Three months ago, the world`s greatest cellist made a journey he had never dared dream possible.
”I was sure that I never would be allowed to return home to Russia-I believed I would die here in the West,” recalled Mstislav Rostropovich last weekend in his Orchestra Hall dressing room, before his first local recital in 15 years.
”I never believed the Soviets would make the gesture of inviting me back home, because that is like apologizing. It is like saying to the world and to me, `It was our mistake that you had to leave-please come back.”`
Yet that`s precisely what happened when Mikhail Gorbachev`s government invited Rostropovich and his National Symphony Orchestra (of Washington, D.C.) to perform in Moscow last February.
Sixteen years before, Rostropovich and his wife, soprano Galina Vishnevskaya, had been expelled from the USSR for giving aid and comfort to an ”enemy of the people”-Soviet writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn. And because Rostropovich believes he never will fully recover from his long exile, his return stirred up volatile and painful emotions.
”On one hand, I was tremendously excited and nervous about going back,” said Rostropovich, 63. ”But at the same time, my most beloved friends had passed away in those 16 years. This is why the return was so tragic for me.
”If my six dearest friends had been alive-(violinist David) Oistrakh,
(composer Dmitri) Shostakovich, (composer Aram) Khachaturian, (pianist Emil) Gilels, (scientist-humanitarian Andrei) Sakharov and (accompanist)
Alexandre Dedukhin-then my visit would be of a completely different color.
”But straight from the (Moscow) airport I did not go to the hotel or to someone`s home-I went immediately to the cemetery. And to see the stone with Dmitri Shostakovich`s name on it, to see the grave of David Oistrakh, that for me was incredible, emotional, devastating. I can`t tell you how much we would yearn to see each other again.”
Even after the initial shock had worn off, Rostropovich and Vishnevskaya felt old wounds opening.
”When I came to my school (Moscow Conservatory), I did not have the strength to come into the building where I had taught for 25 years.
”The same with Galina. She granted an interview near the Bolshoi Opera
(where she had been a star and Rostropovich had been a conductor). And when she was asked to come the building, she simply said: `No, impossible.`
”You must remember what we went through. After we left , even some of my pupils-to whom I gave my heart and my life-later said to their friends and to the officials, `I`m so ashamed that I was a pupil of this s.o.b. Rostropovich.”`
That was far from the worst of it. In the early `70s, Rostropovich found his concerts inexplicably cancelled at the last moment, his foreign tours halted, his position at the Bolshoi Opera taken away.
His crime was not only providing Solzhenitsyn with a place to live, but also daring to put his sentiments into an open letter to the editors of Pravda and Izvestia, among others.
”I would like to remind you of our newspapers of 1948-how much claptrap they published about S.S. Prokofiev and D.D. Shostakovich, now recognized as giants of our music,” wrote Rostropovich in 1970.
”Today, when you look at the newspapers of those years, the shame for many things becomes unbearable. For the fact that (Shostakovich`s) opera
`Katerina Izmailova` was not heard for three decades. That S. S. Prokofiev, when he was still alive, did not hear the last version of his opera `War and Peace` or his Symphony-Concerto for Cello and Orchestra. That there was an official list of the banned compositions of Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Myaskovsky and Khachaturian.
”Can it really be that the times we have lived through have not taught us to take a more cautious attitude toward crushing talented people?”
Rostropovich had infuriated the authorities years before, when he refused their demand that he make a speech denouncing Boris Pasternak, author of
”Doctor Zhivago,” among other works.
By the late `60s, it became public knowledge that Rostropovich was sheltering the outspoken Solzhenitsyn. And though the music world has no shortage of artists eager to further their careers by becoming collaborators, Rostropovich had other priorities.
”Two (Soviet) ministers came to me and said: `Take Solzhenitsyn and throw him out of your house and into the streets,”` recalled Rostropovich.
”And I said: `In winter? I will not kick him out.` Because if I did, and if the KGB killed him, the devil would put a shadow not only on me, but on my children, and grandchildren, et cetera.
”So I do not care if Stalin himself came to me and told me to throw out Solzhenitsyn. I could not do it.
”I saw this happen over and over. In 1948, Stalin moved against Prokofiev, Shostakovich-against my gods (both of whom had written works for Rostropovich).
”But it did not take very much courage for me to tell (the authorities)
`no.` It was the only honest thing to do.”
Didn`t Rostropovich even fear for his future?
”Of course I did,” he said. ”After I wrote my letter, my wife cried for 48 hours straight through. She said to me: `You`ve killed our family.”`
No doubt Rostropovich`s international fame spared him a fate far worse than expulsion. Yet even after all these years, he cannot understand the Soviets` grim treatment of their great thinkers.
”During my trip, I also went to visit the grave of Sakharov, who, for me, was the No. 1 genius in Soviet Russia,” he said. ”And for at least a half-mile before his grave, there are enormous flowers in his honor. When I saw these, I began to cry, because I thought: `Idiots-now you make flowers. Why didn`t you help him when he lived?`
”But that is Russian history. First we kill our geniuses, and then we cry.”
Despite the dark aspects of Rostropovich`s return, there also were spots of sunshine. Rostropovich was moved to tears when a student choir sang a prayer for him (”before, you could get thrown out of the conservatory for this”), and he was touched to be performing in Rachmaninoff Hall (”He died as an enemy of the people-now they have named a hall for him”).
Through it all, he concluded that ”the people in the Soviet Union want to have a better life-materially better. But it`s not coming fast enough, and that`s a problem for Gorbachev.
”And I think we must try to help him. I think the Lithuanians, for instance, are pushing a bit too fast.
”My fear is that if there are not quick economic improvements in Soviet Russia, there is real danger.”
Meanwhile, Rostropovich plans to return to the USSR in 1993 for a couple of months, with hopes of establishing a music festival.
”I will never get my 16 years back, I will never see my dear friends again on this earth,” he said. ”My grandchildren are not Russians, they are Americans.
”But America is a great country: You take care of your talents. And you take care of the Russian talents, as well.”
