Testimony by Dmitri Shostakovich

Edited by Solomon Volkov

First published: 1979

Type of work: Memoir

Time of work: 1906-1975

Locale: The Soviet Union

Principal Personages:

• Shostakovich| Dmitri, a preeminent Soviet composer
• Stalin| Joseph, the General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party and leader of the Soviet Union, 1928-1953
• Glazunov| Aleksandr, a noted Russian composer, director of the Petrograd (Leningrad) Conservatory, 1905-1928

Form and Content

Testimony is the story of Dmitri Shostakovich’s life from his childhood to just before his death in 1975. The autobiography was written in 1974 and 1975, with the assistance of the music critic Solomon Volkov, Shostakovich’s friend, who transcribed his conversations with the composer, edited them, and wrote the introduction. Shostakovich undertook the project on the condition that Volkov would not publish the book until after his death.

Shostakovich asserts (not entirely convincingly) that his own life is not interesting, but he suggests that there is value in revealing the truth about those whom he has known. In the course of relating a series of vignettes about these diverse people and his relations with them, he provides a vivid history of Soviet culture, particularly its music and theater. The people whom Shostakovich discusses are chiefly Soviet figures, but some foreigners are included as well.

In the English translation Shostakovich’s memoirs comprise 291 pages, with an additional forty-two pages of introductory material. The book also contains thirty-nine photographs, a listing of Shostakovich’s major compositions, titles, and awards, an index, and detailed notes about most of the persons Shostakovich mentions. Although originally written in Russian, the work was first published in English, translated by Antonina W. Bouis. In his preface, Volkov recounts the origin of the book. Shostakovich, whom Volkov first met in 1960, asked Volkov to work with him on his memoirs beginning in 1971 after the latter had published a prominent work on Leningrad composers. Volkov suggests that Shostakovich chose him because of his youth and his devotion to music. He believes that Shostakovich decided to record his memoirs in order to justify himself, as he had been criticized for many years for not speaking out against the Soviet authorities. In an introduction following the preface, Volkov gives an overview of Shostakovich’s life and work.

The text of the memoir is divided into eight untitled and unnumbered chapters, sustained sections appropriately combined by Volkov with Shostakovich’s approval. The first deals with Shostakovich’s reasons for recording his memoirs and his early training. In the second chapter, he talks about his life at the Petrograd Conservatory and his relationship to his teacher Aleksandr Glazunov. The third chapter concerns the late 1920’s, when Shostakovich was at the Moscow Art Theatre; he reminisces about his relationship with Vsevolod Meyerhold and Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky. The fourth chapter is chiefly about the period during which Shostakovich was in disgrace (1936-1941) because of his opera Ledi Makbet Mtsenskogo (1934; Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District). The next includes some reflections on the harshness of the 1930’s and on Glazunov. The last three chapters contain more of his reminiscences about Soviet and foreign intellectuals and their attitudes toward Stalin’s Soviet Union in the 1930’s and 1940’s. These recollections, however, do not proceed in strict chronological order; throughout, Shostakovich refers to incidents from his past out of sequence. He only briefly touches on experiences he had after World War II. Furthermore, Shostakovich does not discuss his music very much except as it affected the society and politics of the time. This is a work portraying Russian society, not a technical monograph on musicology.

Critical Context

When Testimony was published in the West after Shostakovich’s death, his relatives denounced it as a fraud. This reaction was probably motivated by fear of reprisals, although Shostakovich does not attack Socialism, the Soviet system itself, or the Russian motherland. He was a great defender of Russia even though he himself was of Polish descent and his great-grandfather and grandfather had participated in the Polish uprisings against the czars in 1830 and 1863. With Testimony, Shostakovich stands not only as a musical giant of the twentieth century but also as an important witness of Soviet society, adding his voice to those of Nadezhda Mandelstam, Solzhenitsyn, and others who have recorded the horrors and absurdities of Stalinism. In particular, Testimony provides a picture of Stalin which can aid in evaluating one of the most controversial leaders of the modern age.

Shostakovich’s autobiography is a book of contradictions. Here is a party man denouncing the Party. He relates a tale of hardship, sorrow, and fear. He describes the slanders and denunciations he underwent. Yet he was honored throughout his life, winning the Stalin Prize—awarded by the general secretary himself—thirteen times from 1941 to 1951. Nevertheless, honesty is the basis and survival is the theme of this autobiography. In one part Shostakovich tells of his enjoyment of the American musical comedy Fiddler on the Roof, which he saw in New York. He understood the message of the show to be a yearning for the homeland. Shostakovich himself, however, was also a fiddler on the roof, trying to hold his balance while scratching out a passable tune.

Bibliography

Devlin, James. Shostakovich, 1983.

Norris, Christopher, ed. Shostakovich: The Man and His Music, 1982.

Roseberry. Shostakovich: His Life and Times, 1981.

Sollertinsky, Dmitri, and Ludmilla Sollertinsky. Pages from the Life of Dmitri Shostakovich, 1980.