Posted 8:20 AM by Gene

One of the greatest victims of Soviet communism was the arts, and perhaps the greatest victim of all the arts was music. Civilized men should never forget Stalin's hideous edict of 1948 blackballing the leading Russian composers of his day, most fearsomely Prokofiev, who was so shattered neither his health nor his music ever recovered. For the Russians it is a double curse because their musical culture, in so many ways, was the most outstanding of all, with a gift of melody and love of harmony that perhaps only the Viennese ever equaled, and an undying quest for perfection. It is therefore sobering to think that the great cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, himself a gallant and uncompromising fighter for human rights -- and a fierce champion of Shostakovich, who was likewise blackballed -- may be the last well known Russian musical figure (unless some rock hack comes along -- unlikely). This realization makes us mourn ever more for the arts, the mourning exacerbated when in so many precincts it's marked with feverish cheering.