One of the great battles of World War II was between the Red Army and the armies of the United States, Britain, and France. Although nominally allies, there was a fierce rivalry between the U.S.S.R. and the Western powers to see who would reach Berlin first as the war entered its final stage. And although neither side actually fired a shot at each other, whichever side won the battle to seize Berlin first would be able to determine the map of post-War Europe. Fortunately, both sides reached Berlin at about the same time and thus Europe became divided by Churchill's Iron Curtain.

Unfortunately, the 1949 Mosfilm movie called The Fall of Berlin has nothing to do with the rivalry between West and East and everything to do with the bright and cheerful Red Army brightly and cheerfully liberating the Berlin under the bright and cheerful direction of the great and wise Stalin. It is, in other words, a propaganda film, one of the many propaganda films made by Mosfilm in the late 1940s deifying the great and wise Stalin. Since Stalin was in charge of all movies made in the U.S.S.R., and since Stalin was an insane and murderous thug likely to execute any film that didn't deify him, there were no other films made by Mosfilm in the late '40s except those deifying him.

At this point in his career as a composer, Shostakovich was no longer able to work as a serious composer or as a teacher. He had been condemned, again, by the Communist Party, performance of his music had been banned, and he had been fired from his teaching jobs. But, in his greatness and wisdom, Stalin allowed Shostakovich to compose film scores to the movies he allowed to be made. In other words, the only music Shostakovich was allowed to write was music praising the man who had just had him condemned.

Not unsurprisingly, The Fall of Berlin does not seem to have been released in the West, nor does the complete film score exist. But judging from a plot description and by the recordings of the suite drawn from the complete score, The Fall of Berlin contains some of Shostakovich's worst music. The use of a chorus to sing—shout might be a better word—patriotic and folk songs is simplistic in the extreme. The brutal battle music is shamefully shallow and the scenes of the Red Army advancing through the shattered German countryside is guilelessly naive and absurdly bright and cheerful.

While The Fall of Berlin, Op. 82, might have made Stalin feel better about himself, it makes for painful listening now.

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