Is 7 really Shostakovich's "most popular" symphony?
Mea culpa, what I meant was "the most recorded/pressed/performed" - which I believe it is?
I cannot be certain about that, but it may well be just that.
There is some dispute among the DSCH scholars that the 7th was really the composer's reaction to the invasion of the USSR by the Third Reich. Apparently sketches predate the invasion (which came as a complete surprise to the USSR's top brass) so extensively that it's hard to make this case. Legend persists that Khrennikov persuaded DSCH to retitle a work that he had wanted to call "The Legendary", and to put the symphony at the country's disposal in time of war. I see Elder hasn't mentioned any of this. Volkhov's Russian-language book ("The Tsar & The Composer") is more overt than the boiled-down English version titled "Shostakovich & Stalin". I should be interested to know what experts like McBurney think about this matter?
And so would I - but then even the remarkable Elizabeth Wilson, who has arguably gotten as near as it might be possible to get to address the secrets of Shostakovich, cannot really help us here, so I suspect that such help is simply not forthcoming and we'll accordingly have to form our own conclusions.
Works of art shouldn't float to the top on the sympathy vote, because they happened to be created in dreadful circumstances or fearful times*. They have to succeed as works of art, first and foremost. And if the sympathy vote has been rigged - because the composer had a different idea in his mind about whom Russia's "enemy" was in "the Legendary", as Volkhov states, and as Rostro claimed - then the touching stories attached to it lose credibility considerably.
If by "Volkhov" you mean Solomon of that ilk, then I'd rather move away, thanks - but I agree with the rest of what you write here, without question.