In 1948 he headed a conference at which Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Myaskovsky and Shebalin (who had been his teacher), were told that they were bad “formalists”. The word “formalist” has no meaning in music, but it was used by the politicians to describe anyone who was not obeying the politicians’ guidelines. Khrennikov said at the conference that “we will stop all manifestations of formalism and popular decadence".