Memoirs of Yu.B. Elagin (1910-1987), a talented violinist and a keen connoisseur of music, who by the will of fate ended up in America after World War II, covers a terrible decade for Russian culture - 1930-1940. The book restores many unknown and forgotten facts concerning the policy of the Soviet government in the field of art and the fate of people in creative professions in the Soviet Union. Despite the authenticity of the recreation of the gloomy atmosphere of those years, the author’s sense of humor does not leave him. “The Taming of the Arts,” twice published in the West and widely distributed during the years of Soviet power in samizdat, is published in Russia for the first time.