Symphony for the City of the Dead
Page 37
“I visited front-line units . . . real heroes”: Siegmeister, 243. It is, of course, impossible to say whether these words are actually his, as they appeared in a newspaper article.
Eighty percent of the buildings in the city . . . : Pleshakov, 233.
“Even the parks were in flames”: Ibid., 144.
For a few days, the Red Army held up . . . : Ibid., 212.
The Nazis took four hundred thousand prisoners: Montefiore, 372; cf. Overy, 86.
They told him the truth at risk to their lives . . . : Pleshakov, 10, 12. He notes that it would take the Russians three hard-fought years to reclaim the territory lost in the first ten days of the German invasion.
Slowly, he walked out of the room . . . : This anecdote varies in translation and in several of its details. See Amery and Curran, 78; Pleshakov, 218; A. Roberts, 157; Montefiore, 374.
THE FIRST MOVEMENT
On July 2, he went again to try to enlist: Fay, Life, 123.
His ditchdigging lasted for about a week . . . : The chronology of these activities is not exact. They are summarized under “July” in Sofia Khentova’s “Timeline” at the conclusion of Shostakovich in the Years of the Great Patriotic War [Voynï]. He himself wrote many articles about this period (or signed them after they were passed to him by appointed propagandists), but he rarely cited specific dates.
His family was still off at a cottage . . . : Siegmeister, 243; Martynov, 103.
The Leningrad City Council had created . . . : Salisbury, 144.
there were no Luftwaffe air raids during the month of July . . . : Reid, 42.
In the streets, however, feverish preparation . . . : Adamovich and Granin, 237.
“We’ll come back for you” . . . conceal it: Reid, 119.
“It is with a feeling of admiration . . . Leningrad’s defenses”: Seroff, 238.
The golden spires now were painted a camouflage gray . . . : Salisbury, 145.
Then, like grazing beasts, barrage balloons . . . : The barrage balloons were in place by mid-July. Citizens remarked on their striking appearance (Reid, 54–55; Salisbury, 168–169).
“Then you lead us, Vyacheslav! We will follow”: Accounts of this incident can be found in Pleshakov, 220; Overy, 79; Montefiore, 376; Service, Stalin, 415.
He returned to the Kremlin . . . : On July 10, 1941 (Service, Stalin, 415).
“Comrades! Citizens! . . . my friends”: Ibid., 449; Pleshakov, 260; Reid, 39–40.
He had never before called his people his family . . . : Adamovich and Granin, 242.
He warned his citizens that this was not an ordinary war . . . : Overy, 79.
“All the strength of the people . . . victory”. . . Moscow by August: Hastings, 145.
It could not have been long into July . . . : They launched their offensive into Karelia on July 10, 1941 (Forczyk, Leningrad, 29).
Wary of the risk, Shostakovich fetched his family . . . : Ardov, 15.
They all drove back to the apartment in Leningrad . . . : L. Mikheeva, Zhizn Dmitriya Shostakovicha [The Life of Dmitri Shostakovich] (Moscow: Terra, 1997), 221; Sollertinskys, 98.
For example, the Germans took Pskov . . . : Reid, 44. Pleshakov (246) puts the conquest of Pskov even earlier, on July 2.
Then, ominously, they stopped mentioning Pskov . . . : Reid, 45.
“We’re winning, but the Germans are gaining ground”: Ibid., 51.
the city government was starting to demand . . . : Salisbury, 143.
“insufficient warehouse space”: Jones, 76; Reid, 161–162. Cf. Hastings, 165.
“the patter of iron rats . . . rat catcher”: Nicolas Slonimsky, “Dmitri Dmitrievitch Shostakovich,” Musical Quarterly 28, no. 4 (October 1942): 435.
The Leningrad city government was daily shipping . . . : Simmons and Perlina, xii.
They stumbled out of cattle cars into scenes . . . : Salisbury, 179.
In just the first few days of fighting, the Eighth Panzer division . . . : Reid, 59.
The delay from early July until roughly August 8 . . . : Salisbury, 190.
Military resistance along the Luga Line . . . : Reid, 59.
As the Germans crawled closer . . . : Ibid., 52.
“One can judge the time . . . smile amongst them”: Inber, 9.
The workers had little reason . . . : Reid, 96.
Even more ominous than the evacuations . . . : Ibid., 96–97.
“For a long time my husband . . . leaving Leningrad”: Siegmeister, 623.
“viewed citizens’ refusal . . . people to remain”: Reid, 103.
On August 10, the city government announced . . . : Jones, 96.
Shostakovich kept working on the new symphony . . . : I. Rudenko, “Razgovor s kompozitorum” [Conversation with a Composer], Komsomolskaya Pravda, June 26, 1973, p. 4.
“It was a steel-gray . . . savagery was raging”: Glikman, xxxiv.
Late in the summer of 1941, the German propaganda ministry . . . : Howard K. Smith, “Valhalla in Transition,” in Reporting World War II, Part One: American Journalism 1938–1944, ed. Samuel Hynes and others (New York: Library of America, 1995), 223.
We don’t know, however, if Shostakovich knew . . . : Volkov, Testimony, xxxiv; Mishra, 136–138; MacDonald, 159.
“They often beg their father . . . quiet as mice, all ears”: Seroff, 240.
“We were both extremely agitated . . . piece will be”: Glikman, xxxiv.
“By chance, you might . . . in the commercial stores”: Skrjabina, 23.
“Now we realize that we were travelling . . . a remote area”: Jones, 97.
“We worked out where everybody . . . towards us”: Adamovich and Granin, 246.
“There are Nazi paratroopers ahead”: Jones, 98.
The adult chaperones scrambled . . . : Reid, 99–100; Jones, 97–100.
“Just imagine . . . hungry and exhausted”: Adamovich and Granin, 246.
“The children had started to board the train . . . It was dreadful”: Jones, 98.
“Suddenly, I heard a terrible cry . . . a giant hand”: Jones, 99.
“The nursery school teacher . . . immediately explode”: Adamovich and Granin, 99.
“What rubbish . . . what he was bombing”: Ibid., 247.
“A plane circled . . . totally impassive”: Jones, 99.
“When they began shelling the coaches . . . blankets over them”: Adamovich and Granin, 249. There appears to be some understandable confusion about whether this testimony (by Alexandra Arsenyeva) applies to the same attack at Lychkovo or a subsequent one at Mga. See Jones, 99; Reid, 99. Arsenyeva herself mentions Mga, but the circumstances resemble Lychkovo.
“When I got back to Leningrad . . . never happened”: Jones, 100.
Shostakovich’s friend Ivan Sollertinsky . . . : MacDonald, 152.
“Dear Ivan . . . two days”: Sollertinskys, 100.
This was the last train to make it out of Leningrad: There are several dates cited for the shutting down of Mga, presumably due to the fact that the battle for the town lasted for five days. See Jones, 101–102; Reid, 104; Forczyk, Leningrad, 30.
About 636,000 people in all had been evacuated . . . : Reid, 95–96.
“Leningrad is surrounded . . . mousetrap”: Skrjabina, 23.
THE SECOND MOVEMENT
“I wrote my Seventh Symphony, the Leningrad . . . engrave it in music”: Fay, Life, 124; cf. Volkov, Testimony, 154.
Shostakovich, toiling away at his symphony . . . : Glikman, 6; Shostakovich, Facsimile, 7; Shostakovich, Works, vol. 7, 258.
Though the Soviets did not know it yet . . . : Salisbury, 373.
People looked up; their windowpanes . . . : Adamovich and Granin, 297.
“It has made quite an impression . . . destroyed houses”: Skrjabina, 25.
An even more devastating Luftwaffe assault was to arrive two days later: On September 8, lasting into the morning of the ninth. There is considerable confusion about the date of the destruction of the Bedayev warehouses; as Adamovich and
Granin point out (44), there is a tendency among survivors to smear together two air raids: one on September 6 (which was the first airborne assault on Leningrad) and one on the eighth (which destroyed the warehouses and which is, to add confusion, sometimes dated to the ninth). These mistakes are common. Skrjabina, for example, who was supposedly writing her diary day-by-day, nonetheless records the September 8 bombing of the Bedayev warehouses as if it happened on September 12 (27), an odd mistake that suggests she may have constructed some of the “diary” from memory.
On September 8, Shostakovich began work . . . : Shostakovich, Works, vol. 7, 259–260.
“I looked out the window . . . but a massive onslaught”: Adamovich and Granin, 43; cf. 44.
Twenty-seven German Ju 88 bombers . . . : Forczyk, Leningrad, 42; Salisbury, 291.
“They flew at low altitude . . . rising higher and higher”: Jones, 44.
“High in the sky . . . that it was fire”: Simmons and Perlina, 23.
The Leningrad city bosses had decided . . . : Reid, 140; Jones, 43.
“[Leningrad Party bosses] Voroshilov and Zhdanov . . . city to famine”: Jones, 79.
“It was an immense spectacle of stunning beauty”: Simmons, 23.
At around ten thirty that evening . . . : Reid, 140.
“Whole new squadrons flew over us . . . Sheer hell”: Skrjabina, 26.
“We were all deafened . . . crying with fear”: Adamovich and Granin, 284.
“Down there were many people . . . is forgotten”: Skrjabina, 26.
“Everyone thinks . . . several times a day”: Reid, 143.
“A few scenes have etched . . . and a lamp”: Skrjabina, 26.
Another lone wall stood with its house . . . : Adamovich and Granin, 286.
The streets . . . smelled of ham and butter: Inber, 17; Skrjabina, 27.
“It is not worth risking the lives . . . a single German soldier”: Hastings, 166; cf. Jones, 40, 43.
“We shall not trouble ourselves . . . scientific method”: Adamovich and Granin, 40.
“to spare the troops . . . on civilians”: Jones, 128.
“It is the task of the artillery . . . civilians themselves”: Ibid., 129.
“Even then a large part . . . of our eyes”: Reid, 136.
By mid-September, after the destruction . . . : Ibid., 167.
Their ration cards were death sentences . . . : Ibid., 169.
“didn’t believe that the inhabitants . . . From starvation”: Ginzburg, 59.
The Nazis shelled the city every day . . . : Overy, 106.
“This way . . . morale of the Leningraders”: Jones, 3.
“Even during air raids . . . into the shelter”: Seroff, 239.
When Shostakovich got up from his desk . . . : M. Dolinsky and S. Chertok, “The Heroic Orchestral Act,” Sovetskaya Kultura, January 26, 1964.
All night the building burned . . . : Sollertinskys, 100.
THE THIRD MOVEMENT
“What are our tanks doing in this area . . . wooden dummies”: Jones, 113.
Zhukov was stunned . . . : The use of decoys, though bizarre sounding, was occasionally quite a successful strategy — most famously in Operation Fortitude and the D-day invasion of Normandy, in 1944.
“Get another hundred . . . tomorrow myself”: Salisbury, 324.
“You have yourself to blame . . . generals killed”: Jones, 80.
Voroshilov picked up the platter . . . : Hastings, 165.
The air force commander at the time . . . : Montefiore, 536.
“because you’re making us fly in coffins!”: Ibid., 345.
General Zhukov was reorganizing the city’s defenses . . . : Forczyk, Leningrad, 32; cf. Hastings, 166.
This protocol, originally issued in Leningrad . . . : Hastings, 148.
This was simply an extension of Order No. 270 . . . : G. Roberts, 98; Overy, 80–81; Service, History, 264.
He threw Red Army units against the Germans . . . : Forczyk, Leningrad, 33; for a more complete discussion of the strategic situation, see Jones, 118–122.
“It’s time to assemble . . . banks of the Neva”: Hastings, 166.
Then the German guns would start roaring . . . : Jones, 122.
Hitler released Secret Directive No. 1a 1601/41 . . . : Released on September 22, 1941. Amery and Curran, 197; Adamovich and Granin, 28.
“pulverized brick and melting iron”: Vishnevskaya, 26.
“You begin to realize with astonishment . . . like a waterfall”: Ginzburg, 24.
route to Radio House: At this point, Shostakovich and his family were living on Bolshaya Pushkarskaya Street (Khentova, Mire, 79), in the Petrograd Side. Radio House was located across the Neva, closer to the center of town, on Nevsky Prospect.
The building was in some disarray . . . : Fadeyev, 27ff; cf. Salisbury, 460–461.
Shostakovich’s acquaintance poet Olga Berggolts . . . : Salisbury, 323.
“An hour ago I finished scoring . . . bound up with Leningrad”: Transcript in Sollertinskys, 101.
“I am moved . . . warms the heart”: Inber, 25.
The night of the broadcast, Shostakovich and his family . . . : Sollertinskys, 102–103.
“[Shostakovich] told us . . . large form”: Schwarz, 177.
He had ideas for the third movement . . . : Shostakovich, Facsimile, 8.
FABLES, STORIES
“that he had a piece of metal . . . be removed”: Wang, 347.
“in the temporal horn . . . cerebrospinal fluid”: Ibid., 348.
“since the fragment . . . when composing”: Ibid., 347.
“After all, a German shell . . . produce more music”: Ibid., 348.
The Sovinform Bureau flooded the airwaves . . . : Morrison, 218.
“Ivan Pupkin killed five Germans with a spoon”: Reid, 45.
“No firebombs . . . put one out”: Lind, 15. Translation by Ellen Litman.
A Conservatory official, Aron Ostrovsky . . . : Fay, Life, 123.
We cannot really tell, given the swirl of contradictory accounts . . . : In one account, supposedly by Shostakovich (Lind, 14–18), he explicitly says he was living at the Conservatory and watching on the roof in September, during the blockade. Anecdotes by others, however, place him at his home by this time, and both his official Soviet biographer and the late head of the Shostakovich Family Archive presumed that he was barracked at the Conservatory primarily in the summer, at which time he was writing the first movement of the Seventh Symphony (Khentova, Voynï, “Timeline” for July 1941, unpaginated; Shostakovich, Symphony no. 7, 7). Until more reliable documentation is produced, it will be impossible to speak authoritatively about the specifics of his service.
“The war became a terrible tragedy . . . Millions”: Volkov, Testimony, 103.
One of his soccer buddies claimed . . . : Sollertinskys, 99.
One composer even claimed . . . : Volkov, Stalin, 178.
“Morale is the big thing . . . enthusiastic”: Bierman and Smith, 249.
“He is a really courageous person . . . sense of belonging”: Jones, 151.
“Any violence which does not spring . . . outlook”: Conquest, 446.
“The reputation for horror . . . what it will”: Overy, 73.
In many of the Soviet satellite states . . . : Pleshakov, 172; Hastings, 143; Service, History, 276.
Ukrainians and Cossacks came out of their villages . . . : Overy, 127; Service, Stalin, 418; Pleshakov, 237; A. Roberts, 162.
No sooner had they moved in than they began . . . : Service, History, 287–288.
“Can you imagine . . . my very own eyes”: Wilson, 188.
“Sometimes I’d wander . . . its stern grandeur”: Lind, 16. Translation by Ellen Litman.
On September 19, the Luftwaffe launched . . . : Inber, 23, 205; Amery and Curran, 195.
Gostiny Dvor burned quietly . . . : Salisbury, 298.
“We’re giving you a respite . . . the past twenty years”: Simmons and Perlina, 24.
On September 25, Dmit
ri Shostakovich turned thirty-five . . . : Sollertinskys, 103.
“I kept working day and night . . . but I kept working”: Martynov, 104.
He was done with the third movement . . . : Glikman, 6.
“I confess that I used . . . road open to me”: Akhmatova, 570.
Anna Akhmatova later claimed . . . : Ibid., 576n, 580n.
Is this simply one of the stories people told . . . : See MacDonald, 273–274. Akhmatova claims that she departed Leningrad with the Seventh Symphony on her lap on October 1, 1941. If this were in any way corroborated, it would make sense, as it could mean she was evacuated with Shostakovich and might well have been handed the manuscript to hold. Unfortunately, Akhmatova scholars claim she was evacuated on September 29 (Akhmatova, 580n), a few days before Shostakovich.
“This telephone is disconnected until the end of the war”: Inber, 19.
“Leningrad? . . . Winter Palace and the Hermitage”: Salisbury, 341.
But Comrade Kalinnikova was calling with good news . . . : Glikman, 3.
Shostakovich made the arrangements . . . : Sollertinskys, 103.
“beloved home town”: Glikman, 3.
FLIGHT
Shostakovich was startled . . . : Ardov, 16.
Shostakovich apparently asked about the fate . . . : Fay, Life, 126.
It was a small aircraft . . . : Ardov, 16.
the Wehrmacht’s lines . . . : Jones, 126–127.
“Someone explained to me . . . our aeroplane”: Ardov, 17.
Behind them, the pilots dragged tree limbs . . . : Ibid.
They even took Maxim and Galina to a toy store . . . : Ibid.
Food, however, was still hard to come by . . . : Morrison, 220.
Air raids on Moscow were frequent and devastating . . . : Overy, 97.
To confuse bombers, the medieval walls of the Kremlin . . . : Montefiore, 395.
Perhaps the most striking evacuee was the corpse . . . : Overy, 96.
“Oh, Wright brothers . . . What have you wrought”: Ardov, 17–18.
On October 5, a Soviet Pe-2 . . . : Overy, 93; Forczyk, Moscow, 39–40.
The Soviet general in the area did not know . . . : Forczyk, Moscow, 43.
“I thought I’d seen retreat . . . hundreds of meters wide”: Hastings, 155.
Stalin was bewildered by the German successes . . . : Forczyk, Moscow, 25; Hastings, 155.
Ninety million Soviets . . . were now living . . . : Hastings, 155.