658 Great Soviet Encyclopedia on God: “An imaginary figure of a powerful supernatural being.” —Vol. 3, entry on God.
660 Shostakovich to Glikman: “Dear Isaak Davidovich…”—Glikman, p. 49 (29 August 1953).
670 Shostakovich to Nikolayeva: “Which of them was luckier?”—After Shostakovich and Volkov, p. 98 (here Shostakovich was actually comparing himself to the executed Tukhachevsky).
670 Shostakovich to Nikolayeva: “Well, to grieve is also a right, but it’s not granted to everyone!”—After Shostakovich and Volkov, p. 136.
670 Shostakovich: “It was really terrible that he didn’t have a secretary. It used to be that Nina always picked up the telephone and said that he was away for two months”—After Gojowy, p. 106 (DDS to Denisov, trans. by WTV).
670 Chekhov: “Isn’t our living in town…” —Anton Chekhov, The Tales of Chekhov, vol. 5: “The Wife” & Other Stories, trans. Constance Garnett (New York: Ecco Press, 1985 repr. of 1918 Macmillan ed.), p. 267 (“The Man in a Case,” 1898), abridged by WTV.
671 The difference between a whistling shell and a sizzling one—Werth, p. 55.
672 The émigré Martynov on “Lady Macbeth”: “A warning of harmful deviation.”—Ivan Martynov, Dmitri Shostakovich: The Man and His Work, trans. T. Guralsky (New York: Philosophical Library, 1947), p. 47.
673 Discussion with Comrades Khubov et al about “Lady Macbeth”—Loosely based on the account in Glikman, pp. 261-62.
674 “It’s about, I, I, how the love could have been if the world weren’t full of vile things…”—After Shostakovich and Volkov, p. 108 (the composer was actually speaking of “Lady Macbeth”).
674 Shostakovich’s song: “Burn, candle, burn bright, in Lenin’s little red asshole” —G. Glikman, in Schmalenberg, p. 197 (trans. and slightly altered by WTV).
674 The Eleventh Symphony’s “secret references to the Soviet tanks now crushing the Hungarian uprising”—After Wilson, p. 317 (testimony of Lev Lebedinsky: “What we heard in this music was not the police firing on the crowd in front of the Winter Palace in 1905, but the Soviet tanks roaring in the streets of Budapest”).
674 Maxim: “Papa, what if they hang you for this?”—Loc. cit.
675 “A German”: “The Russians are masters in the construction of shellproof wooden field fortifications.”—Steven H. Newton, comp., German Battle Tactics on the Russian Front 1941-1945 (Atglen, Pennsylvania: Schiffer Military/Aviation History, 1994), p. 127 (Gustav Höhne, “In Snow and Mud: 31 Days of Attack Under Seydlitz During Early Spring of 1942”).
675 Shostakovich: “When I look back on my life, I realize that I’ve been a coward…” —After Wilson, p. 304 (testimony of Edik Denisov). For narrative reasons I have moved this scene from 1957, when it actually occurred, to 1958.
675 Address of the Kino House (Dom Kino)—Dr. Heinrich E. Schulz and Dr. Stephen S. Taylor, Who’s Who in the USSR 1961/62 (Montreaclass="underline" Intercontinental Book and Publishing Co., Ltd, 1962; printed in Austria; orig. comp. by Institute for the Study of the USSR, Munich), p. 320 (entry on Karmen). Let’s hope that the Kino House was in the same place in 1958.
680 Khrushchev and Shostakovich, 1960: Based on a scene described in Wilson, pp. 381-82 (testimony of Sergei Slonimsky).
681 Shostakovich to Glikman: “Life is far from easy. How I long…”—Glikman, p. 90 (letter of 30 April 1960).
681 Glikman’s secret approach to Elena Konstantinovskaya on Shostakovich’s behalf —This is a total fiction.
681 Number of faculty members at the Leningrad Conservatory—Great Soviet Encyclopedia, vol 14, p. 396 (entry on Leningrad Conservatory). Since this is a 1972-73 figure, it might be slightly higher than would have been the case a decade earlier.
682 Lebedinsky to Shostakovich: “You don’t have much luck with women, Dmitri Dmitriyevich. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say that you’ve racked up your share of failures” —Somewhat after Wilson, p. 352 (testimony of Lebedinsky).
682 Shostakovich to Irina Supinskaya: “Actually, I’m not against your calling the Seventh the Leningrad Symphony…”—Closely after Shostakovich and Volkov, p. 156.
683 Shostakovich to Lebedinsky: “I’d sign anything even if they shoved it at me upside down”—Wilson, p. 183 (actually not said to Lebedinsky but remembered by Y. P. Lyubimov, slightly altered).
683 Khrushchev: “Plainly speaking, why do the United States of America…”—N. H. Mager and Jacques Katel, comp. and ed., Conquest Without War: An Analytical Anthology of the Speeches, Interviews, and Remarks of Nikita Sergevich Khrushchev, with Commentary by Lenin, Stalin and Others (New York: Pocket Books, 1961), p. 99 (at Czechoslovakian embassy, Moscow, quoted in New York Times 10 May 1960).
685 Shostakovich on the beauty and plumpness of Meyerhold’s wife—Loosely after Shostakovich and Volkov, p. 78.
686 Marina Tsvetaeva : “I set my lips to the breast of the great round battling earth.”—Tsvetaeva, p. 20 (from “Insomnia,” 1916, stanza 6), “retranslated” by WTV.
687 Dostoyevsky: “Why do even the finest people…?”—Uncle’s Dream etc., p. 109 (“White Nights”).
690 Shostakovich to Glikman: “I’m not going, you see… They’ll have to tie me up” —Slighly altered from Glikman, p. 92 (Glikman’s commentary).
691 German casualties of the Allied bombing of Dresden—Kershaw (p. 761) gives an estimate of “at least 35,000” victims.
692 “Even former S.S. officers were cooperating with us now…”—Gehlen (p. 249) names three who worked for East German intelligence in part “to avenge the Allied bombing of Dresden in 1945.”
693 Shostakovich: “The distinguishing feature of Jewish music…”—Wilson, p. 235 (testimony of Rafiil Matveivich Khozak).
694 Shostakovich to Glikman: “I wrote an ideologically deficient quartet…”—Slightly altered from Fay, p. 217.
695 “Akhmatova insists… that whoever doesn’t make continual reference to the torture chambers all around us is a criminal”—Loosely after Chukovskaya (p. 5), who was actually writing that she herself would be a criminal if she didn’t make at least some elliptical record of her conversations with the great poet.
696 Manfred Smolka: “There is no doubt that desertion and treachery…”—Richard J. Evans, Rituals of Retribution: Capital Punishment in Germany 1600-1987 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 852. From the context, it is not clear whether Smolka’s words were in fact reported in the press.
697 The Kabbalists: “Every definition of God leads to heresy”—Matt, p. 32 (Abraham Isaac Kook, “Pangs of Cleansing,” in Orot).
697 Shostakovich: “When fate and all that is, you know, meaningless!”—Loosely after Shostakovich and Volkov, p. 17.
701 Conventional wisdom on Zoya: “Not long but beautifully did she live!”—Vsesoyuznuii Gospudarstvennui Fond Kinofilmov, p. 331 (entry on the movie “Zoya,” trans. WTV).
703 Leskov on Katerina’s final murder: She “threw herself on Sonetka like a strong pike on a soft little perch”—Nikolai Leskov, The Enchanted Wanderer: Selected Tales, trans. David Magarshak (London: Andre Deutsch Ltd., 1987, repr. of 1961 Secker & Warburg ed.), p. 50 (“Lady Macbeth of the Mtensk district,” 1865).
704 Shostakovich to F. P. Litvinova: “You know, my dear Flora Pavlovna, I would have displayed more brilliance…”—Fay, p. 268.
706 Description of Nina’s portrait—After the illustration in Gojowy, p. 28 (“Die Ehefrau Dimitri Schostakowitschs, Nina Wassiljewna geb. Warsar”).