David Oistrakh, Artist of the People?

David Oïstrakh, the man violin, under Stalinist terror.

"How ever hard I try, I can't recall ever having been without a violin during my childhood. I was three and a half when my father brought home a toy violin for me. As I played it I imagined I was a street violinist, a poor man's occupation that was widespread in Odessa at the time. But I could not imagine any greater happiness." The little prince adulated by his mother ("Do you know why he is so intelligent? Because, as a child, he bathed in my milk!") becomes for all of his fellow musicians "King David," a title he did not usurp.