Fear and the Muse Kept Watch: The Russian Masters—from Akhmatova and Pasternak to Shostakovich and Eisenstein—Under Stalin

In this study of artists living in the U.S.S.R. during Stalin’s reign, journalist McSmith (No Such Thing as Society) probes the question of why a “disproportionate amount of the great art of the 20th century came from a regime where to think freely was to risk death.” In addition to the creators mentioned in the title, the book delves deep into the lives of numerous poets, novelists, composers, and playwrights, including the likes of Isaac Babel, Vladimir Mayakovsky, and Osip Mandelstam. The suffering is awfully apparent as McSmith describes each artist’s struggles—for the right to create, for artistic integrity, and for survival—“in a state where anybody could be punished for anything.” The persistence of both artists and appreciators of the arts is humbling. For example, Nadezhda Mandelstam, a widow in her 70s, preserved Mandelstam’s life’s work by memorizing all of it. The book stays strictly focused on the Soviet state, never segueing into a larger discussion of the social and political role of art under repressive regimes. Nevertheless, McSmith pieces together many stories in a way that is thoroughly engaging from start to finish. (July)