In early 1936, Sergei Prokofiev, one of the most celebrated composers of the 20th century, decided to leave Paris and settle in Moscow, returning to the USSR (see the timeline). His return has been widely interpreted as a highly symbolic event — one that has fueled conflicting narratives. A common claim in Western scholarship is that Prokofiev was deceived into returning, only to later find himself trapped by the Soviet regime....
In my PhD thesis, I conducted a content analysis of 13 books specializing in the history of Soviet music. For each book, I examined its responses to a set of key historical questions, including: Why were the ASM (Association for Contemporary Music) and RAPM (Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians) dissolved in 1932? Why did Prokofiev return to the USSR in 1936? Why was Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk censored, while Dzerzhinsky’s Quiet Flows the Don was praised?...
My wife gave me this awesome electric egg boiler in Christmas 2021. It’s very simple: add some water to the plate, add the eggs using the support, cover it, turn it on, and wait. The boiler will heat the water and turn off automatically when the water finishes evaporating. It’s just a thermal switch: it turns off because the plate gets hotter once the water is not there anymore. The problem is that although it turns off, it doesn’t flip the on/off switch, like, say, those electric kettles....