I have three DVDs sitting on my desk waiting for me to have time for a Russian film festival.  I’m not sure if this will happen over one long afternoon, or over three separate nights. I stumbled upon these films because the music for each, was composed by some of my favorite Russian composers. Being a composer, or artist of any sort, in Stalinist Russia was an absolute nightmare.  More accurately, being a human being in Stalinist Russia was an absolute nightmare, and being a composer was no exception.  There was no such thing as due process under the law, nor freedom of speech, nor so many of the things I take for granted as a citizen of a free country.  There were several “purges” over the time Stalin was in power, whereby people who showed opposition to the Party, or some undesirable trait, were rounded up and imprisoned or…