Similarly, his Thirteenth Symphony was censored for its sympathy to the Jewish survivors of the Babi Yar massacres. Ian MacDonald wrote that an attitude of "disgust" to this reception shaped the "puritanical fury" found in the Tenth String Quartet. The formal choice itself to increasingly compose string quartets over symphonies has been used to support this reading of his work, due to the fact that the string quartet and other chamber forms do not appear on the official list of Soviet genres.
Similarly, his Thirteenth Symphony was censored for its sympathy towards Jewish survivors of the Babi Yar massacres. Ian MacDonald argued that a sense of disgust from the reception shaped the "puritanical fury" found in the Tenth String Quartet. The decision to compose more string quartets than symphonies has been used as evidence for this interpretation, as these chamber forms were not officially recognized by the Soviet government.