It became known as The Great Terror. Stalin's political purges sent members of the intelligentsia off to the gulags or worse, for trivial reasons, sometimes for no reason at all.
And in 1937, Stalin was none too happy with Dmitri Shostakovich. Indeed, Shostakovich's next symphony might be a matter of life and death. We're up to 1937 in our cycle of his symphonies in the context of their times, and this week we'll hear the symphony that may have saved his life.
Sunday at 6:00 p.m. on WFIT 89.5 FM, streaming at WFIT.org, or ask your smart speaker to play WFIT.
