Word: galina
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Solzhenitsyn was eventually exiled. Rostropovich and his wife were punished in other ways. Recalls Slava: "I said to Galina, 'After this you will have many difficulties. If you want, we can have an official divorce.' She said, 'No, absolutely not.' " Without explanation, Galina was given only infrequent assignments at the Bolshoi; when she did appear, her name was left off the printed program. Similarly, when her recordings were played on the radio, her name was omitted from the announcer's list. Says she: "I would listen to myself being obliterated." Slava adds: "It was like a slow-motion plan against...
...worst moments came in the late summer of 1973. Galina and Slava sailed down the Volga to give concerts and recitals in small riverside towns?the only places left to them. But in city after city, they found that the engagements had been canceled or that the posters announced the music without naming them as performers. In despair, Slava wrote a letter to Leonid Brezhnev: "Please, I have already given up concerts abroad. I only conduct in my own country. Please help me. If this situation is not changed, I will have to give up music in my country...
...Rostropovich was denied permission to participate in a BBC program honoring Shostakovich. In a fury, he told a Western journalist that the Soviet authorities had imposed an "artistic quarantine" on him and Galina...
Unlike Solzhenitsyn, Slava and his family were not expelled from the Soviet Union. They are still on the Kremlin's leash; they are required to renew their passports once a year at a Soviet embassy. But as far as most Russians are concerned, the two are nobodies. Galina's name is nowhere to be found in the Bolshoi Opera's special 200th anniversary commemorative book. Slava's entry in the latest edition of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia runs a meager twelve lines. The Soviet press continues to ignore his work abroad, in fear, says Slava, that other musicians might...
Meanwhile, Rostropovich and his family are enjoying their new freedom and fresh celebrity. In addition to the dacha and the Moscow apartment, they keep flats in Paris and New York and one near Lausanne. Olga, 20, and Elena, 19, are studying at Manhattan's Juilliard School. Galina sang Tosca last week at Covent Garden. Friends report that her life with Slava is often tempestuous, partly because his career is rising and hers is fading; after all, Rostropovich was largely responsible for destroying her position at the Bolshoi. While Galina supported her husband's defense of Solzhenitsyn, she feels that Slava...