Pascal Huynh, Curator, Lenin, Stalin and Music says Shostakovich expected the worst. Every night with his family, when he heard a car stop in the street, when he heard the lift go up in his building, he thought it was the secret police coming to arrest him and his family. At that time, anybody could be arrested and sentenced for counterrevolutionary activities. And many were. Others managed to escape the censors because dissidence in music is hard to prove. Unlike in poetry or painting, there are no words or images.