“You ask if I would have been different without "Party guidance"? Yes, almost certainly. No doubt the line I was pursuing when I wrote the Fourth Symphony would have been stronger and sharper in my work. I would have displayed more brilliance, used more sarcasm, I could have revealed my ideas openly instead of having to resort to camouflage.”

—  Dmitri Shostakovich

In conversation with Flora Litvinova, 1970; cited from Elizabeth Wilson Shostakovich: A Life Remembered (1994) pp. 425-6.

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Dmitri Shostakovich 32
Russian composer and pianist 1906–1975

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