Emphasis Preaching Journal

In 1967 Shostakovich, the Russian composer, wrote a symphony titled October. The work was created to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. That same October was the 450th anniversary of the Reformation. However, the dominant theme in East Germany at that time was Roter Oktober, "Red October," the time when the Russian people shook off the yoke of the tsars to seize freedom for themselves. What was meant to be freedom, however, turned into a nightmarish era of oppression.