conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me a description for a book titled Shostakovich and Stalin about Shostakovich, Stalin, Russian with the genre: History, Europe.. End with the sentence ' This is a fascinating and important story told by one of the greatest authorities on Russian culture in the Soviet years.'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: 'Music illuminates a person and provides him with his last hope; even Stalin, a butcher, knew that...' So said the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich, who spent his life battling for the right to create his works under the Soviet Union's totalitarian regime. This proved dangerous under the autocratic Stalin, who perceived himself to be an erudite critic of modern culture. So when he stormed out of the performance of Shostakovich's opera 'Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk' in 1936, the composer feared he would be arrested and killed. Instead, the 'supreme leader' played a game of cat and mouse. He would attack Shostakovich in Pravda and ban his music from the airwaves. Then he would honour him with prestigious awards. Stalin's goal was to remain unpredictable, and thus afford Shostakovich no sense of personal security, although he continued to compose stirring symphonies that drew him millions of fans. This is a fascinating and important story told by one of the greatest authorities on Russian culture in the Soviet years.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the first four paragraphs for this book.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Shostakovich and Stalin
  Quoted in: Arkady Vaksberg, Gibel' Burevestnika. M. Gor'kii: poslednie dvadtsat' let (Moscow, 1999), p. 253.
  B. Asafiev (Igor Glebov), Kriticheskie stat'i, ocherki i retsenzii. Iz naslediia kontsa desiatykh-nachala tridtsatykh godov (Moscow–Leningrad, 1967), p. 242.
  This and following responses to "Muddle Instead of Music" are quoted in: Vlast' i khudozhestvennaia intelligentsiia, pp. 290–5.
  V. N. Toporov, Akhmatova i Blok (k probleme postroeniia poeticheskogo dialoga: "blokovskii" tekst Akhmatovoi) (Berlin, 1981), pp. 7–8.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me five more paragraphs.. Start with the sentence 'B'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: B. Asafiev (Igor Glebov), Kriticheskie stat'i, ocherki i retsenzii. Iz naslediia kontsa desiatykh-nachala tridtsatykh godov (Moscow–Leningrad, 1967), p. 242.
  This and following responses to "Muddle Instead of Music" are quoted in: Vlast' i khudozhestvennaia intelligentsiia, pp. 290–5.
  V. N. Toporov, Akhmatova i Blok (k probleme postroeniia poeticheskogo dialoga: "blokovskii" tekst Akhmatovoi) (Berlin, 1981), pp. 7–8.
  Boris Kuzin, Vospominaniia. Proizvedeniia. Perepiska. Nadezhda Mandelstam, 192 pis'ma k B. S. Kuzinu (St. Petersburg, 1999), p. 532.
  Shostakovich: mezhdu mgnoveniem i vechnost'iu. Dokumenty, materialy, stat'i (St. Petersburg, 2000), p. 122.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the last two paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: For this see: Pis'ma k drugu, pp. 160–1; Lebedinsky, Bessistemnye zapisi (typed copy of manuscript in the archive of Solomon Volkov).
  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Distributed by Random House, Inc., New York.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Swap the first and the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: , New York. 160–1; Lebedinsky, Bessistemnye zapisi (typed copy of manuscript in the archive of Solomon Volkov).
  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Distributed by Random House, Inc.For this see: Pis'ma k drugu, pp.