M. T. Anderson

An account of the Siege of Leningrad reveals the role played by Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich and his Leningrad Symphony in rallying and commemorating their fellow citizens.

Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad

Symphony for the City of the Dead

Arun Khanna

I'm usually not a big fan of biographies in trying to understand or interpret history. Despite this, I found this book to be an excellent read. M.T. Anderson walks us through the early Soviet Union through the eyes of the famous composer Dmitri Shostakovich. 

He shows us the horrors, incompetencies, and bizarrely comedic angles of Stalin's brutal regime. One of Shostakovich's operas, Lady Macbeth, ends up becoming popular both among the general public, critics, and among the officials in the Communist Party. However, the second that Stalin makes his displeasure about the play clear, Shostakovich is scorned and essentially left to rot in society. It took him years of essentially hiding from public scrutiny in order to start producing symphonies again. This cycle of being in favor with the authorities and then condemned and banned followed him again after the second world war as well.

M.T. Anderson's writing does as much justice to the complete tragedy of the seige fo Leningrad as one can possibly do. The book doesn't shy away from describing the level of suffering in the great city. What I found especially moving was that despite all of starvation and sickness in the city, the power of music remained strong -- a kind of reverse Maslow's hierarchy of needs. The Communist Party recognized this and used Shostakovich's music as propaganda to suit their purpose, both in maintaining their alliances and shoring up support for resistance to German occupation.

Haley Sherman

This was extraordinary. I recommend the audio book.

Claudia

such a great book - love how shosty's life (and work! a musician's wet dream) was contextualised with explanations of historical developments. perhaps there was too much historical context at times (did way too much ww2+hitler/stalin cult of personality during grade school) and would have preferred more discussion on the difficulties anderson faced in stringing together a cohesive narrative on shosty's life + didn't quite get the significance of the title until the last 120 or so pages, which was when the book started to get REALLY good. anyhow, this adds a lot to the shosty listening experience - thank you anderson!

A 2016 YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults Finalist National Book Award winner M. T. Anderson delivers a brilliant and riveting account of the Siege of Leningrad and the role played by Russian composer Shostakovich and his Leningrad Symphony. In September 1941, Adolf Hitler’s Wehrmacht surrounded Leningrad in what was to become one of the longest and most destructive sieges in Western history—almost three years of bombardment and starvation that culminated in the harsh winter of 1943–1944. More than a million citizens perished. Survivors recall corpses littering the frozen streets, their relatives having neither the means nor the strength to bury them. Residents burned books, furniture, and floorboards to keep warm; they ate family pets and—eventually—one another to stay alive. Trapped between the Nazi invading force and the Soviet government itself was composer Dmitri Shostakovich, who would write a symphony that roused, rallied, eulogized, and commemorated his fellow citizens—the Leningrad Symphony, which came to occupy a surprising place of prominence in the eventual Allied victory. This is the true story of a city under siege: the triumph of bravery and defiance in the face of terrifying odds. It is also a look at the power—and layered meaning—of music in beleaguered lives. Symphony for the City of the Dead is a masterwork thrillingly told and impeccably researched by National Book Award–winning author M. T. Anderson.

Sheila

"When we read tales of atrocity, we all want to be the one who stood firm, who would not bend, who shouted the truth in the face of the dictator. [...] It is easy for us all to imagine we are heroes when we are sitting in our kitchens, dreaming of distant suffering."

This book is, quite simply, a testament to the power of music. Absolutely horrific, and absolutely wonderful.


"The whole of Leningrad heard the music that evening. A soldier in the Red Army wrote in his journal, "On the night of 9 August 1942, my artillery squadron and the people of the great frontline city were listening to the Shostakovich symphony with closed eyes. It seemed that the cloudless sky had suddenly become a storm bursting with music as the city listened to the symphony of heroes and forgot about the war, but not the meaning of war.""

"It was not only the Russians who reacted. The Germans listened too, as the music rose up through the leafy streets and above the gilt barrage balloons. It barked out of the radios in the Wehrmacht barracks. Years later, a German soldier told Eliasberg, "It had a slow but powerful effect on us. The realization began to dawn that we would never take Leningrad." That was enough in itself. "But something else started to happen. We began to see that there was something stronger than starvation, fear and death - the will to stay human.""

Bonus mentions for the heroics of Leningrad's librarians, who went above and beyond the call of public service to help Leningrad survive:

"The Leningrad Public Library remained open throughout the siege and became a place for people to congregate. "People came to the library to read, even when weak from cold and exhaustion," one of the librarians explained. "Some died in their places, with a book propped in front of them.""
"In the course of the war, the librarians greatly expanded the collection, purchasing books from the starving, who were desperate to sell anything for food. Some of the city's librarians scoured bombed ruins for volumes, scrabbling over the piles of brick with their backpacks full of salvaged books. [...] They still served patrons and sought out the answers to practical questions posed by the city government: alternative methods of making matches or candles, forgotten sources of edible yeast."

The scale of what Russia sacrificed in WWII was something I never learned or realized until the end of this book where Anderson explains: 

"Historians now estimate that about 27 million Soviet citizens died during the conflict - more, in other words, than the dead of all other nations combined. [...] The Siege of Leningrad alone cost approximately one and a half million Russian lives - more than the combined World War II casualties of both the Americans and the British - a higher death toll, in fact, than the number of all Americans killed in battle in all wars fought since the United States' first founding."

This book is a must-read for anyone who has even the slightest appreciation of music and wants to learn more about Soviet or WWII history.

Symphony for the City of the Dead Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad

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