In mid-1947, the head of the Propaganda and Agitation Department of the Communist Party Central Committee Georgy Aleksandrov and his deputies were subject to public criticism for being insufficiently vigilant and removed from their positions. Shepilov was appointed deputy chief of the Department on 18 September 1947. Since the new department head, Mikhail Suslov, had other responsibilities, Shepilov had almost complete control of the Department's day-to-day operations. One of his first tasks was to assist Zhdanov in disciplining the Soviet Union two greatest living composers, Dmitri Shostakovich and Sergei Prokofiev. He selected Shostakovich's Eighth and Ninth Symphonies and Prokofiev's opera "War and Peace" as the worst examples of what was wrong with Soviet music.