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Crazy how the Russian citizens that supported and didnt support the Bolsheviks would burn everything before Germans got to them

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“Black snow flew,” one man remembered. “It was a scene out of the Apocalypse.”

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Anderson makes it very clear that the symphony was sent to the US in hopes that it would garner support from Russia. Without exposure to Shostakovich's work, the US population may not have have empathized as much with their pains. Do you think that the US too often remains uninvolved in circumstances where their assistance is needed the most?

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I feel like the victims of Stalin's cruelty are so overlooked.

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I feel like the victims of Stalin's cruelty are so overlooked.

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It seems all we got from the WW's was Hitler's terrible thoughts and actions, the suffering of millions by his hand. Yet we rarely mention those under Stalin and Mussolini. Why?

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Why is Stalin so dumb with military actions ? 

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Why is Stalin so dumb with military actions ? 

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Stalin always chooses the dumbest ideas for Russia and it never benefits Russia.

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"Parents could not even talk freely in front of their own kids.
When one little boy saw his father dragged off by the secret police, he immediately assumed the man was guilty"(119)

The communist regime destroyed society. To not be able to trust your family is an extremely scary thought

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The thought provoking scenarios in the fist part of the book really created an understanding of what exactly was happening in the time period and what was important.

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p.76 “if art is art, it is not for everybody, and if it is for everybody, it is not art”
The more thought you put into this quote, the more meaningful it seems to become. I have thought about this quote numerous times after reading it and it just makes me stop to think about what we really define as “art” today.

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"Perhaps the most heartbreaking collapse in this mass starvation was not physical, however, but moral.  People were forced to confront nightmare decisions about who they should allow to live or die" (290).

After this quote is a specific example of a mother who must choose which of her children will live or whether to save herself to be able to care for the other children.

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This is a picture from History.com and, like the pictures in the book, it shows the fact that the people were fighting the conditions, the war and the back breaking work of clean up in the midst of starvation and the constant fear of bombing. As described in the book, the fear, exhaustion and devastation was overwhelming.

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"The evening was a huge success.  His friends were overwhelmed by his new work.  It spoke somehow to what they were all feeling, trapped in that city"  (233).

It shows that the reason why the 7th symphony was so popular was because somehow Shostakovich was able to capture what everyone was feeling in music.

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Loved the first half of this story, very engaging.

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When the symphony was played in Leningrad for the first time was heart warming.

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I find it absolutely amazing how people survived those conditions

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Please add comments and/or questions you would like to discuss about the book.  Feel free to copy a quote from the book that made you stop and think.

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Please add comments and/or questions you would like to discuss about the book.  Feel free to copy a quote from the book that made you stop and think.