Like several other films for which Shostakovich composed the scores in the late 1940s, Pirogov (1947) was based on a real historical character. Nikolai Ivanovich Pirogov was a Russian doctor who distinguished himself in the defense of Sevastopol during the Crimean War, but whose outspoken liberal political views alienated him from the ruling Romanov Tsar. The film was directed by Gregory Kozintsev, half of the directing team of Kozintsev and Trauberg with which Shostakovich had often collaborated in the past. A five-movement suite was drawn from the complete score by Shostakovich's close friend and frequent arranger Lev Atovmian in 1951. This suite, Op. 76a, consists of an extremely dramatic introduction based on the opening credits, a lighter scene of relentlessly driving rhythm, a waltz played by clarinets in Shostakovich's most tuneful and popular vein, a brilliant scherzo which starts as a moto perpetuo and changes into circus band music in the center, and a gargantuan finale whose ostinato rhythm and dramatic melody balance the introduction.

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