The official cause of Tchaikovsky's death—cholera from unboiled water—is often rejected in favor of suicide conspiracies. This reflects a cultural discomfort with a celebrated artist dying from a mundane disease, preferring a narrative that aligns with the romanticized image of a tortured genius.

Soft power is being deployed through culture. U.S. agencies have funded cultural products, like rap music in Bangladesh, with lyrics explicitly 'designed to get people in the streets.' These anthems are used to mobilize disaffected youth and create social division as part of a larger political destabilization strategy.

Despite harsh laws, homosexuality in 19th-century Russia was often viewed as a personal taste rather than a defining identity. For wealthy, connected individuals like Tchaikovsky, this perception meant the risk of prosecution or public scandal was minimal, allowing for a relatively open secret life.

For middle-class Russians like Tchaikovsky, music was not a respectable profession. The primary path to social standing was a prestigious and hard-to-attain role as a civil servant, a career he pursued for years before his father encouraged him to switch to music.

The saxophone's association with jazz and Black American culture led to it being banned by the Nazis, the Soviet Union, and the Vatican. This "forbidden" status did not diminish its power; instead, the controversy cemented its cultural identity as a symbol of revolution and counter-culture.

In Russia, nominally private companies like Gazprom function as direct extensions of the state. Their international investments are designed not just for profit but to achieve geopolitical goals, creating a system where foreign policy, business interests, and the personal wealth of the ruling class are completely inseparable.

While Tchaikovsky was a fervent Russian patriot, his focus on folk traditions and national identity was part of a wider 19th-century European Romantic movement. His 'Russianness,' far from being unique, was an expression of a continental trend celebrating national character in art.

Feeling the pressure of social convention, Tchaikovsky impulsively proposed to a woman he barely knew. His immediate and profound regret—marked by bursting into tears at the wedding and fleeing the marriage—demonstrates a tragic conflict between his personal reality and the societal duty he felt compelled to perform.

Posthumous narratives of Tchaikovsky's life reflect the biases of later eras. Soviet historians actively erased evidence of his homosexuality to fit a state-sanctioned image, while Western scholars often over-emphasized it, framing him as a tortured 'gay composer' to fit their own cultural narratives.