Composed in 1935-36 and intended to be his artistic 'credo', Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony was not performed publicly until 1961. Here, Dr Pauline Fairclough tackles head-on one of the most significant and least understood of Shostakovich's major works. She argues that the Fourth Symphony was radically different from its Soviet contemporaries in terms of its structure, dramaturgy, tone and even language, and therefore challenged the norms of Soviet symphonism at a crucial stage of its development. With the backing of prominent musicologists such as Ivan Sollertinsky, the composer could realistically have expected the premiere to have taken place, and may even have intended the symphony to be a model for a new kind of 'democratic' Soviet symphonism. Fairclough meticulously examines the score to inform a discussion of tonal and thematic processes, allusion, paraphrase and reference to musical types, or intonations. Such analysis is set deeply in the context of Soviet musical culture during the period 1932-36, involving Shostakovich's contemporaries Shebalin, Myaskovsky, Kabalevsky and Popov. A new method of analysis is also advanced here, where a range of Soviet and Western analytical methods are informed by the theoretical work of Shostakovich's contemporaries Viktor Shklovsky, Boris Tomashevsky, Mikhail Bakhtin and Ivan Sollertinsky, together with Theodor Adorno's late study of Mahler. In this way, the book will significantly increase an understanding of the symphony and its context.

In 1968, the predecessor of this volume was published as Number 15 of the Law in Eastern Europe series, under the title "Soviet Citizenship Law". The decision to put out a new version of that study was prompted by the enactment in 1978 of the CUTTent Law on the Citizenship of the USSR and the various changes in Soviet prac tice in this domain which occurred in the intervening decade. I have drawn on the earlier work for background material and in order to make comparisons between the previous record here and the substance ofthe latest statute. However, the pres ent monograph is not a second edition in the sense of being an expanded and updated revision of the original, but stands as an independent piece of research and analysis. Thus, three of the chapters (out of a total of six) featured in the 1968 vol urne - citizenship and state succession, state succession and option of nationality, and refugees and displaced persons - have now been omitted for the simple reason that the situation in these areas has remained virtually static during the past ten years so that the initial treatment requires no significant alteration. On the other hand, fresh problems have meantime arisen - such as, for instance, the connection between citizenship and emigration, and the relationship between citizenship status and the international protection of human rights - which called for attention and are dealt with in this book.

Cover -- Half-title -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Preface -- Introduction: Sincerity, Memory, Marketing, Media -- 1 History: Situating Sincerity -- 2 "But I Want Sincerity So Badly!" The Perestroika Years and Onward -- 3 "I Cried Twice": Sincerity and Life in a Post-Communist World -- 4 "So New Sincerity": New Century, New Media -- Conclusion: Sincerity Dreams -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y -- Z

A thorough examination of Shostakovich's string quartets is long overdue. Although they can justifiably lay claim to being the most significant and frequently performed twentieth-century oeuvre for that ensemble, there has been no systematic English-language study of the entire cycle. Judith Kuhn's book begins such a study, undertaken with the belief that, despite a growing awareness of the universality of Shostakovich's music, much remains to be learned from the historical context and an examination of the music's language. Much of the controversy about Shostakovich's music has been related to questions of meaning. The conflicting interpretations put forth by scholars during the musicological 'Shostakovich wars' have shown the impossibility of fixing a single meaning in the composer's music. Commentators have often heard the quartets as political in nature, although there have been contradictory views as to whether Shostakovich was a loyal communist or a dissident. The works are also often described as vivid narratives, perhaps a confessional autobiography or a chronicle of the composer's times. The cycle has also been heard to examine major philosophical issues posed by the composer's life and times, including war, death, love, the conflict of good and evil, the nature of subjectivity, the power of creativity and the place of the individual - and particularly the artist - in society. Soviet commentaries on the quartets typically describe the works through the lens of Socialist-Realist mythological master narratives. Recent Western commentaries see Shostakovich's quartets as expressions of broader twentieth-century subjectivity, filled with ruptures and uncertainty. What musical features enable these diverse interpretations? Kuhn examines each quartet in turn, looking first at its historical and biographical context, with special attention to the cultural questions being discussed at the time of its writing. She then surveys the work's reception history, and