volunteer corps but after a strong bout of stomach ulcers he was declared unfit for military service. During the summer and the beginning of autumn 1941 he served as a fireman extinguishing incendiary bombs on the roof of the Moscow Conservatory during air raids; then he was evacuated to Novosibirsk. The arrival of the Leningrad Symphony Orchestra in Novosibirsk led to Yevgeny Mravinsky conducting a performance of Lokshin's vocal-symphonic poem Wait for me (lyrics by Konstantin Simonov). The piece received high praise from Ivan Sollertinsky, helping Lokshin's return to Moscow after the end of the war. He was able to take the state examinations, obtained the Conservatory diploma with Wait for me as the diploma work. Then, with Nikolay Myaskovsky's support, Lokshin was hired as Assistant Lecturer in Instrumentation at the Moscow Conservatory. In this capacity he worked from 1945 to 1948, the only working position held by the composer during his entire life. The Zhdanov purges At the height of the anti-cosmopolitan campaign and music purges of 1948, directed by Andrey Zhdanov, Lokshin was expelled from the Moscow Conservatory for popularizing among his students what was considered to be the ideologically alien music of Mahler, Alban Berg, Stravinsky, and Shostakovich. Efforts by Nikolay Myaskovsky, Maria Yudina, and Yelena Gnesina to get him another job were fruitless, and for the rest of his life Lokshin supported his family by composing music for film and theater. Accusation by Aleksandr Yesenin-Volpin After Stalin's death, Lokshin was accused by Alexander Esenin-Volpin of being an informer for the NKVD. Lokshin denied ever being an informer and no evidence was ever found confirming that he was. Performances of Lokshin's music Performances of his music had become rare and were met with resistance from liberal-thinking intellectuals, notably Gennady Rozhdestvensky who refused to perform Lokshin's music. Still, most of Lokshin's works have been performed and recorded occasionally. Among his compositions which were never performed are his Symphony No 6 on verses by Aleksandr Blok and The Cockroach (Tarakanishche), a comic oratorio (on a poem by Korney Chukovsky, with anti-Stalin innuendo). Rudolf Barshai in collaboration with Viktor Popov prepared Symphony No 6 for performance, however the performance of this composition was prohibited by the Communist Party for being too mournful for the Soviet public. Among Lokshin's own compositions which he never heard performed are the cantata Mater Dolorosa (1977) on verses from Akhmatova's Requiem, which was prohibited in