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Below: Yevgeny Zamyatin


SHOSTAKOVICH, ZAMYATIN, GOLDSTEIN, AND THE BOLT

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A hoax unmasked

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In 1987 a paper by the expatriate Russian musicologist Mikhail Goldstein about a
hitherto unsuspected relationship between Shostakovich and the anti-communist
writer Yevgeny Zamyatin appeared among a dozen delivered to a conference[1] held
by the Slavic Languages Department of the University of Lausanne. Summarising
this paper in DSCH XXI, I noted that several of Goldstein's controversial claims
- contradicting the account given in Testimony - were factually suspect. One
such - that the writer Yevgeny Zamyatin influenced Shostakovich in the
conception of his ill-fated ballet The Bolt - can now be shown to be false.



New material on Zamyatin continues to be published and among documents recently
made available in English by Gary Kern[2] is testimony which directly
contradicts Goldstein's assertions on this point. In a review of new Russian
theatre written just after going into exile in December 1931, Zamyatin includes,
in an attack on various works supposedly displaying the 'publicistic...
treatment of industrialisation, the collective farms, and so on', the following
remarks about The Bolt:

> 'On the stage, of course, we were shown a factory, there was a dance of the
> workmen at the furnaces, a dance of the "vrediteli" [wreckers], a dance of the
> "kulaks", and a sort of dance "apotheosis" - dances of different parts of the
> Red Army, including Red Cavalrymen who galloped wildly... while sitting on
> chairs. The result was by no means an apotheosis (since) the first night of
> the ballet happened to be its last.'[3]

There is no question of Zamyatin's comments being taken out of context; he meant
them and he meant them critically. Thus, either he had fallen out with
Shostakovich (whose name he conspicuously fails to mention), or Goldstein's
allegations concerning the writer's guiding role in the creation of The Bolt are
false.



Solomon Volkov's very different version of their relationship is clearly more
credible in this light. By the same token, Goldstein's account is seriously
compromised. It is, for example, hard to imagine how Zamyatin and Shostakovich
could have sustained a long correspondence after what would necessarily have
been a serious break in their relationship during summer 1931. Unless these
letters are to be found somewhere - and, if not, how did Goldstein know about
them? - the only possible conclusion is that no such break occurred because no
such close relationship existed.



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Is Goldstein's essay, then, a hoax? Apart from the reservations noted in DSCH
XXI, there are other reasons to suspect that this is so. For example,
Goldstein's claim that Shostakovich had read 'several' of Zamyatin's books by
the time of their alleged first meeting in 1924 is unsupported by the Glivenko
letters, the evidence of which suggests that the composer's interest in
contemporary literature dates at the earliest from 1925.

Similarly, Goldstein's allegation that Shostakovich was naively assertive in
defending one of the country's most notorious individualists at the very height
of the Cultural Revolution is both an anachronism and in itself essentially
implausible. Had he really known Shostakovich in 1931, he would have been aware
that such a claim was extremely unlikely to be true.



Was it possible for Goldstein to have faked these 'recollections'? Very easily.
Most of the statements he attributes to Zamyatin are to be found, often
verbatim, in the author's novel We or in his essays of the 1920s. As for the
'details' of Zamyatin's alleged role as éminence grise to Shostakovich between
1926 and 1931, for 'Zamyatin' read 'Sollertinsky'.



Why, though, would Goldstein have faked such a close relationship between
Shostakovich and Zamyatin? Politically, an obvious motive would have been to
present the composer as having been in close creative contact with a declared
anti-Communist throughout the only period of his life in which his political
affiliations are otherwise highly debatable.



Another motive would have been pure mischief. Solomon Volkov (letter to the
present writer) describes Goldstein as a 'good-natured hoaxer' well-known as
such in Russian musical circles: 'Once he invented a nonexistent composer,
complete with forged symphony, etc.' As for Goldstein's memoirs, published in
Russian in Germany in 1970, there is 'nothing of substance about Shostakovich
and certainly not about Zamyatin'.



Naturally Volkov has to be considered an interested party in this case since it
is chiefly his version of Shostakovich's relationship with Zamyatin which
Goldstein's challenges. Yet more than enough independent evidence now exists to
support Volkov's claim - indeed I personally have no doubt whatever that he is
right and that Goldstein's piece is a hoax.



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As for how much Shostakovich knew about Zamyatin's ideas during their
collaboration on The Nose, we may safely assume that he was aware of the
existence of We and of its contents - and that he was therefore 'collaborating'
with a man both the Party and the Proletkult regarded as a 'betrayer of the
revolution'.[4] (This renders Goldstein's report of Zamyatin's remarks about the
Second Symphony at least provisionally plausible.[5])

Whether or not Shostakovich was one of those who read We in manuscript, we shall
have to wait and see. (That he and Zamyatin had specific political interests in
common is suggested by recent evidence that much of the novel's satirical detail
derives from its author's study of the early Proletkult, in particular the
writings of Alexei Gastev and Alexander Bogdanov.[6])



Shostakovich's contemporary approval of Ilya Ehrenburg[7] likewise indicates
that he was probably well disposed to Zamyatin's critical views of Soviet
society since Ehrenburg's novels of the period were comparably disenchanted. (As
a friend and colleague of Zamyatin, Ehrenburg himself considered We to be
'magnificent'. His own The Grabber, a satire on NEP which includes deprecating
remarks about Soviet institutions, was, together with Zamyatin's We and
Pilnyak's Mahogany, banned at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution in 1929.)



Despite Goldstein's spoofing, then, the closeness of the young Shostakovich's
thoughts to those of anti-Communists like Zamyatin and Ehrenburg is difficult to
gainsay. How consistent he was in entertaining such views is, of course, another
matter.

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Copyright 1993

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