life, though outspoken in his criticism of the quality of Soviet writing.
He was one of the most honored authors of the Soviet period. His short stories and novels were published in massive editions. He was a member of the Supreme Soviet and Central Committee, awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor, and won both the Lenin and Stalin Prizes. He was acknowledged for his writing in the West as well, receiving the Nobel Prize of literature in 1965 for Tikhii Don. See also: SOCIALIST REALISM
Ermolaev, Herman. (1982). Mikhail Sholokhov and His Art. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Sholokhov, Mikhail. (1959). Virgin Soil Upturned, tr. Stephen Garry. New York: Knopf. Sholokhov, Mikhail. (1996). Quiet Flows the Don, tr. Robert Daglish. New York: Carroll amp; Graf.
The central text of the Josef Stalin-era party catechism, The History of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)-Short Course was compulsory reading for Soviet citizens of all walks of life between 1938 and 1956. This textbook traced the origins of the Russian revolutionary movement to tsarist industrialization efforts after 1861. Early agrarian populists gave way during the 1880s to Marxist Social Democrats, who acted in the name of the nascent working class. By the mid-1890s, Vladimir Ilich Lenin had emerged to guide this movement through police persecution and internal division (versus the Mensheviks, “Legal Marxists,” and Economists); his leadership allowed the Bolsheviks to seize power in 1917. Subsequently, Lenin plotted a course through civil war and foreign intervention toward the construction of a socialist economy. After Lenin’s death in 1924, Stalin navigated the USSR successfully through shock industrialization, agricultural collectivization, and the defense of the revolution’s gains against internal and external enemies. All but several sections on dialectical materialism were actually drafted by E. M. Yaroslavsky, P. N. Pospelov,
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
and V. G. Knorin before being edited for publication by Stalin and members of his entourage.
A seminal text, the Short Course epitomized a belief held by Soviet authorities after the early 1930s that history ought to play a fundamental role in party indoctrination efforts. This was signaled by a letter Stalin wrote to the journal Prole-tarskaya revolyutsia (Proletarian Revolution) in 1931 in which he denounced party historians for daring to question even minor aspects of Lenin’s leadership. Party historians floundered in the wake of this scandal, forcing Soviet authorities to clarify the party’s new expectations on “the historical front.” Existing party histories were too inaccessible and insufficiently inspiring for what was still a poorly educated society. A long-standing focus on anonymous social forces and abstract materialist analysis was to be replaced by a new emphasis on heroic individuals, pivotal events, and the connection of party history to that of Soviet society as a whole. These demands reflected the Soviet leadership’s intention to treat both party and state history as motivational propaganda.
Editorial brigades under Yaroslavsky, Knorin, P. P. Popov, Lavrenti Beria, and others struggled to address these new demands, although the situation was complicated by the Great Terror. Repeated exposure of traitors within the Soviet elite between 1936 and 1938 made it difficult to write a stable narrative about the party. A lack of progress led the party leadership to ask Yaroslavsky, Pospelov, and Knorin to combine forces on a single advanced text. Knorin’s arrest during the summer of 1937, however, forced Yaroslavsky and Pospelov to focus exclusively on the jointly authored manuscript, redrafting it under the supervision of Stalin, Andrei Zhdanov, and Vyacheslav Molotov.
Released in the fall of 1938, the Short Course was hailed as an ideological breakthrough that succeeded in situating party history within a broader Russo-Soviet historical context. Moreover, its tight focus on Lenin and Stalin ensured that the text would survive future purges (although at the cost of conflating party history with the cult of personality). Ubiquitous after the printing of more than forty-two million copies, the Short Course reigned over party educational efforts for eighteen years, authoritative until Nikita Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin and the personality cult in 1956. See also: STALIN, JOSEF VISSARIONOVICH
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Brandenberger, David. (1999). “The ‘Short Course’ to Modernity: Stalinist History Textbooks, Mass Culture, and the Formation of Russian Popular National Identity, 1934-1956.” Ph.D. diss, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.
(1906-1975), highly controversial composer, at the same time outstanding musical representative of the Soviet Union and tragic figure in tension between acceptance and rejection of his music by the Soviet regime.
Dmitry Shostakovich’s acculturation and his musical training at the Petrograd, then Leningrad, conservatory took place in the new Soviet state. Overnight Shostakovich rose to fame with a rousing performance of his first symphony in 1926. He was seen as a beacon of hope in Soviet music. The young composer succeeded in fulfilling the highflying expectations in the following years. Overwhelming applause was given to the opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District (1934). This coarsely realistic work based on a novel by Nikolay Leskov was celebrated as a first milestone in the development of a genuine Soviet musical theatre. In 1936, however, a devastating review based on ideological criteria was published in Pravda. Shostakovich was caught-after Josef Stalin had watched the opera with greatest displeasure-in the trap of the aggressive, intrigue-dominated cultural policy. The composer was branded in public as aesthetizing formalist and his work as extreme left abnormality. These typical expressions of Soviet politico-cultural discourse meant that his music was too dissonant and complicated for Party taste. Ensuing condemnations not only by the officialdom but even by previously enthusiastic fellow composers greatly worried Shostakovich, as did the arrest and execution of his friend and patron Soviet Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky in the course of the Great Terror in 1937. Nonetheless, during the same year he managed to rehabilitate himself with his fifth symphony. In fact, the work signals a clear stylistic turn to a more moderate musical language, but to attribute this exclusively to political pressure seems misguided. Previous works indicate a break with aesthetic radicalism; moreover, Shostakovich practiced all his life through diverse styles of composi1388 tion. He even wrote operetta- like light music, which cannot be dismissed simply as reluctantly performed commissioned work. From the end of the 1930s, however, Shostakovich successfully developed forms of musical expression that realized his aesthetical ideas and at the same time met the demands of Socialist Realism for comprehensibility and popular appeal. His individuality and heterogeneity, his inclination toward the grotesque and sarcasm, and the profound seriousness and expressiveness of his works left the audience fascinated, but again and again provoked conflicts with the official state organs. In spite of vehement accusations in 1948, he soon was integrated again into the Soviet music elite, but only the Thaw following Stalin’s death made general conditions more favorable for the composer and his oeuvre. During his last two decades he could act as a respected personality of Soviet cultural life.
Shostakovich and his work have been highly disputed and exposed to ideologically charged interpretations. Shostakovich was seen as a faithful communist, an opportunistic conformist, a secret dissident, or an oppressed genius. In any case, he was a Soviet citizen, who, like many others, stood by his home country but also got in trouble with its officials. Regardless of all political factors, he was one of the outstanding composers of the Soviet Union and perhaps the last great symphonist of music history. See also: CULTURAL REVOLUTION; MUSIC; PURGES, THE GREAT; THAW, THE
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bartlett, Rosamund. (2000). Shostakovich in Context. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fanning, David, ed. (1998). Shostakovich Studies. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Fay, Laurel E. (2000). Shostakovich: A Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ho, Allan B. (2000). Shostakovich Reconsidered. London: Toccata Press.
Staged trials of opponents of the Soviet regime held in Moscow between 1936 and 1938.
The most visible aspect of Josef Stalin’s Great Purges was a series of three Moscow show trials
