‘The New Woman’: Lady Macbeth and sexual politics in the Stalinist era

Abstract

Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District became extraordinarily infamous after its damnation by Pravda in 1936. The amount of violence and sex in the opera distinguishes it from the Leskov novella on which it was based, and seems to have underpinned Stalin's disapproval. The complex relation between Shostakovich's detailed representation of sexuality and his portrait of Katerina, the opera's tragic heroine, mirrors the social tensions of the sexual revolution and the conservative backlash of the 1920s and 1930s. The writings of feminist Alexandra Kollontai (1872–1952) about the new Soviet woman display striking similarities to Shostakovich's portrayal of his female characters and offer a context for his approach.