Although the symphony is commonly referred to by the nickname Babi Yar, no such subtitle is designated in Shostakovich's manuscript score.

Vitaly Gromadsky sang the solo part alongside the basses of the Republican Russian Chorus [ru] and the Moscow Philharmonic.

Yevtushenko's poem "Babi Yar" appeared in the Literaturnaya Gazeta in September 1961 and, along with the publication of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich in Novy Mir, happened during a surge of anti-Stalinist literature during the premiership of Nikita Khrushchev.

[2] The composer completed these four additional movements within six weeks,[11] putting the final touches on the symphony on July 20, 1962, during a hospital stay.

Discharged that day, he took the night train to Kiev to show the score to bass Boris Gmyrya, an artist he especially admired and wanted to sing the solo part in the work.

[13] Yevtushenko remembered, on hearing the composer play and sing the complete symphony for him, … I was stunned, and first and foremost by his choice of such apparently disparate poems.

"[15] By the time Shostakovich had completed the first movement on 27 March 1962, Yevtushenko was already being subjected to a campaign of criticism,[11] as he was now considered a political liability.

Khrushchev's agents engendered a campaign to discredit him, accusing the poet of placing the suffering of the Jewish people above that of the Russians.

[16] Shostakovich defended the poet in a letter dated 26 October 1965, to his pupil Boris Tishchenko: As for what "moralising" poetry is, I didn't understand.

Two singers were engaged, Victor Nechipailo to sing the premiere and Vitaly Gromadsky in case a substitute were needed.

Nechipailo was forced to drop out at the last minute (to cover at the Bolshoi Theatre for a singer who had been ordered to "get sick" in a performance of Verdi's Don Carlo, according to Vishnevskaya's autobiography "Galina: A Russian Story", page 278).

It might be possible that Yevtushenko intentionally changed his style of narrative to make it clear that the modified version of the text is not something he initially intended.

While Shostakovich biographer Laurel Fay maintains that such a volume has yet to surface, the fact remains that Yevtushenko wrote new lines for the eight most offensive ones questioned by the authorities.

[27] Meanwhile, a copy of the score with the original text was smuggled to the West, where it was premiered and recorded in January 1970 by the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy.

To keep the symphony in performance, seven lines of the poem were altered, replacing references to imprisonment without trial, to neglect of the poor and to the fear experienced by artists.