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“In Memory of Our Murdered (Jewish) Children”: Hearing the Holocaust in Soviet Jewish Culture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Abstract

This article offers the first major investigation of the Holocaust in wartime Soviet music and its connection to questions of Soviet Jewish identity. Moving beyond the consistent focus on Dmitrii Shostakovich's 1962 Symphony no. 13 ﹛Babi Yar),I present an alternative locus for the beginnings of Soviet musical representations of the Nazi genocide in a now forgotten composition by the Soviet Jewish composer Mikhail Gnesin, his 1943 Piano Trio, “In Memory of Our Perished Children.” I trace the genesis of this work in Gnesin's web of experiences before and during the war, examining Gnesin's careful strategy of deliberate aesthetic ambiguity in depicting death—Jewish and Soviet, individual and collective. Recapturing this forgotten cultural genealogy provides a very different kind of European historical soundtrack for the Holocaust. Instead of the categories of survivor and bystander, wartime witness and postwar remembrance,we find a more ambiguous form of early Holocaust memory. The story of how the Holocaust first entered Soviet music challenges our contemporary assumptions about the coherence and legitimacy of Holocaust musicas a category of cultural history and present-day performance.

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Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 2014 

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References

1. Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (GARF), fond (f.) R-8144, opis (op.) 1, delo (d.) 53, list (1.) 207 (B. Iagolim, “Mikhail Gnesin [K 60-letiiu so dnia ego rozhdeniia], draft article, March 1948).

2. See, for example, Lukasz Hirszowicz, “The Holocaust in the Soviet Mirror,” in Lucjan, Dobroszyckiand Jeffrey, Gurock, eds., The Holocaust in the Soviet Union: Studies and Sources on the Destruction of the Jews in the Nazi-Occupied Territories of the USSR, 1941- 1945(New York, 1993), 2960 Google Scholar; Harriet, Murav, Music from a Speeding Train: Jewish Literature in Post-Revolution Russia(Stanford, 2011), 150-95Google Scholar; and Mordechai, Altshuler, Religion and Jewish Identity in the Soviet Union, 1941-1964, trans. Saadya, Sternberg(Waltham, 2012).Google Scholar

3. Murav, Music from a Speeding Train, 153.

4. Ibid., 4.

5. David, Shneer, Through Soviet Jewish Eyes: Photography, War, and the Holocaust(New Brunswick, 2010)Google Scholar; and Shneer, , “Picturing Grief: Soviet Holocaust Photography at the Intersection of History and Memory,” American Historical Review 115, no. 1(February 2010): 2852.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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8. David, Bloch, “Jewish Music in Terezin: A Brief Survey,”in Joachim, Braun, Vladimir, Karbusicky, and Heidi Tamar, Hoffmann, eds., Verfemte Musik: Komponisten in den Diktaturen unseres Jahrhunderts. Dokumentation des Kolloquiums vom 9.-12. Januar 1993 in Dresden(Frankfurtam Main, 1995), 105.Google Scholar

9. Perhaps the best example of musical completism is the massive, twenty-four-CD recording project of Italian pianist and conductor Francesco Lotoro, KZMusik: Encyclopedia of Music Composed in Concentration Camps (1933-1945), recorded 2001-11, Musikstrasse.

10. To take but one example, in a recent international academic project with over three hundred scholarly articles and a bibliography of over four hundred fifty items, the only Russian or east European composer included is Shostakovich. This project is Music and the Holocaust, an educational website run by an impressive coterie of international scholars sponsored by the Jewish philanthropic organization ORT, at holocaustmusic.ort .org (last accessed 1 April 2014).

11. Another academic chronology of Holocaust-related art music dates the beginnings of the genre to 1947, with the composition of two Israeli works, Odeon Partos's Yizkor (In Memoriam)and Yitzhak Edel's Suite in Memoriam, along with Arnold Schoenberg's A Survivor from Warsaw, op. 46. See Ben, Arnold, “Art Music and the Holocaust,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 6, no. 4(1992): 335-49.Google Scholar

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13. In the 1940s alone, the pages of Eynikaytwere filled with numerous mentions of composers who produced memorial works on Jewish martyrdom, often using the texts of Soviet Yiddish writers. Prominent examples include Leningrad composer Aleksandr Manevich's 1947 Yiddish cantata, To the Memory of the Victims of German Fascism;Kiev composer S. Sendrei's 1947 setting of Shmuel Halkin's iconic poem, “Tife griber, royte leym—kh'hob amol gehat a heym” (Deep Pits, Red Clay—Once I Had a Home), and other works; as well as the song settings of Halkin's poetry by Mieczyslaw Weinberg and Lev Pul'ver. See also Inessa, Dvuzhil'naia, “Otrazhenie temy kholokosta v muzykal'nom iskusstve Belarusi,” Materialy vosemnadtsatoi mezhdunarodnoi ezhegodnoi konferentsii po iudaike, 2vols. (Moscow, 2011), 1:514-24Google Scholar; and Antonina, Klokova, ‘“Mein moralische Pflicht,’ Mieczyslaw Weinberg und der Holocaust,” Osteuropa 60, no. 7(July 2010): 173-82Google Scholar. On the broader Cold War cultural politics involved in the reception of Soviet composers, see Neil, Edmunds, introduction to Neil, Edmunds, ed., Soviet Music and Society under Lenin and Stalin: The Baton and the Sickle(London, 2004), 2.Google Scholar

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15. Murav, Music from a Speeding Train, 119.

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17. Quoted in Vladimir Dyn'kin, “Evreiskaia muzyka zhdala svoego Glinku … ,“ Lekhaim105, no. 1 (January 2001), at www.lechaim.ru/ARHIV/105/hrennikov.htm (last accessed 1 April 2014).

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20. Sergo Bengelsdorf, “Der bakanter un umbekanter Mikhel Gnesin,” Forverts, 2April 2010, at yiddish2.forward.com/node/2862 (last accessed 1 April 2014); Rita Flomenboim, “Ha-eskolah ha-le'umit shel ha-musikah ha-yehudit-omanutit: Yo'el Engel (1868-1927) ve-Mikha'il Gnesin (1883-1957)” (PhD diss., Bar-Ilan University 1996); Dmitrii Slepovich, “Evreiskaia kompozitorskaia shkola v Rossii pervoi poloviny XX veka: Tvorchestvo M. F. Gnesina,” at klezmer.narod.ru/Jews_rus.htm (last accessed 30 June 2014); Frans C. Lemaire, Muzyka XX veka v Rossii i v respublikakh byvshego Sovetskogo Soiuza(St. Petersburg, 2003), 321-24; and Izalii Zemtsovskii, “M. F. Gnesin o sisteme ladov evreiskoi muzyki (po materialam arkhiva kompozitora),” Nauchnyi vestnik Moskovskoi konservatorii(2012): 6-24. See also the recent survey of literature on Gnesin by Borisova, E. V., “Kratkii obzor literatury, posviashchennoi M. F. Gnesinu),”in Tropp, Vladimir V., ed., Gnesinskii istoricheskii sbornik: Zapiski memorial'nogo muzei-kvartiry El. F. Gnesinoi. K 60-letiiu RAM im. Gnesinykh(Moscow, 2004), 94103.Google Scholar

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22. On the challenges of labeling Gnesin's identity, see James, Loeffler, The Most Musical Nation: Jews and Culture in the Late Russian Empire(New Haven, 2010), 94133,202-8Google Scholar, and Evgeniia Vladimirovna Khazdan, “Mikhail Fabianovich Gnesin: Evreiskii kompozitor ili kompozitor ‘evreiskogo prosveshcheniia'?,” in Materialy vosemnadtsatoi mezhdunarodnoi ezhegodnoi konferentsii, 1:495-513.

23. Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv literatury i iskusstva (RGALI), f. 2954, op. 1, d. 193,1.95 (Draft Manuscript of the Memoirs of M. F. Gnesin).

24. On this latter work, see Iulian, Krein, “M. F. Gnesin,”in Raisa Vladimirovna, Glezer, ed., M. F. Gnesin: Stat'i, vospominannia, materialy(Moscow, 1961), 33.Google Scholar

25. RGALI, f. 2954, op. 1, d. 181 (M. F. Gnesin, “Iz vospominannii o V. E. Meierkhol ‘de,“ 24 August 1941). See also Krivosheevoi, I. V., ed., Vs. Meierkhol d i Mikh. Gnesin: Sobranie dokumentov(Moscow, 2008), 14 Google Scholar.

26. Flomenboim, “Ha-eskolah ha-le'umit,” 176-78; Jascha, Nemtsov, Die Neue Jiidische Schule in der Musik(Wiesbaden, 2004), 104-10Google Scholar; and Nemtsov, , Enzyklopaedisches Findbuch zum Archiv der “Neuen Judischen Schule”(Wiesbaden, 2004), 222-23.Google Scholar

27. On Gnesin's Palestine travels, see the recent analysis by Evgeniia, Khazdan, “Dve palestinskie poezdki M. F. Gnesina,” Opera Musicologica 11, no. 1(2012): 2646.Google Scholar

28. RGALI, f. 2954, op. 1, d. 242 (Letter from Mikhail Gnesin to Nadia Gnesina, 30 October 1913).

29. Aleksandr, Blok, Roza i krest', act 1, scene 3, in Blok, A., Teatr(Berlin, 1922), 163 Google Scholar. For the details of Gnesin's failed attempt to compose music for Blok's play, see Morrison, Russian Opera, 26-42. On the larger history of the production, see Westphalen, Timothy C., Lyric Incarnate: The Dramas of Aleksandr Blok(Amsterdam, 1998), 120-63.Google Scholar

30. Gnesin, “Iz vospominannii,” 11-14. Gnesin went on to refer to his Symphonic Fantasia, op. 19, officially titled Song of the Ancient Homeland (Pesnia o drevnei rodine), as Song of the Holy Land (Pesri o sviatoi zemle)in a 1920 letter to Maksmilian Shteinberg. RGALI, f. 2954, op. 1, d. 269,11.21-22 (Letter from M. F. Gnesin to M. S. Shteinberg, 15 June 1920), quoted in Grigor'eva, G. V., ed., “Pis'ma M. F. Gnesina k M. 0. Shteinbergu,”in Grigor'eva, G. V., ed., Iz lichnykh arkhivov professorov Moskovskoi konservatorii, 3vols. (Moscow, 2002-08), 3:73.Google Scholar

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32. For a recent artistic assessment of Gnesin's oeuvre, see Mariia Karachevskaia, “'la chelovek zabroshennyi …': K 125-letiiu so dniia rozhdeniia Mikhaila Gnesina,“ Muzykal'naia zhizn, no. 2 (February 2008): 20.

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37. Jeffrey Veidlinger, The Moscow Yiddish State Theater: Jewish Culture on the Soviet Stage(Bloomington, 2000), 168-73; Mikhail Krutikov, “Halkin, Shmuel,” at www. yivoencyclopedia.com/article.aspx/Halkin_Shmuel (last accessed 1 April 2014).

38. Fragments in Gnesin's archive suggest he returned to work on the Bar Kokhba project in the years 1944-47 once back in Moscow. RGALI, f. 2954, op. 1, d. 86,1.37.

39. On the period in Ioshkar-Ola, see RGALI, f. 2954, op. 1, d. 283,11.15-18 (Letter from M. F. Gnesin to L. Shtreykher, 31 May 1942).

40. On the difficult circumstances involving Fabi's arrival in Tashkent and untimely death, see the letters from Maksmilian Shteinberg to Elena Gnesina, reprinted in E. F. Gnesina, “la chuvstvuiu sebia obiazannoi…,” Muzykal'naia akademiia, nos. 3-4 (1998): 134.

41. RGALI, f. 2954, op. 1, d. 233,1.27 (Letter from M. F. Gnesin to E. F. Gnesina, 26 November 1943); RGALI, f. 2954, op. 1, d. 425,1.17 (Letter from E. F. Gnesina to M. F. Gnesin, 14 December 1942). The first draft of the trio in Gnesin's archive is dated 29 August 1943. RGALI, f. 2954, op. 1, d. 31.

42. Tropp, ed., Elena Gnesina, 183.

43. RGALI, f. 2954, op. 1, d. 233,1.44 (Letter from M. F. Gnesin to E. F. Gnesina, 26 November 1943).

44. Harlow Robinson, “Composing for Victory: Classical Music,” in Stites, ed., Culture and Entertainment, 62.

45. RGALI, f. 2954, op. 1, d. 233,1. 38, 44 (Letter from M. F. Gnesin to E. F. Gnesina, 26 November 1943).

46. RGALI, f. 2954, op. 1, d. 31. The Russian word pogibshikh(perished) might also be translated as “dead,” “lost,” or “murdered.“

47. On the dissemination of news of the Holocaust in Soviet culture, see Karel C. Berkhoff, '“Total Annihilation of the Jewish Population': The Holocaust in the Soviet Media, 1941-45,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History10, no. 1 (Winter 2009): 61-105.

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51. la. Frenkel, “Sovetisher kompozitor Mikhl Gnesin,” Eynikayt, 1 December 1944,23. See also V. V., Tropp, E. G., Artmova, and I. B., Barannikov, eds., Gnesinskii dom: Letopis voennykh let. 65-letiiu Pobedy v Velikoi Otechestvennoi voine 1941-1945 gg posviashchaetsia(Moscow, 2010), 123.Google Scholar

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57. Ibid.

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65. RGALI, f. 2954, op. 1, d. 269,11.49-50 (Letter from M. F. Gnesin to M. 0. Shteinberg, 2 March 1944). See also Grigor'eva, “Pis'ma M. F. Gnesina,” 90.

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68. Frenkel, “Sovetisher kompozitor,” 23.

69. Letter from M. F. Gnesin to R. B. Fisher, 6 April 1945, quoted in Krivosheevoi, ed., Vs. Meierkhol'd i Mikhail Gnesin, 143. Gnesin also once remarked to his student Abram Iusfin, “My Jewishness is the subsoil [podpochva]from which the very ways in which I think, feel, see, understand, and misunderstand the world, people, and myself grew.“ Abram, Iusfin, “Kto ia est'?,” Al'manakh “MORIIA,“no. 6(2006): n.p.Google Scholar

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71. Ia. Frenkel, “Muzikalishe sezon in Moskve,” Eynikayt, February 1946.

72. Mikhail Gnesin, “Avtobiografiia,” in R. Glezer, Mikhail Gnesin, 173.

73. For a similar discussion of Jewish themes in Shostakovich's work, see Judith, Kuhn, Shostakovich in Dialogue: Form, Imagery and Ideas in Quartets 1-7(Burlington, Vt., 2010), 6466.Google Scholar

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77. RGALI, f. 2954, op. 1, d. 875,1. 66 (Letter from G. Smolar to M. F. Gnesin, 24 June 1948). The radio show on which it was aired regularly ran four evenings a week. On the specific broadcast, see “'Dos, vos es sharkt unz, iz der bavust zayn, az mir zaynen nisht eynzam': Fun der aroystretung durkh radio fun Van Fraana,” Naye lebn26, no. 195 (21 May 1948; 12 Iyyar 5708): 4. On Yiddish-language broadcasting on Polish radio in these years, see Jonas, Turkow, Nokh der bafrayung: Zikhroynes(Buenos Aires, 1959), 3351.Google Scholar

78. Marci Shore, “I?zyk, pami^c i rewolucyjna awangarda: Ksztaltowanie historii powstania w getcie warszawskim, 1944-1950,” Biuletyn Zydowskiego Institytu Historycznegow Polsce188, no. 3 (December 1998): 51. Snyder comments, “In the politically acceptable history of the Second World War, the resistance in the ghetto had little to do with the mass murder of Jews, and much to do with the courage of Communists. This fundamental shift of emphasis obscured the Jewish experience of the war, as the Holocaust became nothing more than an instance of fascism.” Snyder, Bloodlands, 355.

79. Soveshchanie deiatelei sovetskoi muzyki v TSK VKP(b)(Moscow, 1948), 148-52; “Vystupleniia na sobranii kompozitorov i muzykovedov g. Moskvy,” Sovetskaia muzyka, no. 1 (January-February 1948): 80-82; Marian, Koval', Pervyi Vsesoiuznyi s“ezd kompozitorov: Stenografischeskii otchet(Moscow, 1948), 194-99Google Scholar; Gnesina, “la chuvstvuiu sebia obiazannoi…,” 135-38; and Patrick, Zuk, “Nikolay Myaskovsky and the Events of 1948,“ Music and Letters 93, no. 1(2012): 6185 Google Scholar. For a general overview of this episode, see Kiril, Tomoff, Creative Union: The Professional Organization of Soviet Composers, 1939-1953(Ithaca, 2006), 122-51.Google Scholar

80. Maria Lobanova, “Lokschins Schicksal im politisch-kulturellen Kontext der Sowjetzeit,“ in Rudolf, Barshai, Lobanova, M., and Kuhn, E., eds., Ein unbekanntes Genie: Der Symphoniker Alexander Lokschin. Monografien, Zeugnisse, Dokumente, Wuerdiungen(Berlin, 2000), 28 Google Scholar; Aleksandr Lokshin, “Die Jahre 1948 und 1949 im Leben meines Vaters,” in Barshai, Lobanova, and Kuhn, eds., Ein unbekanntes Genie, 156-57. On Gnesin's participation in this event, see Sovetskaia muzyka, no. 1 (January 1950): 49-50. Gnesin further registered his distaste for the politically driven theories of Soviet music in a 1948 article, simfonizme, O Russkom,” Sovetskaia muzyka, no. 6 (August 1948): 4150, and no. 2 (February 1949): 50-54Google Scholar.

81. Anna, Ferenc, “Music in the Socialist State,”in Edmunds, , ed., Soviet Music and Society, 16.Google Scholar

82. Dyn'kin, “Evreiskaia muzyka.“

83. Ryzhkin, Iosif la., “Moi vstrechi s Mikhailom Fabianovichem Gnesinym,”in Tropp, , ed., Gnesinskii istoricheskii sbornik, 5657.Google Scholar

84. On the context of the antisemitic purges in the Soviet musical profession at this time, see Tomoff, Creative Union, 164-88.

85. Tropp, “Biografiia,” 45-46.

86. Bogdanova, A. V., Muzyka i vlast': Poststalinskiiperiod(Moscow, 1995), 194 Google Scholar. On the Gnesin Musical Institute's negotiation of Soviet cultural politics in the 1950s and 1960s, see Bittner, Stephen V., The Many Lives of Khrushchev's Thaw: Experience and Memory in Moscow's Arbat(Ithaca, 2008), 4073 Google Scholar.

87. Kostyrchenko, G., Gosudarstvennyi antisemitizm v SSSR ot nachala do kul'minatsii: 1938-1953(Moscow, 2005), 346-48Google Scholar; Kostyrchenko, G., Tainaia politika Stalina: Vlasf i antisemitizm(Moscow, 2001), 553 Google Scholar. For another instance of the accusation of secretly using “Hatikvah” in Soviet music, see Tomoff, Creative Union, 166.

88. Igor, Boelza, “Instrumental'naia muzyka,”in Vasina-Grossman, V. A., ed., Istoriia russkoi sovetskoi muzyki, vol. 3,1941-1945(Moscow, 1959), 338,422.Google Scholar

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90. Lev Nikolaevich, Raaben, Sovetskaia kamerno-instrumental'naia muzyka(Leningrad, 1963), 9293 Google Scholar. Gnesin's work, referred to as a “Memorial Trio,” still earned a passing mention in Tarakanov, M. E., ed., Istoriia sovremennoi otechestvennoi muzyki, vol. 2, 1941-1958(Moscow, 1999), 233.Google Scholar

91. A. G. Yusfin, “Michael Fabianovitch Gnesin,” program note to August 2002 concert, at www.joodsemuziekprojecten.nl/uk/pdf/gnepro_yusfin_sum_uk.pdf (last accessed 17 April 2014).

92. To take one example, the 1968 brochure of the National Jewish Music Council failed to include Gnesin's trio in a list of his chamber works available for musicians and concert programmers interested in Russian Jewish repertoire. National Jewish Music Council, Articles on Jewish Music(New York, 1968), 8-16.

93. For an exception, see Slepovich, “Evreiskaia kompozitorskaia shkola.“

94. Ryzhkin, “Moi vstrechi,” 54.

95. I. la. Ryzhkin, “Sootnoshenie natsional'nykh istokov v muzykal'nom tvorchestve Mikhaila Gnesina i Al'freda Shnitke—k postanovke voprosa (tezisy),” in Granovskii, B. B., ed., Evreiskaia muzyka: Izuchenie i prepodovanie. Materialy konferentsa (Moscow, 1996)(Moscow, 1998), 49.Google Scholar

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97. Friedrich, Geiger, Musik in zwei Diktaturen: Verfolgung von Komponisten unter Hitler und Stalin(Kassel, 2004), 100.Google Scholar

98. Yusfin, “Michael Fabianovitch Gnesin.” On the politics of musical programming and blacklisting, see Elena Vlasova, “Repertuarnaia politika v muzykal'nom iskusstve Stalinskoi epokhi,” in Iu. Pozanova, , Skvortsova, I. A., and Sorokina, E. G., eds., Iz istorii russkoi muzykal'noi kul'tury: Pamiati Alekseia Ivanovicha Kandinskogo(Moscow, 2002), 153167 Google Scholar; Blium, A. V., Sovetskaia tsenzura v epokhu totalnogo terror, 1929-1953(St. Petersburg, 2000), 243-51Google Scholar; and Robert, Enz, “Sowjetische Repertoirepolitik in der Stalinzeit am Beispiel Moskauer und Leningrader Opern- und Balletttheater wie Philharmonien”(PhD diss., Ruprcht-Karls-Universitat, Heidelberg, 2006), 366416.Google Scholar

99. Joachim, Braun, “The Double Meaning of Jewish Elements in Dimitri Shostakovich's Music,” Musical Quarterly 71, no. 1 (1985): 6880 Google Scholar; Esti, Sheinberg, “Jewish Existential Irony as Ethos in the Music of Shostakovich,”in Pauline, Faircloughand David|Fanning, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Shostakovich(Cambridge, Eng., 2008), 350-67Google Scholar; Richard, Taruskin, On Russian Music(Berkeley, 2009), 302-5Google Scholar; and Kuhn, Shostakovich in Dialogue, 44-56.

100. Ryzhkin, “Moi vstrechi,” 58; Iu. Krein, “M. F. Gnesin,” 37. See also Flomenboim, “The Work of Michael Gnesin,” 155-59.

101. Joachim Braun, “Jewish Art Music and Jewish Musicians in the Soviet Union, 1917-1950's,” in Braun, Karbusicky, and Hoffmann, eds., Verfemte Musik, 131-32; Sheinberg, Irony, Satire, Parody, 301-19.

102. Sheinberg, Irony, Satire, Parody, 302-9.