An Answer to Those Who Still Abuse Shostakovich
Have revisionists kidnapped the memory of the Russian composer? Irina Shostakovich criticised Solomon Volkov on the anniversary of the composer's death. Read Volkov's reply in New York Times.

Irina Shostakovich
NYT 20 August 2000

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MOSCOW -- Irina Shostakovich is the widow of Dmitri Shostakovich. They married in 1962, and she was his third wife. The following are her reflections, translated by Irina Roberts, on her husband's life and posthumous reputation.

Dmitri Shostakovich was born in 1906. He enjoyed early success as a composer, but his relations with the Soviet regime deteriorated. In 1936, his opera "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District" was condemned in Pravda as "muddle instead of music," and he was denounced by friends and colleagues. His Fifth Symphony restored his standing in 1937. In 1948 he was denounced again, with others, for "formalist" tendencies and forced to recant. Though the climate of repression relaxed somewhat after the death of Stalin in 1953, recriminations persisted, and Shostakovich bore the marks of trauma to the end of his life.

In 1973, he was named as a signatory to a letter denouncing the dissident Russian physicist Andrei Sakharov. Earlier, he had been named as a signatory to a statement demanding the release of the Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis, who was imprisoned by Greece's right-wing regime from 1967 to 1970.

Mrs. Shostakovich refers to Leo Arnshtam, a film director, and Isaak Glikman, a drama critic and historian. Both were friends of Shostakovich's throughout his lifetime. Lev Lebedinsky, a musicologist, befriended Shostakovich in the 50's.

The book to which she refers, "Testimony: The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich," as related to and edited by Solomon Volkov, was published in 1979 by Harper & Row and has since been the subject of a lively controversy over its authenticity.

mitri Shostakovich died 25 years ago this month. Since then, his music has been alive and has gained in popularity; the number of his fans has risen in leaps and bounds, and his music has found its way into the hearts of people in many different countries. At present, young performers are taking the place of Shostakovich's deceased contemporaries and lending their skills and talent to the art of performing his music.

Shostakovich was loved and recognized in the music world ever since his youth; that music world tried to protect and shelter him from the wrath of his persecutors during the most difficult times, even when it was dangerous and the forces were unequal. By defending him, people who were themselves oppressed and scared were defending their own human dignity and their right to create. Only very few of them had the courage to protest openly, but most musicians persistently rebuffed all the attacks, mockery and incitement mounted against him. Of course, there were also rabid persecutors who were eager to please and expected to benefit from such persecution, as well as born informers and those who were simply easily persuaded and not very bright.

Dmitri Shostakovich was as defenseless as the rest of us, but he had much more to lose. He had to worry about the future of his work, which was treated shamelessly. Consequently, he considered it more important than anything else to be worthy of his talent and to develop it, evading his enemies and misleading them whenever possible. In the process, he managed to help many other people, protecting and supporting them, and for this he is remembered with gratitude.

But not by everyone. Even now there are some people who nurse grievances and feel offended that he did not help promote them, even though it seemed to them he could have.

Then there are those who believe they are as talented as he was but think that he was far too cunning and smart, and that they were innocent and defenseless; that he prevented them from making it to the top by the mere fact of his existence.

There was yet another category: young people with progressive views, who have aged by now, who tried to push Shostakovich forward and force him to present their ideas in a way they themselves were too cowardly to do. Furthermore, they were prepared to follow him, hide behind him, while striving to achieve their most ambitious goals.

Everyone who knew the Soviet way of life has his or her own ideas about it, but it needs a lot of courage to defend your ideas personally and not use someone else as a shield.

But now Dmitri Shostakovich is gone, and anything goes. The time has come to exploit his name, even to the point of abusing and humiliating his memory. Things are easier now, and people have found their voices. The dead are defenseless.

They are now recalling what happened and what didn't and, by attributing various scandalous remarks to the great composer, are finding it easy to settle old scores, to appropriate his ideas and pass them off as their own.

Then, too, by collecting true and false testimonies from his aging contemporaries and putting them through the grinder, people can create any picture they wish and documentarily "prove" that Shostakovich had no talent, that he was cunning and knew how to cheat, that he was weak and dishonest. But it is also possible to prove the opposite.

The story of his life has been turned into a battlefield. Of course, everything and everyone is pulled into the line of fire. They shout obscenities on the Internet, publish articles and write books and plays about Shostakovich; someone even went to the trouble of composing an opera about him.

These people were and are still trying, but failing, to establish their right to possess him. And it does not matter whether they shout from the reactionary positions of party ideology or act under the avant-garde flag; the right and the left meet in the end.

Among them are some of his talented pupils who were professionally unsuccessful, envious colleagues, and music critics who are interested in scandal above all else. Although they do not know or understand the historical evidence involved, they are not ashamed to repeat any lies and pass them off as established facts.

I take the liberty of claiming that people who have no morals, which are vital in all human relations, will never understand Shostakovich and his music. Ask yourself before you accuse someone else: how would you have behaved at such a difficult time and in such difficult circumstances?

The only consolation is that no one can ever hurt or upset Dmitri Shostakovich again, and time will eventually set everything right.

Volkov and 'Testimony'

During interviews, I am often asked about the veracity of the book "Testimony" by Solomon Volkov, published as Shostakovich's memoirs. Here is what I think.

Mr. Volkov worked for Sovetskaya Muzyka magazine, where Shostakovich was a member of the editorial board. As a favor to Boris Tishchenko, his pupil and colleague, Shostakovich agreed to be interviewed by Mr. Volkov, whom he knew little about, for an article to be published in Sovetskaya Muzyka. There were three interviews; each lasted two to two and a half hours, no longer, since Shostakovich grew tired of extensive chat and lost interest in the conversation. Two of the interviews were held in the presence of Mr. Tishchenko. The interviews were not taped.

Mr. Volkov arrived at the second interview with a camera (Mr. Volkov's wife, a professional photographer, always took pictures of Mr. Volkov with anyone who might become useful in the future) and asked Mr. Tishchenko and me to take pictures "as a keepsake." He brought a photograph to the third interview and asked Shostakovich to sign it. Shostakovich wrote his usual words: "To dear Solomon Maseyevich Volkov, in fond remembrance. D. Shostakovich 13.XI.1974." Then, as if sensing something amiss, he asked for the photograph back and, according to Mr. Volkov himself, added: "In memory of our talks on Glazunov, Zoshchenko and Meyerhold. D. Sh."

That was a list of the topics covered during the interviews. It shows that the conversation was about musical and literary life in prewar Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) and nothing more. Some time later, Mr. Volkov brought Shostakovich a typed version of their conversations and asked him to sign every page at the bottom. It was a thin sheaf of papers, and Shostakovich, presuming he was going to see the proof sheets, did not read them. I came into Shostakovich's study as he was standing at his desk signing those pages without reading them. Mr. Volkov took the pages and left.

I asked Shostakovich why he had been signing every page, as it seemed unusual. He replied that Mr. Volkov had told him about some new censorship rules according to which his material would not be accepted by the publishers without a signature. I later learned that Mr. Volkov had already applied for an exit visa to leave the country and was planning to use that material as soon as he was abroad.

oon after that, Shostakovich died, and Mr. Volkov put his plans into further action.

Mr. Volkov had told a lot of people about those pages, boasting his journalist's luck. This threatened to complicate his exit. It seems that he managed to contrive an audience with Enrico Berlinguer, secretary of the Italian Communist Party, who happened to be visiting Moscow, showed him the photograph signed by Shostakovich and complained that he, Mr. Volkov, a friend of Shostakovich's, was not allowed to leave the country for political reasons. In any case, an article about Mr. Volkov and the same photograph appeared in the Italian Communist newspaper La Stampa. Apparently, it did the trick.

I met Mr. Volkov at a concert and asked him to come and see me (but without his wife, as he had wanted) and leave me a copy of the material he had, which was unauthorized (since it had never been read by Shostakovich). Mr. Volkov replied that the material had already been sent abroad, and if Mr. Volkov was not allowed to leave, the material would be published with additions. He soon left the country, and I never saw him again.

Later on, I read in a booklet that came with the phonograph record of the opera "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District" conducted by Mstislav Rostropovich, which was released abroad, that Mr. Volkov was Shostakovich's assistant with whom he had written his memoirs. Elsewhere I read that when Shostakovich was at home alone, he would phone Mr. Volkov and they would see each other in secret.

Only someone with rich fantasy could invent something like that; it was not true, if only because at that time Shostakovich was very ill and was never left on his own. And we lived outside Moscow at the dacha. There was no opportunity for secret meetings. Mr. Volkov's name is nowhere to be found in Shostakovich's correspondence of the time, in his letters to Isaak Glikman, for example.

Mr. Volkov found a publisher in the United States, and the advertising campaign began. Extracts from the book appeared in a German magazine and reached Russia, where at that time there was state monopoly on intellectual property. VAAP, the Soviet copyright agency, asked for verification of Shostakovich's signature. American experts confirmed its authenticity. The book was published. Each chapter of the book was preceded by words written in Shostakovich's hand: "Have read. Shostakovich."

I can vouch that this was how Shostakovich signed articles by different authors planned for publication. Such material was regularly delivered to him from Sovetskaya Muzyka magazine for review, then the material was returned to the editorial department, where Mr. Volkov was employed. Unfortunately, the American experts, who did not speak Russian, were unable and certainly had no need to correlate Shostakovich's words with the contents of the text.

As for the additions, Mr. Volkov himself told me that he had spoken to a lot of different people about Shostakovich, in particular to Lev Lebedinsky, who later became an inaccurate memoirist and with whom Shostakovich had ended all relations a long time before. A friend of Shostakovich's, Leo Arnshtam, a cinema director, saw Mr. Volkov on his request, and Arnshtam later regretted it. A story about a telephone conversation with Stalin was written from his words. All this was included in the book as though it were coming from Shostakovich himself.

The book was translated into many languages and published in a number of countries, except Russia. Mr. Volkov at first claimed that the American publishers were against the Russian edition, then that the royalties in Russia were not high enough, then that those offering to publish it in Russia were crooks and, finally, that he had sold his manuscript to a private archive and it was not available anymore. Retranslation into Russian relieves the author of responsibility and permits new liberties.

Other 'Signatures'

Dmitri Shostakovich was accused of signing a letter from the intelligentsia against the academician Andrei Sakharov published in 1973 in Pravda. Yes, Shostakovich's name is among those signatories, but he never signed the letter. On the morning of the day in question, I answered a multitude of phone calls from Pravda, first saying that Shostakovich was out, then saying he was at the dacha. When they said they were going to send a car to the dacha, we simply went out and did not come back until the evening when the issue of the paper was already in print. Nevertheless, Shostakovich's name appeared among the signatories.

Some time ago we tried to obtain the original letter, but Pravda refused us, while admitting that "there was such a practice at that time." But I know it without being told. The same thing had happened earlier with a letter in support of Mikis Theodorakis. At that time Shostakovich was in the hospital. There was no use questioning the signature after it had already happened.

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