My research is focused on the life and work of the Soviet composer Nikolai Roslavets (1882-1944) through the lens of music theory and analysis, and in the context of the sociopolitical turmoil within which the composer found himself throughout his career. I am particularly interested in Roslavets' compositional development, from his innovative, proto-serial, modernist works in the 1910s and 1920s, to the adoption of tonality in the 1930s and until his death—a necessary step in order to appease detractors and conform to the mandate of Socialist Realism following Roslavets' catastrophic political missteps in the latter half of the 1920s.