Rostropovich, Mstislav. (1927–2007) & Vishnevskaya, Galina Pavlovna. (1926–2012)
Historic Signed Appeal to reinstate their Soviet Citizenship
A historic document, signed by the eminent cellist and co-signed by his wife, soprano Galina Vishnevskaya, [Paris 17 March 1978]; 1 page typed, signed in blue ballpoint pen; in Russian.The original typed and signed appeal designated for reproduction and widespread publication, from the artists, addressed to the European public, asking all people of goodwill to protest against the stripping of their Soviet citizenship in 1978, when they were designated as "ideological renegades" for, as the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet put it, "acts harmful to the prestige of the USSR." Also included are 3 handouts: a release from the Secretary of Rostropovitch, announcing a press conference on the same subject; copies in French and Russian of their open letter to Mr. Leonid Brezhnev.
Rostropovich's sympathies against the Communist Party leaders of his homeland started with the Stalin-era denunciations of Shostakovich and Prokofiev and under Leonid Brezhnev's regime, Rostropovich and Vishnevskaya sheltered the dissident writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn in their country house in the early 1970s. After Solzhenitsyn won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970, Rostropovich wrote an open letter protesting the official Soviet vilification of the author. "Explain to me please, why in our literature and art (that) so often, people absolutely incompetent in this field have the final word?" Rostropovich asserted in the letter that went unpublished. The fight by the cellist and his wife for cultural freedom resulted in the cancellation of concerts, foreign tours and recording projects. Finally, in 1974, they fled to Paris with their two daughters. Four years later, their Soviet citizenship was revoked. "When Leonid Brezhnev stripped us of our citizenship in 1978, we were obliterated," Rostropovich recalled in a 1997 interview in Strad magazine. "Russia was in my heart _ in my mind. I suffered because I knew that until the day I died, I would never see Russia or my friends again." Indeed, he was unable to attend Shostakovich's funeral in 1975. But in 1989, as the Berlin Wall was being torn down, Rostropovich showed up with his cello and played Bach cello suites amid the rubble. The next year, his and Vishnevskaya's Soviet citizenship was restored, and he made a triumphant return to Russia to perform with Washington's National Symphony Orchestra, where he was music director from 1977 to 1994. (9397)
TLS Classical Music