The petition pleading that Heinrich Neuhaus be allowed to return to Moscow following his arrest in 1941 and expulsion in 1942 for anti-Soviet activities and propaganda was headed by the signatures of eminent Russian musicians Dmitri Shostakovich, Vissarion Shebalin, Konstantin Igumnov, and other cultural figures including the writer Alexei Tolstoy, philologist Militsa Nechkina, and actors Ivan Moskvin and Vasily Kachalov. The document stated: “Despite his surname not being Russian, H. G. Neuhaus is undoubtedly a Russian, Soviet artist with a Soviet style in his creative methods; he is an eminent standard bearer of precisely Russian-Soviet culture which he champions; he is one of the best interpreters of Russian and Soviet composers.” Even before the outbreak of the Second World War, in 1933 the music critic K. Grimikh wrote: “[Neuhaus] remains a son of his time, one of the brightest representatives of the Soviet artistic intelligentsia. He lives our life, with our interests at heart: with us he thinks, feels, searches, falters, experiences joy and suffering—and all these thoughts and feelings are those of a Soviet man, worker, and citizen which are filtered through the prism of his brightly talented individuality.” Yet, having essentially lived beyond Russia's borders until the age of twentysix— the son of an émigré family who had grown up speaking and writing predominantly in Polish and German, and had shown hardly any interest in Russian music, literature, history, or other arts before 1914—it would be naive to suggest that Neuhaus really had any claim to being born into an instinctive awareness of Russianness.

Upon his first arrival in Petrograd in 1915, his debut recital had aroused the curiosity of Russian musicians wanting to hear the musicianship of this foreign, Austro-German–educated pianist. A significant number of his first professional engagements in the country were linked to the performance of German music, including that of Max Reger. Many of his European acquaintances whom he left behind, such as Artur Rubinstein, continued to remember him as a German pianist. Establishing himself within Russian society, Neuhaus surrounded himself with a network of friends who looked toward German culture: not least Asmus, Gabrichevsky, and Pasternak.