Protest and Discipline: Shostakovich and the Revolutionary Self

Abstract

This article returns to the topic of Shostakovich’s political views, and specifically, his response to the revolutions of 1917. It argues that the view of Shostakovich as certainly neutral if not positively dissident is coloured by the assumptions of the post-Stalin era and the views current at the time of what constituted principled behaviour. If we return to primary documents (e. g. Shostakovich’s autobiographical questionnaire or his correspondence), the standpoint is much more elusive, and also heavily nuanced by genre and addressee. The main purpose of the article, however, is to look in detail at what it meant for Shostakovich to experience the revolutions at an extremely young age (only 9). Context for this is provided in an important collection of children’s autobiographies collected by the émigré charitable association, Zemgor, in 1923–1924. These texts, written in an atmosphere that did not require the expression of revolutionary solidarity (as comparable Soviet autobiographies did), and which was even positively hostile to this, nevertheless often record the euphoria as well as terror that the events of 1917 inspired. A further frame for Shostakovich’s later personal development was his exposure to a contradictory and conflicted educational process. The schooling that he received at the Shidlovskaya College, a Montessori-inspired free school, stood in radical contrast to the harsh discipline and regimentation of his education at the Conservatoire, a conflict that also helps to explain some of the cognitive dissonance of his later years.