The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia

* Zaslavsky was probably the author of the infamous Pravda article of 1936 (‘Muddle Instead of Music’) denouncing Shostakovich’s opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. In 1929, Zaslavsky had denounced his own brother as a ‘Trotskyist’ to demonstrate his loyalty to the Party. On Fadeyev’s initiative, and with the agreement of Stalin, Zaslavsky and Ehrenburg were both removed from the list of members of the JAFC shortly before the arrest of its other members in December 1948 (RGALI, f. 2846, op. 1, dd. 75, 101, 187, 310, 311).