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Written in 1982 by David Pownall and set in 1948, the play pits Stalin and his Cultural Commissar against renowned composers Shostakovich and Prokofiev, with Stalin bent on convincing the artists to create in the service of the working class.
Why shouldn’t their music be more attuned to the sensibilities of that audience?
The musicians know Stalin could be persuasive. After succeeding Lenin in 1924 and, to remain in power, he had killed hundreds of thousands of people in addition to those he sent to the forced labor camps known as the Gulag.
Stalin reminds the composers of his own working class origins, and of his poetry writing.
The composers, symbolizing the creative spirit of all human beings, resist coercion as best they can while attempting to indulge Stalin and not displease the great leader.
And so the grand dance plays out.
There is the sense that Stalin understands their resistance, that he knows that, to create, the artist mut be free, and that only then can the work become a sublime expression.
But Stalin resents it and fights it.
He’s fresh out of leading Russia to victory against Germany in WWII after suffering the loss of 20 million people.
‘They died for me,’ he says at one point.
Is Stalin envious of the creators he is trying to coerce into writing the music he wants?
He knew he had great powers. He had roused Russians to defend against Germany’s invading their territory in June 1941 and, through enormous…
