Fear and the Muse Kept Watch: The Russian Masters¿from Akhmatova and Pasternak to Shostakovich and Eisenstein¿Under Stalin

by Andy McSmith

Overview

In this dazzling exploration of one of the most contradictory periods of literary and artistic achievement in modern history, journalist Andy McSmith evokes the lives of more than a dozen of the most brilliant artists and writers of the twentieth century. Taking us deep into Stalin's Russia, Fear and the Muse Kept Watch asks the question: can great art be produced in a police state? For although Josif Stalin ran one of the most oppressive regimes in world history, under him Russia also produced an outpouring of artistic works of immense and lasting power—from the poems of Anna Akhmatova and Osip Mandelstam to the opera Peter and the Wolf, the film Alexander Nevsky, and the novels The Master and Margarita and Doctor Zhivago.

For those artists visible enough for Stalin to take an interest in them, it was Stalin himself who decided whether they lived in luxury or were sent to the Lubyanka, the headquarters of the secret police, to be tortured and sometimes even executed. McSmith brings together the stories of these artists—including Isaac Babel, Boris Pasternak, Dmitri Shostakovich, and many others—revealing how they pursued their art under Stalin's regime and often at great personal risk. It was a world in which the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky, whose bright yellow tunic was considered a threat to public order under the tsars, struggled to make the communist authorities see the value of avant garde art; Babel publicly thanked the regime for allowing him the privilege of not writing; and Shostakovich's career veered wildly between public disgrace and wealth and acclaim.

In the tradition of Eileen Simpson's Poets in Their Youth and Phyllis Rose's Parallel Lives, Fear and the Muse Kept Watch is an extraordinary work of historical recovery. It is also a bold exploration of the triumph of art during terrible times and a book that will stay with its readers for a long, long while.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781595580566
Publisher:	New Press, The
Publication date:	07/07/2015
Pages:	416
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.20(d)

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

1 Eisenstein in the Jazz Age 13

2 The Hooligan Poet and the Proletarians 32

3 The Master 54

4 Corrupting Gorky 74

5 The Stalin Epigram 95

6 Babel's Silence 116

7 Pasternak's Sickness of the Soul 130

8 Stalin and the Silver Screen 149

9 Stalin's Nights at the Opera 168

10 Pasternak in the Great Terror 184

11 Sholokhov, Babel, and the Policeman's Wife 200

12 Altering History 222

13 Anna of All the Russias 243

14 When Stalin Returned to the Opera 262

15 After Stalin 276

Notes 291

Index 321

Editorial Reviews

05/18/2015
In this study of artists living in the U.S.S.R. during Stalin’s reign, journalist McSmith (No Such Thing as Society) probes the question of why a “disproportionate amount of the great art of the 20th century came from a regime where to think freely was to risk death.” In addition to the creators mentioned in the title, the book delves deep into the lives of numerous poets, novelists, composers, and playwrights, including the likes of Isaac Babel, Vladimir Mayakovsky, and Osip Mandelstam. The suffering is awfully apparent as McSmith describes each artist’s struggles—for the right to create, for artistic integrity, and for survival—“in a state where anybody could be punished for anything.” The persistence of both artists and appreciators of the arts is humbling. For example, Nadezhda Mandelstam, a widow in her 70s, preserved Mandelstam’s life’s work by memorizing all of it. The book stays strictly focused on the Soviet state, never segueing into a larger discussion of the social and political role of art under repressive regimes. Nevertheless, McSmith pieces together many stories in a way that is thoroughly engaging from start to finish. (July)

Publishers Weekly

"McSmith writes journalist's history in the best sense, accounting for persons and events without resorting to theory, psychological or political. With clear-eyed restraint and unsentimental sympathy for the victims, he tells the story of Stalin's quarter-century effort, ended only by his death, to manage the greatest Russian artists of the time through intimidation, harassment, jailing, torture, and, when circumstances allowed, murder. . . . An invaluable contribution to serious popular history."
—Booklist

"The author has a deep affinity for these artists, and his portrayal of their struggles makes our appreciation of them even stronger. . . . Valuable."
—Kirkus Reviews

"Revelatory. . . . McSmith . . . has done a masterful job of researching and describing what it was like for writers, musicians and filmmakers to create under one of the most oppressive regimes in history. . . . Using extensive primary and secondary sources, McSmith reveals a remarkable story about art triumphing over evil."
—Shelf Awareness

From the Publisher

2015-04-05
Independent senior reporter McSmith (No Such Thing as Society: A History of Britain in the 1980s, 2010, etc.) explores how arts and artists in Russia somehow managed to flourish despite Joseph Stalin's iron control. Stalin decided whose work was acceptable. If it was not, it ended up in the ash heap—unless someone, like Pasternak or Gorky, interceded. The only literary style suitable in those days was social realism that lauded the Russian way of life. There were attempts to modernize, such as Sergei Eisenstein's addition of jazz to his films, and there were successes—e.g., his Battleship Potemkin (1925). Stalin knew that artistic success reflected on his regime, and he obsessively controlled everything, especially movies but also the music of Shostakovich and Prokofiev. Writers of poetry and plays all lived under his vigilance, as well. The greatest poets of the generation, under the eye of the censors, were never sure what would offend. Throughout his oppressive reign, Stalin had no problem sending artists to their deaths. Though he claimed that writers were the engineers of the human soul, every word written, every play or movie proposed was subject to review before, during, and after completion. McSmith shows how many persisted in the worst conditions and even returned after emigrating, for love of the homeland. Perhaps their strength came from knowing how much Russians loved the arts. Osip Mandelstam said, "there's no place where more people are killed for it." An epigram he wrote about Stalin was never written down, only recited twice, but the secret services still found out about it. Paranoia was a way of life. The author has a deep affinity for these artists, and his portrayal of their struggles makes our appreciation of them even stronger. Lovers of Russian literature and music will find this valuable, and history buffs will get a fearsome picture of life under Stalin.

Kirkus Reviews