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The exam questions on Soviet Music are announced before the winter term. I think: can music be ‘Soviet?’ or ‘British?’ It can be Russian or Ukrainian, Tartar, English, Scottish, but if it is ‘Soviet’ or ‘British’ then it is not music but something else altogether. Yet many people consider Prokofiev and Shostakovich to be Soviet composers. How naive! Take the never-ending, rubbery Anthem of the Soviet Union, for instance, stretching out like gum, cobbled together by some distinguished puncture-patcher from the country that occupies one-sixth of the world’s land surface – that is Soviet music, the music of an empire, maybe because listening to it you want to lie on a patched inflatable mattress and float off into extra-historical dreams from the fountain reservoir in Pushkin Square.
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