But it’s true that his defense of Russia during the Ossetia/Georgia war was misunderstood here, primarily because of the misinformation we gullibly swallowed. (Well, most of us….*I* didn’t!). As the author of the only fanblog of his I’m aware of here, I try to disabuse people of their ignorance on that subject.

However, you make his life sound very soft and cushy. In fact, until his 50s (and publication of “Lolita”) he was quite poor, living in Berlin and Paris and making a living however he could, while writing literature that had almost no commercial appeal. Granted, this is not as bad as what most Russians had to endure during this time, but I think it should be mentioned.

As for Rostropovich. He was a guy who accumulated great privileges in the USSR, and was willing to lose all those privileges in his stand against the authorities. As for your comments about “the west” supporting him, I really don’t understand. Should the Westerners have simply ignored him or told him to go back to Russia, instead of recognizing and supporting him? Actually, I do not really regard him as a political figure – he took certain stands that were more personal in nature than political, although in the USSR of the time they had obvious political implications.

As for Solzhenitsyn – OK, you don’t want to talk about him, but I can’t resist mentioning a few things first, “whining about the gulag” (as you put it)…when “Ivan Denisovich” was published, “the West” had nothing to do with it – the book was personally approved by Khruschev for publication, it was a purely internal Soviet event. Solzhenitsyn didn’t get “paid by the West” until he was kicked out of the country. By the way, saying that he “defected” (as the original post states) is actually incorrect – he was kicked out of Russia against his will. He refused to go to Sweden to pick up the Nobel Prize, because he was afraid the authorities would not let him back in. I do not want to defend everything he said (much of it is not to my taste) but he was certainly devoted to his own “idea of Russia.” Saying that he “accused his own country” greatly distorts his position - rather, he accused the rulers of his own country (both during the rule of the Communists, and during Yeltsin’s time).

Yeah, what a traitor. I mean, can you imagine Putin giving him a state award, and Medvedev coming to his funeral? Hey, wait a minute – they did!

However, this long comment by me is a little beside the point. I was making an aesthetic judgment, not a political one. (By the way, I was not intending to denigrate the people on the second list - Prokofiev, for instance, really was a great composer)

Same goes for Rostropovich. He was a great musician, no doubt. But it doesn’t make him a national hero. I have to give him some credit, though: he honesty fought. However unfortunately, he didn’t really understand what he was fighting for: he certainly didn’t fight for the country; he fought against the regime, which made him nothing but an ally of the west. The poor guy never understood that.

I do not want to even discuss Solzhenizin’s role: he simply made a career wining to americans about his gulag time (half of the country went through this) and accusing his own country. I’m not saying there was nothing to accuse. Just don’t do it while getting paid by the west!!! Give me a break: the guy has accepted the Nobel Prize in the midst of the cold war!!!

Sholokhov , on the other hand, is one of the greatest Russian writers. Tihij Don is a masterpiece…

As to the mystification: “Had he not read his own piece?”

With many pieces of this nature, I expect the heavy hand of an editor did some tarting up, which would account for some of the imbalance and the contradictory elements. (I’ve had some personal experience of that sort of thing, which is one reason I decided day-to-day journalism was not a good career choice for me.)

I also take issue with your comment: “A pattern begins to form: Stravinsky, Solzhenitsin, Nabokov, Rostropovich, Vadim Repin and Evgeny Kissin, who defected, are much more loved in the West than Prokofiev, Sholokhov, Gergiev,Gorky and Svetlanov, who didn’t.” I would submit that, overall, the first list of artists is superior to the second. I mean, c’mon - are you going to tell me that Gorky and Sholokhov are better writers than Nabokov? Obviously, politics plays a role, but it’s not the whole story.

I also don’t see why, in and of itself, “such a solidly cosmopolitan CV should easily demolish any charges of nationalism” - there has been no shortage of culturally cosmopolitan intellectuals who were also nationalists. You may be right, but I don’t think this statement proves your case. (On this issue, it would be interesting to know if Gergiev is still collaborating with the Georgian composer Giya Kancheli - they have had a close working relationship.)