Board Quote by Mstislav Rostropovich

In 1948 the first severe crash occurred in my life when Stalin put out his decree on formalism. There was a bulletin board in…

— Mstislav Rostropovich

After Stalin died, the Soviet Union began inching toward the world again. The ban on jazz was lifted. Ernest Hemingway was published; the Pushkin…

— Keith Gessen

“By the time Stalin died on 5 March 1953, the Soviet Union boasted the largest and best-funded scientific establishment in history. It was at…

— Simon Ings

Poor Dimitri Shostakovich: In the Soviet Union, he was condemned as being too radical; in the West, for being too conservative. He could please…

— Edward Abbey

“In a regime where words are watched, lies are rewarded, and silence is survival, there is no truth. - Symphony for the City of…

— M T Anderson

Nowadays, it is no longer possible to maintain that the Nazi-Soviet pact of 23 August 1939 was a fiction invented by bourgeois-imperialist enemies. Everyone…

— Norman Davies

“(Of his first wife, Ekatarina, who had died of tuberculosis in 1907, a year after their marriage, Stalin had reportedly said: “With her died…

— Nigel Hamilton

“We should have known that the only reason that Shostakovich’s nightmare restored us to ourselves was so we’d be compelled to drink the cup…

— William T. Vollmann

[Vladimir] Lenin died in January, 1924; three months later [Joseph] Stalin expounded in writing Lenin's conception of the proletarian revolution.

— Leon Trotsky

“But the powerful and respected party right, particularly Stalin, went so far in the direction of moderation as to support a merger of Bolsheviks…

— China Miéville

“If circumstances should make it impossible (temporarily, I hope) for me to be a Russian writer, perhaps I shall be able, like the Pole…

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

Shostakovich was one of the great symphonists of all time, and maybe the last great symphonist.

— Andris Nelsons