Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District
However, Shostakovich lived in difficult times.  The dictator Josef Stalin was making life very difficult for creative people.  He thought that music and all the other arts should praise and glorify their country (the Soviet Union).  He did not allow people to express their own personal feelings.  Anything that he did not like was called “formalist”.  If Stalin did not like someone that person would not be allowed to work.  They might even get sent to prison in Siberia where they were treated very badly.  Many of them died.