Changes

''Testimony'' hit the musicological and political worlds like a meteor. The Soviet government was quick to denounce the alleged memoirs, and began a swift PR campaign to discredit Volkov. ''Shostakovich: About his Life and Times'' was soon released, which musicologist Ian MacDonald has called a "KGB snow job,"<ref>http://www.siue.edu/~aho/musov/fay/fayrev1.html</ref> and which reproduces speeches and official articles published under Shostakovich's name throughout his life. These articles, which friends of the composer claim were written by party officials and which he had no choice but to sign, reinforced the image of the composer as a loyal Communist.

''Testimony'' hit the musicological and political worlds like a meteor. The Soviet government was quick to denounce the alleged memoirs, and began a swift PR campaign to discredit Volkov. ''Shostakovich: About his Life and Times'' was soon released, which musicologist Ian MacDonald has called a "KGB snow job,"<ref>http://www.siue.edu/~aho/musov/fay/fayrev1.html</ref> and which reproduces speeches and official articles published under Shostakovich's name throughout his life. These articles, which friends of the composer claim were written by party officials and which he had no choice but to sign, reinforced the image of the composer as a loyal Communist.

Then came an article by Laurel Fay in 1980, entitled "Shostakovich versus Volkov - Whose Testimony?" Fay viciously attacked Volkov's credibility further, claiming that he had plagiarized most of it, and that the rest was pure fantasy. Fay's own credibility has been questioned by MacDonald, who also questions her possible political motives and suspects her of holding Communist sympathies,<ref>http://www.siue.edu/~aho/musov/fay/fayrev6.html</ref> as she had been a student in Leningrad in the late 1970's. While it is true that much of the more innocuous material in ''Testimony'' appears in earlier Soviet publications, this is not definitive proof that Volkov plagiarized; it is also possible (and plausible, given Shostakovich's photographic memory) that the composer recited the stories in question to Volkov in much the same form as he had previously written them.  

Then came an article by Laurel Fay in 1980, entitled "Shostakovich versus Volkov - Whose Testimony?" Fay viciously attacked Volkov's credibility further, claiming that he had plagiarized most of it, and that the rest was pure fantasy. Fay's own credibility has been questioned by MacDonald, who also questions her possible political motives and suspects her of holding Communist sympathies,<ref>http://www.siue.edu/~aho/musov/fay/fayrev6.html</ref> as she had been a student in Leningrad in the late 1970's, and was the first American allowed into the Shosakovich archives. While it is true that much of the more innocuous material in ''Testimony'' appears in earlier Soviet publications, this is not definitive proof that Volkov plagiarized; it is also possible (and plausible, given Shostakovich's photographic memory) that the composer recited the stories in question to Volkov in much the same form as he had previously written them.  

Dozens of Shostakovich's friends and confidants who had previously emigrated to the West, such as Mstislav Rostropovich and the composer's own son, Maxim, were quick to defend the statements of ''Testimony'' as being very characteristic of how he talked and believed in private. Their recollections have been recorded in Allan B. Ho and Dmitri Feofanov's ''Shostakovich Reconsidered'', published in 1998, and have more or less settled the question of ''Testimony's'' veracity for most scholars. Among Western scholars, the faction that refuses to acknowledge the book's credibility as a source now consists primarily of Fay, Richard Taruskin, and Malcolm Harrick Brown.

Dozens of Shostakovich's friends and confidants who had previously emigrated to the West, such as Mstislav Rostropovich and the composer's own son, Maxim, were quick to defend the statements of ''Testimony'' as being very characteristic of how he talked and believed in private. Their recollections have been recorded in Allan B. Ho and Dmitri Feofanov's ''Shostakovich Reconsidered'', published in 1998, and have more or less settled the question of ''Testimony's'' veracity for most scholars. Among Western scholars, the faction that refuses to acknowledge the book's credibility as a source now consists primarily of Fay, Richard Taruskin, and Malcolm Harrick Brown.