For Joseph Stalin, general secretary of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union, the evening of 26 January 1936 should have been a routine date in his diary.
A self-styled opera lover, Stalin was attending the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow to catch up belatedly on a work that had premiered to great acclaim two years previously in Leningrad, and been performed around 200 times in the Soviet Union since. In fact, no fewer than three productions of Dmitri Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk were running in Moscow at the time, and successful stagings in both Europe and the US had catapulted the 29-year-old composer into the global arena.
Explicit sex and violence
Unfortunately, Stalin did not like what he saw. Three acts into Shostakovich’s four-act opera he left the theatre, apparently unable to stomach more. What particularly riled him? The sensationally in-your-face plot – a woman in Tsarist Russia, oppressed and exploited by a succession of men, becomes a triple-murderer – was one problem. Violent and sexually explicit, it offered a chaotically unstable view of human relationships, dramatically at odds with the state-ordered, morally conservative equilibrium the Communist authorities sought to propagate.
Shostakovich’s music was correspondingly in-your-face, especially in the convulsive sex scenes, ‘complete with ejaculatory trombone slides’, as one commentator has put it. Throw in a dash of anti-police satire in Act Three, and the recipe for thoroughly antagonising the Soviet Union’s most powerful citizen was complete.
Stalin left before the end. Bad sign
Shostakovich was in the Bolshoi Theatre that evening, and knew that Stalin was too. When he saw the general secretary leave before the end, the composer realised the signs were ominous. ‘I was called out by the audience and took a bow,’ he wrote to a friend later. ‘My only regret is that I did not do so after the third act. Feeling sick at heart, I collected my briefcase and went to the station.’
Just two days later, a review of Lady Macbeth appeared in Pravda (‘Truth’), the Communist Party newspaper. Headlined ‘Muddle Instead of Music’, the unsigned article castigated the opera in the most brutally dismissive fashion. ‘Singing is replaced by shrieking,’ it raged. ‘The music quacks, hoots, pants and gasps for breath in order to present the love scenes as naturalistically as possible.’ The work as a whole was ‘coarse, primitive and vulgar’, and designed to ‘tickle the perverted taste of the bourgeoisie’. Such an approach, the reviewer warned, ‘could only end badly’.
This scarcely veiled threat certainly unsettled Shostakovich, and rumours that Stalin himself had written the article began to circulate. He had not, but Pravda was a state-sanctioned publication, and the views expressed therein were automatically assumed to have the leader’s imprimatur. Erstwhile friends began to abandon Shostakovich, including fellow composers Reinhold Gliere and (after initial support) Vissarion Shebalin.
The composers’ union dutifully condemned his opera. Performances sputtered to a halt, and it would not appear again on the Soviet stage until 1963, in a partially sanitised version entitled Katerina Izmailova.
Stalin didn't stop Shostakovich from composing
The furore over Lady Macbeth did not stop Shostakovich composing, despite the heightened level of scrutiny he was now subjected to by the Communist leadership. The Fourth Symphony followed soon after – though, for fear of causing similar displeasure, was soon hidden away without a performance – as did the first of his 15 string quartets.
In 1978, Shostakovich’s friend Mstislav Rostropovich recorded Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk in its full original form in London, confirming it as one of the searing operatic achievements of the 20th century. Stagings of the opera are now relatively common, and it always had a special place in Shostakovich’s heart – when evacuating the Nazi-threatened Leningrad in 1941, it was the only score he took with him.
Six more musicians who fell foul of the authorities
1. Igor Stravinsky and The Star-Spangled Banner
In 1944, Stravinsky arranged the U.S. national anthem in his distinctive harmonic style. When it was performed in Boston, the police threatened him with arrest for “tampering” with the anthem, citing a Massachusetts law against altering patriotic music. Though no charges were brought, Stravinsky was rattled, and the anecdote followed him for years — a bizarre reminder that even in America, artistic freedom could hit absurd limits.
2. Paul Robeson and McCarthyism
Paul Robeson, singer, actor, and activist, was blacklisted during the 1950s for his outspoken leftist politics and support for civil rights. The U.S. State Department revoked his passport in 1950, effectively silencing his international career. Robeson’s concerts were canceled, and he was hounded by the FBI. His artistry was inseparable from his activism, and for nearly a decade, political repression curtailed the voice of one of America’s most powerful performers.
3. Fela Kuti vs. the Nigerian Government
Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti became a constant thorn in the side of Nigeria’s military regimes in the 1970s and 80s. His songs denounced corruption and brutality, while his commune, the Kalakuta Republic, symbolized resistance. Authorities responded with raids, arrests, and harassment; in a 1977 attack, soldiers burned his compound and assaulted residents, leading to the death of his mother. Despite relentless persecution, Fela refused to stop, becoming an icon of musical defiance.
4. Pussy Riot in Russia
In 2012, the Russian punk-activist collective Pussy Riot staged a “punk prayer” inside Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, denouncing Putin and the Orthodox Church’s complicity. The performance lasted less than a minute but resulted in a global media storm. Members Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina were sentenced to two years in prison for “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred.” Their harsh treatment exposed Russia’s intolerance of dissent and cemented Pussy Riot as international symbols of resistance.
5. Billie Holiday and 'Strange Fruit'
Billie Holiday’s haunting 1939 song 'Strange Fruit', a searing protest against lynching, immediately drew the attention of authorities. Harry Anslinger, head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, targeted her relentlessly, threatening venues that booked her and using her drug addiction against her. Despite harassment, Holiday continued to perform the song, knowing its political weight. '“'Strange Fruit' became one of the most courageous protest songs in American history, and Holiday paid dearly for her defiance.
6. Victor Jara and Pinochet
Chilean singer-songwriter Victor Jara was a beloved voice of social justice and the New Song movement. After Augusto Pinochet’s military coup in 1973, Jara was arrested, tortured, and murdered in Santiago’s Estadio Chile. His hands were broken, and he was forced to mockingly play guitar before being shot. Jara’s brutal death turned him into a martyr for artistic freedom and resistance against tyranny, and his songs remain powerful symbols of protest across Latin America and beyond.
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