An ideologically pure song for Soviet citizens goes:
Urals! Urals!
Iron ore, watth out! . . .
By the Party's orders,
Pig iron must be got!
Last week it looked as if all Soviet composers might soon be setting similar gems to music. The Party's witch-hunting Central Committee, in a fourth postwar decree aimed at keeping Soviet arts in tune with Soviet policy, rained brimstone on the foremost of Russian musicmakers.
Among the scorched was Sergei Prokofiev, whom many regard as the world's greatest living composer, much of whose music, including his Fifth Symphony, has...
To continue reading:
or
Log-In
