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Title: Undoubtedly a fraud......
Review: Althought a fascinating read, the evidence overwhelmingly proves that 'Testimony' is a fraud. Laurel E. Fay's two studies of the subject, 'Shostakovich vs. Volkov: Whose Testimony?' (1980) and 'Volkov's Testimony Reconsidered' (2002) completely destroy the evidence for the validity of this work. Basically, the only pages of 'Testimony' that Shostakovich signed are completely stolen from earlier published words of the composer, absolutely word to word, maintaining even the pagination of the original articles. This, despite the fact that Volkov (who worked for the paper that published these) denies any knowledge of them.'Testimony' should definitely be read alongside 'A Shostakovich Casebook' (edited by Malcom Brown, 2004) if fellow readers wish to gain a more complete understanding not only of these 'memoirs', but of Shostakovich himself.
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