Shostakovich and Yevtushenko evince a revolutionary ethos by insisting that Soviet audiences acknowledge the devastation their government would prefer they disregard for the sake of its illusory utopian vision. Can you listen to the vividly rendered screams of a child, the artists ask their listeners, and not hold those who let it happen to account? Can you bear witness to oppression and not grit your teeth against it? Are you immune to human suffering? It is understandable, in this light, that the Soviet Union allowed only two performances of Shostakovich’s 13th Symphony when it premiered in Moscow on December 18, 1962. And it is this confrontational ethos that is the subject of my essay. In it, I will contextualize each of the five movements and analyze their lyrics and orchestration. In so doing, I aim to show that Shostakovich and Yevtushenko are exemplars of artistic integrity with no less relevance today than in the USSR. Despite assuming personal and professional risk to do so, they insisted that their creative vision serve a more humane world. I. Babiy Yar The first movement of Shostakovich’s 13th Symphony (henceforth I will use the more common English spelling, “Babi Yar”) begins with a disconcerting funeral march scored for winds, horns, and the lower string section (comprised of cellos and basses). Intermittently, a church bell tolls, produced by striking the timpani and percussion chimes in unison. The march makes way for a chorus of lower-register male vocalists, who mournfully intone one of the first movement’s most compelling poetic lines: “There is no memorial above Babi Yar.” These words would have announced the symphony’s confrontational nature to its first Soviet audience. To them, Babi Yar – the name of a ravine where Nazis massacred thousands of Jewish innocents during the Second World War – was considered a somewhat taboo phrase; so much so that many would have been afraid to speak it even in private. More context is necessary to properly understand the fear that surrounds the use of the phrase. In September of 1941, Kiev,2 the capital of the Soviet Republic of Ukraine, was Nazi-occupied. Days before the massacre, the entire Jewish population of the city “and its vicinity” received a notice demanding that they “appear on Monday, September 29, 1941 by 8 a.m. at the corner of Melnikova and Dokhterivskaya streets (next to the cemetery). Bring documents, money, and valuables, and also warm clothing, bed linen, etc” (Yad Vasham). The notice threatened that Jewish people who failed to follow the order would be shot. 2 The Ukranian capital’s name is spelled this way to imply the Russian-language pronunciation of the Soviet era. An alternative spelling, “Kyiv” intones the Ukrainian-language pronunciation that is preferred by Ukrainians in the wake of independence in 1991. 73
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