Soviet agitprop poster: "Comrade, come join our kolkhoz!"

A kolkhoz (Russian:  колхо́з​ (help·info), Russian pronunciation: [kɐlˈxos]), plural kolkhozy, is a shortened for a term of rural economics for collective farming (literally - collective management) in the Soviet Union that existed along with state farms (shortened for sovkhoz, plural sovkhozy). The word is a contraction of коллекти́вное хозя́йство, or "collective farm", while sovkhoz is a contraction of советское хозяйство (English: Soviet farm).

Kolkhozy and sovkhozy were the two components of the socialized farm sector that began to emerge in Soviet agriculture after the October Revolution of 1917 as an antithesis to individual or family farming. The 1920s were characterized by spontaneous and apparently voluntary emergence of collective farms, which included an updated version of the traditional Russian “commune”, the generic “farming association” (zemledel’cheskaya artel’), the association for joint cultivation of land (TOZ), and finally the kolkhoz. This peaceful and gradual shift to collective farming in the first 15 years after the October Revolution was turned into a "violent stampede" during the forced collectivization campaign that began in 1928.

Kolkhoz as a pseudo-cooperative[link]

As a collective farm, a kolkhoz was legally organized as a production cooperative. The Standard Charter of a kolkhoz, which since the early 1930s had the force of law in the USSR, is a model of cooperative principles in print. It speaks of the kolkhoz as a “form of agricultural production cooperative of peasants that voluntarily unite for the purpose of joint agricultural production based on ... collective labor.” It asserts that “the kolkhoz is managed according to the principles of socialist self-management, democracy, and openness, with active participation of the members in decisions concerning all aspects of internal life”.^[1]

In practice, the collective farm that emerged after Stalin’s collectivization campaign did not have many characteristics of a true cooperative, except joint ownership of non-land assets by the members (the land in the Soviet Union was nationalized in 1917) and remuneration in proportion to labor and not capital from residual profits. The basic principle of voluntary membership was violated by the process of forced collectivization; members did not retain a right of free exit, and those who managed to leave could not take their share of land and assets with them (neither in kind nor in cash-equivalent form). The role of the “sovereign” general assembly and the “democratically elected” management was in practice reduced to rubber-stamping the plans, targets, and decisions made by the district and provincial authorities. They imposed detailed work programs and nominated their preferred managerial candidates.^[2][3] The kolkhozy rapidly metamorphosed from cooperatives to an offshoot of the state sector (although notionally they continued to be owned by their members). Since the mid-1930s, numerous kolkhozy changed their status to sovkhozy or vice versa, depending on current taxation policies and other discriminatory practices applicable to workers in the two categories of farms. The faint dividing lines between collective and state farms were obliterated almost totally in the late 1960s, when Khrushchev’s administration authorized a guaranteed wage to kolkhoz members, similarly to sovkhoz employees. Essentially, his administration recognized their status as hired hands rather than authentic cooperative members. The guaranteed wage provision was incorporated in the 1969 version of the Standard Charter.

Work organization[link]

The brigade[link]

The question of internal organization was important in the new kolkhozy. The most basic measure was to divide the workforce into a number of groups, generally known as brigades, for working purposes. `By July 1929 it was already normal practice for the large kolkhoz of 200-400 households to be divided into temporary or permanent work units of 15-30 households.'^[4] The authorities gradually came down in favour of the fixed, combined brigade, that is the brigade with its personnel, land, equipment and draught horses fixed to it for the whole period of agricultural operations, and taking responsibility for all relevant tasks during that period. The brigade was headed by a brigade leader (brigadir). He was usually a local man (few were women).

After the kolkhoz amalgamations of 1950 the territorial successor of the old village kolkhoz was the "complex brigade" (brigade of brigades), a sub-unit of the new enlarged kolkhoz.

The zveno[link]

Brigades could be subdivided into smaller units called zvenos (links) for carrying out some or all of their tasks.

Kolkhoz life under Stalin[link]

In a kolkhoz, a member, called kolkhoznik (колхо́зник, feminine колхо́зница), was paid a share of the farm’s product and profit according to the number of workdays, while a sovkhoz employed salaried workers. In practice, many Kolkhoz did not pay their "members" much at all. In 1946, 30 percent of Kolkhoz paid no cash for labor at all, 10.6 paid no grain, and 73.2 percent paid 500 grams of grain or less per day worked.^[5] In addition the kolkhoz was required to sell their crop to the State which fixed prices for the grain. These were set very low and the difference between what the State paid the farm and what the State charged consumers represented a major source of income for the Soviet government. In 1948 the Soviet government charged wholesalers 335 rubles for 100 kilograms of rye, but paid the kolkhoz roughly 8 rubles.^[6] Nor did such prices change much to keep up with inflation. Prices paid by the Soviet government hardly changed at all between 1929 and 1953 meaning that the State did not pay one half or even one third of the cost of production.^[6]

Members of kolkhoz were allowed to hold a small area of private land and some animals. The size of the private plot varied over the Soviet period but was usually about 1 acre (0.40 ha). Before the Russian Revolution of 1917 a peasant with less than 13.5 acres (5.5 ha) was considered too poor to maintain a family.^[7] However, the productivity of such plots is reflected in the fact that in 1938 3.9 percent of total sown land was in the form of private plots, but in 1937 those plots produced 21.5 percent of gross agriculture output.^[8]

Members of the kolkhoz were required to do a minimum number of days work per year on both the kolkhoz and on other government work such as road building. In one kolkhoz the requirements were a minimum of 130 days a year for each able-bodied adult and 50 days per boy aged between 12 and 16. That was distributed around the year according to the agricultural cycle.^[9] If kolkhoz members did not perform the required minimum of work, the penalties could involve confiscation of the farmer's private plot, a trial in front of a People's Court that could result in three to eight months of hard labour on the kolkhoz, or up to one year in a corrective labor camp.^[10]

In both the kolkhoz and sovkhoz, a system of internal passports prevented movement from rural areas to urban areas. Until 1969 all children born on a collective farm were forced by law to work there as adults unless they were specifically given permission to leave.^[11][12] In effect, farmers became tied to their sovkhoz or kolkhoz in what may be described as a system of "neo-serfdom", in which the Communist bureaucracy replaced the former landowners.^[13]

See collectivisation in the USSR and agriculture in the Soviet Union for general discussion of Soviet agriculture.

Basic statistics for the USSR[link]

Kolkhozy and sovkhozy in the USSR: number of farms, average size, and share in agricultural production

Source: Statistical Yearbook of the USSR, various years, State Statistical Committee of the USSR, Moscow.

The disappearance of the kolkhoz after 1991[link]

With the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991, the former Soviet republics became independent states that pursued, with varying degrees of vigor and resolve, a general policy of transition from the Soviet centrally planned economy to a market economy. Farm restructuring was one of the components of the transition agenda in the New Independent States, all of which adopted laws (typically called "Law on Enterprises and Entrepreneurship" in the various native languages) that allowed new corporate forms of farming to emerge (in addition to family farms). These corporate farms could organize as partnerships, limited-liability companies, joint-stock societies, or agricultural cooperatives, and the traditional kolkhozy and sovkhozy — collective and state farms — were generally required to re-register in one of the new corporate forms as chosen by the general assembly of their members or workers. This legal requirement led to massive "external restructuring" of kolkhozy and sovkhozy through re-registration in new corporate forms. The number of kolkhozy and sovkhozy declined rapidly after 1992, while other corporate forms gained in prominence. Still, field surveys conducted in CIS countries in the 1990s generally indicated that, in the opinion of the members and the managers, many of the new corporate farms behaved and functioned for all practical reasons like the old kolkhozy.^[14] Formal re-registration only "changed the sign on the door" and did not produce radical internal restructuring of the traditional Soviet farm, although this was badly needed for improving productivity and efficiency of the former Soviet farms.^{[citation needed]}

Number of kolkhozy and all corporate farms in Russia, Ukraine, and Moldova 1990-2005

Source:

• For Russia, Agriculture in Russia, statistical yearbook, State Statistical Committee, Moscow, various years.
• For Ukraine, Rethinking Agricultural Reform in Ukraine, IAMO, Halle, Germany.
• For Moldova, land balance tables, State Land Cadastre Agency, Chisinau, various years.

Kolkhozy have disappeared completely in Transcaucasian and Central Asian states. In Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan the disappearance of the kolkhoz was part of an overall individualization of agriculture, with family farms displacing corporate farms in general. In Central Asian countries, corporate farms persist, but no kolkhozy remain. Thus, in Turkmenistan, a presidential decree of June 1995 summarily "reorganized" all kolkhozy into "peasant associations" (Turkmen: daikhan berleshik).^[14] In Tajikistan, a presidential decree of October 1995 initiated a process of conversion of kolkhozy into share-based farms operating on leased land, agricultural production cooperatives, and dehkan (peasant) farms.^[15] However, contrary to the practice in all other CIS countries, one-third of the 30,000 peasant farms in Tajikistan are organized as collective dehkan farms and not family farms. These collective dehkan farms are often referred to as "kolkhozy" in the vernacular, although legally they are a different organizational form and the number of "true" kolkhozy in Tajikistan today is less than 50. Similarly in Uzbekistan the 1998 Land Code renamed all kolkhozy and sovkhozy shirkats (Uzbek for agricultural cooperatives) and just five years later, in October 2003, the government's new strategy for land reform prescribed a sweeping reorientation from shirkats to peasant farms, which since then have virtually replaced all corporate farms.

Countries outside the USSR[link]

• Landwirtschaftliche Produktionsgenossenschaft, LPG - GDR
• Rolnicza Spółdzielnia Produkcyjna, RSP - Poland
• Termelőszövetkezet, TSZ - Hungary
• Cooperativă Agricolă de Producție, CAP - Romania

See also[link]

• Zveno (Soviet collective farming) - working subunit of the brigade in a collective farm
• Sovkhoz - Soviet state farm
• Kibbutz

References[link]

This article may be expanded with text translated from the corresponding article in the Russian Wikipedia. (December 2009) Don't speak Russian? Click here to read a machine-translated version of the Russian article. Click [show] on the right to review important translation instructions before translating. Google's machine translation is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into English Wikipedia. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. After translating, {{Translated|ru|Московская монорельсовая транспортная система}} must be added to the talk page to ensure copyright compliance. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

Moscow Monorail
Background
Locale	Moscow
Transit type	straddle-beam monorail
Number of lines	1
Number of stations	6
Daily ridership	~12,000[1]
Operation
Began operation	20 November 2004 (excursion mode) 1 January 2008 (transportation mode)
Operator(s)	Moskovsky Metropoliten
Technical
System length	4.7 kilometres (2.9 mi)
Top speed	60 km/h (37 mph)
System map Legend Ulitsa Sergeya Eisensteina Vystavochny Tsentr Ulitsa Akademika Korolyova Teletsentr Ulitsa Milashenkova Timiryazevskaya

The Moscow Monorail (Russian: Московская Монорельсовая Транспортная Система (ММТС)) is a 4.7 kilometres (2.9 mi) long monorail system located in the North-Eastern Administrative Okrug of Moscow, Russia. It runs from the Timiryazevskaya metro station to Sergeya Eisensteina street. The monorail line has 6 stations. Planning of the monorail in Moscow started in 1998. This was a unique project for Russian companies which did not have prior experience in building monorails. 6,335,510,000 rubles (US $240 million) were spent by the city of Moscow on the monorail construction.

On 20 November 2004, the monorail opened in an "excursion mode". On 10 January 2008, the operation mode was changed to "transportation mode" with more frequent train service. Ticket prices were reduced from 50 rubles ($2) to 19 rubles ($0.80) which was the standard fare for Moscow rapid transport at that time; as of 2012, ticket prices still matched the standard fare, although multi-ride passes could not be used between systems. On April 2012 one of Moscow's transport officials announced that he believes the system should be closed and dismantled in future ^[2].

The monorail is run by the Moskovsky Metropoliten state-owned enterprise.

History[link]

Planning[link]

In the 1990s, Moscow streets became jammed by private cars, which significantly interfered with public transport. This situation renewed interest in the monorail which could unload ground public transport. Estimates were published in the media that showed that building monorails would be 5-7 times cheaper than building new underground metro lines.

The decision to start monorail planning in Moscow was made by the Mayor of Moscow Yury Luzhkov after consultations with Yury Solomonov, the head of state-run Moscow Institute of Thermal Technology (MITT) and Luzhkov's close associate. (Luzhkov and Solomonov jointly patented 19 inventions, including patent RU 2180295 "Monorail transport system".^[3] In 1999, Solomonov directed Luzhkov's mayor election campaign.) MITT previously developed military technology, but had no prior experience in monorail design. At the end of 1990s, MITT urgently needed funding, and looked for contracts from the Government of Moscow.

The modern history of Moscow monorail began on 17 July 1998 when Luzhkov tasked MITT, the Office of Transport and Communications and Moskomarchitechtura (NIiPI General Plan of Moscow) to draft the Moscow Monorail program and to prepare a preliminary technological and economical justification for the development of monorail routes in Moscow. These tasks were formulated in a short decree 777-RP "On the financing of project works on monorail transportation".^[4] MITT received 1.4 million rubles from Moscow budget. Deputy Premier of Moscow Government B.V. Nikolsky was assigned to supervise the project.

On 2 September 1998, Luzhkov signed a decree 996-RP "On the design and construction of new types of high-speed transportation in Moscow" which justified the development of monorail lines in Moscow.^[5] The decree stated that traditional public transportation could not handle the increasing passenger loads and that cardinal solution to that problem would be possible only through the development of new types of high-speed transportation that meet modern ecological and economical requirements, are comfortable and could be integrated with traditional transportation. The decree instructed the Office of Transport and Communications and the state-run Moscow Institute of Thermal Engineering to continue work on the Moscow monorail transportation and to draft the layout of monorail lines by the first quarter of 1999. Luzhkov's decree proposed three monorail lines: from Novogireevo metro to Nikolo-Archangelskoe cemetery, from the metro Vykhino to Zhulebno district and from Krylatskoe to Krasnaya Presnya. However, all these proposed lines were later cancelled. Again, B.V. Nikolsky supervised the project.

On 16 February 1999, the decree 108-PP established an open joint-stock company Moscow Monorail. The company was co-founded by the Department of State and the municipal property of Moscow City which acted on behalf of the Government of Moscow and had a 25% + 1 share.^[6] The total starting capital of Moscow Monorail was 100 million rubles. Vladimir Grigorievich Sister, the prefect of the North-Eastern Administrative Okrug, represented the Government of Moscow in the company. General supervision over the decree implementation was conducted by B.V. Nikolsky. On 3 August 1999, Luzhkov's decree 738-RP established a commission for the supervision of the monorail works in the North-Eastern Administrative Okrug.^[7] Sister became the commission head.

By the first quarter of 2000, an experimental monorail test set was built at the MITT campus. Several trains were purchased from the Swiss company Intamin.^[8] The decree 49-PP specified the rules, regulations and parameters for the construction of the Moscow Monorail.^[9]

Design[link]

Originally the monorail was planned to run from the M8 highway overpass to Severyanin railway station,^[10] but later the project was changed to connect two nearby metro stations (Timiryazevskaya and Botanichesky Sad) with the All-Russia Exhibition Centre. At that time, Moscow competed for hosting EXPO-2010 and a modern monorail could improve the image of the exhibition site. This idea was finalized on 13 March 2001 in the Moscow Government decree 241-PP.^[11] On 21 June, tasks were assigned to the companies contracted to prepare the monorail project^[12]:

The development plan of the North-East Administrative Okrug prioritized the construction of the monorail linking metro stations Botanichesky Sad and Timiryazevskaya. This line was planned to be 8.6 km long and to have 9 stations.^[13] On 25 December 2001, it was decided that the monorail construction would be accomplished in two stages. The first stage would be the construction of the route from the metro station Timiryazevskaya to the All-Russia Exhibition Centre.^[14] On 22 May 2001, the Government of Moscow announced that this line would open in the second quarter of 2003.^[15] The Government of Moscow also emphasized the uniqueness of the object and the lack of experience of Russian companies in such constructions. On 31 January 2002, it was decided that the monorail depot would be established at the territory of the Bauman tram depot where the Museum of Urban Passenger Transport had been previously located. To clear the space for the monorail subdivision of the depot, the museum exposition was first moved to a tram repair factory and then to a newly constructed building that opened in Strogino District on 10 September 1999.

Construction[link]

In August 2001, the construction began at the Fonvizina street. The area was prepared for the construction, trees cut on the path of the future monorail and test drilling conducted. On 22 September, a prototype frame was built for the first pillar. At that time, the exposition trains were moved from the Bauman tram depot to the tram repair factory. On 2 February 2002, the tram track between VVTs and Ostankino was closed and a temporary one-way reversal circle was built for tram routes 11 and 17.

Monorail train design had to be refined because the trains acquired from Intamin showed unsatisfactory performance in winter conditions. The refinement consisted of the installation of a linear engine that was engineered by the scientific centre "TEMP" (electromagnetic passenger transport).^[16] The Moscow Government documents called the monorail line being built "experimental".^[17]

By the end of June, the construction of the monorail line over Academician Korolev Street' tramway was finished and the station construction began. The station was also to be named Ulitsa Akademika Korolyova. On 15 October, tram service was restored on the route from All-Russia Exhibition Centre to the Ostankino TV center. In December, supports were installed throughout the route and the construction sites of all stations were defined. In April 2003, construction of Timiryazevskaya station began with the installation of support beams and building a rail switch.

The decree 866-PP issued by the Moscow Government on 14 October 2003 described in detail the procedure of launching the monorail and provided the technical parameters.^[18] The deadline of 24 October was set to form the acceptance committee. On 11 November, the MMTS Expocentre terminal received a new name - "Ulitsa Sergeya Eisensteina". On 21 November, special construction codes were established that restricted digging trenches, laying utilities, construction of building foundations, tunnelling works and other interferences in the strip of land adjacent to the monorail. The borders of this strip were demarcated as 25 metres from the monorail supports. Restrictions were also imposed on work that lowers the groundwater within 100 metres from the monorail.

In November 2003, most stations were nearing completion, and the rail construction was almost completed. In December, the first test runs of rolling stock were conducted.

The monorail opening was initially planned for the beginning of February 2004, but was delayed until 23 February. On 19 February, an acceptance certificate for the monorail was signed by the committee.^[19] On 21 February, during a trial run near Ulitsa of the Academic Koroleva, one of the trains ripped off 15 metres of the third rail.^[20] However, because of an accident, the monorail opening was delayed again.

On 20 April 2004, a decree "on the additional measures on the construction of the Moscow Monorail" 746-RP was issued.^[21] This decree rescheduled a number of construction deadlines from 2003 to 2004. In May, three trains were test run and the opening was delayed again for no given reason.

On the 11 November, information surfaced that the only work that remained to be accomplished before the line could be launched in an excursion mode was the installation of the automated control system.^[22] On the same day, Dmitry Gayev, director of the Moscow Metro, presented the line to the media.^[23]

Excursion Mode[link]

On 20 November 2004, the monorail carried its first passengers. At that time the monorail was running two trains at 30 minute intervals while the only boarding and exiting station was Ulitsa Sergeya Eisensteina. The monorail ran from 10:00 to 16:00, by the suggestion of Moskovsky Metropoliten. On 29 November, Timiryazevskaya station was opened for boarding and exiting. The cost for one ride during the excursion period was 50 rubles for adults, 25 rubles for students (>6 years of age) of universities, institutes and colleges and free rides for children under six years of age (later changed to seven).

At the beginning of 2005, a project for the continuation of the route was approved and the costs of that project were estimated. In July, the travel time from Timeryzevskaya to Ulitsa Sergei Eisensteina was cut down to about 22 minutes, the line's operating hours were extended to encompass 8:00 to 20:00 and the stations Vystavotchny Tsentr and Teletsentr were opened for passenger boarding and exiting. On 6 February, an electrical equipment near Vystavochny Tsentr station caught fire, with no injuries. Based on previous experience, the monorail was closed until 11 February, due to concern of a possible high voltage leak near the accident area.

On 7 May and 1 June, two accidents involving damage of the third rail happened^[24] Repair work in both cases took several days. It was decided to perform additional monorail reliability checks which suspended its opening until Q2 2006.^[25]

The last station was opened on 1 September 2006. On 19 and 20 October, the trial was conducted to assess the readiness of the line to have six trains en-route simultaneously. According to the monorail staff, these trials showed the lack of sufficient reliability of the rolling stock. Because of this, the launch of the transportation mode is delayed to Q1 2007.^[26]

During the off-hours of 26 December 2006, approximately 400 metres of trolley cable was damaged between stations Vystavochny Tsentr and Ulitsa Sergeya Eisensteina. The damaged site was repaired quickly and, on 30 December, the line continued operation. Allegedly, trolleys were damaged by an excavator or other heavy equipment. On 27 December, the repaired EPS 01 train was accepted for service and soon cannibalized for spare parts.

Budget complaints[link]

In the beginning of 2007, Alexander Lebedev filed claims with the prosecutor of Moscow in regards to his beliefs that the government was making inefficient choices on budget matters in regards to the monorail.^[27] A deputy later published a large section of the complaint in a newspaper.

The period of time that the monorail was in excursion mode launched several complaints against the Moscow Government that were similar to Lebedev's. The highpoint of the complaints was on 20 August, when Dmitry Gayev, answering a question about expansion asked by journalists, said: "This line still does not have any expansion plans, but this does not mean we have to shut it down. This monorail is experimental in nature and is in an experimental regime. Monorails have the right to live, and anything on the territory of Moscow has the right to live, but there is no plan for expansion.".^[28] The media took this to mean that the experiment with the monorail had ended, and that there would be no more plans to develop rapid monorail transit systems in the capital.^[29][30]

Transition to the transportation mode[link]

In the first quarter of 2007, work was considered to be done on fixing minor problems encountered in the semi-automatic control system. Discussion about the transition began in December after the addition of bridges connecting the platforms at normal stations to ease emergency flow.^[31] Also in December, a certificate was signed stating that the current owners of the monorail would be willing to transfer ownership to the Moscow government.

Transportation Mode[link]

As of 1 January 2008, the stations open for entry and exit of passengers from 6:50 to 23:00. On 10 January, the line officially started working in the transportation mode. The transit time was reduced to a range of 9 to 22 minutes (2-5 monorails running simultaneously on the line), the crew was reduced to just the driver, prices were reduced to 19 rubles per trip and students were allowed to purchase tickers. During the first week of in the transportation mode, (from 10 January 2008) the monorail carried 37,871 passengers. In the first week of the work in transportation mode, the monorail's daily use was between 5,700 to 6,200 passengers on weekdays and on weekends, 7,000 people.^[32] After a month and a half after the transition into the transportation mode, passenger traffic reached 12,000 a day: "... the deputy mayor said that for 1.5 months of the monorail in the new regime, the number of passengers increased by seven times."^[33]

On 22 July 2008, the Moscow Government expanded the list of categories of citizens entitled to free use of the monorail services.^[34] In November 2008, the maximum number of trains on the line was increased from 5 to 6 and, on 1 December, a new schedule was introduced. The average daily usage of the monorail in 2008 was 9,600 passengers per day.^[35]

In 2009, the time of the train full circle time was reduced to 39 minutes 40 seconds. The minimal delay between the trains was also reduced by 20 seconds, to 6 minutes 35 seconds. The average daily usage of the monorail in 2009 was approximately 11,200 passengers per day, 17.3% higher than in the previous year.^[35] In 2010, the ticket price was increased to 26 roubles. Wheelchair users ride free.^{[citation needed]}

Stations[link]

Akademika Korolyova street (2011)

• Timiryázevskaya (Тимиря́зевская)
• Úlitsa Milashénkova (У́лица Милаше́нкова)
• Teletséntr (Телеце́нтр, English: Television centre)
• Úlitsa Akadémika Korolyóva (У́лица Акаде́мика Королёва)
• Výstavotchny tsentr (Вы́ставочный центр, English: Exhibition centre)
• Úlitsa Sergéya Eisenshteina (У́лица Серге́я Эйзенште́йна)

The monorail shares a unified station coding system with Moscow Metro.

The average travel time between Timiryazevskaya and Ulitsa Sergeya Eisensteina stations is 17 minutes.^{[citation needed]}

Infrastructure[link]

Each station on the monorail was built separately. Each station consists of two levels, with stair, escalator and elevator access between the two. Five of the six stations are built on an "island" principle, meaning that there is only one platform, with trains approaching on either side of the platform. However, Úlitsa Akadémika Korolyóva is built on a split island design. Instead of trains approaching from either side of one platform, there are two platforms, with trains approaching on only one side of each.

Management of the monorail line can be carried out automatically from the computer control room located in the Bauman train depot. Also at each station there are Station Dispatch rooms, so that rolling stock can be controlled remotely from the station. Currently, the monorail trains operate in a semiautomatic mode, where the electronic system controls the trains. There is also a manual mode in which the operator at the depot controls the trains.^[36] The monorail is powered by seven substations, one for each station and one for the depot.

Criticism[link]

Tram line 17 passes under the monorail track near the VDNKh Moscow Metro station

The criticism in the media is primarily about the system design (low speed and capacity), the route of the monorail and the idea of elevated platform transport (it is alleged that a tram can have the same capacity and speed).^[37] For example, the journalist Alexandr Lebedev noted^[38]:

The amount of space per person on the monorail (either 200 people with 5 people per meter squared or 290 people at an average of about 8 people per meter squared) has been criticized as too little space for something deemed an "alternative to the light metro". For example, journalist Elena Komarova wrote in 2006 that:^[39]

However, the quote ignores the fact that the people per meter squared statistics listed above work out to about 50,000 people per day, which, taking into account the current capacity loads in the Moscow Metro, comes close to the hourly capacity loads of the Butovskaya Light Metro. If the fact that the existing number of rolling stock held my the Monorail and dimensions of the rolling stock built for the first section of the depot is taken into account, such statistics do not match the potential of at least eight times, because (according to data on the company's website) trains can be made up of 10 cars (just like current Moscow Subway lines), and subway lines usually have 42-44 trains running per hour, which would satisfy the monorail's passenger traffic of 38 thousand people, per hour in both directions (or 23 thousand and hour under the existing six-car arrangement), which means the monorail can at least handle the same amount of traffic as the "Light Metro" and could possibly handle the daily volume of the Filyovskaya metro line.^[40]

Supporters of the project state that the current above ground Moscow transport lines, along with the highways are in very poor condition, and the building of another Metro line would be too expensive and would lower the land values of area where construction would be taking palce due to the amount of noise.

Other problems[link]

Along with financial problems,^[41] the closure of the Moscow Museum of Mass Transit for the construction of the monorail depot was criticized. The exhibits were moved into a tram repair station and are now not accessible to the public. Other residents complained about the change of the skyline after the construction of the Ulitsa Academica Koroleva station — they believe that the monorail track is not aesthetically pleasing and blocks the view across the street of the same name.^[42]

See also[link]

	Trains portal
	Moscow portal

• List of monorails
• Trams in Moscow

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Moscow monorail

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Moscow monorail

• (Russian) Official website of MMTS
• The photos of MMTS on The Monorail Society website

Coordinates: 55°49′53″N 37°38′46″E / 55.83139°N 37.64611°E / 55.83139; 37.64611

Dmitri Shostakovich in 1942

Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich Russian pronunciation: [ˈdmʲitrʲɪj ˈdmʲitrʲɪɪvʲɪt͡ɕ ʂəstɐˈkovʲɪt͡ɕ] (Russian: Дмитрий Дмитриевич Шостакович;^[1] 25 September 1906 – 9 August 1975) was a Soviet Russian composer and pianist and was one of the most celebrated composers of the 20th century.

Shostakovich achieved fame in the Soviet Union under the patronage of Leon Trotsky's chief of staff Mikhail Tukhachevsky, but later had a complex and difficult relationship with the government. Nevertheless, he received accolades and state awards and served in the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR (1947–1962) and the USSR (from 1962 until death).

After a period influenced by Sergei Prokofiev and Igor Stravinsky, Shostakovich developed a hybrid style, as exemplified by Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District (1934). This single work juxtaposed a wide variety of trends, including the neo-classical style (showing the influence of Stravinsky) and post-Romanticism (after Gustav Mahler). Sharp contrasts and elements of the grotesque^[2] characterize much of his music.

Shostakovich's orchestral works include 15 symphonies and six concerti. Music for chamber ensembles includes 15 string quartets, a piano quintet, two pieces for a string octet, and two piano trios. His piano works include two solo sonatas, an early set of preludes, and a later set of 24 preludes and fugues. Other works include three operas, and a substantial quantity of film music.

Biography[link]

Early life[link]

Birthplace of Shostakovich (now School no. 267). Commemorative plaque at left

Born at 2 Podolskaya Ulitsa in Saint Petersburg, Russia, Shostakovich was the second of three children born to Dmitri Boleslavovich Shostakovich and Sofiya Vasilievna Kokoulina. Shostakovich's paternal grandfather (originally surnamed Szostakowicz) was of Polish Roman Catholic descent (his family roots trace to the region of the town of Vileyka in Belarus), but his immediate forebears came from Siberia.^[3] His paternal grandfather, a Polish revolutionary in the January Uprising of 1863–4, had been exiled to Narim (near Tomsk) in 1866 in the crackdown that followed Dmitri Karakozov's assassination attempt on Tsar Alexander II.^[4] When his term of exile ended, Boleslaw Szostakowicz decided to remain in Siberia. He eventually became a successful banker in Irkutsk and raised a large family. His son, Dmitriy Boleslavovich Shostakovich, the composer's father, was born in exile in Narim in 1875 and attended Saint Petersburg University, graduating in 1899 from the faculty of physics and mathematics. After graduation, Dmitriy Boleslavovich went to work as an engineer under Dmitriy Mendeleyev at the Bureau of Weights and Measures in Saint Petersburg. In 1903, he married Sofiya Vasilievna Kokoulina, another Siberian transplant to the capital.^[4] Sofiya herself was one of six children born to Vasiliy Yakovlevich Kokoulin, a Russian Siberian native.

Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich was a child prodigy as a pianist and composer, his talent becoming apparent after he began piano lessons with his mother at the age of nine. (On several occasions, he displayed a remarkable ability to remember what his mother had played at the previous lesson, and would get "caught in the act" of pretending to read, playing the previous lesson's music when different music was placed in front of him.)^[5] In 1918, he wrote a funeral march in memory of two leaders of the Kadet party, murdered by Bolshevik sailors.^[6]

In 1919, at the age of 13, he was allowed to enter the Petrograd Conservatory, then headed by Alexander Glazunov. Glazunov monitored Shostakovich's progress closely and promoted him.^[7] Shostakovich studied piano with Leonid Nikolayev, after a year in the class of Elena Rozanova, composition with Maximilian Steinberg, and counterpoint and fugue with Nikolay Sokolov, with whom he became friends.^[8] Shostakovich also attended Alexander Ossovsky's history of music classes.^[9] However, he suffered for his perceived lack of political zeal, and initially failed his exam in Marxist methodology in 1926. His first major musical achievement was the First Symphony (premiered 1926), written as his graduation piece at the age of nineteen.

Shostakovich in 1925

Early career[link]

After graduation, Shostakovich initially embarked on a dual career as concert pianist and composer, but his dry style of playing (his American biographer, Laurel Fay, comments on his "emotional restraint" and "riveting rhythmic drive") was often unappreciated. He nevertheless won an "honorable mention" at the First International Frederic Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw in 1927. After the competition Shostakovich met the conductor Bruno Walter, who was so impressed by the composer's First Symphony that he conducted it at its Berlin premiere later that year. Leopold Stokowski was equally impressed and gave the work its U.S. premiere the following year in Philadelphia and also made the work's first recording.

Thereafter, Shostakovich concentrated on composition, and soon limited his performances primarily to those of his own works. In 1927 he wrote his Second Symphony (subtitled To October), a patriotic piece with a great pro-Soviet choral finale. Due to its experimental nature, as with the subsequent Third Symphony, the pieces were not critically acclaimed with the enthusiasm as granted to the First.

1927 also marked the beginning of Shostakovich's relationship with Ivan Sollertinsky, who remained his closest friend until the latter's death in 1944. Sollertinsky introduced the composer to the music of Gustav Mahler, which had a strong influence on his music from the Fourth Symphony onwards.

While writing the Second Symphony, Shostakovich also began work on his satirical opera The Nose, based on the story by Gogol. In June 1929, the opera was given a concert performance, against Shostakovich's own wishes, and was ferociously attacked by the Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians (RAPM).^[10] Its stage premiere on 18 January 1930 opened to generally poor reviews and widespread incomprehension amongst musicians.^[11]

Shostakovich composed his first film score for the 1929 silent movie, The New Babylon, set during the 1871 Paris Commune.

In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Shostakovich worked at TRAM, a proletarian youth theatre. Although he did little work in this post, it shielded him from ideological attack. Much of this period was spent writing his opera, Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, which was first performed in 1934. It was immediately successful, on both popular and official levels. It was described as "the result of the general success of Socialist construction, of the correct policy of the Party", and as an opera that "could have been written only by a Soviet composer brought up in the best tradition of Soviet culture."^[12]

Shostakovich married his first wife, Nina Varzar, in 1932. Initial difficulties led to a divorce in 1935, but the couple soon remarried when Nina became pregnant with their first child.^[13]

First denunciation[link]

In 1936, Shostakovich fell from official favour. The year began with a series of attacks on him in Pravda, in particular an article entitled, "Muddle Instead of Music". Shostakovich was away on a concert tour in Arkhangel’sk when he heard news of the first Pravda article. Two days before the article was published on the evening of 28 January,^[14] a friend had advised Shostakovich to attend the Bolshoi Theatre production of Lady Macbeth. When he arrived, he saw that Stalin and the Politburo were there. In letters written to Ivan Sollertinsky, a close friend and advisor, Shostakovich recounted the horror with which he watched as Stalin shuddered every time the brass and percussion played too loudly. Equally horrifying was the way Stalin and his companions laughed at the love-making scene between Sergei and Katerina. Eyewitness accounts testify that Shostakovich was "white as a sheet" when he went to take his bow after the third act.^[15]

The article, which condemned Lady Macbeth as formalist, "coarse, primitive and vulgar,"^[16] was thought to have been instigated by Stalin. Consequently, commissions began to fall off, and his income fell by about three quarters. Even Soviet music critics who had praised the opera were forced to recant in print, saying they "failed to detect the shortcomings of Lady Macbeth as pointed out by the Pravda".^[17] Shortly after the "Muddle Instead of Music" article, Pravda published another, "Ballet Falsehood," that criticized Shostakovich’s ballet The Limpid Stream. Shostakovich did not expect this second article because the general public and press already accepted this music as "democratic" - that is, tuneful and accessible. However, Pravda criticized The Limpid Stream for incorrectly displaying peasant life on the collective farm.^[18]

More widely, 1936 marked the beginning of the Great Terror, in which many of the composer's friends and relatives were imprisoned or killed: these included his patron Marshal Tukhachevsky (shot months after his arrest); his brother-in-law Vsevolod Frederiks (a distinguished physicist, eventually released but died before he got home); his close friend Nikolai Zhilyayev (a musicologist who had taught Tukhachevsky; shot shortly after his arrest); his mother-in-law, the astronomer Sofiya Mikhailovna Varzar (sent to a camp in Karaganda); his friend, the Marxist writer Galina Serbryakova (20 years in camps); his uncle, Maxim Kostrykin (died); and his colleagues Boris Kornilov and Adrian Piotrovsky (executed).^[19] His only consolation in this period was the birth of his daughter Galina in 1936; his son Maxim was born two years later.

Withdrawal of the Fourth Symphony[link]

The publication of the Pravda editorials coincided with the composition of Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony. The work was a great shift in style for the composer, due to the substantial influence of Gustav Mahler, as well as multiple Western-style elements. The symphony gave Shostakovich compositional trouble, as he attempted to reform his style into a new idiom. The composer was well into the work when the fatal articles appeared. Despite this, Shostakovich continued to compose the symphony and planned a premiere at the end of 1936. Rehearsals began that December, but after a number of rehearsals Shostakovich, for reasons still debated today, decided to withdraw the symphony from the public. A number of his friends and colleagues, such as Isaak Glikman, have suggested that it was in fact an official ban which Shostakovich was persuaded to present as a voluntary withdrawal.^[20] Whatever the case, it seems possible that this action saved the composer's life: during this time Shostakovich feared for himself and his family. Yet Shostakovich did not repudiate the work: it retained its designation as his Fourth Symphony. A piano reduction was published in 1946, and the work was finally premiered in 1961, well after Stalin's death.

During the years of 1936 and 1937, in order to maintain as low a profile as possible between the Fourth and Fifth symphonies, Shostakovich mainly composed film music, a genre favored by Stalin and lacking in dangerous personal expression.^[21]

"An artist's creative response to just criticism"[link]

The composer's response to his denunciation was the Fifth Symphony of 1937, which was musically more conservative than his earlier works. Premiering on 21 November 1937 in Leningrad, it was a phenomenal success: many in the Leningrad audience had lost family or friends to the mass executions. The Fifth drove many to tears and welling emotions. Later Shostakovich wrote in his memoirs: "I'll never believe that a man who understood nothing could feel the Fifth Symphony. Of course they understood, they understood what was happening around them and they understood what the Fifth was about."^[22]

The success put Shostakovich in good standing once again. Music critics and the authorities alike, including those who had earlier accused Shostakovich of formalism, claimed that he had learned from his mistakes and had become a true Soviet artist. The composer Dmitry Kabalevsky, who had been among those who disassociated himself from Shostakovich when the Pravda article was published, praised the Fifth Symphony and congratulated Shostakovich for "not having given into the seductive temptations of his previous ‘erroneous’ ways."^[23]

It was also at this time that Shostakovich composed the first of his string quartets. His chamber works allowed him to experiment and express ideas which would have been unacceptable in his more public symphonic pieces. In September 1937, he began to teach composition at the Leningrad Conservatory, which provided some financial security but interfered with his own creative work.

Second World War[link]

In 1939, before the Soviet forces invaded Finland, the Party Secretary of Leningrad Andrei Zhdanov commissioned a celebratory piece from Shostakovich, entitled Suite on Finnish Themes to be performed as the marching bands of the Red Army would be parading through the Finnish capital Helsinki. The Winter War was a humiliation for the Red Army, and Shostakovich would never lay claim to the authorship of this work.^[24] It was not performed until 2001.^[25]

Lev A. Russov. The Leningrad Symphony. Conducted by Yevgeny Mravinsky. 1980.

After the outbreak of war between the Soviet Union and Germany in 1941, Shostakovich initially remained in Leningrad. He tried to enlist for the military but was turned away because he had bad eyesight. To compensate, Shostakovich became a volunteer for the Leningrad Conservatory’s firefighter brigade and delivered a radio broadcast to the Soviet people  listen (help·info). The photograph for which he posed was published in newspapers throughout the country.^[26]

But his greatest and most famous wartime contribution was the Seventh Symphony. The composer wrote the first three movements in Leningrad and completed the work in Kuibyshev, now a settlement in Volgograd Oblast, where he and his family had been evacuated. Whether or not Shostakovich really conceived the idea of the symphony with the siege of Leningrad in mind, it was officially claimed as a representation of the people of Leningrad’s brave resistance to the German invaders and an authentic piece of patriotic art at a time when morale needed boosting. The symphony was first premiered at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow and was soon performed abroad in London and the United States. However, the most compelling performance was by the Radio Orchestra in besieged Leningrad. The orchestra only had fourteen musicians left, so the conductor Karl Eliasberg had to recruit anyone who could play a musical instrument to perform the symphony.^[27]

In spring 1943, the family moved to Moscow. At the time of the Eighth Symphony's premiere, the tide had turned for the Red Army. Therefore the public, and most importantly the authorities, wanted another triumphant piece from the composer. Instead, they got the Eighth Symphony, perhaps the ultimate in sombre and violent expression within Shostakovich's output. In order to preserve the image of Shostakovich (a vital bridge to the people of the Union and to the West), the government assigned the name "Stalingrad" to the symphony, giving it the appearance of a mourning of the dead in the bloody Battle of Stalingrad. However, the symphony did not escape criticism. Shostakovich is reported to have said: "When the Eighth was performed, it was openly declared counter-revolutionary and anti-Soviet. They said, 'Why did Shostakovich write an optimistic symphony at the beginning of the war and a tragic one now? At the beginning we were retreating and now we're attacking, destroying the Fascists. And Shostakovich is acting tragic, that means he's on the side of the fascists.'"^[28] The work was unofficially but effectively banned until 1956.^[29]

The Ninth Symphony (1945), in contrast, is an ironic Haydnesque parody, which intentionally failed to satisfy Stalin's demands for a "hymn of victory". The war was won, and Shostakovich’s "pretty" symphony was interpreted as a mockery of the Soviet Union’s victory rather than a celebratory piece. Shostakovich continued to compose chamber music, notably his Second Piano Trio (Op. 67), dedicated to the memory of Sollertinsky, with a bitter-sweet, Jewish-themed totentanz finale.

Second denunciation[link]

In 1948 Shostakovich, along with many other composers, was again denounced for formalism in the Zhdanov decree. Andrei Zhdanov, Chairman of the RSFSR Supreme Soviet, accused Shostakovich and other composers (such as Sergei Prokofiev and Aram Khachaturian) for writing inappropriate and formalist music. This was part of an ongoing anti-formalism campaign intended to root out all Western compositional influence as well as any perceived "non-Russian" output. The conference resulted in the publication of the Central Committee’s Decree "On V. Muradeli’s opera The Great Friendship," which was targeted towards all Soviet composers and demanded that they only write "proletarian" music, or music for the masses. The accused composers, including Shostakovich, were summoned to make public apologies in front of the committee.^[30][31] Most of Shostakovich's works were banned, and his family had privileges withdrawn. Yuri Lyubimov says that at this time "he waited for his arrest at night out on the landing by the lift, so that at least his family wouldn't be disturbed."^[32]

The consequences of the decree for composers were harsh. Shostakovich was among those who were dismissed from the Conservatoire altogether. For Shostakovich, the loss of money was perhaps the largest blow. Others still in the Conservatory experienced an atmosphere that was thick with suspicion. No one wanted their work to be understood as formalist, so many resorted to accusing their colleagues of writing or performing anti-proletarian music.^[33]

In the next few years he composed three categories of work: film music to pay the rent, official works aimed at securing official rehabilitation, and serious works "for the desk drawer". The latter included the Violin Concerto No. 1 and the song cycle From Jewish Folk Poetry. The cycle was written at a time when the post-war anti-Semitic campaign was already under way, with widespread arrests including of I. Dobrushin and Yiditsky, the compilers of the book from which Shostakovich took his texts.^[34]

The restrictions on Shostakovich's music and living arrangements were eased in 1949, when Stalin decided that the Soviets needed to send artistic representatives to the Cultural and Scientific Congress for World Peace in New York City, and that Shostakovich should be amongst them. For Shostakovich, it was a humiliating experience culminating in a New York press conference where he was expected to read a prepared speech. Nicolas Nabokov, who was present in the audience, witnessed Shostakovich starting to read "in a nervous and shaky voice" before he had to break off "and the speech was continued in English by a suave radio baritone".^[35] Fully aware that Shostakovich was not free to speak his mind, Nabokov publicly asked the composer whether he supported the then recent denunciation of Stravinsky's music in the Soviet Union. Shostakovich, who was a great admirer of Stravinsky and had been influenced by his music, had no alternative but to answer in the affirmative. Nabokov did not hesitate to publish that this demonstrated that Shostakovich was "not a free man, but an obedient tool of his government."^[36] Shostakovich never forgave Nabokov for this public humiliation.^[37] That same year Shostakovich was obliged to compose the cantata Song of the Forests, which praised Stalin as the "great gardener." In 1951 the composer was made a deputy to the Supreme Soviet of RSFSR.

Stalin's death in 1953 was the biggest step towards Shostakovich's rehabilitation as a creative artist, which was marked by his Tenth Symphony. It features a number of musical quotations and codes (notably the DSCH and Elmira motifs, Elmira Nazirova being a pianist and composer who had studied under Shostakovich in the year prior to his dismissal from the Moscow Conservatoire),^[38] the meaning of which is still debated, whilst the savage second movement, according to Testimony, is intended as a musical portrait of Stalin himself. The Symphony ranks alongside the Fifth and Seventh as one of his most popular works. 1953 also saw a stream of premieres of the "desk drawer" works.

During the forties and fifties Shostakovich had close relationships with two of his pupils: Galina Ustvolskaya and Elmira Nazirova. In the background to all this remained Shostakovich's first, open marriage to Nina Varzar until her death in 1954. He taught Ustvolskaya from 1937 to 1947. The nature of their relationship is far from clear: Mstislav Rostropovich described it as "tender". Ustvolskaya rejected a proposal of marriage from him after Nina's death.^[39] Shostakovich's daughter, Galina, recalled her father consulting her and Maxim about the possibility of Ustvolskaya being their stepmother.^[40] Ustvolskaya's friend, Viktor Suslin, said that she had been "deeply disappointed" in Shostakovich by the time of her graduation in 1947. The relationship with Nazirova seems to have been one-sided, expressed largely through his letters to her, and can be dated to around 1953 to 1956. He married his second wife, Komsomol activist Margarita Kainova, in 1956; the couple proved ill-matched, and divorced three years later.

In 1954, Shostakovich wrote the Festive Overture, opus 96, that was used as the theme music for the 1980 Summer Olympics.^[41] In addition his '"Theme from the film Pirogov, Opus 76a: Finale" was played as the cauldron was lit at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Greece.

In 1959, Shostakovich appeared on stage in Moscow at the end of a concert performance of his Fifth Symphony, congratulating Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra for their performance (part of a concert tour of the Soviet Union). Bernstein recorded the symphony later that year in New York for Columbia Records.

Joining the Party[link]

The year 1960 marked another turning point in Shostakovich's life: his joining of the Communist Party. The government wanted to appoint him General Secretary of the Composer’s Union, but in order to hold that position Shostakovich was required to attain Party membership. It was understood that Nikita Khrushchev, the First Secretary of the Communist Party from 1958 to 1964, was looking for support from the leading ranks of the intelligentsia in an effort to create a better relationship with the Soviet Union’s artists.^[42] This event has been interpreted variously as a show of commitment, a mark of cowardice, the result of political pressure, and as his free decision. On the one hand, the apparat was undoubtedly less repressive than it had been before Stalin's death. On the other, his son recalled that the event reduced Shostakovich to tears,^[43] and he later told his wife Irina that he had been blackmailed.^[44] Lev Lebedinsky has said that the composer was suicidal.^[45] Once he joined the Party, several articles denouncing individualism in music were published in Pravda under his name, though he did not actually write them. In addition, in joining the party, Shostakovich was also committing himself to finally writing the homage to Lenin that he had promised before. His Twelfth Symphony, which portrays the Bolshevik Revolution and was completed in 1961, was dedicated to Vladimir Lenin and called "The Year 1917."^[46] Around this time, his health also began to deteriorate.

Shostakovich's musical response to these personal crises was the Eighth String Quartet, composed in only three days. Shostakovich subtitled the piece, "To the victims of fascism and war",^[47] ostensibly in memory of the Dresden fire bombing that took place in 1945. Yet, like the Tenth Symphony, this quartet incorporates quotations from several of his past works and his musical monogram: Shostakovich confessed to Glikman, "I started thinking that if some day I die, nobody is likely to write a work in memory of me, so I had better write one myself."^[48] Several of Shostakovich's colleagues, including Natalya Vovsi-Mikhoels^[49] and the cellist Valentin Berlinsky^[50] were also aware of the Eighth Quartet's biographical intent.

In 1962 he married for the third time, to Irina Supinskaya. In a letter to his friend Isaak Glikman, he wrote, "her only defect is that she is 27 years old. In all other respects she is splendid: clever, cheerful, straightforward and very likeable."^[51] According to Galina Vishnevskaya, who knew the Shostakoviches well, this marriage was a very happy one: "It was with her that Dmitri Dmitriyevich finally came to know domestic peace... Surely, she prolonged his life by several years."^[52] In November Shostakovich made his only venture into conducting, conducting a couple of his own works in Gorky:^[53] otherwise he declined to conduct, citing nerves and ill health as his reasons.

That year saw Shostakovich again turn to the subject of anti-Semitism in his Thirteenth Symphony (subtitled Babi Yar). The symphony sets a number of poems by Yevgeny Yevtushenko, the first of which commemorates a massacre of the Jews during the Second World War. Opinions are divided how great a risk this was: the poem had been published in Soviet media, and was not banned, but it remained controversial. After the symphony's premiere, Yevtushenko was forced to add a stanza to his poem which said that Russians and Ukrainians had died alongside the Jews at Babi Yar.

In 1965 Shostakovich raised his voice in defense of poet Joseph Brodsky, who was sentenced to five years of exile and hard labor. Shostakovich co-signed protests together with Yevtushenko and fellow Soviet artists Kornei Chukovsky, Anna Akhmatova, Samuil Marshak, and the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. After the protests the sentence was commuted, and Brodsky returned to Leningrad. Shostakovich joined the group of 25 distinguished intellectuals in signing the letter to Leonid Brezhnev asking not to rehabilitate Stalin.^{[citation needed]}

Later life[link]

Dmitri Shostakovich (center) with his wife Irina and Azerbaijani composer Gara Garayev

In later life, Shostakovich suffered from chronic ill health, but he resisted giving up cigarettes and vodka. Beginning in 1958 he suffered from a debilitating condition that particularly affected his right hand, eventually forcing him to give up piano playing; in 1965 it was diagnosed as polio. He also suffered heart attacks the following year and again in 1971, and several falls in which he broke both his legs; in 1967 he wrote in a letter:

"Target achieved so far: 75% (right leg broken, left leg broken, right hand defective). All I need to do now is wreck the left hand and then 100% of my extremities will be out of order."^[54]

A preoccupation with his own mortality permeates Shostakovich's later works, among them the later quartets and the Fourteenth Symphony of 1969 (a song cycle based on a number of poems on the theme of death). This piece also finds Shostakovich at his most extreme with musical language, with twelve-tone themes and dense polyphony used throughout. Shostakovich dedicated this score to his close friend Benjamin Britten, who conducted its Western premiere at the 1970 Aldeburgh Festival. The Fifteenth Symphony of 1971 is, by contrast, melodic and retrospective in nature, quoting Wagner, Rossini and the composer's own Fourth Symphony.

Shostakovich died of lung cancer on 9 August 1975 and after a civic funeral was interred in the Novodevichy Cemetery, Moscow. Even before his death he had been commemorated with the naming of the Shostakovich Peninsula on Alexander Island, Antarctica.

He was survived by his third wife, Irina; his daughter, Galina; and his son, Maxim, a pianist and conductor who was the dedicatee and first performer of some of his father's works. Shostakovich himself left behind several recordings of his own piano works, while other noted interpreters of his music include his friends Emil Gilels, Mstislav Rostropovich, Tatiana Nikolayeva, Maria Yudina, David Oistrakh, and members of the Beethoven Quartet.

Shostakovich's musical influence on later composers outside the former Soviet Union has been relatively slight, although Alfred Schnittke took up his eclecticism, and his contrasts between the dynamic and the static, and some of André Previn's music shows clear links to Shostakovich's style of orchestration. His influence can also be seen in some Nordic composers, such as Lars-Erik Larsson.^[55] Many of his Russian contemporaries, and his pupils at the Leningrad Conservatory, however, were strongly influenced by his style (including German Okunev, Boris Tishchenko, whose 5th Symphony of 1978 is dedicated to Shostakovich's memory, Sergei Slonimsky, and others). Shostakovich's conservative idiom has nonetheless grown increasingly popular with audiences both within and beyond Russia, as the avant-garde has declined in influence and debate about his political views has developed.

Music[link]

For a complete list, see List of compositions by Dmitri Shostakovich.

See also: Category:Compositions by Dmitri Shostakovich (thematical selection of works by Shostakovich).

Shostakovich's works are broadly tonal and in the Romantic tradition, but with elements of atonality and chromaticism. In some of his later works (e.g., the Twelfth Quartet), he made use of tone rows. His output is dominated by his cycles of symphonies and string quartets, each numbering fifteen. The symphonies are distributed fairly evenly throughout his career, while the quartets are concentrated towards the latter part. Among the most popular are the Fifth and Seventh Symphonies and the Eighth and Fifteenth Quartets. Other works include the operas Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, The Nose and the unfinished The Gamblers based on the comedy of Nikolai Gogol; six concertos (two each for piano, violin and cello); two piano trios; and a large quantity of film music.

Shostakovich's music shows the influence of many of the composers he most admired: Bach in his fugues and passacaglias; Beethoven in the late quartets; Mahler in the symphonies and Berg in his use of musical codes and quotations. Among Russian composers, he particularly admired Modest Mussorgsky, whose operas Boris Godunov and Khovanshchina he re-orchestrated; Mussorgsky's influence is most prominent in the wintry scenes of Lady Macbeth and the Eleventh Symphony, as well as in his satirical works such as "Rayok".^[56] Prokofiev's influence is most apparent in the earlier piano works, such as the first sonata and first concerto.^[57] The influence of Russian church and folk music is very evident in his works for unaccompanied choir of the 1950s.

Shostakovich's relationship with Stravinsky was profoundly ambivalent; as he wrote to Glikman, "Stravinsky the composer I worship. Stravinsky the thinker I despise."^[58] He was particularly enamoured of the Symphony of Psalms, presenting a copy of his own piano version of it to Stravinsky when the latter visited the USSR in 1962. (The meeting of the two composers was not very successful, however; observers commented on Shostakovich's extreme nervousness and Stravinsky's "cruelty" to him.)^[59]

Many commentators have noted the disjunction between the experimental works before the 1936 denunciation and the more conservative ones that followed; the composer told Flora Litvinova, "without 'Party guidance' ... I would have displayed more brilliance, used more sarcasm, I could have revealed my ideas openly instead of having to resort to camouflage."^[60] Articles published by Shostakovich in 1934 and 1935 cited Berg, Schoenberg, Krenek, Hindemith, "and especially Stravinsky" among his influences.^[61] Key works of the earlier period are the First Symphony, which combined the academicism of the conservatory with his progressive inclinations; The Nose ("The most uncompromisingly modernist of all his stage-works"^[62]); Lady Macbeth. which precipitated the denunciation; and the Fourth Symphony, described by Grove as "a colossal synthesis of Shostakovich's musical development to date".^[63] The Fourth Symphony was also the first in which the influence of Mahler came to the fore, prefiguring the route Shostakovich was to take to secure his rehabilitation, while he himself admitted that the preceding two were his least successful.^[64]

In the years after 1936, Shostakovich's symphonic works were outwardly musically conservative, regardless of any subversive political content. During this time he turned increasingly to chamber works, a field that permitted the composer to explore different and often darker ideas without inviting external scrutiny.^[65] While his chamber works were largely tonal, they gave Shostakovich an outlet for sombre reflection not welcomed in his more public works. This is most apparent in the late chamber works, which portray what Groves has described as a "world of purgatorial numbness";^[66] in some of these he included the use of tone rows, although he treated these as melodic themes rather than serially. Vocal works are also a prominent feature of his late output, setting texts often concerned with love, death and art.

Women's Rights[link]

Shostakovich's works have quite a few social justice themes. For example, in Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, the protagonist is doomed by the patriarchal society, and the opera ends with her tragic death. Shostakovich had actually been brought up with feminism; his godmother, Klavdia Lukashevich, was a feminist activist and was also a powerful influence on the young Dmitri Shostakovich.^[67]

Jewish themes[link]

Even before the Stalinist anti-Semitic campaigns in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Shostakovich showed an interest in Jewish themes. He was intrigued by Jewish music’s "ability to build a jolly melody on sad intonations."^[68] Examples of works that included Jewish themes are the Fourth String Quartet (1949), the First Violin Concerto (1948), and the Four Monologues on Pushkin Poems (1952). He was further inspired to write with Jewish themes when he examined Moiser Beregovsky’s thesis on the theme of Jewish folk music in 1946.

In 1948, Shostakovich acquired a book of Jewish folk songs, and from this he composed the song cycle From Jewish Poetry. He initially wrote eight songs that were meant to represent the hardships of being Jewish in the Soviet Union. However in order to disguise this, Shostakovich ended up adding three more songs meant to demonstrate the great life Jews had under the Soviet regime. Despite his efforts to hide the real meaning in the work, the Union of Composers refused to approve his music in 1949 under the pressure of the anti-Semitism that gripped the country. From Jewish Poetry could not be performed until after Stalin’s death in March 1953, along with all the other works that were forbidden.^[69]

Posthumous publications[link]

In 2004, the musicologist Olga Digonskaya discovered a trove of Shostakovich manuscripts at the Glinka State Central Museum of Musical Culture, Moscow. In a cardboard file were some "300 pages of musical sketches, pieces and scores" in the hand of Shostakovich. "A composer friend bribed Shostakovich's housemaid to regularly deliver the contents of Shostakovich's office waste bin to him, instead of taking it to the garbage. Some of those cast-offs eventually found their way into the Glinka. ... The Glinka archive 'contained a huge number of pieces and compositions which were completely unknown or could be traced quite indirectly,' Digonskaya said."^[70]

Among these were Shostakovich's piano and vocal sketches for a prologue to an opera, Orango (1932). They have been orchestrated by the British composer Gerard McBurney and this work was premiered in December 2011 by the Los Angeles Philharmonic.^{[70][71][72][73][74]}

Criticism[link]

According to Shostakovich scholar Gerard McBurney, opinion is divided on whether his music is "of visionary power and originality, as some maintain, or, as others think, derivative, trashy, empty and second-hand."^[75] William Walton, his British contemporary, described him as "The greatest composer of the 20th century."^[76] Musicologist David Fanning concludes in Grove that, "Amid the conflicting pressures of official requirements, the mass suffering of his fellow countrymen, and his personal ideals of humanitarian and public service, he succeeded in forging a musical language of colossal emotional power."^[77]

Some modern composers have been critical. Pierre Boulez dismissed Shostakovich's music as "the second, or even third pressing of Mahler."^[78] The Romanian composer and Webern disciple Philip Gershkovich called Shostakovich "a hack in a trance."^[79] A related complaint is that Shostakovich's style is vulgar and strident: Stravinsky wrote of Lady Macbeth: "brutally hammering ... and monotonous."^[80] English composer and musicologist Robin Holloway described his music as "battleship-grey in melody and harmony, factory-functional in structure; in content all rhetoric and coercion."^[81]

In the 1980s, the Finnish conductor and composer Esa-Pekka Salonen was critical of Shostakovich and refused to conduct his music. For instance, he said in 1987:

Shostakovich is in many ways a polar counter-force for Stravinsky. [...] When I have said that the 7th symphony of Shostakovich is a dull and unpleasant composition, people have responded: "Yes, yes, but think of the background of that symphony." Such an attitude does no good to anyone.^[82]

It is certainly true that Shostakovich borrows extensively from the material and styles both of earlier composers and of popular music; the vulgarity of "low" music is a notable influence on this "greatest of eclectics".^[83] McBurney traces this to the avant-garde artistic circles of the early Soviet period in which Shostakovich moved early in his career, and argues that these borrowings were a deliberate technique to allow him to create "patterns of contrast, repetition, exaggeration" that gave his music the large-scale structure it required.^[84]

Personality[link]

Shostakovich was in many ways an obsessive man: according to his daughter he was "obsessed with cleanliness";^[85] he synchronised the clocks in his apartment; he regularly sent cards to himself to test how well the postal service was working. Elizabeth Wilson's Shostakovich: A Life Remembered (1994 edition) indexes 26 references to his nervousness. Mikhail Druskin remembers that even as a young man the composer was "fragile and nervously agile".^[86] Yuri Lyubimov comments, "The fact that he was more vulnerable and receptive than other people was no doubt an important feature of his genius".^[87] In later life, Krzysztof Meyer recalled, "his face was a bag of tics and grimaces".^[88]

In his lighter moods, sport was one of his main recreations, although he preferred spectating or umpiring to participating (he was a qualified football referee). His favourite football club was Zenit Leningrad, which he would watch regularly.^[89] He also enjoyed playing card games, particularly patience. He was fond of satirical writers such as Gogol, Chekhov and Mikhail Zoshchenko. The influence of the latter in particular is evident in his letters, which include wry parodies of Soviet officialese. Zoshchenko himself noted the contradictions in the composer's character: "he is ... frail, fragile, withdrawn, an infinitely direct, pure child ... [but he is also] hard, acid, extremely intelligent, strong perhaps, despotic and not altogether good-natured (although cerebrally good-natured)".^[90]

He was diffident by nature: Flora Litvinova has said he was "completely incapable of saying 'No' to anybody."^[91] This meant he was easily persuaded to sign official statements, including a denunciation of Andrei Sakharov in 1973; on the other hand he was willing to try to help constituents in his capacities as chairman of the Composers' Union and Deputy to the Supreme Soviet. Oleg Prokofiev commented that "he tried to help so many people that ... less and less attention was paid to his pleas."^[92] When asked if he believed in God, Shostakovich said "No, and I am very sorry about it."^[93]

Orthodoxy and revisionism[link]

Shostakovich represented himself in some works with the DSCH motif, consisting of D-E♭-C-B.

Shostakovich's response to official criticism and, what is more important, the question of whether he used music as a kind of covert dissidence is a matter of dispute. He outwardly conformed to government policies and positions, reading speeches and putting his name to articles expressing the government line.^[94] But it is evident he disliked many aspects of the regime, as confirmed by his family, his letters to Isaak Glikman, and the satirical cantata "Rayok", which ridiculed the "anti-formalist" campaign and was kept hidden until after his death.^[95] He was a close friend of Marshal of the Soviet Union Mikhail Tukhachevsky, who was executed in 1937 during the Great Purge.

It is also uncertain to what extent Shostakovich expressed his opposition to the state in his music. The revisionist view was put forth by Solomon Volkov in the 1979 book Testimony, which was claimed to be Shostakovich's memoirs dictated to Volkov. The book alleged that many of the composer's works contained coded anti-government messages, that would place Shostakovich in a tradition of Russian artists outwitting censorship that goes back at least to the early 19th century poet Pushkin. It is known that he incorporated many quotations and motifs in his work, most notably his signature DSCH theme.^[96] His longtime collaborator Evgeny Mravinsky said that "Shostakovich very often explained his intentions with very specific images and connotations."^[97]

The revisionist perspective has subsequently been supported by his children, Maxim and Galina, and many Russian musicians. Volkov has further argued, both in Testimony and in Shostakovich and Stalin, that Shostakovich adopted the role of the yurodivy or holy fool in his relations with the government. Other prominent revisionists are Ian MacDonald, whose book The New Shostakovich put forward further revisionist interpretations of his music, and Elizabeth Wilson, whose Shostakovich: A Life Remembered provides testimony from many of the composer's acquaintances.

Tombstone of Shostakovich, showing his D-E♭-C-B motif. Novodevichy Cemetery, Moscow.

Musicians and scholars including Laurel Fay^[98] and Richard Taruskin contest the authenticity and debate the significance of Testimony, alleging that Volkov compiled it from a combination of recycled articles, gossip, and possibly some information direct from the composer. Fay documents these allegations in her 2002 article 'Volkov's Testimony reconsidered',^[99] showing that the only pages of the original Testimony manuscript that Shostakovich had signed and verified are word-for-word reproductions of earlier interviews given by the composer, none of which are controversial. (Against this, it has been pointed out by Allan B. Ho and Dmitry Feofanov that at least two of the signed pages contain controversial material: for instance, "on the first page of chapter 3, where [Shostakovich] notes that the plaque that reads 'In this house lived [Vsevolod] Meyerhold' should also say 'And in this house his wife was brutally murdered'.")^[100] More broadly, Fay and Taruskin argue^{[citation needed]} that the significance of Shostakovich is in his music rather than his life, and that to seek political messages in the music detracts from, rather than enhances, its artistic value.

Recorded legacy[link]

A Russian stamp in Shostakovich's memory

In May 1958, during a visit to Paris, Shostakovich recorded his two piano concertos with André Cluytens, as well as some short piano works. These were issued by EMI on an LP, reissued by Seraphim Records on LP, and eventually digitally remastered and released on CD. Shostakovich recorded the two concertos in stereo in Moscow for Melodiya. Shostakovich also played the piano solos in recordings of the Cello Sonata, Op. 40 with cellist Daniil Shafran and also with Mstislav Rostropovich; the Violin Sonata, Op. 134, with violinist David Oistrakh; and the Piano Trio, Op. 67 with violinist David Oistrakh and cellist Miloš Sádlo. There is also a short sound film of Shostakovich as soloist in a 1930s concert performance of the closing moments of his first piano concerto. A colour film of Shostakovich supervising one of his operas, from his last year, was also made.^[101]

Awards[link]

Soviet Union

• Hero of Socialist Labor (1966)
• Order of Lenin (1946, 1956, 1966)
• Order of the October Revolution (1971)
• Order of the Red Banner of Labour (1940)
• Order of Friendship of Peoples (1972)
• People's Artist of the USSR (1954)
• People's Artist of the RSFSR (1948)
• International Peace Prize (1954)
• Lenin Prize (1958 - for the 11th symphony "1905")
• State Stalin Prize in arts (1941 - 1st class, for piano quintet; 1942 - 1st class, 7th ("Leningrad") Symphony; 1946 - 2nd class, a trio, 1948, 1949, 1949, 1949, 1950 - 1st class, for the music for the film Meeting on the Elbe, 1952 - 2nd class, 10 poems for chorus)
• USSR State Prize (1968 - for the poem "The Execution of Stepan Razin" for bass, chorus and orchestra)
• Glinka State Prize of the RSFSR (1974 - for the 14th string quartet and choral cycle "Fidelity")
• National Prize of Ukraine Taras Shevchenko (posthumously, 1976 - USSR State Prize named after Taras Shevchenko - for the opera "Katerina Ismailov," staged in KUGATOB Shevchenko)

Finland

• Sibelius Award (1958)

United States

• Oscar nomination for Khovanshchina, Best Score (Musical) in 1961

United Kingdom

• Gold Medal of the Royal Philharmonic Society (1966)

Austria

• Decoration for Services to the Republic of Austria in Silver (1967)

Denmark

• Léonie Sonning Music Prize (1974)

List of compositions[link]

• List of compositions by Dmitri Shostakovich

Notes[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Dmitri Shostakovich

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Dmitri Shostakovich

• Complete catalogue of works, with many additional comments by Sikorski
• The Shostakovich Debate: Interpreting the composer's life and music
• Journey of Dmitri Shostakovich – an interview with filmmaker Helga Landauer
• Epitonic.com: Dimitri Shostakovich featuring tracks from Written With The Heart's Blood
• Video of Shostakovich, at a rehearsal of his opera The Nose in 1975
• BBC Presenter Stephen Johnson on Shostakovich and Depression
• Altovaya sonata. Dmitriy Shostakovich (1981) (Sonata for Viola), documentary film on Shostakovich's life, and difficulties with Khrennikov and Stalin
• Complete opus list, comprehensive discography, bibliography, filmography, list of first performances and links by Yosuke Kudo
• Archive of BBC's "Discovering Music" radio show, featuring Shostakovich's Symphony No. 5, Symphony No. 10, String Quartet No. 8, and Cello Concerto No. 1.
• Various pieces by Shostakovich in streaming media by Classical Music Archives
• Shostakovich: the 24 preludes Op. 34
• University of Houston Moderated Discussion List: Dmitri Shostakovich and other Russian Composers
• Shostakovich: the string quartets
• Shostakovich: the quartets in context
• Interview with the composer's son, conductor Maxim Shostakovich by Bruce Duffie, July 10, 1992
• Paterson, Harry (21 December 2000). "Shostakovich: Revolutionary life, revolutionary legacy". Weekly Worker. http://www.cpgb.org.uk/article.php?article_id=1000592. Retrieved 31 August 2011. 
• "Shostakovich's Tenth Symphony: The Azerbaijani Link – Elmira Nazirova" by Aida Huseinova, in Azerbaijan International, Vol. 11:1 (Spring 2003), pp. 54–59.
• Ho, Allan B. & Feofanov, Dmitry (2011). "The Shostakovich Wars" (PDF). Southern Illinois University. http://www.siue.edu/~aho/ShostakovichWars/SW.pdf. Retrieved 31 August 2011. 
• Three Words for Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich by Wendy Lesser