Anton Chekhov’s influence on modern literature endures to this day. While best known for his dramatic works, Chekhov’s short stories masterfully portray the lives of ordinary people in 19th-century Russia – where seismic social transformations were taking place.

“The bourgeois like to think that they alone are born with the right to dominate culture. But every human being has the potential to appreciate the arts, and to excel in all of them. This artistic potential of the masses will be unleashed when they move to change society.”

Stalin’s bureaucracy waged a campaign of hate against artists who defied their narrow doctrine of ‘Socialist Realism’. Dmitri Shostakovich’s ‘Anti-formalist Rayok’ lambasts these cultural crimes, and defends the spirit of cultural freedom unleashed by the October Revolution.