Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad, by MT Anderson

[sophia_sol]

I first heard about this book from a review by chestnut_pod, and I'm super glad I did, because this was great! Remarkably more-ish kind of book, which is unusual in nonfiction like this, in my experience. Too often the material is interesting but the prose is dry, but this one did not have that problem.

The main thing the book is about is Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony, also known as the Leningrad Symphony, but to talk about the symphony you need to talk about its composer and about its cultural context. So it's also a biography of Shostakovich, and a history of Communist Russia from its origins through WWII with particular focus on the city of St Petersburg/Petrograd/Leningrad.

And it was honestly like....a perfect level of historical overview for me on this era of history, giving me a much better sense of the political situation, both between countries and within Russia/the USSR, and how exactly the beginning of Communism in that part of the world played out. History class in Canadian schools mostly just teaches you about the rest of the world as it relates to Canada, so it was more like "Canada's role in the Cold War" and less "so who actually was Stalin and how did he end up in power."

So although I knew this history kinda piecemeal through being a modern citizen of the world who hears things, having it all laid out for me in a clear manner was really nice.

And one of the things the book makes clear is just how much....you can't actually even trust primary sources from the era. Writing a biography of Shostakovich is hard because so little can be confirmed to be what he actually thought or said! Articles he "wrote" with his opinion were often written for him and presented to him for his signature (with underlying threats if he didn't comply). A memoir that's supposedly his thoughts and words is of pretty dubious provenance. Things he said on the radio or to people he was close to might not have reflected his actual opinions because TPTB were always watching and were well known for murdering anyone who didn't perfectly live up to the Correct way of doing communism, and denouncements were common (and then you died).

Anyway: lots of horribleness! And then the siege of Leningrad happens and the horribleness levels just get to a whole other level of horrible. The book does not shy away from discussing the realities of the experience of the Leningraders during the multi-year siege, and it's just like. Gosh. Literally every single person in that city who didn't die must have left that experience just so very traumatized. (Well okay except the rich people who still miraculously had access to food and eventually went to the effort of escaping the blockaded city because nobody was going out dancing anymore and it was boring. Wtf.)

But I really appreciated how the book talked about the horrors of the experience and the horrible thing some people did in their efforts to stay alive, but also talked about how the main way most people survived was through their experience of community, of people taking care of each other and doing what they could for each other despite everything.

And the other thing is that the book makes it clear how important art is to survival. Shostakovich's symphony made had literal actual impacts on people's lives. It's part of what helped inspire the USA to feel okay contributing relief supplies to Russia, and it's part of what gave some Leningraders the strength of mind to carry on living despite everything. The description of the performance in Leningrad, by musicians who were dying of starvation with an audience ditto, and how much it meant to them all, brought me near tears.

Olga Berggolts was another artist in Leningrad at the time of the siege, and her poetry was similarly vital to morale -- even to her own. And the heroic efforts of the librarians to keep the library open and available to Leningraders throughout everything, because of how important books were to people, was also amazing. Art: it matters!

When I finished this book I went to bed a little haunted by the things I'd read about, so tread cautiously if you're not in a good headspace for reading about starvation and death and murder and cannibalism and fascism and war and all that. But it's a great book and I'd definitely recommend it.

The other thing I did when I finished this book was go to the wikipedia article for the siege of Leningrad, because I was curious, and then was promptly hit in the face with the reminder that a certain kind of WWII-obsessed history buff cares a LOT about like...timelines and numbers and battles and all the little nitpicky details about the Military Experience, and not about anything else, and that kind of person clearly spends a lot of time on wikipedia. The very bones of the article are designed around that particular perspective on history to such a degree that the article couldn't really be anything else without a complete overhaul, and it's just SO completely opposite to the kinds of priorities of the book I just finished reading that I was kind of flabbergasted. It is not an approach to history that I find interesting or understandable at all. To me that data is relevant for how it informs you about the lived experiences people had, and what it meant to people/communities/countries/the world -- how it contextualizes the human story -- rather than the data being interesting in its own right.

Comments

[chestnut_pod]

Oh my, I am so glad you read this! And enjoyed it to the same extent I did, too. It's a wonderful piece of historical work, in so many ways; if I ever found myself in a position to teach some sort of class on any relevant subject, I would absolutely include it on my syllabus.

[sophia_sol]

It really is wonderful, thank you so much for introducing it to me!

[osprey_archer]

I listened to this book on audiobook a few years ago and I loved it - both the book itself and the fact that the audiobook format meant it could include excerpts from the symphony.

It impressed me especially because I went in a bit skeptical that it would be worthwhile - did I really have anything new to learn about Stalinism at this point? - and as it turns out, I absolutely did! And the book was absolutely there to share it with me! While also offering enough background to be accessible to readers with less prior knowledge of Stalinism, which is a really tough balancing act to manage.

[sophia_sol]

oh my gosh, that is really using the audiobook format the way it's meant to be used! throughout the book I kept wishing I could listen to the relevant bits of his music for context but I was stuck with the physical pages, so that's amazing what the audiobook is doing.

And I'm also delighted to hear that this book has things to say that are new and interesting even to people who knew more than me going in!

[genarti]

Oh gosh, this sounds incredible! And I'm coming at it with a pretty similar level of vague/haphazard knowledge about Russia and the Soviet Union, much of it learned in adulthood, because my US history classes were also very much focused on the US side of things. Definitely adding this to the list.

[sophia_sol]

It really is wonderful! I hope you get as much out of it as I did.

[superborb]

This book sounds fascinating! I guess I shouldn't be surprised that "Young Adult Nonfiction" is a separate category, but I don't think I've ever encountered that before.

[sophia_sol]

Yeah I'd never come across YA Nonfic as a category before either, but I think it's a category that makes a lot of sense: write books that are aimed at well-developed minds capable of critical thinking and analysis but not a lot of world experience and knowledge yet. I want more like this!

[dolorosa_12]

a certain kind of WWII-obsessed history buff cares a LOT about like...timelines and numbers and battles and all the little nitpicky details about the Military Experience, and not about anything else, and that kind of person clearly spends a lot of time on wikipedia. The very bones of the article are designed around that particular perspective on history to such a degree that the article couldn't really be anything else without a complete overhaul, and it's just SO completely opposite to the kinds of priorities of the book I just finished reading that I was kind of flabbergasted. It is not an approach to history that I find interesting or understandable at all. To me that data is relevant for how it informs you about the lived experiences people had, and what it meant to people/communities/countries/the world -- how it contextualizes the human story -- rather than the data being interesting in its own right.

I know exactly what you're talking about, and your perspective is one I share. It's so interesting that people can be interested in history, but have such wildly different understanding of what 'history' can be. Like you I'm much more interested in knowing about people's lived experiences — the grandfather one of my good friends in high school fought for the USSR during the Leningrad siege, and I remember her telling me that he and his fellow soldiers had to light fires underneath tanks and trucks in order to prevent the petrol from freezing. That small human detail has always stuck with me, way more so than a wikipedia article full of dry facts and figures.

The book sounds really interesting.

[sophia_sol]

Yeah exactly! The fact that it was so cold that it affected the soldiers in that specific way is far more interesting to me than like, just hearing the number of degrees Celsius it was, or that the cold weather caused x number of deaths, or whatever. The book had another interesting story to tell that's similar to your friend's grandfather, actually, which was that during an evacuation attempt in the middle of the worst winter, the trucks driving the Leningrad evacuees away across a frozen lake couldn't stop to help if anything bad happened to anyone because if the trucks stopped the engines probably wouldn't be able to start again, because of the cold. So you just had to barrel on and leave others behind knowing that they'd die, but if you stopped too you and your truckful of people would also die.

[dolorosa_12]

Now that you mention it, I suspect it was the engines they were trying to keep warm with the lit fires, rather than the petrol, and I'm just remembering things wrong — fire and petrol don't exactly go well together!

And that story is just heartbreaking — what a horrific thing to have experienced.

[sophia_sol]

that does make more sense!

And yeah, there were SO many heartbreaking stories, the book was just one heartbreak after another for a large portion of it

[cahn]

OH, this sounds amazing! I actually played the first movement of the Leningrad Symphony in high school (90's) and they told us a little about the history behind it, and Shostakovich having to be super double-faced about it, and how when you listen to it one way it's this cool patriotic theme, and when you listen to it another way it's... all twisted up and that drumbeat that never goes away... Anyway, I've never forgotten that, and now I really really want to read this. (And I find MT Anderson really compelling and had no idea they were writing nonfic, I'd have got it for that alone!)

I have a dim memory from what they told us in high school that they found Shostakovich's letters? or something? in the 80's or 90's and then they had to completely rehaul everything they thought, is that right?

[sophia_sol]

That's so cool that you played some of that symphony in high school! I really need to look it up and actually listen to it, I read the whole book with zero knowledge of how the actual piece sounds beyond the written descriptions.

I actually have no idea if that info about the finding of Shostakovich's letters is accurate or not, the book was written according to the current information available. Which included a lot of different sources of varyingly dubious quality, including his letters; but also made the point that plenty of it, his own words in his letters included, cannot be relied upon to definitely reflect what he actually thought, given the constant danger of denunciation in Stalinist russia!

But I do recall the book saying that there's been a lot of disagreement over the years about what to believe about Shostakovich and his intentions and his opinions and all that, so what you say sounds very believable

[cahn]

Oh, okay! Anderson probably has way more info than my orchestra conductor had in the 90's, hee. Anyway, I have ordered the book and E's getting it for Christmas, so I'll get to read it then! ;)

[sophia_sol]

I hope you and E enjoy it! :)