Raikh was of Lutheran stock, and a noblewoman at that, but I would never have thought so to look at her. She seemed a typical Odessa fishwife. I wasn't very surprised to learn that she was born in Odessa. Her Odessa heritage overshadowed the rest. Zinaida Nikolayevna often frequented a secondhand shop, the one near Novinsky Boulevard, where former ladies sold remnants of their past. Raikh was an excellent haggler.
Raikh's attitude toward me was, I suppose, one of the reasons that I left the Theater of Meyerhold. Because she let me know that I was living on Meyerhold's charity like a sponger. Naturally, it was never articulated, but it was obvious in her treatment of me. And I didn't like it.
Meyerhold was my benefactor. He heard about me from Arn-
• "Disappearance" refers here to Meyerhold's arrest on June 20, 1939. People often simply disappeared in those days, without any official word on their fate; when this happened, relatives knew enough to make inquiries of the secret police. The subsequent fate of those arrested often remained unknown for many years, and in most cases the dates or death are approximate.
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shtam. * In Meyerhold's production of The Teacher Bubus, Arnshtam sat in a shell over the stage. He wore tails and he played pieces by Chopin and Liszt. Including the Dante Sonata ("After Reading Dante"), which ended the play. The Teacher Bubus was a rather wild and clumsy play. The shell in which poor Arnshtam was enthroned was gilded. Candles burned on the grand piano. And voluptuous Raikh marched heavily to Chopin's music.
Arnshtam was planning to leave Meyerhold, since he was being drafted. Meyerhold had heard my First Symphony. He didn't like it very much, but still he knew my name. Arnshtam recommended me as a pianist. It was a good deed for Meyerhold. He thought along these lines: Here's a young man with nothing to eat. I'll take him into my theater. And he did. But being a noble spirit, he didn't hold his good deed against me. Not like Zinaida Nikolayevna.
Raikh was the one who destroyed Meyerhold. I'm absolutely convinced of it. It was she who made him stay close to the rulers, close to Trotsky, Zinoviev, t et al. Meyerhold dedicated one of his plays to Trotsky (he called his plays opuses). And it backfired.
Meyerhold's admirers included Bukharin and Karl Radek.* But to Meyerhold's credit, he never felt on friendly footing with the authorities. Important guests had a terrible effect on him. I can attest to that.
And naturally, Meyerhold would never lower himself to the role of Stalin's flunky. Stalin hated Meyerhold. It was a hatred by default, you might say, because Stalin had never been present at a single production of Meyerhold's. Not a one. Stalin based his feelings for Meyerhold completely on denunciations.
•Leo Oskarovich Arnshtam (b. 1905), film director, a friend of Shostakovich. In his youth, he worked as a piano player at the Theater of Meyerhold. Shostakovich wrote the scores for five of Arnshtam's films, including Girlfriends (1936), which was a success in the United States.
tGrigori Evseyevich Zinoviev (Radomyslsky; 1 883-1936), a leader of the Communist Party and the Comintem. As Chairman of the Pctrograd City Soviet, he was notorious for his cruelty (including executions of hostages). An artist who knew him recalled that Zinoviev told him: "The Revolution, the Internationale-they are major events, that's true. But I'll burst out crying if they touch Paris!" He was shot on Stalin's orders for being a "terrorist."
*Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin (1 888-1 938), a Communist Party leader. In his "political will"
Lenin described Bukharin as "not only the most valt:ed and most important theoretician of the Party, but also justly the favorite of the Party." He was shot by Stalin. The same fate awaited the major Party worker and journalist Karl Bemgardovich Radek (Sobclson; 1 885-1939), who in his day was hailed as the best fabricator of anti-Soviet jokes.
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Just before the Theater of Meyerhold was shut down, Kaganovich*
came to a performance at the theater. He was very powerful. The theater's future depended on his opinion, as did Meyerhold's future.
As was to be expected, Kaganovich didn't like the play. Stalin's faithful comrade in arms left almost in the middle. Meyerhold, who was in his sixties then, ran out into the street after Kaganovich. Kaganovich and his retinue got in the car and drove off. Meyerhold ran after the car, he ran until he fell. I would not have wanted to see Meyerhold like that.
A strange thing happened with Meyerhold. He certainly wasn't a pedagogue, more of an antipedagogue, in fact. If an extremely curious person pestered him with questions, it led to a grandiose scene.
Meyerhold attacked the innocent person, shouting that he was being spied upori, that his best creative discoveries were being stolen from him, and so on, bordering on insanity.
But even people who spent a very brief time with Meyerhold learned something. And even if Meyerhold threw them out on their ears, they still came away enriched, unless, of course, they were complete idiots.
When I lived with Meyerhold on Novinsky Boulevard, he occasionally shared his ideas with me. I sat in on many rehearsals and I saw many of his productions. If I start thinking, there was Tare/kin's Death, The Teacher Bubus, Trust D.E., The Forest, The Mandate, Commander of the Second Army, The Inspector General, The !Ast Decision, Thirty- Three Swoons, The Baths, and The Lady of the Camellias. I saw Meyerhold's production of Tchaikovsky's Queen of Spades at the Maly Theater, I saw a revival of The Masquerade, I wrote music for The Bedbug, I was in charge of the music for Woe to Wit,+ and I learned a f cw things, I would think, from Meyerhold.
Some of his ideas took root in me then, and they turned out to • be important and useful. This, for example: You must strive for some-
*Lazar Moiseyevich Kaganovich (b. 1893), a leader of the Communist Party. Stalin was married to Kaganovich's younger sister, Rose. Kaganovich's signature appeared on multitudes of death warrants in Stalin's time. In 1957 Khrushchev removed him from power as a member of an "anti-Party group."
tin Meyerhold's prciduction of Alexander Griboyedov's classic comedy Woe from Wit, the title was Woe to Wit (as the author himself had called the original draft)-a small touch illustrating Meyerhold's eternal desire to confuse and astound the audience.
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thing new in each work, so that each new work stuns. Set a new technical goal in every work. Meyerhold followed this rule of his with maniacal stubbornness. Today such a rule may seem a commonplace, but in those days, at that time, it was a major discovery for me. We had never been taught anything like that. At the Conservatory it was: So you compose? Well, go ahead, however you please. Of course, follow certain rules. But nothing more than that.
And this leads to the second rule, Meyerhold's second lesson. You must prepare for every new composition. Look through a lot of music, search-maybe there was something similar in the classics. Then you must try to do it better, or at least in your own way.
All these considerations helped me very much in that period. I quickly forgot my fears about never turning into a composer. I began thinking through each composition, I had more confidence in what I was writing, and it was harder to throw me off the track.