The composer was courageous, but not as much as in myth.

In summer 1948, Sostakovic composed the song cycle (From Jewish folk poetry), his first major work in the aftermath of the resolution of the central committee of the Kommunisticeskaja Partija Sovetskogo Sojuza, issued on 10 February 1948. The work uses genuine folk texts, and its melodic, simple, highly accessible harmonic style is completely in accord with A.A. Zdanov's aesthetic precepts. The songs were first privately performed at Sostakovic's birthday party on 25 September 1948, a few weeks after Golda Meir arrived in Moscow as Israel's first ambassador to the USSR and was publicly greeted by more than 50,000 Soviet Jews. In November 1948, the Jewish Antifascist Committee was ordered disbanded, and by the end of the year mass arrests of Jewish intellectuals had begun. Sostakovic's choice of ethnicity for his inspiration was as unfortunate as his previous aesthetic preferences