Sergei Prokofiev Was One of the Soviet Union’s Great Composers
Sergei Prokofiev died 70 years ago today, overshadowed by the death of Joseph Stalin, who had banned much of his work. But Prokofiev’s brilliant musical compositions have outlived him and still sound fresh and exciting to modern listeners.
Sergei Prokofiev, 1918. (Library of Congress via Wikimedia Commons)
Two of the twentieth century’s most brilliant composers, Sergei Prokofiev and Dmitri Shostakovich, produced some of their best work in the shadow of Joseph Stalin’s dictatorship. Like so many Soviet writers and filmmakers, they attracted the ire of Stalin’s cultural commissars, precisely because of their creativity.
While Shostakovich lived to see the end of the worst excesses of Stalin’s rule, and thus greater space in which artists could express themselves, Prokofiev had the horrible luck to die on the very same day as Stalin in 1953. As a result, the Soviet press barely reported on the death of one of the country’s greatest artists.
Even his coffin had to be taken by hand through back streets from his Moscow apartment, as a hearse was prohibited from picking it up to make space for the crowds thronging the roads for Stalin’s funeral. But Prokofiev’s work has escaped from Stalin’s shadow to enjoy lasting and deserved renown.
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