Word: pravda
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...lascivious trombone slides that accompany the furious lovemaking of Katerina and Sergei in Act I, called the music "pornophony." But the opera proved popular, with 83 performances in Leningrad and 97 in Moscow before it offended the delicate sensibilities of the Soviet commissars, who denounced it in Pravda as "Muddle Instead of Music." Shostakovich, the only important 20th century Russian composer who worked entirely under the Soviet system (Rachmaninoff and Stravinsky eventually settled in America, and Prokofiev spent many years abroad), found himself labeled an "enemy of the people" and for a while even feared for his life. It took...
When Shostakovich revised the opera in 1956, he toned down the eroticism of both the music and the text (based on Nikolai Leskov's 1865 story). It was essentially the same work that had fallen afoul of Pravda, but noticeably missing were the trombone slides, the most literal music depiction of sexual intercourse since the famous interrupted climax in Act II of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde and the lusty horn whoops in the prelude to Der Rosenkavalier...
...events in Iran. "We have an interest in Iran as a buffer to Soviet expansion," an Administration official explains. "But at this point, all we can do is sit back and wait to see what happens." Although Moscow has consistently supported Khomeini, the Soviets are in a similar quandary. Pravda reported the Raja'i-Bahonar killings factually and tersely-a sign that the Kremlin is keeping its options open. The Palestine Liberation Organization is caught between its initial attraction to Khomeini, who has steadily supported the Palestinian cause, and the Mujahedin, whose secular views are closer...
...report the full extent of the grain shortfall to its readers, newspapers have been full of revealing stories. Farmers have been exhorted to get crops in as fast as possible, before they are drowned by rain. Warnings have been issued against waste. A front-page editorial in Pravda denounced excess eating of bread. Evening Moscow cited World War II Veteran N. Semenov's complaint that "it is impossible to stand by indifferently when you see how many dried-up pieces of bread are being thrown...
...Mitterrand is likely to take a harder line toward the Soviet Union than Giscard-despite his relationship with Moscow's most loyal European Communist Party. The President-elect strongly denounced the Afghanistan invasion and, as one senior British diplomat observed, "has no illusions about Soviet motivations and intentions." Pravda, which praised Giscard's commitment to detente and was openly rooting for him in the election, lamented last week that the Socialist leader would probably adopt the " 'tough positions' of the Western side...