Revolutionary Acts

Amateur Theater and the Soviet State, 1917-1938

Lynn Mally

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781501706974
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Russian History
• Index: History

During the Russian Revolution and Civil War, amateur theater groups sprang up in cities across the country. Workers, peasants, students, soldiers, and sailors provided entertainment ranging from improvisations to gymnastics and from propaganda sketches to the plays of Chekhov. In Revolutionary Acts, Lynn Mally reconstructs the history of the amateur stage in Soviet Russia from 1917 to the height of the Stalinist purges. Her book illustrates in fascinating detail how Soviet culture was transformed during the new regime's first two decades in power.

Of all the arts, theater had a special appeal for mass audiences in Russia, and with the coming of the revolution it took on an important role in the dissemination of the new socialist culture. Mally's analysis of amateur theater as a space where performers, their audiences, and the political authorities came into contact enables her to explore whether this culture emerged spontaneously "from below" or was imposed by the revolutionary elite. She shows that by the late 1920s, Soviet leaders had come to distrust the initiatives of the lower classes, and the amateur theaters fell increasingly under the guidance of artistic professionals. Within a few years, state agencies intervened to homogenize repertoire and performance style, and with the institutionalization of Socialist Realist principles, only those works in a unified Soviet canon were presented.

1

The Revolution Loves the Theater

“THEATER IS the self-educator of the people,” proclaimed a broadside published by the new state’s cultural ministry in 1919. “The revolution loves the theater and in revolutionary times theater comes alive and blossoms.”¹ This statement attempted to explain the remarkable proliferation of theaters during the first years of the new regime. Some were sponsored by the central government, like the broad network of Red Army theaters; some had local institutional sponsors, such as regional soviets and city governments; and many were impromptu, spontaneous creations by factory councils, newly formed clubs, and informal groups of friends. Given these new groups’ ephemeral nature, a precise count is impossible, but the back pages of local newspapers were filled with advertisements for amateur performances. Enthusiastic Bolshevik supporters used this explosion of theatrical activity as proof of the emancipatory power of the revolution. “Future historians will note that during a time of the most bloody and cruel revolution, all of Russia was acting,” opined the art historian Piotr Kogan.²

This explosion in amateur theater work provoked anxiety as well as pride. Bewildered Russian intellectuals were at loss for an explanation, likening the phenomenon to fevers, epidemics, or even psychosis.³ Many professionals saw a threat to theater as an art form. They bemoaned the untrained actors, the impromptu repertoire, and the shoddy appearance of amateur performances that took place without their oversight. State cultural bureaucrats charged with supervising theaters worried about their ability to channel this frenetic activity that was only nominally under their control. As one high-ranking central official wrote with some despair about amateur stages, “As yet, we know very little about them.”⁴

Although their voices are harder to capture, the participants in this rush to theater appeared to have different standards of judgment. For them, acting was a way to enter the public sphere—and thus to lay claim to a new community in which they would have a voice. Performing new works they had helped to shape gave articulation to their revolutionary visions. But even if the works performed were not new, acting meant seizing a public role. In their accounts of the period, both amateur actors and viewers seemed amazed that the performances were happening at all. Eduard Dune’s vivid recollections of the first months of the revolution in a large factory on the outskirts of Moscow give a central place to theater as a builder of community. The wife of a skilled worker discovered her talents as a director, while the sets (“as good as those in any provincial theater”) were designed by a factory painter: “It was a real eye-opener for many, who were seeing theater for the first time and were captivated by our simple entertainments.”⁵

Dune’s sentiments are echoed in the memoirs of theater group members at a Moscow textile factory: “The first performances we did on our own, without a leader. We put on small works from Chekhov and other authors. The very fact that workers were performing on stage, even without a leader, made a huge impression. People were proud and said, ‘What a life!’”⁶ In these accounts, the amateur standing of the actors, people barely differentiated from the viewing audience, was central to the performance’s appeal. As one newspaper critic determined, “These events eliminated the forced and destructive passivity of the viewer and turned the entire hall—both actors and viewers—into a unified, merged whole.”⁷

The links that anthropologists and performance theorists have drawn between “aesthetic drama” and “social drama” offer insights into this enthusiasm for theater in a time of revolution. Aesthetic drama is what usually comes to mind when we think of theater. Its elements are almost entirely prearranged. Actors use a prepared text, perform in a fixed spot, and use established theatrical techniques of staging (lighting, scenery, props, etc.) and acting (declamation and movement). They are separate from their audience. The goal of aesthetic drama is to affect some sort of transformation in the consciousness of the viewers, even if that change is only temporary.⁸

Social dramas are sparked by real-life events. Victor Turner, who developed the concept of the social drama, applied this term to insurrections and revolutions. These moments of rupture arise in conflict situations, especially when groups try to occupy a new place in the social system. The participants act out a crisis in society, which finally results in a re-evaluation of the social order. In the social drama, there is no hard and fast distinction between the actors and the viewers. Both are altered through the process, and the change in this case can be permanent.⁹

Although aesthetic drama functions primarily on the stage and social drama can be played out anywhere, these two forms are nonetheless closely intertwined. As Victor Turner writes:

The stage drama, when it is meant to do more than entertain—though entertainment is always one of its vital aims—is a metacommentary, explicit or implicit, witting or unwitting, on the major social dramas of its social context (wars, revolutions, scandals, institutional changes.) … Life itself now becomes a mirror held up to art, and the living now perform their lives, for the protagonists of a social drama, a “drama of living,” have been equipped by aesthetic drama with some of their most salient opinions, imageries, tropes, and ideological perspectives.¹⁰

In an attempt to concretize Turner’s abstract language, we might ask what amateur actors were learning from the roles they adopted during the Russian revolution. How did they attempt to apply these lessons to the new life they believed the revolution would bring? Nikolai L’vov, a director of amateur groups before and after 1917, grappled with these issues when he tried to assess why so many people were turning to the amateur stage. He believed that both the theater and the revolution were the creators of new futures: “Now, as new ideas make their way through the population at large, and as people begin to see the possibilities of the new life, the broad popular classes immediately feel the call to the stage. Here they find an avenue for their desire for a brighter life. Here they have a chance to expand their spiritual life with new and unknown experiences.”¹¹

The Problem of Naming

Before the revolution, theater aimed at the lower classes was commonly called “popular theater” (narodnyi teatr). When the Bolshevik government began to oversee professional and amateur theatrical activity, one of the first struggles was over language. What was the new state’s Commissariat of Education (known by its acronym, Narkompros) supposed to call the burgeoning impromptu theaters that it hoped to control? Anatolii Lunacharskii, the head of Narkompros, initially stuck with the old appellation.¹² But the term “popular theater” struck many others as anachronistic. They began searching for a new descriptive terminology that bore fewer prerevolutionary connotations. Platon Kerzhentsev, an important cultural figure, tried out a number of alternatives in his influential book Creative Theater (Tvorcheskii teatr), which went through five editions in the first five years of the new regime. He referred to a vaguely defined “creative theater,” a “socialist theater,” and a “proletarian theater.”¹³

In early 1919 Narkompros formed a division of “worker-peasant theater,” which marked an initial attempt to find a new terminology for amateur efforts by the lower classes. Its first leader was the long-time activist in popular theater, Valentin Tikhonovich. For Tikhonovich, worker-peasant theater was a logical term to embody the art of the laboring classes. Despite the anti-peasant bias of many proletarian-based organizations like the Proletkult, Tikhonovich believed that these two social groups shared a lot in common: they both worked, many factory laborers were not that far removed from the land, and many peasants spent part of the year in a factory. Rather than turning their backs on society’s largest social group, workers should collaborate with peasants to create a new theater.¹⁴

The first national conference on worker-peasant theater showed quite vividly, however, that many were not convinced by this line of argumentation. Difficulties emerged already in the planning stages. At a Petrograd meeting called in April 1919, the main speaker was the theater historian Vsevolod Vsevolodskii-Gerngross, who was engaged in compiling a detailed history of Russian folk theater. He bemoaned the separation between actor and audience created by the introduction of Western European theater in the eighteenth century; in his view the revolution’s task was to reintroduce native theatrical traditions. This speech drew a hostile response from the audience, especially from one speaker who decried the notion of separating art according to class.¹⁵

After many delays, the worker-peasant theater conference finally opened in November 1919. It attracted representatives from a wide range of organizations sponsoring theatrical activity, including Narkompros, the Proletkult, the Red Army, trade unions, and cooperatives. Given this diverse constituency, it is hardly surprising that they reached no shared consensus. A majority position emerged at the conference, presenting what could be called an updated version of the mission of popular theaters before the revolution. Supported by provincial delegates, cooperatives, and professional theater workers, this position applauded efforts to improve theatrical quality, to make critical use of progressive elements from the prerevolutionary theatrical heritage, and to strengthen cooperation between workers and peasants.¹⁶

However, a vocal minority, made up of Communists, Red Army representatives, and members of the Proletkult organization, disputed all these points. They refused to endorse any suggestions passed by the majority, insisting instead on a separate set of resolutions.¹⁷ While the majority endorsed cooperation between its two constituencies, the Communist faction believed that peasants could be helpful only insofar as they subordinated themselves to workers. “Proletarian theater,” read one of the minority resolutions, “is the task of workers themselves, along with those peasants who are willing to accept their ideology.” Faction members also rejected the inclusive attitude the majority had formulated toward the artistic accomplishments of past generations. “[Workers’ t...