In January, late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny reported that the Siberian penal colony in which he was held blasted the song “Я РУССКИЙ” (“I Am Russian”) by Putin’s favorite singer, Shaman, every day at 5 a.m., right after the national anthem. But the dictator has also instrumentalized classical music for his own purposes. A performance of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 7 in C Major, Op. 60 (“Leningrad”) in August 2022 shows how Putin goes about it.

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…wrote his dissertation about the repression of composers under Hitler and Stalin. He is a professor of musicology at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Munich.