Shostakovich released his Fifth Symphony in 1937, which put him back in favor with the Soviet leaders because it was acoustically pleasing to the masses. The Fifth contained elements of the great composers that the audience knew: Stravinsky, Prokofiev, and Mahler, but the theme was a great emotional catharsis. The Fifth Symphony was a memorial for those people that had died in the 'purges,' and also a prayer for those left alive. The premiere of the Fifth Symphony took place in Leningrad and many of the audience members began to weep at the onset.

Shostakovich composed his Sixth Symphony in 1939, but it met with less enthusiasm than his Fifth. The Sixth was a much more tranquil and emotionally removed piece. It is as if in the Fifth Symphony Shostakovich is struggling to find inner piece and he finds it in the finale of the Sixth. In 1941, Shostakovich volunteered for military service, but was turned down because of his bad eyesight. Stalin did however use him for propaganda; the July 20, 1942 edition of Time magazine portrays ‘Firefighter Shostakovich’ doing his part in the war against the Germans. Shostakovich and the rest of the conservatory musicians dug trenches on the outskirts of Leningrad for the troops to defend the city. His Seventh and Eighth Symphonies were written during WWII and today are called the military or war symphonies. The Seventh, written in 1941, was response and prayer for the 900 Day Siege of Leningrad. Shostakovich dedicated this symphony to the city of Leningrad, but what many people didn’t realize was that the symphony was not only a response to Hitler’s butchering of Leningrad. Shostakovich felt that it was Stalin who had brutalized Leningrad, Hitler just came in for the kill. He considered the Seventh and Eighth Symphonies his equivalent of Akhmatova’s ‘Requiem,’ an attempt to make sense of the world around him.

After the end of WWII, Stalin clamped down Soviet culture, the ‘Cultural Revolution,’ and Shostakovich was deemed a formalist, who didn’t portray the ‘right’ Soviet themes in his music. Shostakovich became disillusioned with his homeland; around him his friends were either dead or working in the gulag or were prepared to turn him in. Shostakovich further alienated himself after the war by refusing to write Stalin a glorious and triumphant Ninth Symphony. Shostakovich's Ninth Symphony is playful and overwhelmingly depressing at the same time; it is as if the composer is telling his audience that although the present is joyful and peaceful, one can never forget the horror and tragedy of the past. This was Shostakovich's message; he was thoroughly disgusted with Stalin's egotism in the face of all those that had suffered in the purges.