Shortly after midday on 22 June 1941, the Soviet Commissar for Foreign Affairs Vyacheslav Molotov took to the airwaves to inform a stunned population that an attempted invasion of the country was imminent. Like many of her fellow citizens, Olga Lamm heard the announcement at work, broadcast from loudspeakers in the street. Without making a formal declaration of war, Germany had violated its non-aggression pact with the USSR and initiated a large-scale military offensive, code-named Operation Barbarossa, along the Soviet Union's entire western frontier. Three million soldiers stormed over the border as air raids were conducted on Kiev, Sevastopol, Kaunas, and other cities. Stalin initially reacted with disbelief and for several days apparently failed to grasp the magnitude of the unfolding catastrophe as the Wehrmacht penetrated deeper into Belorussia and Ukraine. Vissarion Shebalin had been examining at the conservatoire in Minsk when the city was bombed on 24 June: he was lucky to make it home safely after a long and hazardous journey, some of it undertaken on foot. Soviet efforts to repulse the attack were at first disorganised and ineffectual. By the end of the month, German forces were advancing on Smolensk, placing Moscow itself under threat. The mood in the capital turned to panic: the government was compelled to issue a directive on 29 June threatening swift reprisals against ‘fearmongering and cowardice’.

Aerial bombardment of Moscow commenced on 22 July. Myaskovsky and Pavel Lamm were forced to cut short their holiday in Nikolina Gora, as it lay in the Luftwaffe's flight path. A few days later, a bomb landed not far from the apartment building in which Myaskovsky lived. As in other western Soviet cities, plans were hastily drawn up to evacuate staff members of major scientific and cultural institutions – part of a broader initiative to safeguard specialists whose services were considered vital to the war effort. The Committee for Artistic Affairs assumed responsibility for arrangements pertaining to the arts sector. On 27 July, Myaskovsky learned that he was to be dispatched to Sverdlovsk (Yekaterinburg), over a thousand miles east of Moscow, with a group from the Bolshoi Theatre. Not wishing to leave Valentina behind on her own, he persuaded her to resign from her civil service post so that she could accompany him. They made hurried preparations – only to be notified that their departure had been postponed.