A closer look
Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich was so deeply terrified of being arrested by Stalin's secret police in the 1930s that he actually packed a tiny suitcase and slept by the elevator in his apartment hallway just to avoid waking up his family. After Stalin attended one of his operas and completely hated it, the government newspaper published a scathing review, which during the Great Purge was basically a massive, neon-lit death sentence for any artist. Shostakovich was entirely convinced that agents would break down his door in the middle of the night, so he decided to politely wait outside in the freezing corridor to make his inevitable abduction more convenient for the authorities. He miraculously survived the purges, but his anxiety-ridden hallway campouts are a deeply depressing testament to the fact that displeasing a brutal dictator with slightly dissonant music was a highly lethal offense
