On January 28, 1936, the Soviet-controlled newspaper Pravda published a review of Dmitri Shostakovich’s opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, calling it a “petty-bourgeois, ‘formalist’ attempt to create originality through cheap clowning.”[1] This criticism, widely understood to reflect Stalin’s disapproval, marked the beginning of a difficult period for classical composers such as Shostakovich. Under Stalin’s reign of the Soviet Union, music was expected to serve the state and promote Soviet ideals while avoiding anything deemed too experimental or individualistic by the Soviet Union. Shostakovich and Sergei Prokofiev, Soviet composers who lived under Stalin’s rule, pushed back against Stalin's constant pressure to conform musically to the Soviet Union’s ideas. While composers like Shostakovich and Prokofiev were pressured to conform, they found ways to resist subtly. Along with many of the other arts, Stalin strived to use music as a medium for propaganda, suppressing dissent, and promoting nationalism. Stalin’s attempt to censor contrary ideas and use music as a means of propaganda ultimately ended in failure.

To understand how Stalin’s regime failed in its use of music as propaganda, it is first necessary to examine his goals. In 1932, the Soviet government established the Union of Soviet Composers (U.S.C.), an organization designed to regulate and control musical output. Membership in this union was mandatory for composers who wished to have their work performed and earn a living. The U.S.C. functioned as a gatekeeping institution, ensuring that music adhered to government-approved themes and ideologies.[2] A 1934 interview with eight members of the U.S.C. outlined its priorities: The U.S.C. stimulates activity in the following directions: 1. Musical composition in general. 2. Music for children, Pioneers, Komsomols, &c. 3. Music for workers in factories and collectives, the Red Army, &c. 4. Music for the theatre. 5. Musical criticism and historical research. 6. Books on theory, pedagogics, &c. 7. Investigation and encouragement of national folk-music. 8. Gramophone recording. 9. Mass propaganda-i.e., encouragement of amateurs in the appreciation and performance of music. 10. Concerts, opera production, radio.[3] These objectives can be categorized into two main groups: stimulating musical propaganda and suppressing undesirable artistic expressions. The Soviet Union strived to use music for “mass propaganda” and to criticize music that did not adhere to their rules, especially those that fit their nationalistic ideals.

This was the basis for the governmental intervention targeted at Shostakovich in 1936. However, these 1936 attacks on Shostakovich were a counterproductive tactic by the Soviet Union to use him as propaganda. The aforementioned Pravda excerpt was part of a wave of criticism that culminated in the loss of his job as a teacher at the Leningrad Conservatory and almost resulted in his death in February of 1936.[4] Shostakovich attempted to regain the regime’s approval through his fifth symphony, including subtitling it: “A Soviet Artist’s Response to Just Criticism.”[5] When he premiered it in November of 1937 it was received incredibly well. In fact, the crowd that was mixed with Soviet officials and critics gave an ovation that lasted for over 40 minutes, almost as long as the piece itself; this officially put Shostakovich back in good favor with the regime.[6] But even this work, meant to glorify the regime and put him back in the good will of the union, contained elements of irony. Musicologist Jennifer Gerstel noted that in the finale of the fifth symphony, Shostakovich exaggerated the optimism and triumph to a ridiculous extent.[7] Shostakovich commented on this exaggerated triumph: I think that it is clear to everyone what happens in the Fifth. The rejoicing is forced, created under threat, as in Boris Godunov. It’s as if someone were beating you with a stick and saying, “Your business is rejoicing, your business is rejoicing,” and you rise, shaky, and go marching off, muttering, “Our business is rejoicing, our business is rejoicing.”[8]

Shostakovich felt that the triumph in his fifth symphony was exaggerated because of how forced it was. This is a failure on the part of the regime; the excessive fear they put him in after the attacks in 1936 caused his fifth symphony to contain hyperbolic triumph, which itself made a mockery of the regime’s excessive forced optimism. This also marked a more general failure of the regime to effectively use Shostakovich’s music as effective propaganda, as instead of glorifying the regime, this work mocked it.

Subsequently Shostakovich’s Ninth Symphony demonstrates Stalin's failure to use music to effectively glorify the Soviet Union. After the Russian victory against Germany in World War II, Stalin expected Shostakovich to write a grand symphony to celebrate the victory.[9] Historically, a composer’s Ninth Symphony is grand and profound, so the regime expected him to produce a similarly monumental Ninth Symphony. Stalin was obsessed with the significance of ninth symphonies because of their history as majestic works. Examples of grand ninth symphonies include Beethoven’s Ninth and Bruckner’s Ninth; he demanded a majestic and grandiose work like these that glorified the regime with very grand orchestration.[10] Having no other choice, Shostakovich wrote his Ninth Symphony for the Regime, but filled it not with grand, epic melodies, but with ironic “Haydn-esque, joke-like reaction[s] to the Communist Party’s expectation of a victory symphony.”[11] That is one way Philip Lenberg describes this piece in his PhD dissertation about Shostakovich’s Ninth Symphony. Lenberg concludes in this dissertation that Shostakovich’s Ninth Symphony was “mocking the anti-Semitic martial state of Stalinist Soviet Union.”[12] Along with mocking anti-Semitism, further analysis reveals many other forms of ridicule.

The brevity of the piece makes a mockery of the regime’s expectations of an excessively grand Ninth Symphony. First, this piece is under 25 minutes in length, which is historically short for a symphony, even for Shostakovich. For comparison, Shostakovich’s fifth symphony is slightly under an hour and his eighth is slightly over an hour. The excessive brevity of this piece undermines the grandiose nature that Stalin expected from this work.

The piece consists of many themes, labeled in the order they are introduced: A-theme, the B-theme, etc. The A-theme mocks the excessive triumph expected from Shostakovich. It starts in E-flat major, a historically heroic key, the same one used in Beethoven's “Eroica” Symphony. In the very first phrase, this heroic key is undermined with the G-flat trill (Figure 1). Since G in an E-flat major chord defines the major chord (the only difference between an E-flat major chord and an E-flat minor chord is the third, either G or G-flat), it undermines the heroism of the key, as if he is saying, “Look at how heroic we really are.” Furthermore, this G-flat is the climax of the phrase; the music builds in volume towards it, it is accented, and it is twice as long as any other note in the phrase. Shostakovich emphasized this note to undermine the heroism throughout the piece. He then repeated this figure several more times throughout the movement to highlight the lack of heroism of the key (Figures 2, 3 & 4), and thus mock the Soviet Union.

Lastly, Shostakovich’s use of brass instrumentation further mocks the Soviet Union’s excessive patriotism. Shostakovich includes a pseudo-patriotic brass theme in his ninth symphony in a musically unfitting place in order to mock the misplaced patriotism of the regime. The symphony includes a cliché V-I resolution (one of the most basic melodic motifs) that becomes very loud and promises the grand march sound that Stalin wanted (Figure 4), only to suddenly get quiet to cause the reverse effect. This theme is then followed by a delicate, silly-sounding piccolo solo (Figures 5 and 6). He later reuses the brass motif, but makes it even more out of place; the trombone is meant to sound like it comes in early until it finally comes in on time (Figures 8 and 9). This is a comment on how the Soviet Union, just like how the trombone literally gets ahead of itself and repeatedly comes in early, Shostakovich comments here that the excessive patriotism of the regime often metaphorically gets ahead of itself. Even Stalin understood how great a failure this piece turned out to be, thus he decided to ban it in 1948, three years after its premiere.[13] Therefore this Ninth Symphony marks a complete failure of the regime to use Shostakovich as a tool for propaganda.

Just as Shostakovich used musical motifs to undermine the success of the Soviet Union, Prokofiev also rebelled against the Soviet Union’s restrictions through his music. Even when Prokofiev composed grandiose works for the Soviet Union, Stalin’s paranoia prevented him from using the music effectively. For example, the ban of Prokofiev’s Ivan the Terrible exemplifies a failure on the part of the regime to effectively use music for propaganda. To understand this, it is necessary to understand the background of the Stalin Prize. The Stalin Prize, conceived in 1939, was presented from 1941 to 1953 as a Soviet alternative to the Nobel Prize and was given across various artistic fields. It had 3 tiers: first-, second, and third-class.[14] Prokofiev was awarded 6 Stalin Prizes total, but he was not respected by the regime as much as Shostakovich.[15] Two of the pieces that won Prokofiev a Stalin Prize were his Aleksandr Nevsky (1938) and the two parts of Ivan the Terrible (1942, 1945).[16] The Ivan the Terrible project took five years to complete, largely due to the interference of an intrusive Soviet committee that meticulously scrutinized its production to ensure it aligned with Soviet ideology and glorified the regime.[17] Despite this extensive oversight, making it one of Prokofiev's least rebellious works, Stalin still chose to ban the second part in 1946.[18] The ban of Ivan the Terrible marked a substantial failure of the Soviet Union to effectively use Prokofiev as a tool for propaganda. Stalin succeeded at commissioning a successful work of propaganda that supported the regime, yet his excessive paranoia got the best of him. Not only was this a large waste of time and resources, but it also reduced the credibility of the Stalin prize, which it had been awarded to this piece before the ban. In trying to suppress rebellion, Stalin destroyed a nationalistic piece of propaganda because he was too paranoid about his public image.

Prokofiev’s Seventh Piano Sonata also marks a failure on the part of the regime to effectively suppress musical rebellion. Prokofiev's Seventh Piano Sonata, one of his so-called "War Sonatas," won him a Stalin prize and was glorified by the regime in a similar way to Shostakovich's seventh (“Leningrad”) symphony.[19] Prokofiev’s seventh sonata contains many rebellious elements. Most of the seventh sonata's themes were composed in 1939 when the Soviet Union and Germany were still in a state of non-aggression.[20] George Weickhardt, the author of “Dictatorship and Music,” argues that many elements of the piece including the so-called “invasion theme” in the first movement can just as easily be interpreted as a reflection of Prokofiev’s struggles under the regime.[21] The regime failed to notice the rebellion in this sonata, and they even rewarded Prokofiev for it.

The 1948 Meeting of the Soviet Union was one of Stalin’s most successful tactics, yet it only was effective until Stalin’s death in 1953. On February 10, 1948, composers and critics were under scrutiny; the USSR held a meeting in which limitations were placed on major Soviet composers including Prokofiev and Shostakovich. They published a resolution accusing many of these composers of formalism.[22] Ian Macdonald, musicologist and author of The New Shostakovich, defines the word formalism as, “one of the pejoratives that could be attached to a Soviet citizen that year [...] despite the fact that few had any idea of what it meant.”[23] By labeling music as formalist, the government could condemn any work that did not align with their ideological expectations, even if its meaning was unclear or subjective. This ambiguity allowed the state to wield formalism as a political weapon rather than a concrete artistic critique. Since “few had any idea of what it meant,” the accusation was nearly impossible to refute, forcing composers into a precarious position where any deviation from state-approved styles could result in professional ruin, exile, or death.

For Shostakovich, however, the 1948 attacks failed to silence his musical defiance, as he continued to compose works that critiqued the regime, even if they could not be premiered at the time. Shostakovich had just started writing his violin concerto when the 1948 meetings started, finishing it only a few months later in March.[24] In November of 1948, Stalinist anti-Semitism intensified to an extreme.[25] During this period, 400 Jewish artists, musicians, and writers were arrested and killed.[26] Shostakovich firmly opposed anti-Semitism, declaring that he would break off “with even good friends if [he] saw that they had any anti-Semitic tendencies.”[27] Thus, in response to the increasing repression, Shostakovich composed the song cycle From Jewish Folk Poetry that challenged Soviet anti-Semitism. Though he could not premiere it under Stalin’s rule, the piece was finally performed in 1955, after Stalin’s death, and was met with widespread public acclaim.[28] That same year, he also premiered his Violin Concerto No. 1, another work composed in secret during the height of Soviet censorship.[29] After losing his job, the pent up anger from Shostakovich against the regime was so great that he made a composition called Rayok that was too rebellious to even be performed in his lifetime; Macdonald comments, “This piece was not so much ‘for the drawer’ as for the sake of its composer’s sanity.”[30] Some of his pent up anger towards the regime was still present in the two other works mentioned: From Jewish Folk Poetry and his Violin Concerto both critique Stalin’s regime and anti-Semitism during this period, and there is no doubt the 1948 meetings contributed to the feelings of distaste for the Soviet Union expressed in these pieces.[31] Stalin’s 1948 attacks failed to silence Shostakovich, who continued composing in secret and published many of his works after Stalin’s death, including these two pieces, which featured critiques and mockery of the regime.

Stalin’s attempt to mold Soviet music into a vehicle for propaganda ultimately failed, as composers like Shostakovich and Prokofiev found ways to resist, even under intense scrutiny. His efforts to exploit these artists were thwarted not only by their resilience but also by the regime’s fundamental misunderstanding of music’s expressive power. By imposing rigid ideological demands, the government inadvertently pushed composers towards greater defiance, fueling works that concealed subversive critiques beneath their seemingly patriotic surfaces. The experiences of Shostakovich and Prokofiev demonstrate that, even under one of history's most oppressive authoritarian regimes, music can serve as a powerful instrument of resistance. As Shostakovich himself famously said, “Words are not my genre. I never lie in music.”[32]