrad City Committee of the Communist Party, 21 August 1946).

627 Mikhail Nikiforovich: “Begging your pardon, my dear Svetlana Alliluyeva”—Biagi, p. 23. (“Begging your pardon, my dear Svetlana Alliluyeva” was my Shostakovian addition.)

628 Comrade Alexandrov’s assessment: “A young, pretty blond woman with gentle brown eyes and a good figure”—Actually, G. Glikman (1945), in Schmalenberg, p. 182 (trans. by WTV). The Shostakoviches had at this time been married for over a decade.

630 Comrade Luria: “As stillborn as a law without the seal of Heaven on it . . .”—This and other aspects of the Jewish creed based on the texts and commentaries in Jacob Neusner,
Introduction to Rabbinic Literature
(New York: Doubleday, 1994).

631 Comrade Alexandrov’s note: “Only eight percent of Leningrad’s housing was destroyed” —Figure from Werth,
Leningrad,
p. 43.

632 Shostakovich to Schwartz: “What I’ve heard is better than anything by Shostakovich!” —Loosely after G. Glikman, in Schmalenberg, p. 199 (trans. by WTV).

634 Description of Shostakovich in 1948—After the illustration in Gojowy, p. 81 (“Im Zebtrum des Kulturkampfes 1948 . . .”).

635 The poster of Shostakovich in the copper helmet; Gavriil’s reaction to it and his sculpture —G. Glikman, Ibid., pp. 179-80.

637 Shostakovich: “Certain negative characteristics in my musical style prevented me from reconstructing myself”—
New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians,
ed. Stanley Sadie (Washington, D.C.: Macmillan Publishing Ltd., 1980), vol. 17, p. 265 (entry on Shostakovich, slightly reworded).

637 Description of Galya Shostakovich as a girl—After the illustration in Gojowy, p. 29 (“Dimitri Schostakowitsch mit seiner Tochter Galina”).

638 Akhmatova’s denunciation in
Leningradskaya Pravda
—Reeder, p. 296.

640 “Comrade Hitler”: “Conscience is a Jewish creation”—The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Oswiecim
,
p. 145 (Francizek Piper, “Living Conditions as Methods of Extermination,” quotation from H. Rauschning’s
Gespräche mit Hitler).

640 Khrennikov on Shostakovich: “Alien to the Soviet people”—MacDonald, p. 192.

640 Footnote:
Great Soviet Encyclopedia
remarks on the Allied Control Council—Vol. 13, p. 7, entry for same (slightly modified for context).

641 Shostakovich’s doublespeak to the activists: “I appreciate your valuable critical observations . . . I’m sure those sanctions will, mmm, to speak, inspire me to . . . future creative work and provide, er,
insights
. . . Rather than take a step backward I shall take a step, so to speak, forward”—Glikman, p. 27 (letter of 8 December 1943, meant sarcastically in original, further Shostakovich-ized by WTV).

645 Shostakovich to Ustvolskaya: “Illusions don’t die all at once—”—Loosely after Shostakovich and Volkov, p. 85.

645 Completion date of Ustvolskaya’s Sonata No. 2—February is my interpolation. I know only that it bears the date 1949.

645 Comrade Stalin: “We’ll take care of that problem, Comrade Shostakovich”—Shostakovich and Volkov, p. 148.

647 Marina Tsevtaeva (“in anger and in love”): “I refuse to be”—Op. cit., p. 122 (from “Poems to Czechoslovakia”).

648 Shostakovich: “I
do not like
too friendly or too antagonistic relationships between people.”—After Khentova (Mineyev); original p. 152, Mineyev, p. 18.

650 Shostakovich to Glikman: “Everything is so fine, so perfectly excellent, that I can find almost nothing to write about”—Glikman, p. 39 (letter of 2 February 1950; this would actually have been written five months before Shostakovich had gone to East Germany, but it’s a typical Shostakovich-ism. Glikman notes that whenever his friend wrote such things, he generally meant or at least felt the opposite).

651 Devotee of white keys and black keys: “This typical Russian girl, with her two braids . . .”—Dmitry Paperno,
Notes of a Moscow Pianist
(Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press, 1998), p. 199.

654 S. Skrebov: “I absolutely reject such music . . .”—Wilson, p. 251 (testimony of Lyubov’ Rudneva, slightly altered).

658
Great Soviet Encyclopedia
on God: “An imaginary figure of a powerful supernatural being.” —Vol. 3, entry on God.

660 Shostakovich to Glikman: “Dear Isaak Davidovich . . .”—Glikman, p. 49 (29 August 1953).

670 Shostakovich to Nikolayeva: “Which of them was luckier?”—After Shostakovich and Volkov, p. 98 (here Shostakovich was actually comparing himself to the executed Tukhachevsky).

670 Shostakovich to Nikolayeva: “Well, to grieve is also a right, but it’s not granted to everyone!”—After Shostakovich and Volkov, p. 136.

670 Shostakovich: “It was really terrible that he didn’t have a secretary. It used to be that Nina always picked up the telephone and said that he was away for two months”—After Gojowy, p. 106 (DDS to Denisov, trans. by WTV).

670 Chekhov: “Isn’t our living in town . . .”
—
Anton Chekhov,
The Tales of Chekhov,
vol. 5: “The Wife” & Other Stories, trans. Constance Garnett (New York: Ecco Press, 1985 repr. of 1918 Macmillan ed.), p. 267 (“The Man in a Case,” 1898), abridged by WTV.

671 The difference between a whistling shell and a sizzling one—Werth, p. 55.

672 The émigré Martynov on “Lady Macbeth”: “A warning of harmful deviation.”—Ivan Martynov,
Dmitri Shostakovich: The Man and His Work,
trans. T. Guralsky (New York: Philosophical Library, 1947), p. 47.

673 Discussion with Comrades Khubov et al about “Lady Macbeth”—Loosely based on the account in Glikman, pp. 261-62.

674 “It’s about, I, I, how the love could have been if the world weren’t full of vile things . . .”—After Shostakovich and Volkov, p. 108 (the composer was actually speaking of “Lady Macbeth”).

674 Shostakovich’s song: “Burn, candle, burn bright, in Lenin’s little red asshole” —G. Glikman, in Schmalenberg, p. 197 (trans. and slightly altered by WTV).

674 The Eleventh Symphony’s “secret references to the Soviet tanks now crushing the Hungarian uprising”—After Wilson, p. 317 (testimony of Lev Lebedinsky: “What we heard in this music was not the police firing on the crowd in front of the Winter Palace in 1905, but the Soviet tanks roaring in the streets of Budapest”).

674 Maxim: “Papa, what if they hang you for this?”—Loc. cit.

675 “A German”: “The Russians are masters in the construction of shellproof wooden field fortifications.”—Steven H. Newton, comp.,
German Battle Tactics on the Russian Front 1941-1945
(Atglen, Pennsylvania: Schiffer Military/Aviation History, 1994), p. 127 (Gustav Höhne, “In Snow and Mud: 31 Days of Attack Under Seydlitz During Early Spring of 1942”).

675 Shostakovich: “When I look back on my life, I realize that I’ve been a coward . . .” —After Wilson, p. 304 (testimony of Edik Denisov). For narrative reasons I have moved this scene from 1957, when it actually occurred, to 1958.

675 Address of the Kino House (Dom Kino)—Dr. Heinrich E. Schulz and Dr. Stephen S. Taylor,
Who’s Who in the USSR 1961/62
(Montreal: Intercontinental Book and Publishing Co., Ltd, 1962; printed in Austria; orig. comp. by Institute for the Study of the USSR, Munich), p. 320 (entry on Karmen). Let’s hope that the Kino House was in the same place in 1958.

680 Khrushchev and Shostakovich, 1960: Based on a scene described in Wilson, pp. 381-82 (testimony of Sergei Slonimsky).

681 Shostakovich to Glikman: “Life is far from easy. How I long . . .”—Glikman, p. 90 (letter of 30 April 1960).

681 Glikman’s secret approach to Elena Konstantinovskaya on Shostakovich’s behalf —This is a total fiction.

681 Number of faculty members at the Leningrad Conservatory—
Great Soviet Encyclopedia,
vol 14, p. 396 (entry on Leningrad Conservatory). Since this is a 1972-73 figure, it might be slightly higher than would have been the case a decade earlier.

682 Lebedinsky to Shostakovich: “You don’t have much luck with women, Dmitri Dmitriyevich. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say that you’ve racked up your share of failures” —Somewhat after Wilson, p. 352 (testimony of Lebedinsky).

682 Shostakovich to Irina Supinskaya: “Actually, I’m not against your calling the Seventh the Leningrad Symphony . . .”—Closely after Shostakovich and Volkov, p. 156.

683 Shostakovich to Lebedinsky: “I’d sign anything even if they shoved it at me upside down”—Wilson, p. 183 (actually not said to Lebedinsky but remembered by Y. P. Lyubimov, slightly altered).

683 Khrushchev: “Plainly speaking, why do the United States of America . . .”—N. H. Mager and Jacques Katel, comp. and ed.,
Conquest Without War: An Analytical Anthology of the Speeches, Interviews, and Remarks of Nikita Sergevich Khrushchev, with Commentary by Lenin, Stalin and Others
(New York: Pocket Books, 1961), p. 99 (at Czechoslovakian embassy, Moscow, quoted in
New York Times
10 May 1960).

685 Shostakovich on the beauty and plumpness of Meyerhold’s wife—Loosely after Shostakovich and Volkov, p. 78.

686 Marina Tsvetaeva : “I set my lips to the breast of the great round battling earth.”—Tsvetaeva, p. 20 (from “Insomnia,” 1916, stanza 6), “retranslated” by WTV.

687 Dostoyevsky: “Why do even the finest people . . . ?”—
Uncle’s Dream
etc., p. 109 (“White Nights”).

690 Shostakovich to Glikman: “I’m not going, you see . . . They’ll have to tie me up” —Slighly altered from Glikman, p. 92 (Glikman’s commentary).

691 German casualties of the Allied bombing of Dresden—Kershaw (p. 761) gives an estimate of “at least 35,000” victims.

692 “Even former S.S. officers were cooperating with us now . . .”—Gehlen (p. 249) names three who worked for East German intelligence in part “to avenge the Allied bombing of Dresden in 1945.”

693 Shostakovich: “The distinguishing feature of Jewish music . . .”—Wilson, p. 235 (testimony of Rafiil Matveivich Khozak).

694 Shostakovich to Glikman: “I wrote an ideologically deficient quartet . . .”—Slightly altered from Fay, p. 217.

695 “Akhmatova insists . . . that whoever doesn’t make continual reference to the torture chambers all around us is a criminal”—Loosely after Chukovskaya (p. 5), who was actually writing that she herself would be a criminal if she didn’t make at least some elliptical record of her conversations with the great poet.

696 Manfred Smolka: “There is no doubt that desertion and treachery . . .”—Richard J. Evans,
Rituals of Retribution: Capital Punishment in Germany 1600-1987
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 852. From the context, it is not clear whether Smolka’s words were in fact reported in the press.

697 The Kabbalists: “Every definition of God leads to heresy”—Matt, p. 32 (Abraham Isaac Kook, “Pangs of Cleansing,” in
Orot
).

697 Shostakovich: “When fate and all that is, you know, meaningless!”—Loosely after Shostakovich and Volkov, p. 17.

701 Conventional wisdom on Zoya: “Not long but beautifully did she live!”—Vsesoyuznuii Gospudarstvennui Fond Kinofilmov, p. 331 (entry on the movie “Zoya,” trans. WTV).

703 Leskov on Katerina’s final murder: She “threw herself on Sonetka like a strong pike on a soft little perch”—Nikolai Leskov,
The Enchanted Wanderer: Selected Tales,
trans. David Magarshak (London: Andre Deutsch Ltd., 1987, repr. of 1961 Secker & Warburg ed.), p. 50 (“Lady Macbeth of the Mtensk district,” 1865).

704 Shostakovich to F. P. Litvinova: “You know, my dear Flora Pavlovna, I would have displayed more brilliance . . .”—Fay, p. 268.