Zhdanov decree
|
|
The Zhdanov decree was issued by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on 10 February 1948. Although formally aimed at Vano Muradeli's opera The Great Friendship, it signalled a sustained campaign of criticism and persecution against many of the Soviet Union's foremost composers, notably Dmitri Shostakovich, Sergei Prokofiev and Aram Khachaturian. The decree was followed in April by a special congress of the Composers' Union, where many of those attacked were forced publicly to repent.
The term derives from Andrei Zhdanov, the Central Committee secretary with responsibility for ideology and culture, who led the campaign. The period surrounding the decree is sometimes known as Zhdanovshchina (the era of Zhdanov).
The composers condemned were formally rehabilitated by a further decree issued on 28 May 1958.
The term is also used to refer to a similar decree criticising the satirist Mikhail Zoshchenko and the poet Anna Akhmatova, issued in 1946.