Guest Gerry: Evidently Stalin had his pet Jews. One of my favorite records, for most of my life, has been the Soviet Army Chorus and Band. The first song on it is "Song of Youth" by Isaak Dunayevsky, who (I learn from the jacket & from Wikipedia) was one of the first composers in the USSR to use jazz. Sure enough, there is a jazz bridge in "Song of Youth", and it is a lot of fun. Despite that, and being a Jew, he managed to prosper in the Soviet musical world thruout the whole Stalin era. (Stalin hated jazz.) He must have been talented in more than music.