Stalin's music prize (Music Matters, BBC Radio 3)

Stalin's Music Prize is a new book by the Russian music expert Marina Frolova-Walker, which aims to shed new light on musical, cultural and political life in Stalin's Soviet Union. Using recently declassified sources which show Stalin’s personal role in a bureaucratic and often controversial decision making process, Frolova-Walker explores the annual prizes which were awarded to composers and musicians from 1940-1954 to represent the best in Soviet Culture. Petroc Trelawny talks to the author, and is joined to review the book by the writer, broadcaster and former BBC Moscow correspondent, Martin Sixsmith, and Christina Guillaumier from the Centre for Russian Music at Goldsmiths, University of London