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A Bell & Howell Information Company 300North Z eeb Road, Ann Arbor. Ml 48106-1346USA 313/761-4700 800/521-0600 DRAMATIC AND THEATRICAL MANIFESTATIONS OF GLASNOST

IN SOVIET RUSSIA DURING THE FIRST HALF OF THE GORBACHEV EPOCH,

1985-1988

DISSERTATION

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for

the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate

School of The Ohio State University

By

Jeffrey Pace Stephens, B.A., M.A.

$ $ $ jJc

The Ohio State University

1995

Dissertation Committee Approved by

Joseph Brandesky

Esther Beth Sullivan Adviser Alan Woods Department of Theatre UMI Number: 9526091

Copyright 1995 by STEPHENS, JEFFREY PACE All rights reserved.

UMI Microform 9526091 Copyright 1995, by UMI Company. All rights reserved.

This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code.

UMI 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, MI 48103 Copyright by Jeffrey Pace Stephens 1995 To Harold, Clara, Susan, and Hal ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I thank the following for their help and guidance: Alan Woods, Esther Beth

Sullivan, Joe Brandesky, Betsy Greiner, Alexandra Karriker, Karen Baker, Leigh

Lambert, Kenneth Cox, Peter Westerhoff, Jerry Davis, Mary Ann Hempe, Jean Herrick,

George Kalbouss, Sharon Foster, Jay Oney, Carol Sutton, Gaye Lynn Scott, Brett Scott,

Brian Rose, Christopher Jones, Kristine Taylor, and John Taylor. VITA

May 26, 1963...... Born-Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

1985...... B.A., University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma

1988...... M.A., Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, Oklahoma

1988-1992...... Teaching and Research Associate, Department of Theatre, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio

1992-1993...... Membership Services, George M. Otto Associates, Chicago, Illinois

1994-Present...... Membership Services, Zonta International Headquarters, Chicago, Illinois

FIELDS OF STUDY

Major Field: Theatre

Studies in General Theatre History: Alan Woods Kenneth Cox Alfred Golding

Soviet and Russian Theatre History: Alexandra Karriker George Kalbouss

Dramatic Theory: Esther Beth Sullivan Stratos Constantinidis TABLE OF CONTENTS

DEDICATION...... ii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS...... iii

VITA...... iv

NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION...... viii

CHAPTER PAGE

I. INTRODUCTION...... 1

Introduction...... 1 Purpose of the Study...... 4 Method of Approach...... 6

II. SIGNIFYING REVOLUTIONARY IDEOLOGY ON THE STAGE: SOVIET THEATRE FROM 1917 UNTIL 1985...... 10

Introduction...... 10 The Party as Aegis and Nemesis of the “Golden Age” of Soviet Theatre 15 Socialist Realism, RAPP, and the Campaign Against Meyerhold...... 27 The Kirov Murder and the “Great Terror” 33 War Drama, Zhdanovism, and the Death of Stalin...... 36 The “Thaw” and De-Stalinization ...... 41 The Era of Stagnation...... 44 Conclusion...... 47

v III. GLASNOST AS A PREVAILING CONCEPT OF THE POLITICS OF “NEW THINKING”...... 50

Introduction...... 50 Speech to the Twenty-Seventh Party Congress...... 53 The Reformist Triumvirate: Peter, Catherine, and Mikhail ...... 56 The Paradox of Party Control During the Gorbachev Epoch: The Arms Race and Economic Restructuring...... 61 Speech to the Ruling Apparatus on the Occasion of the Seventieth Anniversary of the October Revolution...... 69 “New Thinking” as Cultural Disorientation: Revised Monuments, Rehabilitations, The Nina Andreeva Letter ...... 73

IV. CULTURAL POLICY UNDER GORBACHEV AND ITS RELATIONSHIP TO THEORIES OF IDEOLOGY...... 88

Introduction...... 88 “New Thinking” as Cultural Policy...... 89 Ideology as Marxist Terminology...... 97 Louis Althusser and Ideological State Apparatuses (ISA)...... 100 “Artistic Freedom” and Socialist Realism 105 Conclusion...... 112

V. AN ACCOUNTING OF REPRESENTATIVE PLAYS WRITTEN OR PRODUCED DURING THE FIRST HALF OF THE GORBACHEV EPOCH...... 114

Introduction...... 114 Perestroika in the Soviet Theatre...... 117 Cerceau...... 125 Sarcophagus...... 132 Cinzano...... 142 Stars in the Morning...... Sky 150 Dear Elena Sergeevna...... 156 Tomorrow Was War...... 165 Onward! Onward! Onward!...... 174

vi Heart o f A Dog...... 183 Conclusion...... 187

VI. CONCLUSION...... 189

BIBLIOGRAPHY...... 197

vii NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION

With the exception of generally recognized Russian proper names such as

Stanislavsky, Mayakovsky, and Meyerhold, I have employed System II in the body of the text as outlined in J. Thomas Shaw,The Transliteration o f Modern Russian for

English-Language Publications (New York: MLA of America, 1979). I have retained varying systems used by publishers in the notes and bibliography as well as in quotations taken from secondary texts. CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

Introduction

The period to the sentence begun on October 24, 1917, in the fledgling USSR appeared in late December 1991, when Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev resigned as

President of the Soviet Union. After seventy-four years, the “dictatorship of the proletariat” passed into history as befuddled Soviet citizens continued to adjust to the radical social, economic, and political ramifications of Gorbachev's policies of perestroika (“restructuring”) and glasnost1 (“openness”).1

The Gorbachev epoch of 1985-1991 will be remembered as a bold attempt by one man and his philosophical disciples to renew the principles which, long before Stalin seized control of the Soviet political mechanism, marked the Bolshevik Revolution of

1917. Essentially, Gorbachev pursued an agenda which advocated a cleansing of the

Party's sordid past via the the ideologies of “economic restructuring” and the new

“openness.” Ultimately, he failed; yet the ideas he sought to implement continue to resonate in all spheres of post-Soviet life.

'Because both “perestroika” and “glasnost” have entered the English lexicon, the words will hereafter not be underlined to emphasize their foreign origin. For the purpose of this paper, “perestroika” will generally be used to suggest restructuring in a literal sense, e.g., “real alterations” in the structure of the governance of the Writers’ Union: “glasnost” to suggest historical revisionism and the simple relaxation of censorship and “new thinking” to suggest the prevailing ideology of the Gorbachev epoch. 1 2

Economic and political manifestations of perestroika and glasnost have been generally well-documented; cultural manifestations, particularly dramatic and theatrical ones, have not.2 In an artistic Zeitgeist which recalls the vibrant 1920s (often deemed the

“Golden Age” of the Soviet theatre), relatively little attention has been paid to theatre either written or performed during the era of glasnost. The reasons are clear. First, the unprecedented availability of once sealed archives has prompted the most prolific of the western group of Soviet cultural historians to take advantage of what many continue to view as a fleeting opportunity. Archival material made available to western theatre

scholars under the auspices of glasnost may become off-limits by a future shift in the balance of power. (The aborted August coup of 1991 evinced the tenuous nature of the first phase of reforms.) Subsequently, such noted scholars as Jean Benedetti, Sharon

Carnickie, and Laurence Senelick have devoted their considerable energies to the revision of the Soviet theatrical past while time is on their side.

During the period under consideration, western theatre scholars tended to ignore playwrighting as a basis for analytical investigation of the Soviet theatre; herein lies the second reason for the lack of inquiry. This is understandable insofar as a large majority of produced drama in the USSR between 1934 (the year in which the Soviet Writers’

Union led by Gorky concretized the tenets of Socialist Realism3) and 1985 was usually no more than a reflection of the current Party line on a given issue. Further, as the

2Easily accessible economic and political accounts include memoirs and biographies by and about Anatoly Sobchak. Boris Yeltsin. Egor Ligachcv. Mikhail Gorbachev, ct al.; western memoirs by Jane and William Taubman, Margaret Wcttlin, Hedrick Smith, ct al.; and the standard academic offerings by various Sovietologists. Also, a substantial amount of information is available in such American journals as The Russian Review. 3Gorky headed the Soviet Writers’ Union in 1934. the year in which the doctrine of Socialist Realism became compulsory. Although it is true that, for all practical purposes, Gorky was a capitulator to the regime, it should be noted that he saved many writers from Stalin’s terror. See Robert Conquest. The Great Terror: A Reassessment (New York: Oxford UP. 1990) 386-89. 3

Gorbachev era fell under the Soviet label, new dramatic works continued to receive only cursory attention.

Third, while analyses of ideological shifts in Soviet cultural policy under

Gorbachev exist, these are marked by brevity and, in the case of English translations from the Russian, unbridled enthusiasm for the shifts themselves. In other words, they are often devoid of inquiry into the manifestations of those shifts.

In 1989, for example, the editorial staff of Theater (a magazine overseen by the

Yale School of Drama and the Yale Repertory Theatre) devoted an entire issue to the effect of glasnost on the Soviet stage. This special issue was a joint project initiated by the staff of Theater in collaboration with the staff of the highly influential Soviet periodical, Teatr. The 1989 issue of Theater remains one of a handful of inclusive accounts of the reconstruction of the theatre during the Gorbachev era available in

English.4 Nevertheless, the tone of the Russian contributions is highly emotional, a characteristic of most Russian language discourse on the effect of glasnost in the arts.

Further, the Soviet-authored contributions to the collaborative Theater effort were conceived early in 1989, a year in which few could have guessed that the collapse o f the

Soviet Union itself was imminent. With regard to the justification of the study at hand, this is another viable reason for the general lack of investigative scholarship available to those who are interested in Soviet theatre representative of the Gorbachev era. A post-

Soviet sensibility allows for the benefit of perspective and distance.

4Thc last issue of Theater Three (Final Issue. 10-11. 1992) includes articles on Liudmila Razumovskaia, Nina Sadur. Mikhail Shatrov. and an overview essay. “Russian Theatre at the Time of Late Perestroika,” by Alyona Solntseva. 4

Purpose of the Study

In an attempt to foreground the manner in which various Soviet playwrights came to terms with Gorbachevian “new thinking” (novoe myshlenie). I will analyze eight representative plays of the period: Cerceau. by Viktor Slavkin; Sarcophagus (Sarkofag), by Vladimir Gubarev; Cinzano, by Liudmila Petrushevskaia; Stars in the Morning Sky

(Zvezdv v utrennee nebo). by Aleksandr Galin; Dear Elena Sergeevna (Dorogaia Elena

Sergeevna), by Liudmila Razumovskaia; Tomorrow Was War (Zavtra bvla voina). by

Boris Vasiliev; Onward! Onward! Onward! flDal’she! Dal’she! Dal’she!). by Mikhail

Shatrov; and Aleksandr Chervinskii’s adaptation of Mikhail Bulgakov’s Heart of A Dog

(Sobaki serdtse). All of these plays appeared on Soviet stages between 1985 and 1988.5

In this sense, they are exemplars of a theatre informed by the ideology of glasnost.

In order to better understand the theatrical manifestations of glasnost in the

USSR, it is necessary to delineate first the broader aspects of glasnost as a chief feature of “new thinking,” i.e., as official Party policy. In other words, it is important to remember that the “openness” or “transparency” embodied by glasnost irrevocably altered not only Soviet culture, but also (to use an old Marxist-Leninist phrase) the all- encompassing realm of “Soviet reality.”

Finally, it is also necessary to trace briefly the line of official Soviet ideology from its beginnings under Lenin, to its calcification under Stalin and its “thaw” under

Khrushchev, through its stagnation under Brezhnev, Andropov, and Chernenko. Only after such a recognition of that line is it possible to assess the revolutionary shifts in

Soviet ideology persuant to the theatre which were felt under Gorbachev.

5Mikhail Shatrov’s Onward! Onward! Onward! was originally published in the journal, Znamia. in 1988. It was not performed on stage in any major metropolitan city in the Soviet Union while Gorbachev was in office. 5

The study’s main question, then, is this: Is it possible to read Soviet officialdom’s ideological shifts through Soviet theatre and drama? The answer to this question when applied to the theatre before Gorbachev is resoundingly affirmative. After

“new thinking” sets the tone of the period under consideration, however, the answer to that same question is not altogether clear. Ultimately, then, this study attempts to reveal the extent to which Soviet theatre during the years 1985-1988 embraced Gorbachevian ideology.

From an historical vantage point, very little time has lapsed since the conclusion of what some historians have labeled the “first phase” of glasnost, 1985-1990.6 Since it is true that the (commercial) theatre often responds slowly to contemporary events, it may seem odd that an extraordinary number of relevant plays managed to reach an equally extraordinary number of Soviet stages during this so-called “first phase.”7 The

Soviet theatre had to respond quickly. Many established theatre practitioners of the period remembered the relatively mild Khrushchev “thaw” and how easily new-found cultural freedom was diluted and often rescinded under Brezhnev. The unauthorized writing of samizdat, too, helped to invigorate the theatre of the Gorbachev era. Long banned literature literally lay in drawers and under beds, officially non-existent until the next ideological relaxation.8 When the ice melted absolutely, the Soviet theatre had a small, yet potent, ready-made canon at its disposal.

6For example. D.W. Spring, cd.. The Impact of Gorbachev: The First Phase. 1985-1990 (London: Pinter. 1991). 7The American commercial theatre’s response to the AIDS epidemic is a pertinent example of this “slow response.” William M. Hoffman’s As Is premiered at Circle Repertory on March 10, 1985, and on Broadway at the Lyceum on May 1, almost five years after the disease had been reported. The word "commercial” is the qualifier here. Many off-Broadway performance groups such as The Glincs produced AIDS-related theatre pieces in the early 1980s. 8In his introduction to Stars in the Morning Skv: Five New Plavs from the Soviet Union (London: Nick Hern. 1989)xvi, Michael Glenny writes that in the USSR 1969,in the widow of playwright and novelist. Mikhail Bulgakov, gave Glenny the original manuscript of Heart of A Dog to read. She kept it in a locked box under her bed. 6

Method of Approach

The first half of the study will examine the dramatic and theatrical manifestations of various cultural trends inspired by Communist Party policy between the years 1917 and 1985. The second half of the study will examine the dramatic and theatrical manifestations of the ideological constructs of glasnost and perestroika between the years 1985 and 1988, with particular emphasis placed on specific plays produced during that period.

Chapter Two will explore the ways in which Soviet theatre practitioners and theorists read the significance of the October Revolution. The enormous variety of theatrical offerings-both in theoretical and practical terms-during the years 1917-1930 is staggering. There are, of course, obvious parallels to be drawn here between this theatrical “Golden Age” and the theatre of the Gorbachev epoch, but the intent of the chapter is to call forth a history necessary for the examination of the era 1985-1988 (an era whose inhabitants often used the experiments of the first decade of the Soviet regime to initiate their own). Major movements, theorists, and playwrights addressed include

Meyerhold and “October in the Theatre”; Anatoly Lunacharsky and the Proletkult; and specific works of Nikolai Erdman and Mikhail Bulgakov.

Chapter Two will also focus some attention on the years 1930-1985. A span of fifty-five years is a lengthy one, to be sure, but this study is not a rehashing of Soviet theatre history in its entirety. Several broad studies of the Soviet theatre and drama are readily available in English.9

9For example, Norris Houghton’s Moscow Rehearsals (1937): H.W.L. Dana’s Handbook on Soviet Drama (1938): Nikolai Gorchakov’s The Theater in Soviet Russia (1957): Harold B. Seed's Twentieth- Century Russian Drama: From Gorkv to the Present(1979: revised. 1993);Spencer Golub’s The Recurrence of Fate: Theatre and Memory in Twentielh-Ccnturv Russia(1994); and Alma Law’s Soviet Theatre 1952-1985: The Politics of Culture Since Stalin (forthcoming). 7

Major ideological trends and their theatrical manifestations to be discussed regarding this second pre-glasnost era include Socialist Realism; “High Stalinism” and

“Zhdanovism”; the “thaw” and de-Stalinization; and pivotal roles played by some major directors such as Iurii Liubimov in keeping some semblance of Soviet theatrical tradition alive. The chapter also articulates the ways in which the murder of Sergei Kirov generated the terror o f the 1930s.

Before a specific examination of glasnost in the theatre can take place, a more general overview of glasnost as a prevailing concept of the politics of “new thinking” must be broached. Thus, Chapter Three examines the Party’s somewhat grudging acceptance of Gorbachevian ideology and the most telling manifestations of the official political line outside the theatre. This approach will provide a foundation for a fuller comprehension of the impact of glasnost on the specific realm of theatre.

Gorbachev and his cohorts and contemporaries used the word “ideology” to characterize the prevailing cultural policy of the (once) hegemonic Communist Party of the USSR. Therefore, Chapter Four examines the origins of this terminology in a cultural context, particularly as a foundation for allying the condition of the Soviet theatre with Louis Althusser's theory of the function of Ideological State Apparatuses.

Further, the chapter analyzes the cultural policy of the Gorbachev era insofar as it existed at all.

Chapter Five first examines Viktor Slavkin’s Cerceau as a transitional play of the era. The drama uses a dilapidated dacha as a metaphorical expression of what Kate

Schecter calls the “alienated malaise of the ‘fortysomething’ generation.”10 Vladimir

Gubarev’s Sarcophagus dramatizes the human toll of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster with unprecedented alacrity and candor, simultaneously indicting Soviet

1()Katc Schecter. introduction. Cerceau. by Viktor Slavkin. Plays in Process (New York: Theatre Communications Group. 1990) n.pag. 8 information systems. Two plays produced during the Gorbachev era which divert attention away from a fascination with a newly discovered Soviet past use “social problems” as the basis for dramatic conflict. Liudmila Petrushevskaia’s Cinzano creates an atmosphere of often bawdy humor as a pretext for dramatizing the pervasive reality of alcoholism in the USSR.11 Aleksandr Galin’s Stars in the Morning Sky brashly mixes liberal doses of profanity and social criticism as a means o f exploring the apathy and nagging desperation which color the lives of a group of Moscow prostitutes.

Two plays will be used to demonstrate the different generational approaches to

Soviet youth, traditionally a popular subject for Soviet dramatists. The first, Dear Elena

Sergeevna, was written by Liudmila Razumovskaia, born in 1948; the second,

Tomorrow Was War (based on the novel of the same name), was written by Boris

Vasiliev, born in 1924. Both perspectives, regardless of their almost antithetical foundations, suggest the ways in which both playwrights profited from glasnost as an ideological stance.

One play will then be used to illustrate how the Soviet theatre re-thought Soviet history during the Gorbachev epoch. In Mikhail Shatrov’s Onward! Onward! Onward!, formerly forbidden political personages such as Bukharin and Zinoviev find themselves on stage as an eerie dramatic parody of Stalin’s show trials exhumes some of the chief players. The final play, Aleksandr Chervinskii’s adaptation of Mikhail Bulgakov’s Heart of A Doe, is an example of what Helena Goscilo calls the “archealogical fund—literature belonging to earlier eras but banned until now primarily on ‘ideological grounds.’”12

11 Cinzano was written in 1973. but saw only sporadic and unofficial studio productions before the Gorbachev era. 12Hclena Goscilo, introduction, Glasnost: An Anthology of Russian Literature Under Gorbachev, cds. Helena Goscilo and Byron Lindsey (Ann Arbor: Ardis. 1990) xxxi. Cinzano and Dear Elena Sergeevna, too, were officially banned from production in their respective eras, but neither play prompted the kind of panic that Bulgakov’s novella did among the Soviet power structure in the mid- 1920s. 9

The representativeness of these selections is justified in various ways. Although

all have seen productions in the West, the above plays bespeak a distinctly Soviet

mindset; each capitalizes on what was once untouchable or contrary to “historical

reality.” The glasnost-induced exorcism and expose of the past, too, finds an appropriate expression in at least three of the plays, while the others take contemporary life as their point of focus. Most important, quite simply none of the above plays would have seen official production without the revolutionary ideology of “new thinking.” In this sense, more than any other, they stand as a legacy of theatrical glasnost.

Chapter Six is a conclusion which assesses Gorbachev’s stature in a post-

Gorbachev Russia. This brief discussion is accompanied by an assessment of the theatrical viability o f the plays discussed in Chapter Five. CHAPTER II

SIGNIFYING REVOLUTIONARY IDEOLOGY ON THE STAGE:

SOVIET THEATRE FROM 1917 UNTIL 1985

Introduction

Russian theatre ceased to be an inherently commercial venture in 1919, when all theatres in the fledgling Soviet Union were nationalized.1 Although the idea of state- subsidized theatres was not an entirely novel approach in Imperial Russia (Peter the

Great provided some monetary assistance to theatres in Moscow and St. Petersburg as early as 1702), the monarchy never matched the massive amount of money pumped into the theatre by the obliging Bolsheviks. At the same time, Bolshevik nationalization precipitated the Soviet stranglehold on theatrical repertory and, with few exceptions, the eventual snuffing out of a national contribution to world drama that has persisted to this day.2 By the mid-1980s, as glasnost made clear, it was quite obvious that this attempted destruction of the theatre was the legacy of Soviet generosity toward the arts.

Any contemporary account of the Soviet theatre from 1917 until the mid-1980s will be tempered by the historical reality of Mikhail Gorbachev’s “new thinking” and the complementary realities of perestroika and glasnost which signified it. Attempts at objectivity notwithstanding, our close historical association with Gorbachev’s truly revolutionary proposals to reshape Soviet society must impact even the most restrained

’Although funding was cut for a time during the NEP period. See Jean Bencdctti. The Moscow Art Theatre Letters (New York: Routledgc. 1991)316. ^Several of these exceptions, e.g.. Mikhail Bulgakov and Nikolai Erdman (both discussed below), were persecuted or silenced. In this sense, they arc not representative of “official” Soviet drama and theatre. 10 11

analyses of the period. In other words, in light of all the revelatory facts made public since 1985 regarding Soviet society, it becomes quite plausible to argue (as I do in the first paragraph of this chapter) that nationalization of the theatre under Bolshevik rule truncated the further development of Russian drama. Post-Gorbachev hindsight certainly allows for such a stance. While there is some validity in discrediting the majority of the

Soviet dramatic canon (as has long been fashionable in the former USSR) as a propagandistic attack on an unwilling populace, such an argument does nothing to explain why the consensus remains that Soviet drama was so egregious.3 Much of it, particularly evidenced during the Stalin era, was hackneyed and amateurish. Much, too, served the purpose for which it was intended: to support the Communist regime and to educate the public to the goals of the Revolution. This is a characteristic of Soviet drama which must be understood before attempting an analysis of the post-Communist era.

This chapter attempts a broad overview of some significant events in Soviet theatre history from the Revolution of 1917 until the early 1980s. I will use the 1930s as departure point since both the Party and the theatre defined themselves absolutely during this time. The period between 1934 (when Socialist Realism officially entered the lexicon) and 1938 (the year in which Vsevolod Meyerhold’s theatre was closed) was transitional, yet clearly one in which persecution of theatre artists increased at a rapid pace. After 1938 Soviet theatre lapsed into complete subservience to the regime. The basic premise examined in this chapter is the ways in which the Party gained control of

3And. again, the exceptions must be acknowledged. Of the Soviet playwrights who managed to achieve a modicum of success outside their native Soviet republics, e.g., Aleksandr Vampilov, Edvard Radzinskii. Viktor Rozov (all of whom were enormously popular in the post-Stalin era and usually held in high regard by the state), most of the plays they wrote were viewed in the West as “gauges” of cultural control at a given time, not as exceptional plays in and of themselves. Further, many of these plays have completely disappeared from the repertory both in the former Soviet Union and the West. (It should be noted that of all the still active prc-glasnost playwrights, Radzinskii has managed to maintain his status as the most popular and produced playwright in the former USSR.) 12 artistic, specifically theatrical, expression, and how it managed to maintain control long after Stalin's death in 1953,

Many critics who view Soviet drama with disdain use a sense of moral outrage as a base for their argument:

Are we really dealing with art here? Is it in fact even morally defensible to consider together with other artistic tendencies these movements which have served repressive regimes and achieved hegemony through the physical elimination of their opponents?4

The “physical elimination” of opponents about which Boris Groys speaks was a reality in all spheres o f Soviet life in the 1930s. After 1934, the year in which Socialist Realism was adopted by the Writers' Union as the official aesthetic, art was subjected to an ideological litmus test.

The works of such prose writers as Veniamin Kaverin and such playwrights as

Vladimir Mayakovsky and Mikhail Bulgakov had been denounced in the Soviet press by the late 1920s, but a full-fledged persecution of artists did not seem inevitable until after

1932, the year in which all independent literary organizations were outlawed by the

Party. After 1934, the year in which the Soviet Writers’ Union (the only legal literary organization) first convened in Moscow, all writers were forced to follow the dictates of a theory o f art known as Socialist Realism. Quite simply, between 1934 and 1953, the year of Stalin’s death, art generally and theatre specifically were required to reflect Party policy.

Why did the Russian intelligentsia remain seemingly passive in the wake of this somewhat ominous curtailing of “artistic freedom”? The pat answer is that the

4Boris Groys. trans. Charles Rouglc. The Total Art of Stalinism: Avant-Garde. Aesthetic Dictatorship, and Bevond (Princeton. NJ: Princeton UP. 1992) 7. It should be noted that Groys argues for the study o f such art. 13

intelligentsia feared persecution or worse. A much more general, but heartfelt, reason is

offered by an American, Margaret Wettlin, who lived in Russia during the Stalin era and

after, and whose husband, Andrei Evremov, was a theatre director. In the following

passage, she writes of the celebration of the fifteenth anniversary of the October

Revolution, but in so doing, she reveals why it was very difficult to look upon such Party

edicts as the call for Socialist Realism as anything more than a necessary element of

socialist construction:

The November celebration of 1932—the extent of it, the elaborateness of it, the exuberance and splendid extravagance-offered me more than shapes and colors. It was charged with vitality. It was youthful. Its face was turned toward the future. I was lucky to have arrived in Russia at the tail end of a period of revolutionary fervor that lasted, with diminishing force, from 1917 to 1936 and was succeeded by one of such ignominy that it blotted out the memory of its vibrant antecedent. My own children, born later, are skeptical of my testimony, attributing it to my being a foreigner unable to grasp what was actually going on. There may be a modicum of truth in this. But only a modicum. The evidence is there. Today’s young Russians are inclined to look upon this evidence as fabricated, because so much that is dished up to them is fabricated. Or they use today’s standards to deprecate achievements that were valid by earlier standards. Or they shrug off these achievements as inconsequential in the light of what followed. But I must bear witness to this vibrant period because it alone reveals the extent to which hopes were betrayed, and it explains behavior, my own in particular, that is otherwise inexplicable.5

Wettlin uses the year 1936 as the termination of the youthful idealism which, she argues, stemmed back to the October Revolution.6 In August 1936, Stalin staged his first “public” trial of the alleged Kirov conspirators “with representatives of the Western

5Margarct Wettlin. Fifty Russian Winters: An American Woman’s Life in the Soviet Union (New York: Pharos. 1992) 13. 6A s is generally well known, the Bolsheviks overthrew the Provisional Government on October25. but that date is in keeping with the “Old Style” calendar used by Imperial Russia before the Revolution. After the Revolution, the Great October was celebrated on November 7. in keeping with the “New Style” calendar. 14

press and diplomatic corps present”7 (The Kirov murder and its consequences are

discussed in detail later in this chapter.) By the spring of 1937, “mass terror struck the

populace and Party alike.”8 In an atmosphere in which even the most thickly veiled

negative reference to Party policy or its instigators might be construed as “counter­

revolutionary,” artists of all stripes worked feverishly to propagate the Stalinist line.

How did western theatre practitioners view the Soviet theatre of the 1930s? In

America, where the Great Depression prompted a reconsideration of the merits of

modern industrial capitalism, many theatre artists praised the proletariat-centered dramas

of their Soviet counterparts. In September 1936, Theatre Arts Monthly devoted an issue

to the Soviet theatre.9 Entitled “The Soviet Theatre Speaks for Itself,” the magazine

published essays by Iurii Zavadskii, Sergei Eisenstein, Nikolai Akimov, and other

prominent artists, all of whom enthused about their country's theatrical advancements

and working conditions.

Zavadskii, Eisenstein, and Akimov wrote in earnest. In retrospect, however, the

problem for post-glasnost critics lies in the fact that the “advancements” about which the

three wrote were occurring at the expense of “artistic freedom” and this aspect is

conveniently ignored. Still, though, the three aforementioned contributors to the

magazine could not foresee the future. The era in which they wrote is forever tainted in

our minds by Stalinist reality, one which even the most erudite artists either could not or

would not acknowledge. With Wettlin’s above commentary in mind, it is necessary to

attempt an accounting of the state of the theatre before 1936, when discourse about the

stage remained unhindered, although increasingly monitored and tallied by the Party,

until it was generally controlled after 1934,

7Robert Conquest, Stalin and the Kirov Murder (New York: Oxford UP, 1989) 80. 8Conquest 87. 9Theatre Arts Monthly 20 (1936). 15

The Party as Aegis and Nemesis of the “Golden Age” of Soviet Theatre

Before his death in 1924, Lenin was much distressed about the lack of attention paid the arts by himself and the Bolsheviks, although he always recognized what he deemed “party literature” (used as an umbrella term for culture generally) as a stalwart weapon in the class struggle.10 His somewhat bland and brief theoretical treatises on such realist writers as Leo Tolstoy provide some insight into his artistic leanings, but these are chiefly attempts at reconciling Tolstoy’s ambiguous and apolitical feelings about revolution with the needs of the proletariat. The powerful Stalinist clique would decontextualize Lenin’s commentary regarding art and culture, transforming particular phrases into strict dogma. Thus, while it is true that the theoretical foundation for much of what would come to be known as Socialist Realism found its justification in Lenin’s work, Lenin himself never consciously outlined a plan for the new proletarian culture, although he came to oppose the embodiment of that culture: Proletkult.

Just as there is a “fundamental absence of a theory of art in Marx's own work,”11 so, too, is this absence felt in the body of Lenin’s theory. The scant attention directed toward the arts by Lenin is understandable insofar as he was preoccupied with the Civil

War between 1918 and 1921. This preoccupation is the primary reason for the

“liberalism” which is often said to have marked the aesthetic ideological stance of the

Party before Stalin’s rise to power. So, as civil war raged around them, young Soviet artists both sympathetic and adverse to the Bolshevik cause were allowed a degree of freedom unlike any they had ever known.12 This giddy period of relatively unobstructed cultural construction (marked, of course, at the same time, by war and famine) was brief.

10Vladimir I. Lenin. “On Party Organisation and Party Literature.” Lenin: On Literature and Art. trans. Progress (Moscow: Progress. 1987) 24-29. 11 Dave Laing, introduction. The Marxist Theory of An. cd. John Mephain (Sussex: Harvester, 1978) vii. 12Although the terms "Bolshevik” and “Communist” are used interchangeably in the West, the Communist Party did not use the former as a description of itself after 1952. 16

And as the New Economic Policy (hereafter, NEP, initiated in March 1921) gradually

gave way to Stalin’s first Five-Year Plan in 1928, obstinate Soviet critics began to

question the need for any artistic expression which deviated from the Party line.

With Lenin having forgone culture for the sake of economics, Soviet

aestheticians were eager to fashion a theory of Soviet art suitable to the needs of the

working class. Vulgar Party control of aesthetic theoiy reached its apex in 1932 when

“the Communist Party issued a directive that disbanded all literary and cultural circles.”13

The directive, “On the Restructuring of Literary and Artistic Organizations” (O

perestroike literaturno khudozhestvennvkh oreanizatsii). set the stage for the (in)famous

conference of Soviet writers in 1934 which implemented the stringent requirements of

Socialist Realism.

Virtually all aesthetic debates between 1918 and 1934 centered on a

disagreement between Party zealots and artists (often Party members themselves, e.g.,

Vsevolod Meyerhold) with both camps wishing to define the tenets of proletarian

culture. It is the nexus of Proletkult, a Bolshevik sponsored proletarian culture

organization under the watchful eye of the People’s Commissariat of Enlightenment

(Narkompros) which most clearly evinces the initial stirrings of a deep rift between self-

appointed protectors of the proletariat, i.e., Proletkultists, and the Party elite. The latter

felt that independent movements such as Proletkult not only threatened Party control of

the cultural mechanism, but also undermined proletariat cohesion, a prerequisite of Red victory during and after the Civil War.

For the purposes of this chapter, the Proletkult controversy is important to note because it eventually attracted Lenin's attention via the incessant prodding of Anatoly

13Lynn Mally, Culture of the Future: The Proletkult Movement in Revolutionary Russia (Berkeley: U of California P. 1990) 249, The use of the term "vulgar” as a description of Marxism generally refers to a theorist’s tendency to reduce all Marxism to issues of class. Sec Terry Eagleton, Marxism and Literary Criticism (Berkeley: U of California P. 1976) 14-16. for a discussion of this notion in context. 17

Lunacharsky, a disciple of Lenin possessed of moderate political leanings and head of

Narkompros. Further, the controversy prompted Lenin to articulate an (incomplete)

agenda regarding culture in the USSR.14 Decontextualized by Party theorists after 1924,

the smattering of Lenin’s cultural commentary provided Stalin with a specious

justification for both literal and figurative purges of prominent aesthetes in the late 1920s

and 1930s.15

Vanguard of the workers, members of the Communist Party felt obligated to

(re)educate them in terms of the class struggle. While new Soviet teachers hoped to

contribute to a “new cultural order,” it was soon apparent that the ostensibly simple task

of deciding the meaning of culture in a Soviet context would become “the most difficult

problem of all.”16 Thus, the Proletkult seized the opportunity to intercede, providing

definitions of culture with all the fervor of idealistic Bolsheviks. Proletkult, from its

beginnings in 1918, assumed a confrontational, defiantly separatist, position.

Narkompros provided funds for the organization, but Proletkult agitated for an

autonomy which would later be construed as an attempt to subvert the Soviet state.

Theatre comprised only one section of any Proletkult organization (the others

being music, literature, and art), but it was in the theatre where battles between various

Proletkultists regarding the function of culture in the new society became most

acrimonious. Tensions between Proletkult and its benefactor arose early in 1918 when

“leaders of the Petrograd Proletkult refused to cooperate with efforts to create a

citywide theater consortium, insisting that they should not align themselves with non-

14Incompletc because, aside from time. "Lenin lost the power of speech in the very heat of his struggle against Stalin and the Party bureaucracy." Boris Kagarlitsky. The Thinking Reed: Intellectuals and the Soviet State from 1917 to the Present, trans. Brian Pearce (London: Verso. 1988) 71. 15 "Decontextualized" or not. Lenin’s views on not only aesthetics, but all manner of social and economic issues, have been severely criticized in the post-Soviet era as the natural overture to Stalinism. The best contemporary account of this position can be found in Martin Malia. The Soviet Tragedy: A History of Socialism in Russia (New York: Free Press. 1994). 16Mallv xv. 18

proletarian groups.”17 In Petrograd, prominent Soviet actor Vasilii Ignatov “argued that

proletarian theatre should use only proletarian actors and a proletarian repertoire . . . ”18

The thought of participating in the creation of its own body of culture

diametrically opposed to the bourgeois canon of Europe held an immense appeal for

Soviet intellectuals. This is one reason why Nadezhda Krupskaia, head of Adult

Education in the Soviet Union and wife of Lenin, became a vocal opponent of

Proletkult’s far-reaching cultural influence.19 Like Lenin, Krupskaia felt that available

funds should be directed toward what might be called “necessary” culture, e.g., literacy,

rather than to the superfluous domain of art.

In his “Speech of Greeting at the First All-Russia Congress of Adult Education,”

given on May 6, 1919, Lenin expressed his displeasure at the Proletkult (although he did

not specifically name the group) which

very often regarded the new type of workers’ and peasants’ educational institution as the most convenient field for testing their individual theories in philosophy and culture, and in which, very often, the most absurd ideas were hailed as something new, and the supernatural and incongruous were offered as purely proletarian art and proletarian culture.20

By October 1920, with the lingering war and famine still undermining

government attempts to address artistic concerns, Lenin nevertheless wrote a draft

resolution in response to what he must have perceived as the divisive nature of the

headstrong Proletkult entitled “On Proletarian Culture.” Point One reads:

All educational work in the Soviet Republic of workers and peasants, in the field of political education in general and in the field of art in

I7Mally 40. 18Mally 30. 19Far-rcaching because, in a short time, the term "Proletkult” came to mean whatever a group wanted it to mean. See Mally 54. 20Lcnin 140. 19

particular, should be imbued with the spirit of the class struggle being waged by the proletariat for the successful achievement of the aims of its dictatorship, i.e., the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, the abolition of classes, and the elimination of all forms of exploitation of man by man.21

In Lenin’s opinion, the Proletkult, while generally adhering to this cultural line, “had

dared to set themselves over the leaders of the Communist Party.”22

Lenin’s (eventual) vehement opposition to a proletarian culture movement seems

fueled by a series of arguments which developed between himself and Aleksandr

Bogdanov, an “Old Bolshevik,” who was expelled from the Party in 1909 for his

deviationist views regarding “empirio-monism,” a subjective philosophy.23 Bogdanov

championed the inherent good of a proletarian culture movement as a “distinctive class

ideology”24 which would drive a wedge between the working class and the bourgeoisie,

allowing for a recognition o f class by that class. Specifically, a proletarian culture

movement would signify independence from hegemonic European culture.

Lenin finally took note of the “Bogdanovist” tendencies of Proletkult when the

organization claimed that “their movement, as the representative of the proletariat’s

cultural interests, was just as important as the party, the representative of its political

concerns.”25 Any notion which broached the subject of the Party’s parameters risked

angering the irascible Lenin. Understandably, then, Proletkult’s rather blithe disregard

for Bolshevik Party decorum led to its demise.

It was not Lenin’s ideological opposition alone which struck down the Proletkult,

but his need to stabilize an unstable economy via the NEP, that anomolous period in

Soviet history during which capitalism once again flourished. The new culture

21Lcnin 167. 22Nikolai A. Gorchakov. The Theater in Soviet Russia, trans. Edgar Lehrnian (New York: Columbia UP, 1957) 163. 23For Lenin’s refutation of Bogdanov’s position, see Lenin’s Materialism and Enipirio-Criticism. 24Mallv 8. 25Mally xx. 20 accompanying the Soviet transition from War Communism, i.e., “Communism at all costs,” through the NEP did not encourage the class divisions upon which success for the Proletkult depended. By 1932, Proletkult was reviled as an “anti-Party” organization, the many outlets it provided for early Soviet theatrical experimentation either ignored or discredited as “class alien” many years hence.

The Proletkult did not produce a substantial body of plays. Still, though, it is in the theatre where the organization came closest to some semblance of success. In his

Creative Theatre (Tvorcheskii teatr. 1920), Platon Kerzhentsev, an advocate of

Proletkult, influenced such future Soviet theatre practitioners as Nikolai Okhlopkov with his discourse on annihilating barriers between audience and players. Before Sergei

Eisenstein established himself as a film director, he honed his theories within the

Proletkult as a director of theatrical productions such as Gas Masks (Protivoeazv. 1922) by Sergei Tretiakov (author of the classic Soviet drama, Roar. China! [Rvchi kitai.

1926]).26

More important than the names associated with the movement, however, is the seminality of the Party’s attack on Proletkult as a defining moment in the creation of a

Soviet aesthetic ideology. According to Nikolai Gorchakov, “Lenin’s destruction of the

Proletarian Culture Movement was the first great Bolshevik offensive against the freedom of theater work, and the freedom of trends and thought in the Soviet theater as a whole.”27 Stalin would later decontextualize this “offensive” launched against

Proletkult, allowing for the eradication of “extra-Party” artistic expression in the name of

Lenin.

Proletkult must be considered a noble, if sometimes arrogant, endeavor as it did make a concerted effort to empower the disenfranchised. The philosophical and

26Robcrt Russell, Russian Drama of the Revolutionary Period (Totowa, NJ: Barnes, 1988) 42. 27Gorchakov 163. 21 foundational aspects of the movement were skewed, to be sure, but the Proletkult signified for many a real break with the past. Ironically, the Proletkult is remembered today chiefly as the progenitor of Socialist Realism even though the organization agitated against the very Party which trumpeted Socialist Realism as a sanctioned aesthetic. Both the Proletkultists and the purveyors of Socialist Realism wished to subordinate artistic expression in the new society to the politicization of the masses. It can hardly be argued, however, that the Proletkultists advocated terror as an acceptable means of enforcing their agenda as did the Stalinists who championed Socialist Realism.

Lenin’s decision to oppose actively the increasingly independent-minded

Proletkult stems not from a simple case of megalomania. Rather, as Bolshevikpar excellence, he had to quell the evolution of those groups which he perceived to be ignorant of his superobjective: the solidification of a power base which, when realized, would allow for expressions of “anti-Party” sentiment.28 Lenin’s opposition to independent cultural ideologies outside the realm of Narkompros foregrounded the intolerant half of Lenin’s anti-Proletkult stance instead of the temporarily oppositional half. Stalin’s decontextualization of Leninist theory took advantage of the former.

In an attempt to subvert the influence of the theorizing Proletkult, Anatoly

Lunacharsky appointed Vsevolod Meyerhold to the Theatre Section of the People’s

Commissariat of Education. Meyerhold had been a controversial figure since his days with Vera Komissarshevskaia’s theatre in St. Petersburg in the early 1900s. As director of the Theatre Section in the new state, he strove to conform theatrical expression to the most urgent needs of the proletariat. Although Meyerhold held this position for less than

28This is, of course, conjecture, but because of Lenin’s untimely death, there is no way to prove it implausible. Traditionally, pre-glasnost (western) speculation about how the Party would have developed if Lenin had lived tended to give Lenin the benefit of the doubt. In other words, Stalin was usually blamed for perverting Leninist ideals. Moshc Lewin’s Lenin’s Last Struggle (1973). for example, leans toward this argument. Post-glasnost accounts (David Rcmnick’s Lenin’s Tomb [1993], for example) place the genesis of Stalinism directly at the feet of Lenin. 22

five months, he denigrated all theatre redolent of the Russian theatrical past via his

journalistic manifestoes which he called “October in the Theatre” (Teatral'nvi oktiabr).29

Proponents of “October in the Theatre” sought an art steeped in politics,

immediacy, and relevancy, all in an attempt to educate the new working class audience.

Like Proletkult, “October in the Theatre” positioned the post-Revolutionary “new” over

the pre-Revolutionary “old,” but unlike the Proletkultists, Meyerhold did not believe that

philosophizing about the new theatre should take precedence over setting ideas into

motion:

The Proletkult idea of the “invention” of hitherto unprecedented forms of art did not gain Meyerhold’s sympathy ... the more philosophical the Proletkult theoreticians became, the further their imaginations departed from reality. Meyerhold brushed them aside in disappointment. He could not inhabit the realm of clever verbal constructs; he wanted to direct productions.30

“October in the Theatre” was Meyerhold’s personal response to the theatrical

possibilities ushered in by the Revolution although he would soon abandon the

movement’s dictum.

“October in the Theatre” was one of many attempts made by early Soviet theatre

artists to sever ties with pre-Revolutionary traditions. The results displeased many who

initially liked the idea, because instead of “new content in old forms” (the rallying cry of

Lunacharsky and, thus, the Party)31, many advocates of “October in the Theatre”

inverted the slogan, emphasizing form over content.

29Lunacharskv essentially fired him in February 1921. See Konstantin Rudnitsky, Russian and Soviet Theatre: 1903-1932. ed. Lesley Milne, trans. Roxanc Pcrntar (New York: Abrams. 1988) 64. 30Rudnitsky 60. 31Gorchakov lists September 12. 1925. as the official appearance of the “new content in old forms” slogan, although it was clearly interpreted as an extension of Lenin's “On Proletarian Culture” written on October 8. 1920. This is a primary' example of the way in which a post-Lenin Communist Party, when finding it necessary to use Lenin as a source to solidify a position, looked backward. 23

Constructivist set design by such artists as Vladimir Dmitriev, designer for

Meyerhold’s production of Emile Verhaeren’s The Dawn (Rassvet. 1920), seemingly

ignored content, i.e., text, for the sake of formal experimentation.32 The bold shapes and

colors of constructivism suggested contempt for the official Bolshevik line on what

would constitute a revolutionary theatre, one which, according to Lunacharsky, should

promote “classical realism” as most beneficial and intelligible for the proletariat.33 At the

same time, the relatively well-heeled Lunacharsky felt that although formalist

experiments should be sanctioned by the new cultural apparatus, so, too, should “the

preservation of the best theatres of the past, which unconditionally deserve the state’s

concern as custodians of artistic traditions.”34 On this last point, Lunacharsky and

Meyerhold could never fully agree.

Formalism in the Soviet theatre had its roots in Meyerhold’s expansive

imagination and in his fixation on deconstructing the Russian dramatic canon. Where

Meyerhold sought to dramatize the rapid fire tempo of the the new society through a

“formal” repudiation of the theatrical past (although his greatest directorial successes

were such “classic” plays as Ostrovsky’s Forest [Les, 1924] and Gogol’s Inspector

General [Revizor. 1924]), tradition-bound Russian theatres such as the Maly attempted

to adjust to the Revolution by simply placing plays with Soviet “content,” e.g., realistic

depictions of the Civil War, in their classical repertories. Like the Maly, the Moscow Art

Theatre (MXAT) viewed the call for proletarian drama in the 1920s as a threat to its

strength: highly nuanced, text-centered productions of conventional drama. Like the

Maly, too, the MXAT performance philosophy was decidedly at odds with the formalism

32See Rudnitsky 60-61, for a description of the production. 33Qtd. in Gorchakov 417. 34Qtd. in Rudnitsky 59-60. 24

advocated by Meyerhold and his position on theatrical expression in a post-

Revolutionary society.

During the late teens and early twenties, the Moscow Art Theatre found itself

stymied by the Revolution. The relationship between its leaders, Stanislavsky and

Nemirovich-Danchenko, had been little more than civil for many years. The Art Theatre

seemed to be atrophying under the weight of new expectations brought on by the new

society. Additionally, vulgar Marxist critics, Proletkultists, and various other sub-groups

accused the Art Theatre of retaining bourgeois aesthetic principles. In the face of such

adversity, Lenin himself allowed the Art Theatre (which he must have viewed as a

cultural emissary) to “embark on a foreign tour, notably to Berlin, Paris, and the United

States”35 in 1922. The tour was the first step in transforming the Art Theatre, already

recognized worldwide as a major troupe (much as the Maly of St. Petersburg is today), into a servant of Soviet bureaucracy.36

In 1926 the Art Theatre produced a play which aroused enormous controversy, critical evaluation, and international attention: Mikhail Bulgakov’s stage adaptation of his novel, White Guard, renamed Days of the Turbins (Dnei turbinikh). Leftist critics attacked the production for its sympathetic portrayal of the dignified Turbins, a family of

“Whites” (as opposed to the Bolshevik “Reds”); centrists felt the play redolent of

Chekhov (not a bad thing considering the co-opting of Chekhov by the Bolsheviks to fit the socialist cause); and audiences filled the theatre until 1929.37 In that year, the play

35Bcncdetti 316. 36Although it is true that the MXAT lacked a sense of direction and purpose throughout the 1920s. Lenin and. later, Stalin, respected the theatre's international reputation. This reputation saved it from the abuse of the Russian Association of Proletariat Writers (RAPP) which, between 1928 and 1932, denounced such plays as Bulgakov's Davs of the Turbins as “class alien." According to Jean Bcncdctti, by 1938 the Art Theatre had become “the model for all Soviet theatres as part of Stalin’s policy of centralized control” (xiii). Lenin’s reaction to the MXAT. as recounted by Lunacharsky, too, provided Stalin with an even stronger case for glorifying the theatre. Sec Lunacharsky’s reminiscences of Lenin qtd. in Lenin 284. 37For a full acount of this production in English, sec Russell 67-80. 25

was removed from the theatre’s repertory due to the unceasing negative attacks directed

toward it as the chief example of “Bulgakovism,” a newly coined term, “to signify the

particular political attitude which they detected in the play.”38

Days of the Turbins again entered the repertory of the Art Theatre in 1932.39 In

1929, almost three full years before the play had been reinstated, but almost one full year

after it had been closed, Stalin wrote a brief letter to Soviet dramatist, Vladimir Bill-

Bielotserkovskii:

Remember the deep impression the audience receives is favourable to the Bolsheviks. If even people like the Turbins are obliged to lay down their arms and submit to the will of the people and admit what they stand for is lost, the Bolsheviks are invincible . . . ‘The Days of the Turbins’ demonstrates the almighty power of Bolshevism.40

The Art Theatre’s production of Davs of the Turbins was its response to criticism

that, as a producing organization, it was incapable of presenting plays for the proletariat.

The Turbins may have epitomized the Bolshevik foe, but they did accept defeat. This, of

course, was the crux of the matter for Stalin. The Art Theatre would continue to

produce proletarian drama, but none of its efforts would supersede the great controversy

which surrounded its initial foray into purely ideological theatre.

If the production history of Davs of the Turbins is an example of what was

forthcoming in the new state and its manipulation of appropriately Soviet culture, then

the production history of Nikolai Erdman’s Suicide fSamoubiitsa. begun 1928) provides

the paradigm of future official reaction to any artistic expression which might be

38Russcll 74. “They” being vulgar Marxist critics. 39It seems the main reason for the play’s removal from the theatre's repertory for three years resulted from Stanislavsky’s absence from the Art Theatre between late 1928 and 1930. In 1928, he suffered a heart attack on stage and was not a viable influence there until after 1930. Even then, “the last ten years of his life were passed as a semi-invalid.” See Bcncdctti 329. 40Qtd. in Bcncdctti 330. 26 considered hostile to the regime. Trenchant satire, which characterized not only Suicide, but many Soviet plays during the 1920s, became anathema under Stalin. The play never received a public performance outside a dress rehearsal.

In the play, Semen Semenovich Podsekalnikov is an unemployed Soviet everyman. When a foolish argument about leftover liverwurst leads him to jump from his bed sans trousers, his wife, Masha, fears that he may kill himself. After assessing the situation, coupled with a misguided attempt at tuba-playing as a possible cure for his joblessness, he thinks suicide might not be such a grim alternative to his Soviet reality.

Soon, friends and strangers discover his “plan,” and each wants Podsekalnikov to kill himself for one or another cause. After numerous bouts with his conscience,

Podsekalnikov opts to live. The play closes with the announcement that an unseen character, Fedia Petunin, spurred on by his belief that Podsekalnikov has followed through with his plan, has shot himself. This ambiguous ending suggests that one of the two chose the right path. Whether or not that honor belongs to Petunin and his suicide, or to Podsekalnikov and his decision to persevere under Stalin, the playwright offers no comment.41

Stalin allowed the Art Theatre to rehearse Suicide after a letter from Stanislavsky reached him. However, Stalin felt that his comrades considered the play “fatuous and even harmful.”42 Ultimately, Suicide was a victim of its time.43 Suicide, with its raucous comedy interspersed with heartbreakingly elegiac remembrances of the old life, was one

41For a lengthy and insightful analysis of Suicide, see Joseph Brandesky, “Nikolai Erdman’s The Mandate and The Suicide: Critical Analyses.” diss. U of Kansas, 1991. 42Qtd. in Benedetti 346. 43Although the play was completed in 1928. it was not undertaken by the MXAT company until December 16. 1931. at which time Meycrhold’s company was also rehearsing it. Almost four years would pass between the completion of the play and its demise. During that time, appeals to Glavrepertkom. the State Repertory Committee, were made; Meyerhold lobbied various political groups; and a third theatre, the Vakhtangov, vied for its chance to produce the play. Sec Brandesky' 28-38 for a full accounting of attempts made to produce Suicide. 27 of the final Soviet plays to attempt a satirical analysis of the new, and, ironically, one of the few Soviet plays—an exception, to be sure—which now finds itself a legitimate member of the international dramatic canon.

Socialist Realism. RAPP, and the Campaign against Meyerhold

Stanislavsky’s naive belief that Suicide might actually be allowed a wide audience points to the transitionality of the era. Moving from grudging toleration of dissenting voices within the Party to complete censorship, the transition was gradual. The examples noted above which presage that transition indicate the slow formulation of a

Communist theory of art based on commentary by and about Lenin. From Lenin’s

“Party Organization and Party Literature” comes the most vociferous of his documented declarations regarding the future direction of a uniquely Party-oriented literature:

What is this principle of party literature? It is not simply that, for the socialist proletariat, literature cannot be a means of enriching individuals or groups; it cannot, in fact, be an individual undertaking, independent of the common cause of the proletariat. Down with non-partisan writers! Down with literary supermen!44

Lenin’s postulate, written in late 1905, certainly implies an open-endedness that found its fullest expression in the classic definition of Soviet Socialist Realism as the “truthful, historically concrete presentation of reality in its revolutionary development which must be combined with the ideological remaking and education of toilers in the spirit of socialism.”45 The new credo was pronounced by Andrei Zhdanov at the first gathering of the Soviet Writers’ Union in 1934.

44Lcnin 25. 45S.V. Utcchin. ed.. Everyman's Concise Encyclopedia of Russia (London: J.M. Dent, 1961) 499. Arguments put forth to “dissociate” Lenin and Marxists generally from Lenin’s discourse on “party literature” and its influence on the later definition of Socialist Realism include "(a) that the context of the piece was specific to Russia in 1905 and its instnictions cannot be applied wholesale elsewhere: (b) 28

The construction of a new ideologically loaded aesthetic was clearly the motive

of the doctrine of Socialist Realism. The roots of the definition reached back to the

debates between Party officials and “formalists” which raged during the late 1920s.

Such playwrights as Mikhail Bulgakov were the doctrine’s main targets, but poets such

as Boris Pasternak, musicians such as Dmitri Shostakovich (who worked closely with

Meyerhold on such productions as Mayakovsky’s Bedbug [Klop. 1928]), and literary

theorists who followed the lead of Roman Jakobson (whose school of criticism coined

the word “formalism” before it became a wholly negative term of abuse) also felt its

wrath.

Socialist Realism affected all branches of art in the USSR. Again, in the theatre,

it aimed to quell satire and manifestations of formalism, both of which might be

delineated as “anti-Party” propaganda. It is important to note that satirical and formalist

works were but two examples of what constituted the majority of Soviet drama in the

1920s. Generally, the decade was characterized not only by satirical jabs at the losers

and winners of the NEP period, e.g., Bulgakov’s Zova’s Apartment (Zoikina kvartira.

1926) and the formalist renderings of the Russian classics, e.g., Meyerhold’s productions

of Gogol and Ostrovsky. There also existed a large body of drama which depicted the

proletariat as a doer of great deeds and possessed of the ability to demonstrate undying

loyalty for the new state, e.g., Konstantin Trenev’s Liubov Yarovaia. (1926). Greater in

number still were dramas which relied on the not too distant Civil War as a central theme, e.g., Vsevolod Ivanov’s Armoured Train. 14-69 (Bronepoezd. 1927).46

that the article refers to political and theoretical w riting, and not to literary work” (Laing 22-23). Historians such as James H. Billington in The Icon and the Axe: An Interpretive History' of Russian Culture (1966; New York: Random House, 1970) argue conversely that because of Lenin’s call for partiinost’ (“party spirit"), “the totalitarianism of Soviet society under Stalin followed logically (even if it may not have followed necessarily) from the Leninist doctrine of the party” (532). 46Party aesthetes advocated the use of the Civil War as superior subject matter because, essentially. Bolshevism prevailed. In glorifying the struggle, dramatists courted the Party’s favor. For an 29

Although they were the most successful, proponents of Socialist Realism were

not the first group to consolidate power against “deviationists” such as Meyerhold.

Beginning with the first Five-Year Plan in 1928, the Russian Association of Proletarian

Writers (RAPP) began to criticize the old order or so-called “fellow travelers” who were

not Party members, but rather benign in their support of Party policy. RAPP agitated for

a proletarian drama, but like its progenitor, Proletkult, RAPP overestimated its function

and support within the Party.

Before the liquidation of all literary organizations in 1932, RAPP seized the

opportunity to persuade the “fellow travelers” to come to grips with Soviet reality, all in

the name of the cultural revolution which accompanied the first Five-Year Plan. RAPP

waged war against uncommitted writers and theatre practitioners by means of published

critiques, never by the terror which characterized the post-RAPP era. The RAPPists

supported those in the theatre who advocated a narrow, nearly fanatical Marxist line.

Overconfident and dangerously close to usurping the Party’s own control of artistic

expression, RAPP, like Proletkult, succumbed rather quickly. Although RAPP advanced

many of the same positions that marked the aesthetic of its successor, Socialist Realism,

it is likely that RAPP's members' hysterical pro-Communist stance “did not fit into

Stalin’s scheme for eliminating all genuine factions and establishing total personal

domination,”47 and therefore had to be destroyed. The outlawing of RAPP in 1932 was the first step toward the creation of Socialist Realism.

The self-censorship that Soviet writers practiced quite consciously after 1934

kept “writers in a state of continuing uncertainty as to what was required of them.”48

Since the theoretical basis for Socialist Realism “called for two mutually exclusive interesting, if diffuse, analysis of the many readings of Socialist Realism, sec Rcginc Robin, Socialist Realism: An Impossible Aesthetic, trans. Catherine Porter (Stanford: Stanford UP. 1992). 47Utechin 449. 48Billington 535. 30 qualities: revolutionary enthusiasm and objective deptiction of reality,”49 many Soviet plays of the 1930s were understandably often flat and unimaginative.50 Some of this group included Konstantin Finn’s Big Family (Bol’shaia sem’ia. 1937) in which the collective spirit of the Soviet people eradicates loneliness; Leonid Pervomaiski’s

Vagram’s Night (Vagramova noch’. 1935) which explores the motivations of “a father sacrificing his son’s life for the Revolution”51; and Boris Romashev’s Native Land

(Rodnoi dom. 1938), in which an elderly doctor resists his bourgeois principles in order to expose spies and class enemies.

These plays represent Socialist Realism in its most standardized form. Although each play may be considered a successful rendering of Socialist Realism in purely dramatic terms, each is also an individual reading o f Socialist Realism as an aesthetic theory. If there was one common trait of Socialist Realism in the theatre, it was its virulent opposition to what might be called a “theatre of ideas,” a theatrical notion orginally promulgated in the late 19th century by such visionary European stage designers as Adolphe Appia and, later, brought to America by Robert Edmund Jones.52

In Russia, this trend found expression in the magazine, World of Art (Mir Iskusstva). founded by Sergei Diaghilev et al. in 189853; in the stage designs for the Ballets Russes by such artists as Alexandre Benois and Leon Bakst, both of whom emigrated to the

West; and in the vibrant Russian Symbolist movement at the turn of the century, of which Meyerhold, together with Vera Komissarshevskaia in St. Petersburg, was a self- proclaimed potentate.

49Billington 535. 50 Exceptions to this general rule include the work of dramatists Evgcnii Shvarts. Nikolai Pogodin, and Aleksei Arbuzov. 51H.W.L. Dana. Handbook on Soviet Drama (New York: American Russian Institute. 1938) 84. 52As opposed to the "problem” plays of such writers as Ibsen and Pinero, the "theatre of ideas” emphasized the non-realistic via color, light, and the evocation of mood. 53For one of several discussions of the World of Art movement see Camilla Gray. The Russian Experiment in Art. 1863-1922 (New York: Abrams. 1970). 31

As early as 1905, three years after Meyerhold left the Art Theatre to head its first studio, the audacious director staged Maurice Maeterlinck’s La Mort de Tintagiles. the results of which did not meet with Stanislavsky’s approval.54 In 1906, Meyerhold’s production of Aleksandr Blok’s Puppet Show (Balaganchik) at Komissarshevskaia’s

Theatre caused a sensation “of the order of the first night Hernaniof orThe Rite o f

Spring,”55 Meyerhold’s interest in a purely symbolist theatre would not dissipate until

1917, although his mature works of the 1920s and 1930s retained many of its transcendent elements.

Meyerhold’s refusal to eliminate these early formalist influences from his productions led the Party to denounce his work as hopelessly out of touch with “socialist reality.” Although he placated his critics with patriotic plays such as Vsevolod

Vishnevsky’s Final Conflict (Poslednii reshitel’nvi. 1931), in which twenty-seven sailors give their lives in defense of the USSR, and Iurii Olesha’s A List of Blessings (Spisok blagodeyanv. 1931), in which a Soviet actress goes to Paris and dies a martyr for the proletariat, Meyerhold did not put much faith in such patriotism. In 1934, he directed his controversial production of La Dame aux camelias by filsDumas which, in the eyes of the Party, served as the chief example of Meyerhold’s formalist predilections. Highly suspect as “class alien” by this time, attacks on his output increased, but his international reputation saved him for a few more years.

When Meyerhold proclaimed Socialist Realism the antithesis of art at the All-

Union Conference of Theatre Directors in June 1939, he was arrested. His wife, actress

Zinaida Raikh, was murdered in July of the same year, and his close friend, playwright

54The work was not shown to the public. See Michael Green, ed. and trans.. The Russian Symbolist Theatre (Ann Arbor: Ardis. 1986) 12. 55Grccn 14. 32 and poet Sergei Tretiakov, shot as a spy the following August. In February 1940,

Meyerhold himself was tried in prison and shot.56

Meyerhold, Raikh, and Tretiakov are merely three examples of Soviet artists, once praised and heaped with honors as icons of Soviet culture, who perished during the mid- to late 1930s. In one sense, the terror which engulfed the cultural world in the

USSR during this time was the “third wave” of the terror which had gripped the countryside as early as 1929. In that year, Stalin proclaimed collectivization a necessary step in socializing agriculture. Millions of peasants refused to give up private land to the farm collectives ('kolkhozes) which resulted in the systematic annihilation of some seven million households via the “artificial” famine of 1932-33.57 Once forced collectivization showed signs of succeeding, however devastating the human toll, a new terror, the

“second wave,” was unleashed against the “anti-Party factions” within the government.

Although artists felt the pressure of hostile Party officials by the late 1920s, they were not targeted as a group until after the first gathering of the Soviet Writers’ Union in

1934. By 1940, Stalin’s terror had left no segment of the Soviet population untouched.

The terror did not dissipate substantially until after the Twenty-Eighth Party Congress in

March 1939. According to Robert Conquest, “an entirely new Party” had been created between 1934 and 1939. The most shocking evidence for such a thesis is the fact that

“of the 1,827 rank and file delegates” which made up the Congress five years hence, only

56Therc exist a few lengthy biographies of Meyerhold. For a less daunting account which also includes several photographs, see Robert Leach. Vsevolod Mcverhold. cd. Christopher Inncs, Directors in Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge UP. 1989). The standard work on Meyerhold’s theatrical commentary remains Edward Braun, cd. and trans., Meyerhold on Theatre (New York: Hill and Wang. 1969). It should be noted that it was not until 1991 that Mcycrhold’s body, buried in a mass grave, was located. See Alma H. Law. “Meyerhold’s Grave is Located.” Soviet and East European Performance 11.3 (1991): 35-39. 57Scc Robert Conquest, The Ha nest of Sorrow (New York: Oxford UP. 1986) for a full accounting ot the terror-faminc. 33 thirty-five remained in 1939.58 The other 1,792 had either been imprisoned or shot. No other piece of evidence comes close to strengthening the argument that Stalin’s paranoia was not merely a personality kink, but an omnipresent entity which eliminated all oppositional forces. One must wonder what the more specific reasons were for the scope of such “untold human suffering and degradation.”59

The Kirov Murder and the “Great Terror”

If there is a point from which the Stalinist terror of the 1930s grew, it is the murder of Sergei Kirov in 1934. In The Great Terror. Robert Conquest argues that the murder of popular Bolshevik, Kirov, leader of the Leningrad contingency of

Communists, “has every right to be called the crime of the century.”60 In Stalin and the

Kirov Murder. Conquest considers all the available evidence regarding the murder through June 1988. Without devoting an excessive amount of space to the significance of the murder, a few pertinent details must be noted in an attempt to suggest why the event led to the mass terror of “High Stalinism,” a Zeitgeist coinage of the years 1936-38 and a concept of rule the memory of which racks the collective conscience of post-Soviet

Russia.

On December 1, 1934, Leonid Vasilevich Nikolaev entered the Leningrad soviet and shot Sergei Mironovich Kirov, who was unaccompanied by his usual bodyguards.

The assassin, Nikolaev, wanted an official post in the Soviet government, a post he apparently considered his right because of past service to the Party. In the most general sense, Nikolaev’s inability to secure an important office job developed in him “a single-

58Thcse figures may be found in Robert Conquest’s monumental work. The Great Terror: A Reassessment (New York: Oxford UP. 1990) 438; hereafter. Terror. 59Billington 451. 60Conquest. Terror 37. 34

minded hatred of the bureaucracy, which he blamed for failing to give him his due.”61

After his successful attack on Kirov, Nikolaev himself was unceremoniously shot on

December 29, 1934.62

Beginning in 1935, several faked trials were arranged by Stalin, all in an attempt

to support his contention that Nikolaev was but one of thousands of anti-Party

“saboteurs,” out to wreck the young country’s economy and political system.63 Over the

course of four years after the Kirov murder, prominent former “oppositionists” such as

Grigorii Zinoviev were implicated, as were members of the NKVD (Secret Police) and

innumerable others, most of whom were Party members in good standing.64

Although Conquest argues that Nikolaev had his own personal motivation for

assassinating a member of the bureaucracy, his target could have been any one of the

power elite. Only Stalin, however, stood to benefit directly from the liquidation of

Kirov 65 Head of the Leningrad Party and possessed of an impeccable record of

achievements, the somewhat moderate (in a Stalinist context) Kirov “is believed to have

led the opposition within the Central Committee to Stalin’s personal rule after the 17th

party conference, 1934.”66 Stalin could not simply remove Kirov from his position as

First Secretary, but he could attempt to remove him from Leningrad, the city long-

viewed as not only the birthplace of the Revolution, but also the “window to the West,”

61Robert Conquest, Stalin and the Kirov Murder (New York: Oxford UP, 1989) 11: hereafter, Kirov. 62Conquest, Kirov 58. 63Most of the trials were closed affairs. The first of the three “show trials.” at which western reporters were present, took place in August 1936. and involved Zinoviev. Lev Borisovich Kamenev, et al. Although the trials caused a “worldwide sensation." the West was too fixated on Hitler to analyze Stalin and his agenda. Sec Conquest, Kirov 80-86. 64For the fate of the "leading characters” in the Kirov murder, sec Conquest, Kirov xi-xiv. It is important to remember the “relativity" of murder during this time. Although it is, of course, natural to feel remorse for the innocent victims (and there w ere many) of the Kirov affair, many of those executed or consigned to the camps as a result of their “involvement” were guilty of murder themselves in other circumstances and other “affairs.” 65Sec Conquest. Kirov 122-139 for the explication of this argument. 66Utcchin 278. 35

and, thus, a hotbed of bourgeois liberalism. Stalin wanted Kirov to go to Kazakhstan

and later, “with the idea of neutralizing Kirov in the capital,”67 to Moscow. Kirov

refused.

Nineteen thirty-four was a transitional year for Stalin and the USSR. At issue

during that year “was whether Stalin would be able, by one means or another, to

overcome the powerful tendencies in the party of which Kirov had come to be the

representative.”68 The “powerful tendencies” were changes of heart put forth by Party

members who once considered Stalin’s iron-fisted rule during the first Five-Year Plan a

necessity, but who no longer could abide his quest for complete control of the Party.69

Conquest ultimately concludes that although no absolute proof of Stalin’s

involvement in the Kirov murder exists via memoirs, public pronouncements during the

Khrushchev era, or Gorbachevian era revelations, there is no getting around Stalin’s

“complicity” in the Kirov affair. The argument is completely plausible and the diligent

research which steadies it undeniably persuasive. At any rate, mass terror was unleashed

on a grand scale after the Kirov murder. The murder provided Stalin and his closest

associates at the time, Lazar Kaganovich (a Politburo member) and Nikolai Yezhov

(People’s Commissar for Internal Affairs), among others, with “the central justification

for the whole theory of Stalinism and the necessity for endless terror.”70

The Kirov murder created an atmosphere “in which no voice of even comparative

reason or moderation could raise itself.”71 And while, as mentioned above, it was the

point from which the terror of the thirties grew, the point from which the terror was

67Conquest. Kirov 33. 68Conquest, Kirov 32. 69For another reading of the reasons behind the terror, see Adam B. Ulam. A History of Soviet Russia (New York: Holt. 1976) 121-36. Ulam argues that Stalin wished to exterminate those like Kirov “who might oppose the regime if war broke out.” 70Conquest. Kirov 3. 71Conqucst. Kirov 45. 36

sustained and justified by the perpetrators was a government decree issued on the same

day as Kirov’s murder. This “terror decree,” as it is often called, contained three

pronouncements, the first of which directed the appropriate investigators “to speed up

the cases of those accused of the preparation or execution of acts of terror.”72 The

second point denied pardons and the third directed the NKVD “to execute the death

sentence against criminals . .. immediately after the passing of sentences.”73 Thus, while

the decree was ostensibly announced as a direct response to Kirov’s murder, it could

easily be manipulated to justify any action against those who were perceived as enemies

of the regime, including artists:

Suspect were all former oppositionists, followers of Trotsky, Zinoviev, Bukharin, former Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries, anarchists, members of the Jewish Socialist Bund and others; also all sympathizers of pre-revolutionary left-wing parties; returned emigrants, Party members whose duties had taken them abroad, foreign Communists, members of religious sects, all those who at one time or another had been excluded from the Party, all Party members who had resisted the purging process.74

The atmosphere of fear which the “terror decree” engendered abated only after the Nazi

march toward Moscow commenced late in 1941.

War Drama. Zhdanovism. and the Death of Stalin

With well over twenty million killed either in battle, in the camps, or in the besieged cities of Leningrad and Stalingrad (formerly Tsaritsyn, now Volgograd), World

War II (or, the Great Patriotic War, as it is known in Russia) exacted an enormous price from the Soviet people. It is worth remembering that after the Nazi-Soviet non­

72Conquest, Kirov 37. 73Conqucst. Kirov 37. 74Gcorg von Rauch. A History of Soviet Russia, trans. Peter and Annette Jacobsohn (New York: Praeger. 1957) 243. 37

aggression pact was broken by the Germans in June 1941, the Soviet military machine

was unprepared strategically. Most problematic was the lack of experienced

commanders, many of whom had been purged in the previous decade.75 Horrific

numbers of human casualties mounted fully two years before the Soviet army pushed

back the Germans in the Volga region, in the Caucasus, and in the sieges of Leningrad

and Stalingrad.76

During the grim war years, Socialist Realism continued to hold sway over artists,

but the official cultural line became less antagonistic simply because, as was the case in

the early 1920s, strictly political matters took precedence over cultural concerns. Soviet

plays during 1941-45 deified military leaders, past and present. Mother Russia was

hailed as a great and powerful nation, although such “bourgeois nationalism” had been

discouraged since the Bolshevik coup. As a means to the end of the war, however, the

Party’s manipulation of Russian nationalism as opposed to “world Communism” served

its purpose well.

In the midst of widespread suffering, Soviet theatres churned out appropriate

plays which vilified the Germans and glorified Stalin. The cult of personality manifested

itself theatrically in such typical plays as Margarita Aliger’s Tale About the Truth

(Skazka o pravde. 1944). In the play (based on Aliger’s epic poem), Zoya, a young

Soviet woman, is imprisoned by the Germans. She is the victim of unspeakable crimes,

but

she sees a phantom of Stalin in her cell. It has come to inform her that the Red Army has launched a general offensive and that Moscow will not

75Gcorgii Zhukov. Marshal of the USSR, was an exception. However, after the war he w as “removed by Stalin, who resented his great popularity’' (Utcchin 621), 76Less than five months into the war, Soviet casualties stood at some 3.2 million. Sec Ulam 159. 38

be surrendered. Zoya thanks Stalin for the information and tells him that now she is afraid of nothing.77

Such plays were clearly written as morale boosters for a beleaguered people.

Post-war drama reflected the ideology of a 'dgorously recalculated Stalinism which was initiated “on the cultural front” by Andrei Zhdanov. Instead of the anticipated liberalization of stringent policies once thought necessary to prop up the regime, “a new wave of repressions”78 began almost immediately following the end of the war. The years between 1945 and 1953, the year of Stalin’s death, in some ways recalled the

1930s, but the main difference between the two periods was extremely significant.

Although repressions continued, artists who deviated from the Socialist Realist line were

“simply forbidden to publish, exhibit their paintings, or perform their music rather than imprisoned or worse.”79

To a much lesser extent, just as artists experienced a sense of freedom during the

Civil War years, governmental control of the arts eased during World War II simply because, as mentioned above, defeating the Germans was the essential concern. Thus,

“the propaganda machine had to moderate its criticisms of the capitalist way of life as it was encouraging Russians to fight a common enemy alongside the capitalists.”80 Long barred access to international travel,81 average Soviet citizen/soldiers for the first time found the West:

77Gorchakov 378. 78UIam 191. 79Ulam 195. One exception to this general “hands off’ policy was the fate of Jewish actor and director of the State Yiddish Theatre. Solomon Mikhoels. His theatre lacked Soviet plays and was deemed “cosmopolitan.” In ever)' (brief) mention of his work. Mikhoels is listed as dying under “mysterious circumstances” in 1948. This is not surprising given the anti-Semitism inherent in Zhdanov’s post-war cultural policy. The persecution of the “rootless cosmopolites” would reach a peak when the notorious “Doctors’ Plot" was exposed in December 1952. 80Timothv Dunmorc. Soviet Politics 1945-53 (New York: St. Martin’s. 1984) 129, 81 All Soviet citizens of legal age were required to hold an internal passport beginning in 1932, A major revision of this requirement was proposed in 1974 “to reflect the classless nature of Soviet society.” See N. Shchelokov. “The USSR Citizen’s Passport.” The USSR Todav: Current Readings from the Soviet Press. Selections from the Current Digest of the Soviet Press, eds. Jan S. Adams, ct al. (Columbus. OH: 39

After years of isolation Soviet cities now found themselves in contact with Hollywood films, Western novels and Western goods sent under the lend-lease agreement. As soldiers or as officials many Soviets gained their first opportunity of seeing life in other countries at first hand.82

Zhdanov’s first confrontation with postwar hopes for a relaxation of regulations

took place in 1946 in the form of severe reprimands of literary journals “for publishing

‘apolitical’ and ‘ideologically harmful’ works of authors such as Zoshchenko and

Akhmatova.”83 Although neither the satirist, Mikhail Zoshchenko, nor the poet, Anna

Akhmatova, were involved specifically in the theatre, Zhdanov’s singling out of these

two cultural figureheads had implications for all artists. Both were expelled from the

Writers’ Union and found themselves subject to the attacks of the Soviet press. Zhdanov

seemed to find the work of Zoshchenko and Akhmatova particularly egregious because

o f its supposed ambivalence toward the regime. Zhdanov died in 1948, but the policy of

exposing “cosmopolitans” remained in force at least until 1953.

Post-war drama also reflected an invigorated Stalinism in its call for the physical

and ideological reconstruction of the USSR. The period between 1945 and 1953,

however, is also remembered for the Party’s apparent rejection of its own line on what

constituted appropriately Soviet theatre. On August 26, 1946, a resolution was adopted

by the Party which chided stage directors for relegating “plays dealing with Soviet life”

to amateurs.84 It would appear that the Party was advocating a relaxation of its own

American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies. 1975) 12: hereafter, all selections from this anthology will be listed as Adams, et al. 82Dunmorc 129. 83Dunmore 132. For the only collection of Mikhail Zoshchcnko’s work in English, sec Hugh McLean, cd.. Nervous People and Other Satires, trans. Maria Gordon and Hugh McLean (1963: Bloomington: Indiana UP. 1975). The collection includes "The Adventures of A Monkey” which Zhdanov loathed. A survey of Akhmatova’s work in English can be found in Walter Arndt, ed.. Anna Akhmatova: Selected Poems, trans. Walter Arndt, ct al. (1976; Ann Arbor: Ardis. 1985). 84Scc Gorchakov 400-08. 40

cultural line, but its enigmatic leaders once again dashed longed-for hopes by reining in

such writers as Aleksandr Fadeev, once the darling of the proletarian press in the 1920s.

Fadeev wrote a novel, Young Guard (Molodaia gvardiia) in 1945 which he

adapted for the stage in 1947. The very successful stage adaptation was directed by

Nikolai Okhlopkov and Elena Zotova (who were married), both of whom were respected

and influential artists.85 At first glance, then, everything about the production was well

within the boundaries of the Party’s postwar theatrical line. Fadeev was a famous

proletarian writer who had supported Zhdanov and the call for Socialist Realism in 1934.

More important was his success producing such works himself. The adaptation of

Young Guard was to be directed by first-rate professionals who had influenced the

direction of Soviet theatre and who were relatively well-known in international cultural

circles.86 Finally, the subject matter of the play was ideally suited for the time: young

Komsomol (Young Communist League) martyrs behind German lines during World War

II organize “an underground resistance group” and are “betrayed by the occupying

forces” and executed.87 Beyond all this, the depiction of a mythic image of heroic Soviet

youth giving their lives for the good of the country is one from a handful of plays in the

Soviet repertory which is Socialist Realist in form and content, but which does not

pummel narrative or characterization for the sake of it. Still, though, Utechin writes that

85A s was typical of the Soviet stage, many professional productions of a popular play might appear at different theatres during the same season. Okhlopkov’s and Zotova’s production was the first of several. Gorchakov discusses a production of Young Guard directed bv Boris Zakhava at the Vakhtangov Theatre in Moscow. Sec Gorchakov 380-81. 860khlopkov headed Moscow’s Realistic Theatre in the early to mid-1930s. He sought a hyper-realism via stagings which precipitated the arena theatre movement years later. After Stalin’s death, he staged his famous production of Hamlet in 1954. See Nick Worrall Modernism to Realism on the Soviet Stage: Tairov-Vakhtangov-Okhlopkov (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1989). 87Worrall 177. 41

Fadeev was ultimately “charged with failing to give sufficient prominence to the role of

the party . . . and was compelled to produce a new version in 1951 ,”8S

The death o f Stalin in 1953 was the foremost event which would lead to the

“thaw” characteristic of Khrushchev’s rule. For two decades, unfettered artistic

expression had ceased to exist in the USSR. The terror of the 1930s, the devastating

war, and the intense obscurantism of the late 1940s had destroyed the spirit of a

generation of artists. Where once the likes of Meyerhold, Eisenstein, and Mayakovsky

had stunned the world with their visionary works, by 1953 all were murdered, worked to

death in the camps, silenced, or suicides. Stalin’s death offered the survivors new

possibilities, but rejuvenation of the artistic community would require many years.

The “Thaw” and De-Stalinization

After 1953, Socialist Realism was recognized by the Party as a “possible”

hindrance to the development of Soviet art, but it could not be wholly discredited

because it was the manifestation of the Party’s official cultural policy. To admit to its

repressive and ridiculous excesses would mean a repudiation of almost two decades of

Soviet life. Instead, ambiguous and oblique decrees issued by the Party coupled with

subtle calls for a reexamination of notions of cultural freedom began to appear in such

influential journals as New World (Nowi mir). Post-Stalin art generally and theatre

specifically, from Nikita Khrushchev to Mikhail Gorbachev, were still subjected to the

Party’s bureaucratic control, but various interpretations of Socialist Realism were

allowed a hearing.

In the realm of playwrighting, Leonid Zorin’s Guests fGostii, 1954) was one of the first post-Stalin plays to examine corruption among the Party’s lifelong bureaucrats

88Utechin 174. Utcchin writes further: "In Iris latter years, Fadeev became an alcoholic, and finally committed suicide after Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin at the 20th party congress.” 42

or apparatchiki. The play pits “the people” against the “soulless bureaucrats” who have

profited from the Revolution without giving much in return.89 In the same year as its

first production, however, the play was suppressed and Zorin “was accused of

deliberately misrepresenting Soviet reality.”90 Both before and after Khrushchev’s

“secret speech” in 1956 denouncing Stalin, then, those behind de-Stalinization would

vacillate in their support of a relative degree of artistic freedom and the repression

(though by no means of the physical sort championed by Stalin) of artists who exposed

too much.91 This trend would continue throughout the 1960s and 1970s, and would end

only after Gorbachev succeeded Konstantin Chernenko in 1985.

The “thaw” saw the rehabilitation of Meyerhold, the return of Mayakovsky’s

plays to the Soviet stage, a spark of life in playwrighting which had been extinguished

since the 1930s, and a reconsideration of actor training outside the officially accepted

“system.”92 At the same time, the “thaw” witnessed the humiliation of Boris Pasternak

regarding the publication abroad of Doctor Zhivatto, an event which caused a furor in the Soviet and international literary world and also one which reiterated the Party’s fluctuating cultural line.93

89Scc Jurgen Ruhlc, “The Soviet Theatre.” Russian Under Khrushchev: An Anthology from ‘Problems of Communism.’, ed. Abraham Brunibcrg (New York: Praeger, 1962) 517-20 for an account of other plays (and the Party’s response to them) which, like Guests, were classified as “Critical Realism.” 90Ruhle 519. 91Khrushchev’s "secret speech” took place in February 1956, at the Twentieth Party Congress. In it, he denounced Stalin, laying the groundwork for his approval of the ideology of dc-Stalinization. It has long been common to refer to the speech as “secret” because it was read at a closed session of the Congress. 92This was motivated in part by the Berliner Ensemble tour in 1957. See Ruhle 524-25. 93Boris Pasternak, whose collections of poetry include “My Sister, Life” (Moia sestra. zhizn’, 1917) was a much revered lyrical poet before lie was silenced during the Stalin era. During this period, he translated many Shakespearean plays into Russian. He was denied access to publication for his epic novel. Doctor Zhivago, in the USSR, but in 1957 an Italian translation appeared. This infuriated Soviet officials, many of whom felt that the novel “posed in effect a challenge to the moral basis of the regime” (Billington 556). Malicious verbal attacks on the novel and its author soon followed. Awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1958. Pasternak declined, having been warned that if he went to Sweden to accept the award, he w ould not be allowed to return. Pasternak died of heart disease in 1960. 43

One reason for the Party’s inability to construct an unequivocal stance on culture stems from the Marxist notion of “revisionism.” Strictly defined, the word suggests “a tendency to revise the officially accepted interpretation of Marxism in a way detrimental to the prospects of revolution or the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.”94 The most obvious symbolic approval of a revision of a once official stance occurred in 1961, when

Stalin's corpse was disinterred, i.e., removed from its place of honor next to Lenin and positioned alongside such lesser Communist icons as the American, John Reed, author of

Ten Davs that Shook the World (1919), in the Kremlin Wall. One sees in this highly connotative act Khrushchev’s push to cleanse Leninism of the perversions of Stalinism.

Just as in the 1930s the Party reached backward for Lenin’s commentary to justify a particular decree, so, too, would it again during the “thaw” to justify an abdication of

Stalin’s brand of Leninism. In other words, during the tenuous “thaw,” “the downgrading of Stalin was accompanied by the intensification of the cult of Lenin.”95

Ironically, de-Stalinization was dealt a staggering, although not crushing, blow in

1962 with the publication of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan

Denisovich, a starkly realistic portrayal of life in a Soviet labor camp. Another of several controversial actions which led to his removal in October 1964, Khrushchev approved of the publication of Solzhenitsyn’s novella in Novvi mir. So liberating was Ivan

Denisovich that “it provoked an outpouring of similar stories, some even more horrific, calling the whole history of the Revolution into question.”96 Party leaders wisely took note of this fact. Realizing that a post-Stalin USSR could not quell dissent by means of mass terror, de-Stalinization continued. Further, “the rulers themselves had not yet finally decided on their (cultural) policy: a new line had not been formulated.”97 Thus,

94Utcchin 455. 95Ulam 235. 96John Elsom, Cold War Theatre (London and New York: Routlcdgc. 1992) 76. 97Kagarlitsky 188. 44

as it was in the mid- to late 1950s, the Party’s cultural policy during the early to mid-

1960s “seemed very difficult to understand.”98

Theatre during the waning years of Khrushchev’s rule proved no less immune to

this “difficult to understand”era. Censorship remained a potent tool of the Party’s

cultural gendarmes, but changes were afoot. Nineteen sixty-three saw the appearance of

Iurii Liubimov’s first mature directorial effort: Brecht’s Good Person of Setzuan.

Liubimov—Party member, ex-soldier, and winner of the Stalin Prize for sustained

achievement as an actor at the Vakhtangov Theatre in 1951—would prove to be the kind

of agitational, yet respected, artist which the Party feared most.99 His works at the

Taganka Theatre in Moscow (his home for two decades), epitomized the sort of theatre

in which a line in the text “which looked innocent when read by the censors in Moscow

took on a different meaning when played against a lighting change which turned the set blood red.”100 Soviet directors who often followed this same line included Oleg Efremov

at the Contemporary (Sovremennik) in Moscow, Georgii Tovstonogov at the Gorky in

Leningrad, and Anatolii Efros, who was affiliated with several post-Stalin theatres. All

of these directors would succeed at confronting, if not overtly challenging, the givens of

Soviet life, sometimes with a candor and vigor which led to persecution throughout the late 1960s and 1970s.

The Era of Stagnation

If it is true that the administration of Leonid Brezhnev, who emerged as premier in early 1966, gave rise to the “Era of Stagnation (zastoT),” it is equally true that the

98Kagarlitsky 188. "See Elsom 76-77 for a brief description of Liubimov’s production of Good Person of Setzuan and for an accounting o f his stature. 100Elsom 81. 45

Soviet theatre, more often than not, assumed the qualities of this pejorative label.101

Under Brezhnev and the many neo-Stalinists who supported him, desperately needed

fundamental change came slowly, if at all, and the theatre once more suffered. Popular

plays of the period such as Vera Panova’s It’s Been Ages! (Skol’ko let, skol’ko zim.

1966) were more often centered on the lives and loves of individuals, rather than on the

strides made by the collective. This in itself purported an ideological shift, but beyond

the emphasis on individuality, the majority of the drama of the period offered little hope

that cultural restrictions might be eased.

An apparent curtailing of the relative artistic freedom which came after the

publication of Ivan Denisovich in 1962 indicated that “the bear could still bite.”102 In

1966, two writers, Andrei Siniavskii and Iulii Daniel, “were sentenced to seven years and

five years respectively in labour camps for spreading anti-Soviet propaganda.”103 It is

not surprising that the ruling cultural apparatus capriciously altered its cultural line with

such severe reprimands of the two. What is surprising, in a Soviet context, is the quite

public protest which took place in December 1965, when the two were being prepared

for trial.104 Clearly, much in the same way that Gorbachev’s revolution could not be

stopped once it had begun, the Khrushchev revolution’s legacy continued long after his

forced retirement.105

101Although Brezhnev’s own conservatism contributed greatly to the “stagnation.” the label is not altogether true. For example, a certain “radical" economist. G. Lisichkin, argued strongly and publicly during these so-called stagnant years against “excessive centralization and directive planning.” His warnings about the imminent disintegration of the command economy generally went unheeded, but his pronouncements attracted many followers. As in all ideological debates of the Brezhnev era. however, new ideas about the economy, culture, etc.. rarely gained the support of the Party’s Stalinist center. See Kagarlitsky 191-201. 102Elsom 77. 103E!som 77. 104See Kagarlitsky 189-190. 105It is true that the Russian nationalist, Vladimir Zhirinovsky', would hinder the pace of Boris Yeltsin’s reforms, but the difference here is that the ultra-nationalists of Zhirinovsky’s “Liberal Democratic Party” (which emerged as a powerful voice in the parliamentary elections of December 1993) had been isolated as am inority party less than a decade after Gorbachev began his nearly seven-year stint as Party head. 46

Playwrighting remained weak in the late 1960s, largely as a result of international

politics.106 Such events as the Czechoslovakian revolt in 1968 led to more restrictive

censorship (and, more damaging, “self-censorship” on the part of playwrights, as

mentioned above), but by 1975, it was possible for Soviet theatre critic, Mark Zaitsev, to

write:

In this atmosphere of constant uncertainty, the Soviet theatre today is more dynamically political than ever before in the sense that it increasingly serves as a testing ground for the true nature of control and the actual status of freedom of expression.107

This “testing ground” represented an apparent willingness by the Party to tolerate dissent

in the theatre if not the street.108 In the Soviet theatre of the 1970s, dissent could be found “between the lines” of many productions. A primary example of this covert

dissension was Iurii Liubimov’s production of Under the Skin of the Statue of Liberty

(Pod shkuru statui svobodv. 1973) at the Taganka in Moscow. Ostensibly anti-

American, the episodic play quite clearly indicts Soviet society. Whether or not the censors, i.e., the outside Party representatives which sat on the Taganka’s artistic committee, ignored or missed the play’s ambiguous references to “freedom” it is impossible to say.109 However, Zaitsev remarks that the many savvy Soviet spectators were fully aware that the production “cut both ways.”110

106lt must be noted, though, that “glasnost” playwrights such as Mikhail Shatrov and Liudmila Petrushcvskaia wrote some excellent plays during the 1960s and 1970s. but most of their work w as written “for the drawer” since, although the definition of Socialist Realism had become less and less absolute, it did not meet with the approval of the many censors through which it had to pass. These works “for the drawer" were not produced until the mid- to late 1980s. although some were allowed a hearing in small studio theatres prior to 1985. 107Mark Zaitsev, “Soviet Theatre Censorship." The Drama Review 19.2 (1975): 121. 108Disscnt as opposed to "outright political opposition” (Ulam 264-65). 109Onc of the significant differences between censorship in the thirties, forties, and fifties, and censorship in the sixties, seventies, and early eighties was its varying degrees of severity: “The Soviet Ministry of Culture sent representatives to watch the dress rehearsals of Moscow productions before certifying them for public performance, but they could not be equally diligent for all 625 theatres 47

Iurii Liubimov was one of a number of internationally recognized Soviet directors who achieved success despite reprimands, threats, and ongoing battles with the Party.

Other directors of note during the 1970s included Tovstonogov, Efros, Efremov, and the

still active Galina Volchek. These courageous artists often challenged prevailing ideology by means of subtle stagings of plays criticized by the Party and the press as wrought with “ideological inconsistencies.” Liubimov went furthest, for it was he who was exiled in 1982 during the brief Andropov era.111

Conclusion

By the early 1980s, Socialist Realism, still the only officially accepted aesthetic

(although for many years poked and prodded into a tolerable standard for the times), steadfastly resisted continued revision. The various revisions inherent in the Khrushchev

“thaw” saw a relaxation of interference in choice of repertory, for example, but Party apparatchiki remained supicious of those in the theatre who might reveal too much enthusiasm for such choice. Defiant directors in the 1960s and 1970s angered authorities who, when sufficiently perceptive to recognize a subversive text or staging, could easily close a production without explanation. It is true that this happened with less frequency in the 1970s and early 1980s, but the mere fact that the possibility remained a reality throughout the Soviet Union. They hud to rely on their local officials who could be more repressive or more lax and unsophicated. The further from Moscow, the more arbitrary the rules, and in some outlying states, such as the Baltic republics, it might even be said that the censors were sometimes on the side of the censored” (Elsom 81). 110Zaitsev 121. For a description of the production, sec R. Shore. “Lyubimov/Yevtushenko: Under the Skin of the Statue of Liberty.” The Drama Review 17.1 (1973): 134-42. 11 'Liubimov’s exile prompted a storm of protest in the USSR and abroad. Ironically, when Iurii Andropov was KGB head, his was a powerful voice which did not register opposition to Liubimov’s “radicalism.” This was in part due to the fact that Andropov’s daughter was married to a company member at the Taganka. See Vladimir Solovyov and Elena Klepikova. Yuri Andropov: A Secret Passage into the Kremlin, trans. Guy Daniels (New York: Macmillan, 1983) 244-45. for the best account of Liubimov’s working method (as well as a lucid description of his significant productions) in English, see Alexander Gershkovich, The Theater of Yuri Lyubimov: Art and Politics at the Taganka Theater in Moscow, trans. Michael Yurieff (New York: Paragon. 1989). 48 continued to stifle the (re)development of the once unparalleled influence of the Soviet theatre.

In the 1930s, Soviet ideologues praised what was known as “revolutionary romanticism” in the drama of the new society. Such drama, in keeping with the requirements of Socialist Realism, trumpeted the glorious fixture of Communism.

Negative strokes on the great canvas of Soviet life were ignored in order to promote visions of a distant socialist utopia.

In the late 1970s, the official Party line on the theatre championed the “Theatre of Optimism.” Ideologically akin to its forerunner, “revolutionary romanticism,” the

“Theatre of Optimism” found expression in plays which demonstrated

friendship among peoples, the struggle for peace on earth, great discoveries in science and technology and the heroic feats of the Soviet people in defence of their motherland and on the labor front, as well as many other issues that are concerning today’s playgoers.1X2

It was not until the permanent revision of Soviet ideology began in earnest in 1985 that the “Theatre of Optimism” proved itself yet another inevitably doomed cultural ploy- long on “optimism,” short on substance.

In his essay, “Language on the Verge of A Nervous Breakdown,” Anatolii

Naiman analyzes the lingering “dearth of meaningful language” in the former Soviet

Union. He argues that the substance of language had been so depleted of actuality under the Communists that the great mass of Soviet people signified the living embodiment of an Orwellian nightmare. Thus, during the Soviet era, the word “freedom” is co-opted from the Russian language by what Naiman calls the “reigning Power” for use as the name of a concentration camp in Kazakhstan. Soviet theatrical language, dependent on

1 l2The Theatre of Optimism (Moscow: VAAP. 1978)5. 49 both “real” language and non-verbal signage, was devalued, too, by a host of restrictions placed upon it by cultural watchdogs. To the extent that the Aesopian language of the stage served to undermine the complete domination of theatrical expression by the state, the theatre sometimes succeeded (where the “pure” word did not) at cleansing words of their Sovietization. The following two chapters stress the primacy of Gorbachev and his

“new thinking” as the incendiary forces which fueled the attempt to revive the ideology behind the Soviet Russian language via glasnost and perestroika. In so doing, of course, aesthetic ideologies found themselves manipulated, which in turn motivated the appearance of a theatrical epoch conditioned by “new thinking.”113

113Anatolii Naiman. “Language on the Verge of A Nervous Breakdown.” trans. Mark Teeter, The Wilson Quarterly 18.3 (1994V 108-17. CHAPTER III

GLASNOST AS A PREVAILING CONCEPT

OF THE POLITICS OF “NEW THINKING”

Introduction

On March 11, 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev succeeded Konstantin Chernenko as

General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the USSR. On

August 24, 1991, a few days after it became clear that the attempted coup had failed,

Gorbachev quit as Party head, thus ending seventy-four years of Party control of political, economic, and social life in the Soviet Union. On December 25, 1991,

Gorbachev resigned as president of the USSR (a.k.a. the “Commonwealth”) and retired from public life, “swept away by the forces he released.”1

By early 1994, the sometimes ridiculously oafish, sometimes brilliantly incisive,

Boris Yeltsin, Gorbachev’s successor and one-time political adversary, was compromising his once unshakable position as champion of radical economic reform by attempting to placate hardline nationalists led by Vladimir Zhirinovsky and his “Liberal

Democratic Party.” For the great majority of Soviet citizens, little had changed.

'Serge Schniemann. “The Fall of Gorbachev: Swept Aside by the Forces He Released,” New York Times 15 Dec. 1991. nat’l cd.: A1.A12. 50 51

Insofar as the reforms that Gorbachev initiated during his brief tenure as General

Secretary were supposed to bring on substantive, irreversible change, particularly in the

economic sphere, those reforms were largely unsuccessful. During Gorbachev’s stint as

leader of the USSR and long after, lines remained long, the black market grew and

flourished (as did organized crime), and the ruble remained, for all practical purposes on

the world market, worthless. The mass of disenfranchised Russians (never known for

their entrepreneurial spirit) are now confronted not so much by black limosines whisking

Party bureaucrats to and from government establishments, but by a miniscule number of

their more adept compatriots who, having made small fortunes in high-risk ventures,

“careen through the streets in BMW and Mercedes limosines without regard for red

lights or any other rules.”2 Resentment for thesenouveaux riches is palpable and strong.

It stems from the still widely held belief, especially among those born between the mid­

twenties and the mid-forties, that the collective good takes precedence over the

individual.3 A well-worn Soviet adage, to be sure, but one which carries real meaning

for two generations now largely marginalized as vestigial remnants of a best forgotten

Stalinist past.

In this age of “post-ideology” where the whole of Russia resembles a gaudy

carnival chock full of petty thievery, tawdry sorcerers, and fools galore, the former

2Craig R. Whitney. "Russia Opens Up Market, but Few Have the Money,” New York Times 18 Nov. 1993, nat’I cd.: A3. 3This resentment seems inherent in the Russian collective conscience, for it goes back further than the Communist era. Since Peter's first attempts to westernize the Slavic people, foreign ways and goods have been perceived as evil or at least unnecessary. Stalin simply built on this fearful concept of western interventionism. Sec Melvin Wren. The Western Impact Upon Tsarist Russia (Chicago: Holt, 1971). 52

leader of the socialist world has a claim on being the most lawless country on earth.4 It

is a Russia which recalls and reaffirms the land envisioned long age by the once suspect

writers, Fiodor Sologub, Andrei Belyi, and Mikhail Bulgakov. The great works of such

authors, capriciously banned and rehabilitated during the Soviet epoch, have given way

to brutally frank, historically accurate exposes of a blood-red past. And herein lies

Gorbachev’s greatest legacy. If he failed to attain a consensus on the economic front,

then on the cultural front, he succeeded quite welt.

This chapter grapples with some of the major political and subsequent cultural

manifestations of Gorbachev’s “new thinking” during the final years of the Soviet Union

which, of course, coincide with Gorbachev's rule between 1985 and 1991.5 “Cultural” is

used here as a broad and embracing qualifier of the better established political

manifestations of the “new thinking.” Further, “cultural” should not be taken merely as

an umbrella term for primarily artistic events such as the theatre. Rather, insofar as the

former Soviet Union had been controlled by one political party (regardless of various

revisions of policy within the Communist Party) for almost seventy years before

Gorbachev emerged victorious in 1985, the “cultural” is the political. Such a discussion

reveals the monumental changes inherent in “new thinking” as a political ideology. It

4Thc notion of a “post-ideological age” is, of course, a controversial one. For a Soviet response to this concept, see L.N. Moskvichov. The End of Ideology Theory: Illusions and Reality (Moscow: Progress, 1974). 5Although the terms “new thinking,” “perestroika,” and “glasnost” were specific, separate facets of Gorbachev’s plan, they arc often used interchangeably. Gorbachev used the term “new thinking” first as a general description of the new direction he felt the Party needed to take. “Perestroika” (“restructuring” or “reconstructing”) was initially used in relationship to the need to decentralize the economy. “Glasnost” (“openness”) was first used in the realm of historical revision and the arts. Retrospectively, all three terms express aspects of the Gorbachev line. 53 will also serve to create the proper context for a specific examination of the theatre of the glasnost era in the chapters to follow. First, though, it is necessary to note the major aspects of “new thinking” as a purely political reality, as an ideology of economics, of foreign policy, and of international relations.

Speech to the Twenty-Seventh Party Congress

More often than not, Gorbachev's feelings about the state of glasnost in the cultural sphere of the USSR during the mid- to late 1980s can be gleaned from what he did not openly express. In the economic sphere, however, the General Secretary’s strong pro-perestroika bias can be found in a number of his writings and speeches, particularly his “Political Report of the CPSU Central Committee to the Twenty-Seventh

Congress of the Soviet Union,” a speech delivered to the delegates of the congress on

February 25, 1986. A watershed event, the speech to the Twenty-Seventh Congress laid the foundation for what Gorbachev repeatedly labels the “acceleration” (uskorenje) of all aspects of (then) Soviet life.6

The body of the speech rails against the status quo while always painting the proposed new course as inherently and proudly Marxist-Leninist. In other words, while the whole basis of the socialist state is called into question via Gorbachev’s denigration of centralized planning, Gorbachev never interrogates socialismqua socialism. He then can speak positively about an economic concept as brazenly capitalist as “cost

6Thc concept of “acceleration” was broached by Gorbachev first at the April 1985 Plenary Meeting of the Party. 54 accounting” without questioning the rightness of the socialist centralized planning which it undermines:

If, for example, it is necessary and justifiable to apply economic standards instead of targets that are sent down as directives, this does not mean a retreat from the principles of planned guidance but only a change in its methods.7

Keenly aware of the monumental economic, political, and cultural alterations proposed in his speech, Gorbachev circumspectly mixes a hearty dose of anti-capitalist verbiage (as is true in all of his published speeches) with his call for restructuring.

Before articulating his proposals, he speaks of the “general crisis of capitalism” with its militaristic and imperialistic tendencies; its perpetuation of high unemployment among the proletariat; and its “stupefying misinformation” filtered through the “bourgeois propaganda” which nurtures the ruling forces. Later, a rancorous denunciation of

"bourgeois ideology" hearkens back to the vitriolic speeches of the “war communists.”

It is described as

an ideology serving capital and profits of monopolies, adventurism and social revenge, an ideology of a society that has no future. Its objectives are clear: to use any method to embellish capitalism, camouflage its intrinsic anti-humaneness and injustice, to impose its standards of life and culture; by every means to throw mud at socialism and misrepresent the essence of such values as democracy, freedom, equality, and social progress.8

7Mikhail Gorbachev. Political Report of the CPSU Central Committee to the Twenty-Seventh Party Congress. 25 February 1986 (Moscow: Novosti, 1986) 49-50; hereafter, 25 Feb. 1986. ^Gorbachev. 25 Feb. 1986 110. 55

There is something to be said for such a stance, but it reveals less about Gorbachev’s real position and more about his attempt through the above quote to appease his opponents.

In the context of the piece, the denunciation of capitalism rings somewhat hollow to the western ear because it is at odds with its otherwise reformist tone.

At the same time, Gorbachev’s justification for propagating what his opponents viewed as an aberrant socialism had nothing to do with what appears to be perestroika’s pro-capitalist roots. Indeed, the reason given for his capitulation to the capitalist world via perestroika is that the USSR was “compelled” to coexist with the West.9 Further, in several of his publications and orations, Gorbachev makes clear that any hopes “that we will go over to the other camp are unrealistic and futile.”10 Those who call for a lessening of socialism are deemed “loudmouths.”11

The above statements were not made solely for the appeasement of the hostile factions who saw (and see) in perestroika the repudiation of their special interests. Such proclamations, and a myriad of others like them, serve to foreground Gorbachev’s very real commitment to the Party and to what he saw as the inherent goodness of socialism.

After all, this was a man who had spent his life serving the socialist cause with not a few accolades to show for it. (Born in 1931, he became a member of the Communist Party months before Stalin died.) The reforms that he is credited with overseeing did not begin in 1985, but with Khrushchev, whose historical positioning forced him to focus the post-

9Gorbachcv. 25 Feb. 1986 12. 10Mikhail Gorbachev, Perestroika: New Thinking for Our Country' and the World (New York: Harper and Row. 1987) 37; hereafter. Perestroika. 1 •Gorbachev, Perestroika 82. 56

Stalin USSR on “the enhanced attention to the rule of law,”12 a concept which

Gorbachev, too, embraced: “Everything which is not prohibited by law is allowed.”13

Gorbachev felt strongly that the vanguard of the rule of law state was perestroika

within the confines of socialism. He advocated this position from the moment he spoke

of restructuring in 1985 until the moment he resigned in 1991. This passionate stance

proved to be his downfall. Tom between his absolute belief in the Party as progenitor of

reform and his just as absolute belief in exposing and correcting the Party’s violent past,

Gorbachev could never convince the populace of the Party’s good intentions. The

paradoxes were simply too extreme. Doubly difficult (and, ultimately, impossible) was

his attempt to win over enough of the proverbial “hardliners” who recognized the need

for fundamental change in the economic sphere, but who refused to sanction what they

saw as Gorbachev’s unnecessary examination of past mistakes.

The Reformist Triumvirate: Peter. Catherine, and Mikhail

In Russian history, Gorbachev is by no means unique. Peter and Catherine, too,

wished to alter Russia dramatically. Peter the Great pulled Russia into the 18th century

in order to fulfill his desire to emulate western Europe. At the cost of innumerable lives,

St. Petersburg emerged as a rival to the great capitals of Europe, an important naval base, and the symbol of the new Russia. The autocratic Peter presided over a wildly

superstitious peasantry, a scheming court resistant to change, and an Old Orthodox

12Moshe Lcwin, The Gorbachev Phenomenon (Berkeley: U of California P, 1991) 102. '•’Gorbachev, Perestroika 108. 57

religious front which possessed real influence. Because of his own predilections and the reality of a “pre-enlightened” Russia, “his reign was not one of philosophic or artistic culture.”14 Nevertheless, “Peter was the first Russian ruler to go abroad, to meet foreigners as an apprentice seeking to learn from them.”15 His concerns were first defensive, militarily speaking, in the sense that for years he faced a grave threat from

Sweden (whom Russia did not defeat until the end of the second lengthy “Northern

War” in 1721).

Catherine II, on the other hand, with the empire generally secure, almost single- handedly brought to her court an appreciationars of gratia artis. Her extravagant and unquenchable Voltairianism irrevocably changed the course of Russian history, but

Catherine's commitment to the ideas of the Enlightenment ended when unrest in the last half of her reign threatened her position. Although she confronted head-on “the dilemma of a reforming despot,”16 she could never solve the pressing question: “How can one retain absolute power and a hierarchical social system while at the same time introducing reforms and encouraging education?”17

Peter, whose first highly symbolic and significant westernizing step was the proclamation of 1702 requiring the nobility to shave their beards; Catherine, whose

Francophile interests fueled her passion for western art and the abstract concept of

14James H. Billington. The Icon and the Axe: An Interpretative History of Russian Culture (1966; New York: Random House. 1970) 182. 15Billington 183. 16Billington 129. 17Billington 219. 58

“natural law”; and Gorbachev, whose attempts to democratize his society were borne largely of his acumen for economic theorizing—all three capitulated to the West for different reasons. Peter needed western technology and military expertise for his fixation, the navy; Catherine, German by birth, needed western intellectual trends to accommodate her own reformist nature; and Gorbachev looked west for skill in economics and in the ways of democracy.

Although Peter was methodologically more akin to Stalin than to Gorbachev, he is listed here because he began the push for westernization that Gorbachev attempted to complete. The parallels between Catherine and Gorbachev are less opaque. Catherine was the incisive aristocrat feted throughout Europe and lauded for her humane continuation of Peter’s policies.18 Gorbachev was the purposeful Party leader, fervidly determined to alter once intractable Soviet positions and feted throughout the world.

The real link between the two (although as Gorbachev is our contemporary, revisionist perspectives will challenge this position) is the assessment that both reigns burgeoned with “high hopes and minimal accomplishment.”19

Outside of the “introduction of vaccination, paper money, and an improved system of regional administration”20 in the domestic realm, and the solidification of

Russia’s position as the dominant Eastern European power in the foreign, Catherine’s reforms were largely ornamental. Gorbachev’s reforms, outside of his arduous

I8Although Elizabeth, daughter of Peter and Catherine I (and Catherine It's mentor), was the link between the two. 19Billington 229. 20Billington 226. 59 commitment to glasnost and the revision of Party history, were never made manifest for the average Soviet citizen whom he wished to help.

The success of Gorbachev’s plans for renewal of Soviet society were undermined by his steadfast faith in the Party, still comprised predominantly of unconverted members years into his rule. In deference to this camp, Gorbachev often succumbed to their demands. Thus, tangible reform took place in fits and starts. But with radical reformers such as Boris Yeltsin incessantly harping for an unrealistic reformist tempo, and “who expected instant changes where it was practically impossible,”21 Gorbachev was fighting two fronts, both unyielding and both impervious to his quandary. His tendency to soothe the concerns of those comrades wary of change left him extremely vulnerable.

Both Gorbachev and his imperial predecessor, Catherine the Great, had a propensity for consensus building. Catherine had essentially usurped the throne from her husband, Peter III, nephew of Elizabeth, in 1762. In an effort to secure her position as autocrat, she denied the aristocracy an active role in any form of co-government, an unusual move considering the era, in which countries such as England had been severely curtailing monarchical privilege at least since the Restoration. Instead, Catherine

granted the aristocracy vast compensatory economic authority over their serfs and exemptions from government service (which) only increased their capacity for idleness without increasing their sense of participation in the affairs of state.22

2'Roy Medvedev and Giulietto Chiesa, Time of Change: An Insider’s View of Russia’s Transformation, trans. Michael Moore (New York: Random House. 1989) 135. 22Billington 220. 60

This course of action guaranteed Catherine the leverage she needed as the “reforming despot,” but it stunted, if not paralyzed, Russia’s development as an equal among its western counterparts.

Gorbachev, whose own aristocracy—the Party—expected his auspicious services, chose a similar path. However, having undermined the Party’s claim to “historical truth” via the feverish calls for openness, no matter the number of concessions he made to hardliners, the “uncontrollable undertow” of the combination of reform and anti-reform destablized his position.23 Ultimately, the Party members he had tried to placate turned against him in August 1991. Even after the failed coup Gorbachev admitted that although he did “foresee that something of the kind might take place,” his “main task consisted of sustaining the policy of radical reform of society.”24 And insofar as his policy depended on sustaining that reform, all his “tactical moves and actions were subordinated to that end.”25

Gorbachev’s pragmatism failed. Unlike Catherine’s Russia, the Russia

Gorbachev created could easily force him out. He had no claim of “divine right,” no real historical precedent, no security other than the motley coalition he had assembled. And

Gorbachev’s adversaries, the Party members he refused to depose, seized their opportunity. Like Gorbachev, they, too, would fail. Their legacy lingers, though, in the extremist post-Yeltsin movement embodied by Vladimir Zhirinovsky who, like millions

23See Medvedev and Chicsa 200. 24Mikhail Gorbachev, The AugustC oup: The Truth and the Lessons (New York: Harper Collins, 1991) 31; hereafter. Coup. 25Gorbachcv. Coup 31. 61

of Russians, has romanticized the Soviet era, selectively cleansing it of the oppression which characterizes it and embellishing it with fond remembrances of price controls and national pride.

The Paradox of Party Control During the Gorbachev Epoch: The Arms Race and Economic Restructuring

Gorbachev was an unapologetic Party member who revered the Party’s Marxist-

Leninist heritage. His ideological grounding allowed him to advance many paradoxical positions. Perhaps the most interesting is put forth in Perestroika; New Thinking for

Our Country and the World (1987). In it, he associates perestroika’s call for “more democracy” indissolubly with the notion of “more socialism”;

More socialism means more dynamic pace and creative endeavor, more organization, law and order, more scientific methods and initiative in economic management, efficiency in administration, and a better and materially richer life for the people.

More socialism means more democracy, openness and collectivism in everyday life, more culture and humanism in everyday life, more culture and humanism in production, social and personal relations among people, more dignity and self-respect for the individual.26

The tone here suggests a nod to Gorbachev’s progressive partners while it never denies socialism its place as the nexus for change.

26Gorbachev, Perestroika 36-37, The book is a "typically Soviet testament” in many ways because it is filled with the hoary exhortations of the pre-Gorbachev administrations. In his Lenin’s Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire (New York: Random House. 1993), David Rcmnick characterizes this Soviet rhetoric as that which encourages the "putting off of meaning, the softening of meaning” (60). 62

Most of the book is dedicated to supporting the Gorbachevian policies of restructuring the economy and the push for openness. But highly reflective of its

Zeitgeist, several sections are devoted to criticizing the “immoral intention” of the United

States to drag the Soviet Union into the “quagmire of the arms race.”27 In some ways,

Gorbachev held the moral high ground on this contentious point because it was under his leadership that the Soviet Union proposed the unilateral moratorium on nuclear explosions in the summer o f 1985, the first internationally recognized manifestation of his new course. President Reagan’s refusal to reciprocate would spark the last great ideological confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Of the utmost concern to Gorbachev was the United States Defense

Department’s alleged plan to “militarize” outer space via its Strategic Defense Initiative

(SDI), a.k.a. “Star Wars.” Gorbachev, convinced that the “rightist militaristic group in the USA, representing the powerful military-industrial complex is simply out of its mind about the arms race,”28 spoke often and at length about the need to cancel the SDI. His passionate and quite public opposition revealed that he sincerely believed (as a Party member should) that the Reagan administration’s fueling of the arms race through the

SDI was intended

to secure US military superiority, to try and drain the Soviet Union economically and weaken it politically, and, in the long run, to win world leadership, to attain the long-sought-after imperial ambitions, and further pursue a policy of plunder with regard to developing countries.29

27Gorbachev. Perestroika 219. 28Mikhail Gorbachev, “Statement on Soviet Television. 18 Aug. 1986,” Mikhail Gorbachev: Selected Speeches and Articles (Moscow: Progress. 1987) 588: hereafter. Selected Speeches. 29Gorbachev. Selected Speeches 588. 63

This was the standard Soviet (and American) response to one or the other’s newest

proposal. But Gorbachev consistently used the arms race to signify the differences

between the two powers. This position, too, was nothing new in the context of Soviet-

American relations, but Gorbachev, attuned to his country’s dire economic crisis, could

not soften his stance. He was well aware, and in agreement with, the position held by

such Soviet commentators as Boris Kagarlitskii: “Until the eighties we had plenty of

everything—sources of power, raw materials, land, manpower, and so on. These

resources could be so squandered that no economic inefficiency, no bad management

would hinder further growth.”30 By the mid-eighties, the disappearance of available

resources provided another important justification for why the Gorbachev administration

tacitly approved the breakup of the Eastern European bloc. No longer could Russia

provide Eastern Europe with the resources upon which its continued existence

depended.

The escalation of the arms race between the two superpowers, while it was by no

means the primary reason for the collapse of Communism in the former USSR (as the

Reagan and Bush administrations subsequently argued), was an insurmountable obstacle

for Gorbachev. Following this line, on August 18, 1986, Gorbachev appeared on Soviet

television to announce the extension of the unilateral moratorium on nuclear testing until

January 1, 1987. The reason given for this unprecedented extension of a nuclear test ban

to which the United States had never agreed was what Gorbachev called the Party's

30Boris Kagarlitsky. The Thinking Rccd: Intellectuals and the Soviet State from 1917 to the Present, trans. Brian Pearce (London: Verso. 1988) 312. 64

“sense of responsibility for the fate of the world.”31 Clearly, Gorbachev’s hope was to

sway public opinion in America towards his side with what appeared to be a selfless call

for disarmament. He was also attempting to buy time in his own country for his fledgling

perestroika.

Less than two months after the first announcement of a unilateral testing ban

came the Reykjavik summit in October. The point of contention in Iceland, as it had

been in Geneva in the fall of 1985, was the arms race. Nothing of substance came of

either summit although world public opinion of Gorbachev as “the man Margaret

Thatcher could work with” improved immeasurably. In Reykjavik, Gorbachev made

clear his commitment to perestroika as a serious “new course” for the USSR. What he

really wanted, though, was some sort of concession in the military arena from the

Reagan administration to match the concessions he had been willing to make not so

much for “world security,” but for the sake of his restructuring.

But trouble brewed on the homefront. Both hardliners and many average Soviet

citizens abhorred the international image of the USSR that began to coalesce. The

picture of the Soviet Union bowing low to the Americans in the face of the SDI was

unacceptable, particularly when the latter seemed to flaunt “Star Wars” as an invincible

force. After Reykjavik, the variegated opinions of the Soviet people (held together

tenuously by the sheer phenomenon of “new thinking”) regarding Gorbachev’s

perestroika began to resemble less “opinions” than opposite camps and factions. This

31Mikhail Gorbachev, Selected Speeches 591. 65

factionalization of the Party (tolerated under Lenin, forcibly ended by Stalin, revived somewhat under Khrushchev, and kept in check by Brezhnev, Andropov, and

Chernenko) precipitated its destruction. Gorbachev’s knack for compromise and conciliation allowed the Party to persevere a few more years.

In an attempt to emphasize that perestroika did not translate as weakness in

Soviet foreign policy, and in an attempt to satisfy the rightists in his own country,

Gorbachev responded to the failures of both the Geneva and Reykjavik summits as the true Party member he was:

If the United States succeeds in having its way with SDI, which we doubt very much, a Soviet answer will be forthcoming. If the United States does not give up SDI, we are not going to make life easier for the US. Our reply will be effective, credible and not too costly. We have a tentative scheme on how to puncture SDI without spending the fabulous sums the US will need to establish it. Let the Americans consider once again if it is worthwhile wearing themselves down with SDI. It would not offer dependable protection anyway.32

Less than four months after the January 1, 1987 ban had expired, Gorbachev was in Prague calling for an end to the arsenal of nuclear weapons in Europe while his comrades were discussing “the option of only ‘reasonable sufficiency’ rather than

32Gorbachev, Perestroika 240. Gorbachev’s veiled threat to counter SDI is vintage Cold War rhetoric. The difference was that in 1987 when the statement was made, the Soviets had nothing with which to counter “Star Wars." It is interesting that years after Gorbachev’s disappearance from the world stage, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, taking Gorbachev’s lead, announced to millions of Americans on CBS Television’s “60 Minutes” on March 6, 1994. that Russia was in possession of a “secret laser weapon” called the “elipton” which would render all military' opposition worthless. A ridiculous threat, to be sure, but one which revealed that Gorbachev’s “new' thinking” had fostered not only economic restructuring and openness, but also an upsurge in Russian xenophobia (a traditionally potent clement of the Russian collective conscience). 6 6

strategic parity with the West.”33 By the fall of 1990, with the USSR in economic and political shambles, the world saw the unlikely pairing of the two superpowers against

Saddam Hussein, a few years before, “Moscow’s principal surrogate in the Mideast.”34

At the same time, Gorbachev was forming a loose alliance with some of the military leaders (who eventually staged the August 1991 coup) in an attempt to preserve the delicate balance between reform and retreat he had for years maintained.35

In light of the need to divert funds from the bloated military sector to other crucial areas, Gorbachev unveiled his plans for perestroika in the economic sector at the

June 1987 Plenary Meeting of the CPSU Central Committee. This all-encompassing proposal sought

fundamental changes in every area, including the transformation of the centralized management of the economy, fundamental changes in planning, a reform of the price formation system and of the financial and crediting mechanism, and the restructuring of foreign economic ties.36

If these admittedly lofty and admirable (and unworkable) goals had been met, they would have fulfilled two of Gorbachev’s hopes: 1) the creation of a workforce

33Martin Crouch. Revolution and Evolution: Gorbachev and Soviet Politics (New York: Prentice Hall, 1990) 227. 34Douglas Waller, ct al.. "Superpowers as Superpartners.” Newsweek 17 Sept. 1990: 27. 35The impulse here is to connect Gorbachev’s fixation on the arms race during the first half of his rule to the disaster at Chernobyl which occurred in April 1986. It is much more likely, however, that Gorbachev, while genuinely remorseful about the disaster, was able to tap into it as a source for strengthening his policies both at home and abroad. He was severely criticized in the West for his government’s slow response to the Chernobyl disaster (discussed in detail in Chapter Five), but it proved to be a politically expedient disaster which set glasnost fully in motion. 36Gorbachcv. Perestroika 84. 67

which was not unjustly rewarded for shoddy output; and 2) the creation of an economic

system which placed the consumer above the bureaucracy.

Two years after the proposed massive overhaul of the economy, Gorbachev

himself, and many of his (then) staunch supporters such as Aleksandr Yakovlev,

recognized economic trouble ahead. They admitted that “the economic reforms are not going as well as they might have.”37 But the administration was not saddled with

culpability for the lack of progress; impatience on the part of overenthusiastic reformers

led by Boris Yeltsin was. The Yeltsin faction was reviled as just as harmful as the

“inveterate conservatives” who comprised the more obvious opposition.38 Further, having reproached the repressive methods of past Soviet leaders, Gorbachev and his group could not coerce the opposition into submission:

We can’t use bulldozer methods against this resistance, especially since we are renouncing the Stalinist command system and calling for democracy. People have to be persuaded to change. We can’t carry out perestroika with the methods of the past, simply by imposing orders from above.39

This irresolute stance would mark Gorbachev’s rule until he stepped down in December

1991. It was also the stance which led to Boris Yeltsin’s resignation as Moscow Party

37Aleksandr Yakovlev, “Perestroika or the ‘Death of Socialism,’” Voices of Glasnost: Interviews with Gorbachev’s Reformers, cds. Stephen F. Cohen and Katrina vandcn Hcuvcl (New York: Norton. 1989) 58; hereafter. Voices. 38See the interview with Yakovlev in Voices 33-75. 39Voices 58. Yakovlev resigned in August 1990. Another reformer of his same persuasion, foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze, resigned three months later. A huge schism in the leadership of the Party resulted. Both resignations took place while Gorbachev was courting the hardline opposition and calling for additional executive powers which he eventually received. In other words, people such as Yakovlev and Shevardnadze felt that Gorbachev was imposing the “bulldozer methods” they so resented. 68

chief in October 1987. Further, it bought Gorbachev time from the right while it ushered

in the political threat of an increasingly united front of “impatient” reformers who could

no longer tolerate the vacillating Gorbachev. By 1990, western commentators such as

Robert Levgold, then director of the Harriman Institute for Advanced Studies of the

Soviet Union, were convinced that the USSR had “moved backwards within the past five

years,” noting that the “new problems” which stemmed from perestroika had “failed to

answer old ones or to provide the population with enough food products and other

commodities.”40

The leadership could no longer blame economic inefficiency on “saboteurs” or

“wreckers” as was often done during the 1930s. Nor could it embellish agricultural

targets in the age of glasnost. But Gorbachev could not overhaul the economic

mechanism completely. To abandon the command economy, the foundation of the

Soviet economic system since the thirties, would constitute an affront to Lenin, whom

Gorbachev repeatedly heralded as the ideological source of perestroika. Therefore,

Gorbachev had to reshape the Party more obviously as the ideological progenitor of

perestroika. The seventieth anniversary of the October Revolution provided him the

opportunity.

40Robcrt Legvold. “Sovietologist on Perestroika.” Sputnik Nov. 1990: 40. 69

Speech to the Ruling Apparatus on the Occasion of the Seventieth Anniversary of the October Revolution

In October and Perestroika: The Revolution Continues, delivered to the Central

Committee of the CPSU, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, and the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR on November 2, 1987, Gorbachev obligatorily praises the achievements of the Soviet people in their struggle to propel the country forward in a relatively brief amount of time and in the midst of widespread suffering and sacrifice. The speech is punctuated with unequivocal references to the history of the Party and the Soviet Union as “irreversible”; as peopled with both heroes and villains; and as a history for which the

Party must take full responsibility.41

Like Khrushchev before him, Gorbachev reaches back to Lenin to justify revisionist ideology and his proposed changes in the direction of the USSR: “These days we turn ever more to Lenin’s last works, to his ideas of the new economic policy, and seek to extract from this experience everything valuable and needed today.”42

Gorbachev, though, reaches back only to what historians (particularly western

Sovietologists) have called the writings of the “later Lenin,” the humanist Lenin, the reflective and physically exhausted post-Civil War Lenin. Gorbachev conveniently ignores the bulk of Lenin’s theoretical writing since most of it is linked with the “early

Lenin,” the abrasive Lenin, the “theoretician of state terror.”43 His preponderant interest

41David Rcmnick calls this particular oration the “history speech” (52). 42Mikhail Gorbachev. October and Perestroika: The Revolution Continues. 2 Nov. 1987 (Moscow: Novosti. 1987) 15; hereafter. 2 Nov. 1987. 43Remnick 71, 70 in the “later Lenin” and the Party’s history as the history of the future of perestroika is both honestly felt and, again, politically expedient. There is no criticism of Lenin here, but the following critique of the Party, albeit a diffident one, is unmistakably revisionist:

It is essential to assess the past with a sense of historical responsibility and on the basis of the historical truth. This must be done, firstly, because of the tremendous importance of those years for the future of our country, the future of socialism. Secondly, because those years are in the centre of the everlasting discussions both in our country and abroad, where, along with a search for the truth, attempts are often being made to discredit socialism as a new social system, as a realistic alternative to capitalism. Lastly, we need truthful assessments of this and all the other periods of our history—especially now with the restructuring in full swing. We need them not to settle political scores or, as they say, to let off steam, but to pay due credit to all the heroic things in the past, and to draw lessons from mistakes and miscalculations.44

Gorbachev then delivers a brief and astoundingly frank discussion of the power struggles which polarized the Soviet leadership after the death of Lenin in 1924. In typical post-Lenin fashion, Gorbachev denounces Trotsky, Zinoviev, and Kamenev.

Gorbachev accuses this triumvirate of intensifying the “ideological struggle” which allowed Stalin to credit himself with “safeguarding Leninism,” thus allowing for the cult of personality (although Gorbachev states many times that it was not necessarily

“inevitable”) and the emergence of Stalin as dictator. In the realm of past Party policy, collectivization and rapid industrialization are endorsed since historical necessity meant that “no other course could have been taken.”45

44Gorbachcv. 2 Nov. 1987 18. 45Gorbachev. 2 Nov. 1987 22. 71

Gorbachev then turns to Stalin. His assessment is tempered by his own historical position as head of the same Party as Stalin and occupying the same place within the

Party hierarchy as Stalin, and as the mastermind of an ideology of openness and restructuring which supposedly takes that Party’s lead. Stalin is a “contradictory personality,” according to Gorbachev, whose “guilt” is finally and forever described as

“enormous and unforgivable.”46 Not since the Twentieth Party Congress in 1956 had

Stalin been so duly criticized and never before in the history of the USSR had he been condemned so publicly and officially.

Nevertheless, Gorbachev knew that he could not simply leave it at that.

Although many conservative Party members such as Grigori Romanov and Viktor

Grishin had been “retired” from their positions in the Politburo, some remained. Further, many congressional delegates feared that a total denunciation of Stalin and his legacy would undermine the viability o f the Party itself. Always the adroit politician, Gorbachev countered his own negative review of Stalin with cursory praise for his predecessor’s actions during World War II: “A factor in the achievement of Victory was the tremendous political will, purposefulness and persistence, ability to organise and discipline people displayed in the war years by Joseph Stalin.”47

Gorbachev then addresses the legacy of the Khrushchev era. There were

“changes for the better,” he concludes, “but the failures of the reforms undertaken in that period were mainly due to the fact that they were not backed up by a broad development

46Gorbachcv. 2 Nov. 1987 26. 47Gorbachcv. 2 Nov. 1987 31-32. 72

of democratisation processes.”48 Of course, continued democratization was part of the necessary foundation for a workable perestroika. In each formal public speech,

Gorbachev calls for the democratization of Soviet society although as Moshe Lewin states, Gorbachev’s goal was not

to install a Western-style multiparty republican system, but rather to increase citizens’ participation in political life, to enhance political and other freedoms, and to return the party to a political role, instead of a basically bureaucratic, administrative one.49

Gorbachev vociferously stressed this aspect of democratization to gain the support of skeptical Party members who remembered how Khrushchev's reforms were curtailed during the Brezhnev era.

The last section of October and Perestroika: The Revolution Continues emphasizes the position of the Party as instigator of all the proposed reforms.

Exclamation points abound. Gorbachev exalts the Party as “vanguard of Soviet society” at a juncture in its historical development “which is highly complicated and inspiringly novel.”50 Significantly, he gives the Party what might be called its “last chance” by glorifying its crucial role in the October Revolution, by taking responsibility for the past, and by painting it as the only hope for renewal since no organized alternative existed to challenge it:

Without the Party that learned to build a new society, there would be no socialism and there would not be our great country. Nor would we have a base for the present renewal of all aspects of society and for the country’s accelerated socio-economic development. It is imperative of

48Gorbachev. 2 Nov. 1987 34-35. 49Lc\vin 134. 50Gorbachcv. 2 Nov. 1987 77. 73

the day that under the new conditions, too, the Party should take the lead in revolutionary renewal, enhancing, perseveringly and consistently, the effectiveness of its policy and promoting democratisation in all areas and at all levels of public life.51

“New Thinking” as Cultural Disorientation: Revised Monuments. Rehabilitations. The Nina Andreeva Letter

Both the speech to the Twenty-Seventh Party Congress and the speech delivered on the occasion of the seventieth anniversary of the October Revolution contributed greatly to the “profound cultural disorientation”52 which characterized the death throes of the Soviet system in the late 1980s. Confiision among the citizenry soon gave way to utter disarray as the Party, “vanguard of the proletariat,” battled to survive its transition to the “vanguard of perestroika.” With each new revelation, each unorthodox position, the Party lost credibility. Gorbachev gambled and lost. His “new thinking” inaugurated a “commotion in the ideology”53 which found fullest expression in what Mark von Hagen calls “The Stalin Debate and Reformulation of the Soviet Past.” It was a debate which would serve as the ideological battlefield between conservatives and reformers and one which would irreparably undermine and finally annihilate the Party and its control.

Gorbachev had admitted that Stalin's criminal excesses were “enormous and unforgivable” on November 2, 1987. With this acknowledgement, Gorbachev attempted

5'Gorbachev. 2 Nov. 1987 76-77. 52Thcodorc H. Von Laue. Whv Lenin? Why Stalin? Why Gorbachev? The Rise and Fall of the Soviet System, cd. Robert D. Cross, et al.. Critical Periods of History’ (1971; New York: Harper Collins, 1993) 167. 53A. Kubalkova and A.A. Cruickshank. Thinking New About Soviet ‘New Thinking.1 Institute of International Studies 74 (Berkeley: U of California P. 1989) 16. 74

to salvage socialism, just as other reformers would, who “put all or most of the blame on

Stalin and tried to demonstrate that Stalinism and socialism were entirely different matters.”54 Early in 1988, however, during the period of “High Glasnost,”

a self-styled “radical” political alternative had formed to challenge Gorbachev’s revolution from above and to demand more rapid democratization and transition to a “market economy.” These radical reforms by their nature entailed a rejection of the old model of Soviet socialism, rather than merely a reform within that system.55

Glasnost was fueling the advocates of perestroika whom Gorbachev considered

“radical.” Every individual associated with the beginning of the Soviet experiment was ruthlessly thrust under the microscopic eye of a newly liberated populace aching for fact- based accounts of the past. Historical assessments of the Soviet Union by such writers as Robert Conquest and Richard Pipes, long familiar to readers in the West, were published in Russian translation at a furious pace. Insofar as the USSR’s perestroika- induced “cultural disorientation was accompanied by economic deterioration,”56 the socialist economy itself came under increasingly virulent attack. With “new thinking” providing the “appropriate climate,”57 “by 1989 and especially during 1990, the ‘radicals’ had put into question the entire Soviet period and impugned Lenin and Trotsky with no

54Mark von Hagen. “The Stalin Debate and the Reformulation of the Soviet Past.” The Harriman Institute Forum Mar. 1992: 3-4. 55von Hagen 4. 56Von Laue 171. 57 “To put it schematically, Gorbachev has tried to use glasnost to create the appropriate climate(novoe mvshlenie) in which perestroika can take place” John Garrard and Carol Garrard, Inside the Soviet Writers' Union (New York: Frcc-Macmillan. 1990) 195. 75 less vigor than their counterparts had attacked Stalin a year before.58 This situation, coupled with Gorbachev’s liberalizing reform measures, provoked “immense ideological confusion within the CPSU.”59 And since the underpinning of Gorbachev’s reform was dependent on his opposition to what Aleksandr Yakovlev had called the “bulldozer methods” of the past, “other party officials were able to publish alternative ideological orientations in the party’s press.”60 By 1990, Vadim Medvedev, head of the Central

Committee’s ideological commission, “admitted that it had become impossible to define the boundaries of the CPSU’s ideological position and hence to determine the nature of ideological work.”61

Four more of less ideologically distinctive groups proceeded from the confusion:

1) Party members who followed the Gorbachevian line of moderate reform at a medium rate of speed; 2) Party members led by Egor Ligachev who “consistently endorsed more orthodox definitions of socialism and challenged Gorbachev’s various formulations with varying degrees of explicitness”62; 3) “radical” reformers led by Boris Yeltsin who supported the Gorbachevian line on glasnost in the cultural sphere, but opted for intensified reform in the economic; and 4) a strange coalition of generally pro­ perestroika, anti-semitic, anti-Communist nationalists— “Memory” fPamiat’) —which

58von Hagen 4. Indeed, in January 1994. President Boris Yeltsin “officially rehabilitated the victims of the deadly Bolshevik repression of the Kronstadt uprising of 1921.” thus laving “the genesis of Soviet terror at the feet of Lenin.” See Serge Schmemann. “Yeltsin Extols 1921 Rebellion. Denouncing its Repression by Lenin.” New York Times 11 Jan. 1994. nat’l cd.: A3. 59Jonathon Harris. “Vadim Andreevich Medvedev and the Transformation of Party Ideology, 1988- 1990.” The Russian Review 51 (1992): 363. 60Harris 363. 61Harris 376. 62Harris 363. 76

began to receive publicity in the late 1980s. Soviet politics stood thusly circa 1989 and

although Gorbachev won the Nobel for Peace in December 1990 (an award which

provided him another forum for his position), it would remain as such until 1991, when the Yeltsin faction clearly held the upper hand.63

In the midst of this stormy political upheaval, several cultural phenomena took place which solidified the reality of glasnost’s irreversibility. All of these events were

“political” in the sense that they either stemmed directly from a decree or edict

sanctioned by the Party, or in the sense that they reflected a Zeitgeist which is remembered historically as a reaction to Party history exposed. The semiotics of these phenomena speak volumes about the disintegration of Party hegemony.

One of the most telling trends of the glasnost epoch was the debate (generally outside the Kremlin walls) over monuments erected during the time of Lenin and Stalin.

When the Romanov dynasty fell in 1917, anomalous monuments to Russia’s tsarist past dotted the landscapes of many Russian cities. On April 12, 1918, the Council of

People’s Commissars issued a decree entitled “On the Monuments of the Republic.” The first four of the seven points of the decree follow:

1. The monuments erected in honour of the tsars and their minions and which have no historical or artistic value are to be removed from the squares and streets and stored up or used for utilitarian purposes.

63Gorbachev’s popularity among the Soviet people had plummeted by the fall of 1990. “Public opinion polls” concerning the popularity of a General Secretary of the Party would have been unthinkable before glasnost. Ironically, Gorbachev’s glasnost revealed that his full approval rating had fallen from 52% in December 1989, to 21% in October 1990. See Stepan Kiselyov, “What Can Gorbachev Count On?” Moscow News 18-25 Nov. 1990: 7. 77

2. A special commission made up of the People’s Commissars for Education and Property of the Republic and the chief of the Fine Arts Department of the Commissariat for Education is instructed to determine through agreement with the Art Collegium of Moscow and Petrograd which monuments shall be pulled down.

3. The said commission is instructed to mobilise the artists and organise a broad competition in designing monuments to commemorate the great days of the Russian Socialist Revolution.

4. The Council of People’s Commissars wishes that by May the First some of the most monstrous idols be removed and that models of new monuments be put in their place for the public to judge.64

The People’s Commissariat for Education submitted the names to which prospective monuments suitable to the needs of the new ideologies would be built. Among this interesting group were such revolutionaries as Spartacus, Brutus, and Robespierre; such writers as Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Lermontov, and Gogol (all of whom were held in suspicion by the ruling apparatus of Imperial Russia); and such composers as Chopin.

Even the great actress, Vera Komissarshevskaia, was held in high enough repute by the fledgling government to merit a nod. And after the death of Lenin, “Soviet sculptural art entered the period of the new boom-the casting, sculpturing, and mass production of monuments to Lenin himself.”65

Glasnost ushered in another round of monument revisionism. This time, though, after the figures had been displaced, the pedestals remained bare. In a fascinating turn of events, Soviet citizens took the lead provided by their counterparts in East Berlin who

64 “On the Monuments of the Republic. 12 Apr. 1918.” Lenin: On Literature and Art (Moscow: Progress. 1987) 245. 65Scrgci Osipov, “Down with Monuments?” Sputnik Mar. 1991: 16. 78

had assisted their former adversaries in West Berlin when both sides tore down the

Berlin Wall. By 1990, western news programs telecast increasingly common scenes of

Russians and Ukrainians, Georgians and Lithuanians, toppling monuments to the Soviet

past. By early 1991, monuments especially dear to the old guard were “under round-the-

clock protection o f the militia”66 in some cities. By 1992, post-Gorbachev Muscovites

cavorted among the discarded sculptural renderings of Lenin and Stalin at various

“holding grounds” such as the lawn of the State Art Gallery not far from Moscow’s

Gorky Park.

Another cultural phenomenon during the glasnost years was the reopening of old

cases regarding “enemies of the people.” The rehabilitation of formerly condemned

political and cultural figures was not originally instituted by Gorbachev and his reformers

(it was a common practice since Stalin’s time), but some of the cases that they agreed to

address were at one time considered highly controversial, even during the Khrushchev

era.67

Before his speech on the occasion of the seventieth anniversary of the October

Revolution on November 2, 1987 in which Gorbachev had indicated that more

rehabilitations were forthcoming, long-time Soviet dissident, Andrei Sakharov, was

released from internal exile. The release o f Sakharov on December 19, 1986, was, of

66Osipov 18. 67Hundreds of thousands of Soviet citizens were rehabilitated under Khrushchev. Among the important cultural figures were Vsevolod Mcycrhold and Vladimir Mayakovsky. (Stalin had rehabilitated Mayakovsky in the 1930s. but this applied only to his prodigious output as a poet. His drama remained taboo until the mid-1950s.) 79

course, a major event. Sakharov’s contributions to physics, his pacifism, and his decorated list o f achievements in his own country had earned him an enviable international reputation. His release from the city of Gorky was the first unmitigated signal that glasnost was not merely an expedient terminology, but an active

Gorbachevian credo.

More rehabilitations followed, most of them posthumously. Grigori Zinoviev and

Lev Kamenev, both “Left Opposition” leaders against first Trotsky, then Stalin, were rehabilitated in June 1988. Writers and dramatists were figuratively rehabilitated in that their previously banned works were finally published in the Russian language and made available to a mass readership via magazines and periodicals. Anatoly Rybakov’s

Children of the Arbat (Dedarbata), banned since the early 1960s, was published in 1987;

Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago in 1988; and George Orwell’s 1984 in 1989.

But not everyone was enthused about the new rash of rehabilitations. Many commentators, notably Aleksandr Zinoviev in his Katastroika: Legend and Reality of

Gorbachevism 09901. interpreted such largely symbolic moves as not much more than opportunistic political acts which Gorbachev utilized to prolong Party control. The rehabilitation of Nikolai Bukharin is a case in point:

In all this nothing happens except that one historical lie replaces another. The new historical lie is simply more refined than the old one and better concealed under its layer of truth. The point is not that only part of the truth emerges. The falsity lies in the whole conception of the revolution and of the resultant new social order and in the present leadership’s interpretation of the past in its own interests. 80

As a theorist Bukharin was insignificant. He wrote every kind of nonsense. Now they have begun to praise this nonsense in as much as it is rather in the spirit of current Gorbachevite ideology.68

The Party’s attempt to justify its hegemony by posthumously restoring Party membership to Bukharin and other former “counter-revolutionaries” infuriated such writers as

Zinoviev and other anti-Party, pro-reform factions. According to Roy Medvedev, the rehabilitation of Bukharin “served the debate underway on economic reform. Many of the transformations planned by perestroika (were) in part a reproposal of the methods of the NEP for our own times.”69

As the major proponent of the New Economic Policy during the mid-twenties,

Bukharin’s support of the kind of economic compromise Gorbachev was attempting to establish between socialism and capitalism could validate the continued existence of the

Party. Both Aleksandr Zinoviev and Medvedev believed this to be true, but Zinoviev’s views on the Bukharin rehabilitation suggest the image of a sinister Gorbachev wilfully plotting against the populace in order to maintain control. It seems rather more likely that through his advocacy of the Bukharin rehabilitation, Gorbachev was expressing his sincere belief that the Party was capable of transforming itself to fit the time.

Nevertheless, each rehabilitation of a formerly liquidated public figure such as Bukharin rocked the collective conscience of the Soviet people which, instead of bolstering the

Party’s reputation, undermined it. Sanctioning the rehabilitations was one way the Party

68Aleksandr Zinoviev. Katastroika: Legend and Reality of Gorbachcvism. trans. Charles Johnson (London: Claridge. 1990) 150-51. Bukharin was rehabilitated in February 1988. 69Mcdvcdcv and Chicsa 107. 81 was able to cast itself as the newly constructed Party of glasnost. Gorbachev needed the public perception of a reconstructed Party in order to legitimize it as the vanguard of a post-Communist society. As long as the Party maintained control over the process of rehabilitation, its legitimacy was at least partially assured, for the Soviet people had to petition it as potential arbitrator and wielder of power in each case.

Soon, though, other voices emerged to usurp the Party’s manipulation of the rehabilitation process, thus establishing another reason to discredit it. Once such voice came from Dmitrii Iurasov, a founder of “Memorial” (not related to Pamiat’, discussed above), a group “dedicated to reviving the country’s historical memory and preventing the resurgence of mass state repression.”70 The ostensible reason for the creation of

“Memorial” was not the “revival of historical memory,” but to agitate for a monument to the victims of Stalin and Stalinism.71 And yet the group came to symbolize the anti-Party movement for those citizens who viewed the retrieval of the past as a moral issue rather than a specifically political one.

Dmitrii Iurasov began to penetrate archival repositories long kept from public view in 1981. He wished to add more names of those repressed during previous Soviet regimes to an already lengthy list he had begun compiling as a student. Over the course

70Stcphcn Kotkin. "Terror. Rehabilitation, and Historical Menton': An Interview with Dmitrii Iurasov,” The Russian Review 51 (19921: 238. 71 Many Russians wished to contribute to the monetary fund established to construct the monument including many artists: "On August 16, the Leninist Komsomol Theatre company opened their new season with The Dictatorship of Conscience. The company, together with Mikhail Shatrov, who wrote the play, unanimously decided to transmit all the takings from the premiere to account No. 700454, the special fund for the memorial complex to be erected in Moscow to the victims of Stalin’s repressions.” See "A Step Towards Erecting A Memorial to Stalin's Victims.” Soviet Literature Oct. (1988): 64. 82

of several years, he maintained a file of some 250,000 index cards on which were the names of people deemed “enemies of the people” along with pertinent information regarding sentencing and the name of the accuser.72

“Memorial” became a national phenomenon whose lucidity and specificity as a sort of independent rehabilitating organization undercut the moral aspect of the Party’s decisions regarding those same rehabilitations. No longer did the Party exclusively hold sway over the past. Groups such as “Memorial” coopted the Party’s rehabilitating power and thus dealt a real blow to Gorbachev who wished to portray to the public a

Party capable of transformation and willing to admit and rectify past mistakes.

(“Memorial” did not achieve this usurpation alone, of course, but as the best organized group, it posed the first major challenge to the Party as primary rehabilitator.) Relatives of those condemned and liquidated decades before began to circumvent the Party, taking their questions and petitions to groups such as “Memorial.” The Party, then, passed over by the people, was left with its past intact, unrevised, untouched, and tainted, increasingly impervious to official revision.

The appearance of “Memorial” and other influential non-governmental organizations intensified public discourse on the question of the ownership of historical memory. The “Andreeva Affair” would take advantage of this question and exploit it fully. If there was a point at which Gorbachev’s “new thinking” came under concerted

72Iurasov’s motives have been called into question by members of his own group. See Kotkin 238-39. Sec Remnick 101-19 for another account of “Memorial” and 30-35 for additional biographical information on Iurasov. 83

fire, it was the furor which surrounded the publication of the now infamous “Andreeva

Letter.” Nina Andreeva, a chemistry teacher in Leningrad, wrote an editorial which she sent to various newspapers and journals. The letter, “I Cannot Compromise Principles,” was published in Sovestskaia rossia on March 13, 1988, “bursting like a bombshell on the Moscow political scene” which “spread like wildfire quickly around the country.”73

The letter served to empower conservative opposition to perestroika and glasnost, particularly with regard to the “slander of history” being practiced by the reformers.

Some commentators have, in retrospect, described the letter as “a full-fledged apology for Stalin and all he stood for.”74 Others called it “an explicit all-out attack on perestroika.”75 The intelligentsia regarded the letter as a barometer of the policy changes taking place in the Politburo. Egor Ligachev notes in his memoirs that Gorbachev himself called a special session of the Politburo not long after the Andreeva letter had been published during which “a single issue was on the agenda: discussion of Nina

Andreyeva's letter.”76

Much ink has been spilled examining the genesis of the Andreeva letter. Its

“complex history” has been articulated by many Sovietologists in the West with mixed results. While Andreeva was indeed an apologist for the Soviet past, she was by means simply a ranting Stalinist. At the same time, the dispassionate, dialectical tone of the

73Sc\veryn Bialcr. “The Changing Soviet Political System.” Politics. Society, and Nationality: Inside Gorbachev's Russia, ed. Scweryn Bialer (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1989) 203. 74Bialer 203, 75Medvedcv and Chiesa 190. 76Ycgor Ligachev. Inside Gorbachev’s Kremlin: The Memoirs of Yegor Ligachev. trans. Catherine A. Fitzpatrick, et al. (New York: Pantheon, 1993) 304. 84

letter conjures up the atmosphere of an old guard politico rubber-stamping directives issued from above:

The period when the USSR developed most rapidly, in the technical, economic, social and cultural fields, was when Stalin led our party. It is impossible to deny this, just as it is impossible to justify the attacks on socialist legality that took place in the period of his leadership.77

It is this tone (not especially unusual in a Soviet context, but a dangerous sign in the era of glasnost) which fueled the conspiracy theories that quickly followed publication of the letter.

The consensus months after the appearance of the letter was that Andreeva was a pawn used by Egor Ligachev and “anti-perestroika” forces. Seweryn Bialer, in an otherwise cogent analysis of the Soviet political system in flux states flatly that “the article was in fact written by a team of propagandists and coordinated by the editor of

Sovetskaia rossia. More importantly, it was inspired by Ligachev, who gave it to the newspaper for publication.”78 Ligachev categorically denies his alleged complicity in any conspiratorial scheme:

All this was, o f course, fabricated, artificial, and false. There was no “conspiracy”; I had no connection with Nina Andreyeva’s letter; and the so-called conservatives were in reality true supporters of perestroika who were trying to prevent it from falling into the pernicious trap of radicalism.79

77Qtd. in Serge Schmcniann. et al.. “In Hope and Dismay. Lenin’s Heirs Speak.” New York Times 22 Jan. 1989, nat’l cd.: 10. 78Bialer 203-04. Many Soviet and western commentators including Medvedev corroborate this conjectural stance. See also Robert G. Kaiser. Why Gorbachev Happened: His Triumphs. His Failure, and His Fall (New York: Touchstone-Simon and Schuster, 1991) 207-11. 79Ligachcv 302. 85

According to Ligachev, the radical reformers wished “to turn Andreyeva into a symbol of Stalinist excesses, and then tie Ligachev to her and announce him to be the chief advocate of a return to the times of the personality cult.”80

Was the Andreeva letter a tentative manifesto for a reversal of Gorbachev’s new direction? Was Andreeva's letter a proxy for Ligachev’s own views? The origin of the letter is inconsequential. Its significance lies in its positionality as a defining moment in the ideology of Gorbachevism. The letter polarized Soviet public opinion and forced

Gorbachev to move from simply advocating “new thinking” to defending it. At the same time, the Andreeva letter made clear that opposition to the revisionist overtures of

Gorbachev's platform ran deep.

Andreeva was part of the Russian “fifty-something” generation (and it was largely this group which opposed full implementation of Gorbachev’s “new thinking”).

Hers was the last generation schooled fully under Stalinism; a generation whose formative years were spent both enduring the tremendous hardships of the war and rebuilding the ravaged country afterwards. She was not a child of the Twentieth Party

Congress and as such, had no compunctions about defending the “old ways.” Whether or not Andreeva and Ligachev connived to write the letter, after it, the battle lines between pro-reformers and conservatives were more clearly demarcated than ever before during the Gorbachev era.

80Ligachcv 306. 86

Conclusion

This brief overview of some of the essential political and “extra-political” manifestations of “new thinking” is intended to contextualize the examination of the theatrical manifestations of “new thinking” in the following chapters. It is extremely difficult to ascertain where the “extra-political” action/event/decree ends and the specifically political begins in Soviet Russia under Gorbachev. Such is the nature of transition. Yet because so many aspects of Soviet life were meshed with how they were defined in relationship to the past and the “irrefutable” truth of Soviet history as calculated by the Party, attempts to consolidate power in the political sphere always and already bled into the cultural.

Historicizing the Soviet past before Gorbachev was a redactional process of alteration and accommodation dependent on prevailing ideological strains within the

Party. This had been true under Stalin as it was under Gorbachev, the difference being that Stalin's revisionism altered history away from the “truth” as verified by participants in it in order to preserve Party domination and, as Gorbachev himself stated, “safeguard

Leninism.” Gorbachev attempted to revise the entrenched revisions.

Gorbachev’s terrorist attacks on official Soviet truth impacted the arts to such a degree that revisionism became less a specifically political act and more a complete ideological transformer. Theatre, film, and literature served the state in this capacity of ideological change as before, but all three media as they existed during the era of 87

glasnost concurrently destablized Gorbachev’s political base just as they strengthened the ideological basis of his “new thinking.” The “new thinking” provided virtually the whole of the USSR with the unique historical opportunity to witness an ideological transformation in the making: from the remnants of desired communism to an acceptance of socialism as the highest social order, to a socialism invigorated by glasnost and perestroika, to a socialism framed by capitalism, to a nascent and fragile capitalism.

When Gorbachev could not renounce his sensibilities to accommodate a more intensified ideological struggle, the Yeltsin faction began to agitate for the transformation of

“nascent capitalism” in the economic sphere from mere decentralization to a full-blown market economy. In the next chapter, I will discuss cultural policy as it was colored by the ideological struggle in the first years of the Gorbachev era and attempt to clarify my use of the term “ideology” in a Gorbachevian context. CHAPTER IV

CULTURAL POLICY UNDER GORBACHEV AND ITS

RELATIONSHIP TO THEORIES OF IDEOLOGY

Introduction

In any discussion of the former Soviet theatre, it is imperative that its close

relationship to prevailing ideology be acknowledged, whether or not a specific

production is geared to affirm it as “natural” or destabilize it. This is a crucial point from

an American frame of reference in that, as R. ten Cate noted in 1987, “in the West,

theatre is a purely aesthetic phenomenon on the cultural fringe, but in Russia it is a

political factor of the first magnitude, a warmly beating heart in the middle of society.” 1

Theatre remained a “political factor” under Gorbachev because it very often took

advantage of its historically didactic position (in a Soviet context) as an artistic

expression of government edicts. Under Gorbachev, however, the “edicts” of “new

thinking” usually prompted an examination, if not a complete repudiation, of once

“irrefutable” Soviet truths. Like Lenin, Gorbachev never articulated a comprehensive

1 R. ten Cate, introduction. Cerccau. by Viktor Slavkin (Amsterdam: International Theatre Bookshop, 1987) 125. In the above quote. Cate was commenting on Freidrich Durrenmatt’s impressions of the Moscow theatre in 1987. It w ould be as w ell to attempt a justification of those impressions. In the West, the work of “political” playwrights such as David Hare. Caryl Churchill, and Tony Kushner, and directors/theorists such as Richard Scheclmer and Elizabeth LeCompte, for example, typically attempts a usurpation of the theatre as a “purely aesthetic phenomenon.” Still though, when arguing from an American frame of reference and in terms of the number of people exposed to such work in this country, the impact of “political” theatre on the American populace is miniscule. 88 89 cultural line. This is in part due to the fact that as a champion of glasnost, he felt that culture generally and (for our purposes) theatre specifically must exist outside Soviet ideologies. But, as noted in the previous chapter, the historical expose of the Soviet past found an outlet not only in formerly banned novels and films, but also on stages throughout the USSR. Theatre artists and the intelligentsia in general took seriously

Gorbachev’s early pronouncement that the Central Committee “stop ordering about” the intellectuals.2 This last request was officially and publicly sanctioned by Gorbachev’s call for a glasnost that was needed “as we need the air.”3

This chapter takes as its point of departure statements of a specifically “cultural” nature by Gorbachev in order to elucidate some semblance o f an official cultural line regarding the arts during the last years of the Soviet empire. As I have used the word

“ideology” in various contexts throughout this paper, I also think that it is important to justify its continued use here as a purely theoretical term in relationship to Louis

Althusser’s theory of ideology and “Ideological State Apparatuses” or ISAs.

“New Thinking” as Cultural Policy

Gorbachev alludes to culture in many of his speeches and articles, but in terms relevant only to the “life of the people,” not in the sense of “high culture” or, in Marxist terms, the “superstructure” of culture, i.e., theatre, film, literature, and the arts in general. In his speech to the Twenty-Seventh Party Congress (discussed in detail in

2 Gorbachev, Perestroika 81. 3 Gorbachev, Perestroika 78. 90

Chapter Three), Gorbachev comes close to fashioning a theory of culture as it must exist under “new thinking.” Like every General Secretary before him, though, he speaks of culture in broad, general terms, rarely moving outside the parameters established by

Party decorum. Soviet culture is dialectically examined as the opposite of bourgeois culture and the former, of course, is deemed superior. According to the Party, capitalism causes

an impoverishment of culture, an erosion of the spiritual values created over the centuries. Nothing elevates man more than knowledge. But in probably no other period of history has mankind experienced any stronger pressure of falsehood and deceit than it does now. Bourgeois propaganda foists cleverly doctored information on people all over the world, imposing thoughts and feelings, and inculcating a civic and social attitude advantageous to the ruling forces.4

The assumption here is that culture in capitalism is the result of the deterministic nature o f capitalism. Unlike culture in socialism, culture in capitalism is impure as it is ruled by the whim of the market and manipulated by petty class interests.

Gorbachev places the Party in the vanguard of safeguarding culture from the

“commodity fetishism” of capitalism and from the “moral consequences of imperialism’s current practices in the sphere of culture.”5 The deprivation of culture “under the onslaught of unbridled commercialism and the cult of force, the propaganda of racism, of lowly instincts, the ways of the criminal world and the ‘lower depths’ of society, must be, and certainly will be, rejected by mankind.”6

4 Gorbachev, 23 Feb. 1986 24. (Bold in text.) 5 Gorbachev. 25 Feb. 1986 24. 6 Gorbachev, 25 Feb. 1986 24-25. 91

These statements do little to increase our understanding of the ways in which

Gorbachev attempted to demarcate the cultural lines of “new thinking.” The statements are Sovietized for the Party in that they bipolarize the USSR and the West. In the latter, capitalism produces capitalist culture; in the former, the years of struggle have produced a culture from which socialism springs. But this is as far as Gorbachev goes. There are the obligatory references to the commercialization of culture in the West, but little of the enmity characteristic of former Soviet leaders’ harangues against western cultural norms

(although the accusations of “moral bankruptcy” in the western cultural sphere are as strong as ever).

The absence of a strictly defined cultural policy was Gorbachev’s cultural policy.

Gorbachev knew that there was no artist of the international caliber of a Maxim Gorky

(as there had been during the eras of Lenin and Stalin) to act as a beacon for artistic trends in the first years of his rule.7 He knew also that the implementation of a meaningful glasnost could not withstand even a symbolic facsimile of an officially endorsed cultural policy bearing in mind the disastrous consequences of those which had gone before. Instead, Gorbachev, like Lenin (again), left the cultural sphere to its own devices. Theatre flourished under Lenin as it would under his protege decades later

7 Many internationally recognized Soviet artists were dissenters or in exile at the time of Gorbachev’s appointment as General Secretary of the Party, Sakharov was in internal exile. Renowned theatre director, Iurii Liubimov, had been “stripped of his citizenship.” (For an account of his return to the USSR, see Alnta H. Law. "Lyubimov’s Rctueturn is Soviet Sign,” American Theatre Nov. 1988: 46-47.) Writers such as Vladimir Voinovich. Sasha Sokolov, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (who returned to a post-Gorbachev Russia in 1994) had been exiled or had emigrated years before. 92 because no sanctioned cultural policy existed to impede its development.8 Gorbachev does not ignore the arts completely (and, indeed, he characterizes them as part of the grand scheme of “ideological work”9), but he imposes on them the most minimal requirements (and even these were not resolutely or uniformly enforced).

In his call for “consolidating the family” (reminiscent of the “family values” platform of the Republican Party in America during the presidential election campaign of

1992), Gorbachev stresses the educational function of the mass media and the arts. It is here that it is possible to ascertain the “moral” aspect of the Gorbachevian stance:

Families in which successive generations work in a same profession should be given every support and young people should be brought up on the basis of the experience of older generations. Here a big contribution can be made by the mass information media, television, literature, cinema and the theatre.10

In the sense that other General Secretaries before him called on the arts to support an ideological break with a former position, there is nothing original in Gorbachev’s call for a more responsible mass media or an artistic community more answerable to the needs of the general populace. Still, though, Gorbachev’s statement above is more akin to a gentle reminder or a a slight nudge in the direction appropriate for the “new thinking” rather than a demand for conformity to a divergent political line:

8 As discussed in Chapter Two. Lenin had more to say about the partiinost' aspect of literature and art than about art specifically. Aside from a few famous statements (still etched on the walls of major artistic institutions in the former USSR) such as “Art belongs to the people!”, and apart from his opposition to Prolctkult. Lenin left most of his artistic policy to Anatoly Lunacharsky. Commissariat of Education. 9 Gorbachev, 25 Feb. 1986 111. 10 Gorbachev, 25 Feb. 1986 65. 93

The Party sees the main objective of its cultural policy in giving the widest scope for identifying people’s abilities and making their lives intellectually rich and many-sided. In working for radical changes for the better in this area as well, it is important to build up cultural-educational work in such a way as to fully satisfy people’s cultural requirements and interests."

“Radical changes” is the operative phrase here, but it is not followed by even a semblance of the ways in which these changes may be instituted.

There are essentially only three criteria by which the Party under Gorbachev judged the state of culture and its manifestations. First, great emphasis was placed on the “moulding” of the Soviet citizen in the new society (via the ideological power of

“literature and art”) into “the patriot of his homeland and the internationalist in the true meaning of the word.”12 This is the noble socialist speaking, reiterating the orthodox politics of previous Soviet positions in the realm of culture. Gorbachev then calls on the new generation to propel the proposed changes from theory into practice:

When the social need arises to form a conception of the time one lives in, especially a time of change, it always brings forward people for whom this becomes an inner necessity. We are living in such a time today. Neither the Party nor the people need showy verbosity on paper, petty dirty-linen-washing, time-serving, and utilitarianism. What society expects from the writer is artistic innovation and the truth of life, which has always been the essence of real art.13

Gorbachev seems to support “real art” as opposed to the decades-old tradition of

Socialist Realism, but he never evokes this standard in a positive or negative context.14

" Gorbachev, 25 Feb. 1986 113. (Bold in text.) 12 Gorbachev. 25 Feb. 1986 113. 13 Gorbachev, 25 Feb. 1986 113, 14 The viability of Socialist Realism as a theory of art had long been questioned and denounced by Soviet artists. Nevertheless, a public renunciation of it bv Gorbachev would have been highly connotative. See 94

He casually notes the “dullness” and “inertia” which need to be eradicated from the mass media as well as “the low standard of some literary works, television programmes, and films” which lack both “ideological clarity” and “elementary taste.”15

The second criterion for culture within the boundaries of the Gorbachev era was the necessity of a direct appeal to the “ideological cadres” in the field of art and literary criticism to “shake off complacency and servility to rank, which erodes healthy morals, and to remember that criticism is a social duty and not a sphere serving an author’s vanity and ambitions.”16 Gorbachev again stresses the need for an emphasis on morality as a component of the “new thinking.” At the same time, since the art and literary critics about whom he speaks are qualified as “ideological cadres,” he solicits their help in the creation and sustenance of the new guideposts: acceleration, democratization, restructuring, and openness.

Gorbachev believed that the relaxation of the most stringent regulations imposed on Soviet art would naturally initiate more sweeping changes in the same field. The singling out of art and literary criticism for largely symbolic censure offered him a specific area in which to begin the “relaxations.” Artists and critics sensed immediately the new direction to be taken under Gorbachev, but questions arose regarding what might follow the preliminary and tentative pronouncements of the diversification of

Yu. Borev. ct al.. "Should Wc Reject Socialist Realism?” The USSR Today: Perspectives from the Soviet Press. Selections from the Current Digest of the Soviet Press, eds. Robert Ehlers, et al. (Columbus. OH: Ohio State UP, 1988) 166-68; hereafter, all selections from this anthology will be listed as Ehlers, ct al. 15 Gorbachev. 25 Feb. 1986 112. 16 Gorbachev. 25 Feb. 1986 113. 95

Soviet art. Typically, the new paths to be traveled under a succeeding General Secretary

or a reshuffling of the Politburo meant additional guidelines for art accompanied by a

condemnation of particularly contentious works of art (whether a fixed work such as a

sculptural rendering, or a transitory work such as a theatrical production) or of a specific

artist.17 But Gorbachev articulated his perception of the current situation and stepped

aside, thus allowing not only for the major overhauls of the various artistic unions to

follow, but also for the appearance of other and more conservative names to occupy the

rostrum, instilling the most susceptible factions with the sense that Gorbachev’s non-

policy would lead to lax ideological standards among artists.18

The third criterion of a cultural policy indicative of the “new thinking” under

Gorbachev was the most pointed. It was aimed at the artistic unions, i.e, organizations

comprised of theatrical workers, filmmakers, and writers. It called for a revitalization of

artistic standards within the staid unions themselves. In the following statement,

Gorbachev criticizes the bureaucratic trappings of the union organizations and appeals to

them to take the advice offered by the general public:

Our unions of creative workers have rich traditions, and they play a considerable role in the life of art and of the whole of society, for that matter. But even here changes are needed. The main result of their work is measured not by resolutions and meetings, but by talented and

17 For example. Socialist Realism as the “policy” of Molotov and Stalin: the relaxation of the requirements of previous policy during WWII followed by more adamant enforcement after the war via Zhdanov and his attacks on Akhmatova and Zoshchcnko: the “thaw” culminating in the publication of Solzhenitsyn's Ivan Denisovich in 1962: and the retreat during the late 1960s and early 1970s cuminating in the expulsion of Solzhenitsyn in 1974. 18 As noted in Chapter Three, Nina Andreeva, as individual or proxy, warned of the coming “laxity” in her letter of 1987. It is important for our purposes insofar as the letter criticizes Mikhail Shatrov’s play, Onward! Onward! Onward!, as a primary example of where Gorbachev’s “non-policy” in the cultural sphere would lead. Shatrov’s play is discussed in the following chapter. 96

imaginative books, films, plays, paintings, and music which are needed by society and which can enrich the people’s intellectual life.19

Gorbachev then arrives at the heart of the matter with regard to the “new thinking.” It is a pronouncement which, although more direct than other components of the “policy,” is intended to motivate rather than forcibly influence the unions and their members. Even as mere motivation, its open-endedness is suggestive of the considerable renewal to come: “In this context, serious consideration should be given to suggestions by the public that the standard forjudging works nominated for distinguished prizes should be raised.”20

Gorbachev acknowledges a problem, but proffers no alternative. It is true that he lapses into the old Soviet “doublespeak” with regard to culture just as innumerable Party members before him did, but he never enumerates any specific changes to be made within the unions. If anything, the call for higher standards as a prerequisite for literary, theatrical, and cinematic awards accompanied by no rigid guidelines for the raising of those standards was an enormous harbinger of change in the cultural sphere. Perhaps as a warning to those who might carry out the reforms too quickly, or to those who might sense vacillation among the ranks, Gorbachev specifies that those in control must change or face demotion:

'9 Gorbachev. 25 Feb. 1986 113-14. 20 Gorbachev, 25 Feb. 1986 114. (Bold in text.) The prizes of which Gorbachev speaks were named after both Lenin and Stalin (although the “Stalin Prize” was renamed in 1956 in accordance with the denunciation of Stalin by Khrushchev). In a theatrical and dramatic context, they were awarded for sustained achievement in acting, directing, design, and playwrighting. and usually reserved for those who adhered to the Party line. 97

In support of the idea of making more exacting demands on Communists, some comrades suggest carrying out a purge to free the Party of those whose conduct and way of life contradict our norms and ideals. I do not think there is any need for a special campaign to purge the ranks of the CPSU. Our Party is a healthy organism: it is perfecting the style and methods of its work, is eradicating formalism, red tape, and conventionalism, and is discarding everything stagnant and conservative that interferes with our progress; in this way it is freeing itself of persons who have compromised themselves by their poor work and unworthy behaviour.21

Gorbachev’s pronouncements were so much emollients. His reserved introduction of a new cultural policy which was in fact a “non-policy” at most, initiated the sweeping reconstitution of the artistic community while it also satisfied the conservatives who feared their own dislocation in the hierarchy of officialdom if radical cultural reform were officially endorsedand strengthened by specifics. Soon, the artistic unions began to manifest the new ideology.

Ideology as Marxist Terminology

Before I discuss the manifestations of Gorbachev’s cultural policy as they may be ascertained in the theatre, I think it is necessary to qualify my use of the term “ideology.”

There are few components of Marxist theory which have prompted more contradictory analyses than those which take Marx’s conception of ideology as a subject. As I have used the word in various ways throughout the study assuming that its connotations are

21 Gorbachev. 25 Feb. 1986 120. This was the stance that would infuriate Boris Yeltsin, Eduard Shevardnadze, ct al. who warned Gorbachev that unless he commenced a "purge” of the Party, reform would stall. See Boris Yeltsin, The Struggle for Russia, trans. Catherine A. Fitzpatrick (New York: Bclka-Times, 1994). See also Eduard Shevardnadze, The Future Belongs to Freedom, trans. Catherine A. Fitzpatrick (London: Sinclair Stevenson. 1991). 98

clear in context, I think it is imperative to bracket the word through a brief examination of its history firstly because it is so often used by one side or another to characterize another’s body of ideas. The second reason is predetermined by Gorbachev’s repeated use of the word “ideology” as a referent of culture generally and theatre specifically.

Since Marx never set down a considered theory of ideology, commentators have waged an ongoing struggle to do it for him.22 Thus, “ideology” has been appropriated by historians, academics, and scholars to bolster arguments and agendas. In such works as The German Ideology (1845-46), and the Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of

Political Economy (1859), Marx “generally reserved the term ‘ideology’ for the moral and juridical principles proclaimed by the bourgeoisie.”23 In this sense, the prevailing notions and attitudes of the ruling class with regard to standards of morality and the structure of the legal system, for example, at a given point in history, is the ideology of the ruling class. In other words, the proletariat has no ideology, is not in ideology.

Further, Marxism as a theory of economics, for example, is not ideological as it speaks for the ruled. Here, ideology is a negative conception (in the sense that the term had been used by both Marx and Engels to characterize the oppressive rule of the bourgeoisie). This would remain the popular view of the 19th century at least until

Eduard Bernstein “posed the problem as to whether Marxism is an ideology” in 1898.24

22 Chief among this group are Georgii Plckhanov, Karl Kautsky, Vladimir Lenin. Louis Althusser, and Georg Lukacs. 23 Leonard Schapiro. "The Concept of Ideology as Evolved by Marx and Adapted by Lenin,'' Russian Studies, ed. Ellen Dahrcndorf (New York: Penguin. 1988) 159. 21 See Jorge Lorrain’s brief history of the theory of ideology in A Dictionary of Marxist Thought, ed. Torn Bottomore, ct al. (1983; Cambridge. MA: Blackwell. 1991) 247-52, 99

Lenin coopted the Marxist notion of ideology for his own historical epoch. (And this is surely the way Marx would have wanted it. After all, the “ideologist” in contrast to the historical materialist, i.e., Lenin, “de-historicizes and universalises the ideas and forms of thought of his society.”25) Lenin fashioned a “positive” theory of ideology; one which validated the Marxist concept of ideology as “the general notion that the bourgeoisie, consciously or unconsciously, uses political, moral or juridical ideas to bolster its own economic hegemony. . . ,”26 However, in What is to be Done? (Chto delat’?. 1902), Lenin added to this generally accepted dictum the presumption that

“socialist ideology” is able to counterbalance and eventually overtake “bourgeois ideology” and that “to belittle the socialist ideologyin any way, to turn aside from it in the slightest degree, means to strengthen bourgeois ideology.”27 Lenin agitates for the promulgation of the ideology of the proletariat movement over and against the ideology of the dominant class (the owners of the means of production). Proletariat ideology is thus a class weapon, but a consciously constructed instrument of class conflict unlike bourgeois ideology which is not recognized as an ideology or a system of beliefs, but is rather misrecognized as the natural order.28 Lenin used the Marxist notion of ideology

25 Bhikhu Parekli. Marx’s Theory of Ideology (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1982) 136. 26 Schapiro 157. 27 Vladimir Lenin. What is to be Done?: Burning Questions of Our Movement (1902: Moscow: Progress. 1987) 40. (Italicized in text.) Georg Lukacs, too. stated in 1923 that Marxism was “the ideological expression of the proletariat.” See History and Class Consciousness (1923; Cambridge, MA: MIT. 1971) 258. 28 “Since the ideologist presents the historical as the natural, Marx is intensely suspicious of any reference to nature in human afTairs. In his view it is almost always a cloak for legitimising a social practice by concealing its historicity and alterability” (Parekh 137-38). Parekh presupposes an “ideologist” duping a society into submission which seems to contradict Marx’s notion that it is not a person(s) which “dupe.” but rather the means of production owned by the ruling class. 100

for his own purposes to the extent that it clarified the needs of the working class. For

Lenin, as it was for those Party leaders who followed, proletariat ideology was the

framework for political action. Lenin’s theory was a logical extension of Marx’s

scattered references to ideology and represents what he may have advocated if he had

chosen to do so.29

Louis Althusser and Ideological State Apparatuses fISA')

Louis Althusser contributed the most significant critique of Marx’s theory of

ideology via his distinction between “ideology” and “Ideological State Apparatuses” or

ISAs. Althusser advocated the highly complex notion of a structuralist Marxism as

opposed to the more humanist Marxism characteristic of earlier commentators.30 Aside

from its importance as a revitalizing force in the ongoing critique of Marx and ideology,

Althusser’s distinction between “ideology” and “Ideological State Apparatuses” is

significant because it provides a grid on which to hang the Soviet (and Gorbachev’s)

assumption that theatre is a component of “ideological work.”31 More important, it discredits the idea that transitional Soviet society under Gorbachev divested itself of ideology in general for the sake of a value-free and non-ideological glasnost. The ISAs,

29 The German Ideology was not published until the 1920s. Lenin, then, had no access to it and was “not acquainted with Marx's and Engels’ most forceful argumentation in favour of a negative concept of ideology” (Larrain 250). 30 See Louis Althusser. "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses.” Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essavs. trans. Ben Brewster (New York: Monthly Review. 1971). 31 In the speech of 25 February 1986. Gorbachev’s discussion of Soviet culture generally and theatre specifically falls under the heading: “To Reinforce Ideology’s Link to Life and Enrich People’s Intellectual World.” 101

i.e., religious institutions, the law, the arts, renounced formerly held positions in

relationship to socialism as the natural order, but in so doing they simply embraced the

principles of the “new thinking,” thus embracing the ideology of “reform.” This is not to

say that there is something amiss about the change in direction—who can argue that a

people should not know its past—but to the extent that “new thinking” advanced the

naturalization and normalization of capitalism as a system of belief, indeed as the hope

for the Soviet people, to this extent it is as ideological a position as the dictatorship of

the proletariat.

Although Althusserian Marxism does not offer a cohesive foundational base from

which aesthetic theories may be proposed, the theoretical idea of “ideologies” or ISAs

may be used as a tool in an examination of the function of theatre during the Gorbachev

era. The hierarchy of theatrical production may be decentered by a consideration of

aesthetics as ideology, in order to counter the widely held belief (particularly in America)

that artistic production is somehow disengaged from political agendas. Marxist critic,

William Adams, supports this position to the extent that “philosophically and

commonsensically, we are prepared to see aesthetic matters, and indeed cultural issues in

general, as things separate from the worldy matters of economy, politics, and revolution.

. . ,32 In the last years of the Soviet empire, “aesthetic matters” and “cultural issues”

were some of the most explicit indicators/signifiers of political agendas.

32 William Adams. "Aesthetics: Liberating the Senses.” The Cambridge Companion to Marx, ed. Terrell Carver (Cambridge: Cambridge UP. 1991) 247. 102

For Althusser, ideologies of economics, religion, art are branches of “ideology in general.”33 In any historical context, “ideology in general” is the fodder from which the subsequent ideologies of economics, religion, art, et al. find sustenance. Herein lies

Althusser’s argument for a structuralist Marxism. For Althusser, insofar as “ideology represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence,” then it follows that “ideology has no history,” but is instead “eternal.”34 Althusser rejects the notion that ideology is necessarily bourgeois or proletariat. However, he argues that the ISAs crystallize “ideology in general” but that they “are not the realization of ideologyin general, nor even the conflict-free realization of the ideology of the ruling class.”35 Rather,

The ideology of the ruling class does not become the ruling ideology by the grace of God, nor even by the virtue of the seizure of State power alone. It is by the installation of the ISAs in which this ideology is realized and realizes itself that it becomes the ruling ideology.36

It is with the above statement in mind that it is possible to justify a stance which purports that the theatre (under the rubric “culture,” and, for our purposes, qualified as the theatre in the former Soviet Union) validated and advanced the agenda of “new thinking.”37 At

33 Althusser 159. Althusser uses the concept of “ideology in general” throughout the essay. 31 Althusser 162. 159. 161. 35 Althusser 184-85. (Italicized in text.) 36 Althusser 185. 37 The conceptualization of the ISAs is only one of Althusser’s interests in his essay. Among the most notable others are the “interpellated subject,” the “hailed subject.” and the "problematic.” In the sense that these extremely diffuse theoretical assumptions have little to do with the study at hand, and to the extent that I possess neither the skill nor the presumption to negotiate them. I refer the reader to the authoritative sources for a reading of Althusserian theory. See Alex Callinicos, Althusser’s Marxism; Gregory Elliot, Althusser: The Detour of Theory: Steven B. Smith, Reading Althusser: and (for a negative assessment) E.P. Thompson. The Poverty of Theory. 103

the same time, however, because the ISAs of the previous regime underwent enormous

alterations or “deideologizations” during the Gorbachev era, these same ISAs circum­

vented “new thinking.” As the ISAs of the Gorbachev era were under seige in the push

to “fill in the blanks” of history, it is possible to analyze that transitional era from a

position outside Soviet ideologies.38

The theatrical apparatus was in flux during the Gorbachev era as the framed

production of meaning contradicted itself daily. The revelation of formerly muted

historical events invested the collective conscience of the Soviet people with an

awareness of the manipulative function of the ISAs. This is not to say that the ISAs

ceased to exist during the period of transition from socialism, rather the ISAs were

reconstituting a formative political ideology couched in the words “new thinking.” As the theatre evaluated its position under the parallel themes of perestroika and glasnost, it was, at the same time, girding its own status as an ISA. Expressed in another way, if, as

Richard Schmitt argues in his reading of Marx’s theory of ideology, “ideologies are the product of a group’s attempt to understand its world,” then “to the extent that such understanding is distorted and functions to maintain the world and the practices of that group-to that extent it is ideological”39 (emphasis added). This notion of “maintenance”

38 Catherine Bclsev notes in her reading of Althusser that “while it is impossible to break with ideology in the general sense, nonetheless it is possible to constitute a discourse which breaks with the specific ideology (or ideologies) of the contemporary social formation.” See Bclscy, Critical Practice (London: Methuen, 1980) 62-63. 39 Richard Schmitt. Introduction to Marx and Engels: A Critical Reconstruction (Boulder, CO: Wcstview, 1987) 54-55. 104

is significant in any critique of ideology within the larger framework of a critique of

theatre in a transitional society.

In the simplest terms, the Gorbachevian ideological construct of “new thinking”

in the cultural sphere encouraged the artist to assume an interchangeability between

“new thinking” and “freedom.” Artists generally and theatre practitioners specifically, giddy from the loosing of restrictions, gave the government high marks for its policy of

“non-intervention.” In the post-Soviet, post-Gorbachev era, the legacy of glasnost and perestroika as usurpers of pre-Gorbachev ideologies can be seen in the theatre in the complete abolition of censorship and in the virtual disappearance of the generously subsidized state theatre. The abolition of censorship has produced, of course, diverse repertories in addition to the tawdry commercial excesses typical of many western stages. In the rush to emulate things American, in the rush to naturalize the proposed market economy, commercialization of the theatre has been deemed the normal offshoot of the freedom to create at will. In this sense, glasnost and perestroika, crystallized in the ISA of theatre, were no different than Soviet ideologies prior to Gorbachev.

However, glasnost and perestroika, because of their obvious affinities with western systems of belief, have instituted the more aggressive ideology of “shock therapy” in the economic sphere and, thus, all spheres. Reduced to its simplest terms, if, in a strictly

Marxist sense, the “ideological struggle” can be defined as “generally the struggle 105

between capitalism and socialism,”40 then the struggle ended when Gorbachev resigned

in December 1991 and socialism lost, at least the first round.

Artistic Freedom and Socialist Realism

“New thinking” reacted against an aesthetic tradition maintained by the Party. I

have previously noted the phenomenon of Socialist Realism in the Soviet Union and the

ways in which this official “line” on culture adversely affected artistic expression.

Although it is true that the Party officially sanctioned Socialist Realism as the guiding

aesthetic of the ISA of theatre from 1934 until the advent of glasnost, it is also true that

Socialist Realism itself underwent various revisions during its fifty years of explicit (from

1934 until the mid-1950s) and implicit (from the mid-1950s until the mid-1980s)

dominance.

During the years of stagnation (zastof) under Brezhnev, aesthetic policies in the

USSR had reached a point of ideological saturation. Drama, restricted by suffocating

Soviet propriety and partiinost’. had lost most of its former legitimacy as a contributor to

the world repertory. One reason for this loss of international prestige can be traced to an

attitude best expressed in an article entitled “Socialism and Creative Freedom,”

(“Sotsializm i tvorcheskaia svoboda”) published in Pravda on April 2, 1974.41 It sums up

1,0 Roy D. Laird and Betty A. Laird, A Soviet Lexicon: Important Concepts. Terms, and Phrases (Lexington. MA: D.C. Heath, 1988) 65. Gr. Oganov. “Socialism and Creative Freedom.” The USSR Today: Current Readings from the Soviet Press. Selections from the Current Digest of the Soviet Press, eds. Jan S. Adams, et al. (Columbus, OH: American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies. 1975) 18-19; hereafter, selections from this anthology will be listed as Adams, et al. 106

official Soviet cultural policy without mentioning Socialist Realism outright. Insofar as

the article is tendentious and reactionary, it is representative of Soviet aesthetic theory.42

Further, it encapsulates the policy of an official united front (particularly in the literary

arena) which advocated the component of the old Leninist “Party spirit” in artistic

expression. Although even this cornerstone of Soviet aesthetics had been tempered

somewhat by the early 1980s, it was still the predominant standard against which all

work was judged.

The essay attacks the hypocritical notion of “intellectual freedom” purported to

be the foundation of western art. The essay reduces Soviet Marxist aesthetics to aspects

of the ideological struggle:

Having turned literature, music and painting into commodities, capitalism has subordinated them to market fluctuations, to considerations of commercial advantage that are organically alien to them, and has belittled and debased the noble meaning of creativity . . . .43

Regardless of its tendentiousness, of its vulgar reading of Marx, and of its clearly

partisan tone, the statement makes some sense, particularly to one outside Soviet

ideologies, i.e., outside the reality of the enforced “decommodification” of Soviet art in

all its violent and repressive manifestations. Much of the hostility expressed in the essay

has its genesis in the “form vs. content” debate which polarized Marxist aestheticians

42 Made all the more rancorous because of the "Solzhenitsyn problem” then facing Soviet authorities. Solzhenitsyn was exiled in 1974. 43 Oganov 18. 107

during the first half of the century.44 The Oganov essay discredits freedom of creative

expression as a hopeless attempt to “separate” an aesthetic position from a political

stance. The myth of this freedom “denies any conditioning of creativity by any influences

of life whatsoever—the development of society, class antagonisms, informed choices.”45

Oganov notes that artistic freedom is very much akin to simple irresponsibility insofar as

“freedom” often generates the “anti-Soviet” aesthetic of formalism:

[I]s it not naive to believe that you have “broken with politics” and gained the desired freedom if you have painted something that is nonrepresentational, an abstractionist picture that is a chaos of spots and lines, or if you have written a modernist book that no one can understand, a book in which, to use Horace’s expression, “all the ideas are like delirious ravings”? This is not liberation from politics; it is a service that the artist renders to the bourgeoisie and the reactionaries by withdrawing into pointlessness, by renouncing active humanist positions and abjuring struggle.46

The interesting line posited by this essay is nothing short o f warmed-over

Leninist dictums on the one hand, and an intriguing and still valid assessment o f the

production of art in capitalism, especially the production of art within the “culture

industry.”47 Oganov’s position subjects the Soviet citizen to art as activism insofar as

that activism is properly directed toward the building of communism. Herein lies the

great paradox of Soviet aesthetics. “Freedom” is not freedom to create at will. For

44 Sec Ernst Bloch, ct al.. Aesthetics and Politics, trans. and cd. Ronald Taylor (London: New Left Books. 1977) for the standard reference on the aesthetic positions of notable Marxists such as Brecht and Lukacs during the 1920s. 1930s. and 1940s. 45 Oganov 18. 46 Oganov 19. 47 See Max Horkheimcr and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. John Cumming (1944; New York: Continuum. 1993)120-167. Although the Horkheimer/Adorno critique is unmistakably Marxist, its disgust for the “culture industry” in the West can easily be read in this post- Soviet era as a negative analysis of art in Soviet Marxism. 108

Soviet aestheticians, “freedom” is not identified with “anarchic arbitrariness, with the notorious ‘doing what one wishes,’”48 but with proper expressions of partiinost’. In this sense, then, it follows that the great paradox of western aesthetics reveals itself.

“Freedom” is not freedom to create at will, but freedom to create within the boundaries of the marketplace. Writers and playwrights, for example, write with publication and

“being bought” in mind. Insofar as it is not their standard which determines the ways in which a book or play is published or sold, they are no more “free” than their Soviet counterparts who were restricted by the determining factor of some suitable communication of official policy.49

The difference between the two “freedoms” at variance, though, is a crucial one.

In capitalism, a book or a film, for example, outside the boundaries established by the

“culture industry,” is simply not published or remains unproduced because it lacks commercial appeal. Other than poverty, there is usually no exacting retribution initiated against the artist in America, for example, for attempting to destabilize what Horkheimer called the “prevailing customs.”50 In America, a nation whose political system is monitored by the principles characteristic of a republic, art has rarely acted as the

98 Oganov 19. 19 Sec Terry Eaglcton. Marxism and Literary Criticism (Berkeley: U of California P, 1976) 59-76 for a brief discussion of "the author as producer." 50 Max Horkheimer. "Art and Mass Culture," Studies in Philosophy and Social Science (New York: Institute of Social Research. 1941). The McCarthy era is. of course, an exception to this general rule. Still, though, as nefarious a trend as McCarthyism was, it is impossible to draw significant parallels between it and ostensibly similar trends in the USSR. For example, although playwright Lillian Heilman was blacklisted in Hollywood during the McCarthy era, she nevertheless worked freely in New York writing and adapting plays for production, e.g.. The Lark. The Autumn Garden, and directing a timely revival of The Children’s Hour in 1952. 109

battleground for political factions.51 There are, indeed, perhaps one or two “works of

art” which have actually altered the political landscape in America, and of these, only

Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin comes readily to mind. There are, of

course, a plethora of books, plays, and films which have politics in them, but as

activators of discussion in the broad realm of public discourse as opposed to the narrow

realm of the intelligentsia, they remain an uncommon breed.52

In Soviet Russia, however, totalitarianism dictated a much different role for the

arts (as did the autocratic regime which preceded the Bolshevik coup) and a much

different fate for the artist who did not work within the parameters of established policy.

Too little “Party spirit” meant more than a denial o f publication opportunities; it often translated into persecution by the state. Art, specifically theatre and literature, in all the

Russias has been (at least since Belinskii popularized his social critique of literature in the first half of the 19th century) rife with controversies that moved from the page or stage into the public realm. The controversies were specific to the narrow realm o f the

Russian revolutionary intelligentsia in the 19th century, to be sure, but the questions they provoked began to involve the peasantry and the working class with the advent of

51 Although specific works of art deemed “offensive,” e.g., “Piss Christ," etc., in certain circles and partially funded with tax dollars (whether directly via grants to the artist or indirectly via money allocated to museums or galleries for public showings), have increasingly been used in America to motivate to action the most conservative within the Republican Party. These same “offensive” works of art would have drawn little, if any. attention w ithout the use of public funds to “promote" them. 52 In the American theatre, for example, no real tradition of political drama exists. The popular theatre (or that which premieres on Broadway or in a major urban area and then finds an audience via community productions across the country) in America has its standard-bearers of specifically political drama, but for every Waiting for Lefty. A Raisin in the Sun, or Angels in America, there is a veritable army of commercial entertainments which, of course, possess implicit ideological belief systems, but w hich do not attempt to expose them as such. 110

Bolshevik agitation in the early 20th century. From Gogol and Turgenev, Saltykov-

Shchedrin and Ostrovsky, in the 19th century, through Gorky, Mayakovsky, and

Meyerhold in the 20th, Russian literature, drama, and theatre, have often mobilized

political factions and encouraged social activism.53 In this sense, they have subverted the

traditional function of an ISA; instead of harboring the prevailing ideology of an epoch,

they have recognized manipulation, removed themselves “scientifically,” and, to use a

Marxist phrase, “exposed the contradictions” of the prevailing order.

Again, though, a crucial difference exists between subversive art in the

totalitarian society (whether autocratic or communist) and the democratic. In the

former, subversive art is a “political factor,” and in the latter, it is deemed an aberration,

left alone and written off as the artist’s privilege.54 Art has been marginalized in

capitalism or, in other words, “democratized” to the point of insignificance. The

“political factor” of certain artistic expressions in 19th and 20th century Russia existed

because the political arena itself was closed to all but the sycophants.

“New thinking” radically altered the paradigm. Under its aegis, the arts generally

and the theatre specifically were enlisted to assist in the transition from pre-Gorbachev

53 O f course, the works of Gogol ct al. were not representative of their Imperial Russian epoch any more than Nathaniel West. Horace McCoy, or Theodore Dreiser in the West were of their modern industrial epoch. These arc some of the obvious exceptions to the general rule of the function of the ISA of art in any economic system. 54 There arc two glaring exceptions to this generalization. One is the attempt by extremists in the GOP in America, e.g.. Jesse Helms (R-North Carolina) and Don Nicklcs (R-Oklahoma), to politicize the National Endowment for the Arts and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting due to their “blind” support of various artistic expressions whether “apolitical” or “subversive.” The other is the way in which the non-fiction prose of such writers as Camille Paglia and Susan Faludi. and a truly political play. Oleanna. by David Mamet, have served to fuel the debate regarding the nature of sexual harassment. I l l

ideologies to what Gorbachev himself called major breakthroughs in new “methods of

thinking,”55 and to take the lead in deprivileging the old order. Because “deprivileging

the old order” did not simply translate as “artistic freedom,” but also as decentralization

of the economy, never more would literature, theatre, and film serve the moral purpose

envisioned by so many Russians, particularly Solzhenitsyn.56 As the arts continue their

slow but steady movement to the periphery and begin to accept their marginal position in

the emerging capitalism, they will no longer demand the same respect by the broad mass

of Russian people, nor will they function solely to bolster the legitimacy of the prevailing

ideology.

And yet the arts will continue to maintain the ISA status theoretically assigned to

them by Althusser. But the task at hand here is to examine the ways in which the theatre

during the Gorbachev era, an era during which ideology in general was in limbo and

ideologies were in flux, functioned concurrently as both foil and champion of the “new

thinking.” Thus, a discussion of the function of theatre after the normalization of

capitalism during the post-Gorbachev era is outside the scope of this work.

55 Mikhail Gorbachev. “Mikhail Gorbachov [sicj Answers Questions Put Forth by L’Unita.” Gorbachov: Speeches and Writings (Oxford: Pergamon. 1987)206. 56 See Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Rebuilding Russia, trans. Aleksis Klinrof (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux. 1991). The author left his sanctuary in Vermont in May 1994 for Vladivostok. Russia, with a final destination of Moscow set soon after, determined, it seems, to rejuvenate the entire country’s moral view singlchandcdly. 112

Conclusion

Soviet theatre critic, Konstantin Scherbakov, noted in 1988 that “neither

literature, nor stage and screen arts can exist today unless they reflect what is going

on.”57 During the Gorbachev era (at least through the “High Glasnost” period of 1988

and sporadically after until his resignation in 1991), the most salient works of art were

indeed those which “reflected” the reality of the times. The most notable pieces

generated publicity in various ways, whether positive or negative, but usually used the

revelation of history as a foundation. Gorbachev’s reformist government advocated

historical exposition as a means to an end. This “end” was the desired reconfigured

Party which, if not cleansed of past transgressions, then repentant and accepting of

responsibility for them. The end came about, but the conclusion was far different than

Gorbachev had imagined. The Party reconfigured itself (and not always of its own

accord) so soundly that disintegration and, ultimately, extermination resulted.

The arts played a major role in the reconfiguration of the Party and in the

transformation of Soviet consciousness. And of all the arts, the theatre took the lead.

Its ideological function as a disseminator of “new thinking” strengthened the Party

temporarily (in the sense that it procured for the regime additional time). However, the gains attributed to the Party via its support of glasnost were obviated with each historical revelation. Thus, the ISA of theatre accommodated and reflected “new thinking” as a political agenda while the impetus for change that characterized the ideology of “new

57 Konstantin Scherbakov. "Plays and Polemics on the Soviet Stage.” The Drama Review 33:3 (1989): 171. 113 thinking” increased the theatre’s capacity for intensive criticism of the regime. The non­ policy of the Gorbachev line on culture bolstered the theatre’s critical eye. Such is the nature of ideologies in a transitional society.

In Chapter Five, I will examine specific plays in order to ascertain their affinity with “new thinking” as a political agenda, and in order to expose their subversive qualities. The chapter includes a discussion of the first signs of perestroika in the Soviet theatre between 1985 and 1988. CHAPTER V

AN ACCOUNTING OF REPRESENTATIVE PLAYS

WRITTEN OR PRODUCED DURING THE FIRST HALF

OF THE GORBACHEV EPOCH

Introduction

When Iurii Liubimov was exiled in 1984, few Soviet citizens would have believed that in less than three years, the theatrical milieu he was forced to abandon would find itself in a state of flux. Indeed, even before his triumphant return to the Soviet Union in

1988, the legacy Liubimov had created at the Taganka Theatre in Moscow would seem excessively tame in comparison to contemporary Gorbachevian theatre.

By 1989, a year after Liubimov’s return to the USSR, it was possible for the preeminent American commentator on the Soviet theatre, Alma Law, to proclaim:

“There is no censorship in the Soviet theatre.”1 No more the reliance on furtive glances to convey the hidden agenda of a director or company. No more the “Aesopian language” of the Soviet stage, by means of which unofficial communication took place among performer, text, and spectator. Again, though, between Gorbachev’s election to the position of General Secretary of the CPSU in 1985 and his resignation in 1991, the

1 Alma Law. “Soviet Theatre on Video.” Theatre USSR: Revolution and Tradition. University of South Carolina. Columbia. 2 Dec. 1989. 114 115

whim of a Party official still managed to complicate the production capabilities of a

theatre, whether amateur or professional.

In one of the best films of the glasnost epoch, for example, A Forgotten Tune for

the Flute (Zabvtaia melodia dlia fleitv. 1988), directed by Eldar Riazanov, an official of

the “Leisure Time Directorate” witnesses a production of Gogol’s Inspector General

(Revizor') and is cautiously irritated at what he sees. A self-proclaimed “man of

perestroika,” the official sanctions the performance although he worries about the

“subversive” aspect of the bandaged hand of the magistrate in the play. “What are you

hinting at by having the magistrate’s hand broken?” he asks ominously. “Nothing,” an

actress replies, “Sasha just broke his finger.”

The company is thrilled that the production wins approval, but it is soon apparent

that the approval was a ruse. After he leaves the dress rehearsal, the government official

privately denounces the production to his subordinate and requests that rehearsals of the

play be halted. In traditional Soviet fashion (“new thinking” notwithstanding), the

official gets his way and the play is condemned for its deconstruction of a classic work.

The above is but one example of the plethora of Soviet films which served to

satirize Gorbachev’s push for the “new reality.” The film was a great popular success

when it was released in 1988. Those were joyous, heady days during the glasnost epoch,

when Gorbachev stood tall among world leaders and “new thinking” transformed itself

away from its theoretical basis toward an implemented reality. The arts helped tremendously in this regard, but the reality they purported to signify often contradicted 116

Gorbachev’s vision of optimistic renewal. Conjointly, the simple availability o f formerly forbidden aesthetic perspectives substantiated the foundation of “new thinking.”

In this chapter, I will examine specific plays as barometers of the success of “new thinking” as Gorbachevian ideology. Eight plays will be studied as ideological referents.

The first of these, Cerceau. by Viktor Slavkin, is a transitional play which bridges the gap between traditional Soviet aesthetics and the new openness. The second, Sarcophagus

(Sarkofag), by Vladimir Gubarev, is the finest example of the topical docudrama in the

USSR since the first decade of Bolshevik rule. The next two plays, Cinzano, by

Liudmila Petrushevskaia (first performed unofficially in the USSR in the 1970s, but pointedly revived during the late 1980s), and Stars in the Morning Sky (Zvezdv v utrennee neboL by Aleksandr Galin, take once untouchable social problems as a dramatic base. Liudmila Razumovskaia’s Dear Elena Sergeevna (Dorogaia Elena Sergeevna) and

Boris Vasiliev’s Tomorrow Was War (Zavtra bvla voina) use two different generational dramatizations of the conventional image of young people in the USSR eager to serve the cause. Mikhail Shatrov’s Onward! Onward! Onward! (Dal’she! Dal’she! Dal’she!), attempts a recuperation of Soviet history outside of revisionist trends. The final play,

Aleksandr Chervinskii’s adaptation of Mikhail Bulgakov’s Heart of A Dog, is briefly discussed specifically because the novella on which it is based offers a prophetic statement about the future of the Soviet experiment. Before analyzing the plays above in context, it is necessary to look at the state of the Soviet theatre apparatus immediately before and soon after the implementation of perestroika. 117

Perestroika in the Soviet Theatre

The word “crisis” was used so often and with regard to so many different political, economic, and cultural situations during the Gorbachev era that, in retrospect, it is difficult to invest it with its initial significance. Indeed, there was a crisis in the theatre and that crisis had begun years before glasnost allowed Soviet theatre practitioners to speak and write publicly about it. Writing in 1989, Deputy Editor in

Chief, Mikhail Shvidkoi, of Teatr. the most influential theatrical journal in the USSR, elucidated the two major components of the theatrical crisis of the mid-1980s:

Theaters did not have the right to make independent decisions about either their repertoire or their socio-economic concerns. Every play included in the repertoire required approval from the cultural organ with which the theater was affiliated (ranging from the USSR Ministry of Culture to the cultural departments of cities and regions).2

In her first analysis of the theatre apparatus during the era of “new thinking,”

Alma Law asserted that “increased bureaucratization” had fueled the crisis:

The ever-growing number of Party and Ministry directives aimed at controlling the theater and its repertory was clearly taking its toll. The mere mechanics of getting approval for a repertory that would meet all the requirements set by the Ministry of Culture (festivals, anniversaries, quotas of Soviet plays), and still offer productions which would please the public, left theater directors with little time and energy to devote to their profession.3

Three significant changes in the structure of the theatre apparatus signalled the first effects of perestroika in the Soviet theatre. They did not radically alter the

2 Mikhail Shvidkoi. "The Effect of Glasnost: Soviet Theater from 1985 to 1989.” trans. Vladimir Klimenko. Theater 20.3 (1989): 9. 3 Alma Law. “Revolution in the Soviet Theater,” Harriman Institute Forum 2.7 (1989): 3; hereafter, Revolution. 118

establishment initially, but they did serve to make the production o f theatre much easier

and more closely tied to the needs of a company instead of the needs of the state. The

first sign of the changes to come was the appearance on July 31, 1985 of an article in

Literaturnaia gazeta written by the head of the Lenin Komsomol Theatre in Moscow,

Mark Zakharov. Aside from being “the opening salvo for a series of active pronounce­

ments by playwrights, directors, actors, sociologists, economists, and cultural ministry

officials discussing the outlines of the future theatrical experiment,”4 the appearance of

the article alone—uncensored, untouched—in a standard Soviet periodical reflected the

new spirit of the times.5 Zakharov asked: “Who will carry out the necessary

restructuring of the theater’s economic position? Are we going to wait for detailed and

carefully elaborated paragraphs and subparagraphs... or are we ourselves going to

undertake active efforts directed at intensifying our work?”6

Unlike the “ideological struggle” discussed in the academic journals prior to

Gorbachev’s ascendancy (and represented by the Oganov article in the previous chapter)

between “socialist” and “formalist” art, Zakharov advocates an intensification of

perestroika in the theatre at the expense of the entire ruling cultural apparatus. In other

4 Shvidkoi 9. 5 Soon after Zakharov’s article appeared, several periodicals and newspapers began offering editorial space to notable artists. By 1990. after the “new spirit of the times” had faded somewhat, Mark Zakharov wrote a short piece for Moscow News [40 (1990): 3] in which he discusses intimidation by the anti-reform forces. Specifically, Zakharov was writing about the first death threat he had received as an advocate of “burying Lenin.” By this time, Zakharov was serving as a USSR People’s Deputy in the Soviet Congress. 6 Qtd. in Law. Revolution 4. 119

words, it is not a theoretical essay, but one which vehemently decries the current state of

theatrical affairs in the country.

The second sign of change was the retirement of Minister of Culture, Petr

Demichev (“whose appointment in 1974 was generally regarded as a demotion”7), in

June 1986. Gorbachev appointed Vasilii Zakharov (not Mark Zakharov) to replace

Demichev who “had played an instrumental role in the forced emigration of a number of

prominent Soviet artists, including Yuri Lyubimov.”8

The third significant reconstruction of the theatre apparatus was the creation of

the “Union of Theatre Workers” out of the disbanded “All-Russia Theatre Society” in

the fall of 1986. The push to dissolve the historical and largely subservient “All-Russia

Theatre Society” was led by Oleg Efremov, long-time head of the Moscow Art Theatre.9

Reformist theatre workers such as Zakharov and Efremov, along with Mikhail

Shatrov, Georgii Tovstonogov, and many others argued for a union of theatre

practitioners which would be “charged with dealing with all matters concerning theater in

the countryalong and equal state with cultural organs” and one which “would also have

veto power over any unauthorized decisions . . . pertaining to the art of drama.”10

Before Gorbachev’s advocacy of “new thinking,” such a plan would never have reached

7 Law. Revolution 3. 8 Law, Revolution 3. 9 Like Mark Zakharov, Efremov would later serve as a USSR People’s Deputy in the Soviet Congress. He will be remembered most vividly during the Gorbachev years as the person who split the Moscow Art Theatre in two. See Law. Revolution 5. Sec also Henry Popkin. “Importing Ivanov.’’ Theater Week 29 Oct. 1990: 25-27. for a brief look at Efremov as director of Ivanov at Yale Repertory. Some mention is made of Efremov’s contributions to the implementation of perestroika in the theatre in the mid-1980s. 10 Shvidkoi 10. (Italicized in text.) 120

fruition. However, Gorbachev himself “invited a number of prominent theater personalities to the Kremlin on December 3 [1986] to discuss the creation of the

Union.”11 No substantial objections were raised and the “Union of Theatre Workers” became a reality. No major renovations of the theatrical apparatus occurred immediately as a result of the creation of the new theatre union, but certainly a severe blow had been leveled against the bureaucratic confines of the implacable Ministiy of Culture.

However, as restrictions were relaxed, the number of non-subsidized theatres increased dramatically in the large metropolitan areas.

In the same way that samizdat literature subverted the official outlets of literary expression in the former USSR, the studio theatre movement subverted the official outlets of theatrical expression—the subsidized state theatres—long before Gorbachevian trends sanctioned it (particularly in the 1970s).12 According to Mikhail Shvidkoi, there were over 100 studio theatres in Moscow alone in 1989.13 Many have since faded from view, but others have taken their place. The studio theatres provided a much needed injection of youthful spontaneity in the sometimes moribund trends of the state supported theatres, and if nothing else had come of the initial stirrings of reform in the theatre, the

" Law, Revolution 5. u Many of the most popular playwrights of the Gorbachev era such as Liudmila Petrushevskaia were heard in various small studio theatres in Moscow and Leningrad years before “new thinking.” For an account of the state of the studio theatre movement in the former Soviet Union, sec Alyona Solntseva, “Transition: The Theater Studio Movement.” trans. Vladimir Klimenko. Theater 20.3 (1989): 21-27. For an account of the tribulations of a specific post-Gorbachev studio theatre, see John Freedman, “The Rise and Fall of the Youth Movement in Moscow: The Fomenko Studio and Others.” Slavic and East European Performance 14.1 (1994): 27-35. 13 Shvidkoi 10. 121

studio movement itself would have notably aided reformist attempts to wrestle the

theatre establishment out of its inertia.14

Many other changes in the function of the theatre apparatus would take place in

the coming years. Perhaps more than any other personage, Mikhail Ulianov, the first

head of the new theatre union, saw to it that these changes would be implemented. Like

Zakharov and Efremov, Ulianov would eventually give much of his time to the Party as a

People’s Deputy in the Soviet Congress. (Known throughout the Soviet Union as the

actor famous for playing Lenin on film and on the stage, Ulianov created a sensation in

Mikhail Shatrov’s The Peace of Brest Litovsk FBretskii mirl when it premiered in

Moscow in 1987.1S)

As the first guardian of the nascent principles of the theatre union, it is worth

examining a few of Ulianov’s statements made during an interview with Stephen Cohen about the state of the theatre during the Gorbachev era.16 Effusively supportive of the

Party as harbinger of change, Ulianov’s statements illustrate well the attitude of many

14 The studio theatre movement in the USSR differed from its counterpart in the West. In Chicago, for example, the Goodman Theatre has its mainstage and studio. In the first, patrons arc fed Peter Sellars’ dcconstruction of Merchant of Venice or August Wilson’s latest play; in the second, less traditional patrons are given David Cale’s latest performance or Paula Vogel’s The Baltimore Waltz. The distinction here, of course, is commercial appeal. In the USSR, studio theatres were officially non­ existent. Word of mouth alone brought certain circles into the tiny spaces. Shows were inexplicably closed and reopened. In other words, those involved in a given production often risked much more than a monetary loss. 15 Although it is impossible to verify. Ulianov’s views may have been given considerably more attention precisely because of his identification with Lenin. 16 Mikhail Ulyanov, “The Preaching Theatre,” Voices of Glasnost: Interviews with Gorbachev’s Reformers, ed. Stephen F. Cohen and Katrina vanden Heuvcl (New York: Norton, 1989) 246-60. The editors do not provide the exact date of the interview; however, they do note that all of the interv iews in the book took place between June 1987 and April 1989. 122

idealistic theatre professionals in the Soviet Union during the early years of “new thinking.” Further, it is important to interpret his thoughts as representative of the majority o f union members who elected him, well aware o f his unabashedly pro-

Gorbachev bias. In other words, Ulianov’s following statements verify the indissoluble link between the theatre establishment proper and the Party line on culture as it existed in the first half of the Gorbachev era.

For Ulianov, like Gorbachev, true Leninism was perverted by Stalinism. Ulianov equates Leninism with democracy and glasnost stating further that perestroika is about

“a choice between apparat tyranny and people’s power.”17 As he refuses to critique

Leninism, Ulianov also refuses to critique perestroika and glasnost. In the same response, his views about what Cohen calls “the right to criticize the Politburo” prove ironic in the extreme and historically correct:

Why would we criticize Gorbachev? He is the leader of perestroika, and we need him if we are to change the system. As for the Politburo, I will not take it upon myself to judge. In the short term we probably will not go that far. We are moving in that direction, attacking ministers, but I don’t know about the Politburo. If we begin to attack that, there won’t be anything to hold on to.18

Ulianov himself is clearly playing the part of the apparat. A Party member whose conscience was torn between preserving the Party as vanguard of change under the

Gorbachevian banner of “new thinking,” Ulianov was also elected head of the theatre

17 Ulyanov 249. 18 Ulyanov 250. 123

union by artists who demanded radical restructuring, a concept that Gorbachev and

Ulianov both opposed.

The dissolution of the “All-Russia Theatre Society” coupled with the creation of the “Union of Theatre Workers” was an example of perestroika as radical iconoclasm.

The subsequent alterations made in various theatre administrations and artistic councils, as well as additional freedoms given to theatres to select their own repertories and raise ticket prices, satisfied the majority of theatre professionals who had elected Ulianov. At the same time, the Ministry of Culture itself was not abolished. Its power remained a sometimes formidable weapon against the full realization of perestroika in the theatre

(and “full realization” would have meant independence and the retention of full state subsidy).

Because this compromise was reached relatively early during the Gorbachev era, the theatre did not find itself in the same hopeless situation that other components of

Party dominance did by 1990.19 To be sure, the theatre did face the multiple “crises” of hugely inflated ticket prices, competition from foreign companies, and a decrease in state subsidy, but, again, because relatively radical changes were instituted early, the theatrical establishment was reasonably secure.20

19 The economic sphere is the obvious example. "Shock therapy” (the economic equivalent of the democratic election of the "Union of Theatre Workers”) did not gain widespread acceptance until after the failed coup in 1991. And it was not until 1992 that significant inroads were made to try' and correct the economic crisis. :o This held true for the film, music, and literary establishments as well. "As it happens, not only the XXVUth Party Congress, but also the Eighth Conference of the Soviet Writers’ Union . ... the Seventh Conference of the Soviet Composers’ Union and an important conference of the Moscow division of the Union of Cinematographers were all held during 1986.” Sec Harlow Robinson. "Soviet Culture Under 124

Ulianov’s recounting of the early inauguration of perestroika in the theatre foregrounds the Gorbachevian theatre as an Althusserian Ideological State Apparatus.

To Cohen’s question, “How did this revolution in the theatre begin?” Ulianov replies, “It was rather simple. They decided above and we implemented it. At the Twenty-Seventh

Party Congress in February 1986, the party said let there be glasnost and democratiza­ tion and the artistic intelligentsia took it from there. . . ”21 Such a broad, generalized statement may seem artless coming from the head of one of the most important and visible artistic unions, but Ulianov’s later comments solidify his position as one of the straightforward, Gorbachev-inspired perestroishchiki:

We want every question—political, economic, moral~to be discussed in full, but then we must adopt a position. This doesn’t mean that I must change my personal point of view—about Stalin, for example—but it means that I must subordinate my personal viewpoint to the party’s point of view. A family will fall apart if the wife and the husband always argue about their opinions.22

All of Ulianov’s opinions as quoted in the Cohen interview are as if lifted from

Gorbachev’s speech to the Twenty-Seventh Party Congress in February 1986, presented about eight months before the Fifteenth Congress of the “All-Russia Theatre Society.”

This is telling insofar as this study goes because it suggests the solidarity felt between

Gorbachev and his theatrical colleagues who were Party members, at least during the first three years of Gorbachev’s tenure as General Secretary of the Party.

Gorbachev.” The Gorbachev Generation: Issues in Soviet Domestic Policy, cd. Jane Shapiro Zacck (New York: Paragon, 1989) 142. 21 Ulyanov 251. 22 Ulyanov 256. 125

The theatre apparatus took advantage almost immediately of “new thinking” generally and its solicitous posturing toward the arts. However, perestroika, only one brand of “new thinking” in the theatre, is the subject for another paper. To the extent, though, that Ulianov’s commentary foregrounds the theatre’s quick response to

Gorbachevian ideology insofar as glasnost is concerned, it provides a solid foundation for a discussion of the actual plays produced as a result of the theatre apparatus’s embracing of “new thinking.” The initial theatrical response to the new line was tentative, but significant in a Soviet context.

Cerceau

Viktor Slavkin’s Cerceau was the first play to appear on Soviet stages which indicated that the Soviet theatre (and government) was prepared to accommodate a somewhat unorthodox aesthetic line. Cerceau premiered at the Taganka Theatre in

Moscow on July 4, 1985, about three months after Gorbachev had been elected General

Secretary. The production was directed by Anatoly Vasiliev, soon to be feted by many

Soviet and western theatre critics as the continuation o f the line of brilliant Slavic directors which stretched back to Stanislavsky.

Cerceau is not a “political” play in a traditional Soviet context, but its dreamy atmosphere and world weary characters—by their nature—suggest a politically charged commentary on modern Soviet life. Its historical significance can only be argued from the fact that it was the first major play of the Gorbachev era to reach international stages 126

and cause a discernible stir.23 It remains one of the few Soviet plays of the Gorbachev era which can be discussed from a purely literary standpoint or as a viable contribution to the world canon.

In Cerceau. Slavkin uses the game, cerceau, popular in “(pre-revolutionary)

Russia, both among children and adults,”24 as a metaphorical representation of an irrecoverable past. The play has been linked thematically to Chekhov’s Cherry Orchard by, among others, the playwright himself.25 In the same way that the orchard, the seagull, and Moscow serve Chekhov as emotional symbols which, in turn, serve the characters in the respective plays as links to the past and the fUture, the game of cerceau provides Slavkin’s characters with a last backward glance at their youth.

The characters in Cerceau have gathered at the decrepit dacha of Petushok, who has invited four friends and one mere acquaintance to the country for a weekend holiday.

The old dacha belonged originally to Petushok’s great aunt, who, as we discover in act I, was married to Koka, a “stranger” among the group who appears almost as an apparition through the trees surrounding the dacha. Koka’s imagination and memory are sparked by the appearance of Nadia, one of the four friends, who, having rummaged around in

23 The play was subsequently produced in Holland, Germany, and England to much acclaim. Further, it was translated into Dutch. German, and English within three years of its Russian prcmierc-rclativcly unusual for a contemporary Soviet play. 21 Viktor Slavkin. “Letter by the Playwright Viktor Slavkin to the German Translator of the play Cerceau. Barbara Lehman,” trans. Ton v.d. Lee (Amsterdam: International Theatre Bookshop, 1987) 139; hereafter. Letter, in Viktor Slavkin, Cerceau. cd. R. ten Cate, trans. Thea Hagenteijer, et al. Cerceau is a game played with a stick and rings. The object is to catch the tossed rings with the stick. 25 Slavkin. Letter 136. 127

the dacha, has discovered an “old-fashioned tea-rose coloured grandmother dress.”

Wearing the dress, she speaks, and Koka faints.

In act II, all of the characters sit amidst the aged dacha reading letters written decades previously between Petushok’s great aunt and Koka. Koka reveals that he was married to Liza, the great aunt, but that the marriage lasted only eight days. This discovery leads Pasha, one of Petushok’s weekend guests, to the conclusion that it is

Koka who owns the dacha, not Petushok. Pasha (like Lopakhin in Cherry Orchard) apparently convinces Koka to sell him the dacha, but Koka, in act III, burns the marriage certificate, thus destroying proof of his union with Liza. The guests prepare to leave the dacha, but propose that Koka remain as proprietor. Koka refuses and the dacha is shuttered for what is probably the last time.

Throughout this episodic play, conversation seems disjointed and brimming with malaise. Removed from the context o f its first performance in 1985, Cerceau is a play which might have run up against official disdain via the Ministry of Culture simply because it is so despondent. There exists no connection with preconceived notions of

“Soviet reality” and the barely discernible plot. There are neither essentially “positive” or “negative” characters. At the same time, Slavkin has provided no specific target in the sense that he is not attempting to foreground a social problem or chastise a particular aspect of Soviet bureaucracy. The most subversive quality of Cerceau is its characteriza­ tion of an entire generation as hopelessly muddled in thought and in action, and lacking a

26 Slavkin, Cerceau 170. Hereafter, all quotes from the play will be noted parenthetically with page number only. 128

sense of place in the world. All of the characters in the play are over forty with the exception of Nadia, who is about a decade younger, and whose sensibility is not affected by memories of anything other than a post-Khrushchev world.

Cerceau indicts a generation, but it is done with a very sympathetic hand. This is the stagnant generation, disappointed by Khrushchev’s fall, numbed by Brezhnevian bureaucracy, impervious to change, cynics all. This is not to say that all is lost. It is

Petushok who has assembled the group to propose that the disparate characters live together in the dacha since each is essentially alone. At forty years old, Petushok considers the eccentric plan his last chance to subvert the unvarying pattern of his life:

“When we are fifty it is too late, but when you are forty, you can still risk something”

(167).

The characters in the play give no evidence of Party membership, nor do they hold any overt political positions. The closest the play comes to revealing a prevalent political attitude common to the generation at hand occurs when, in the middle of act II,

Petushok reads an impromptu letter. The melancholy guests or “colonists” have composed their own personal letters in the spirit of those written between Koka and

Liza.

Petushok’s letter is a heartbreaking attempt at recovering some semblance of purpose, of citizenship, of direction, alt compacted many years hence into the collective will: “If someone had asked me twenty years ago, ‘What is the mother country?’, without hesitation I would have answered, ‘All the people of my country’” (188). For 129

Petushok, happiness was once a parade during which a huge mass of people like himself

gathered to march and praise the Soviet way, “but the years went by and there were less

and less people around me ..(188).

Petushok’s monologue continues in an increasingly Chekhovian tone as he

attempts to explain his alienation:

The mother country for us, was a Mayday Parade, a collective trip on the Moskva, a huge choir rehearsal in the stadium . . . My dear colonists, my dear friends! Through my tears of joy I look at you, and embittered I look at my own soul. Who have we got left, except ourselves? We have only got ourselves. And here we are, a bunch of people under one roof. Maybe this is our mother country? (188-189).

The above references to the “mother country” as an illusory entity or at least one which

is not grounded in decree are principal examples of the sort of language which made

Party cultural figures nervous. Before 1985, it is highly unlikely that such language

would have passed the censor intact even at the always rebellious Taganka, particulary

when the words were spoken from a stage set dominated by a ramshackle dacha.

Aside from its place as the harbinger of a renaissance in Russian dramatic

literature, Cerceau is historically important because of Anatolii Vasiliev’s direction of it.

Vasiliev attained international recognition via the presentation of the play at the World

Theatre Festival in Germany in 1987. Although it is beyond the scope of the piece to examine the characteristics of Vasiliev’s unique and controversial style, it is necessary to touch briefly upon a few short comments he has made regarding both his own aesthetic and Slavkin’s play. 130

For Vasiliev, Cerceau “draws a line, it is dedicated to the word ‘no’, which refers to man’s inability to find the strength to liberate himself from the current within himself.”27 The conclusion of the play predictably does not celebrate a new communion of the characters, but it does contain what the director calls an “unexpected moment.”28

Vasiliev is careful not to use the word “hope,” but it is implied. The “unexpected moment” occurs when, after all of the characters have packed and have shuttered and closed the dacha, Valiusha, many years before Petushok’s lover, comments: “I thought

... It occurred to me that we could live in this house now” (224). It is the last line of the play, but the hope it supposedly engenders is severely diminished by the image of the dacha, sagging and empty. The metaphorical use of the game, cerceau, pales in comparison with the dilapidated dacha, a powerful image of the aforementioned “Soviet way” in ruins.

In an interview with Alma Law, Vasiliev discusses his aesthetic. He discards completely the “psychological realism” of Stanislavsky which the government deemed the acceptable approach, instead advocating “‘theatre of play,’ in contrast to the traditional Soviet (or Stalinist) model o f‘theatre of struggle,’ in which everything-the selection of the play, its staging and interpretation—is subordinated to the striving upwards toward a single, unambiguous summit, or superobjective.”29 Vasiliev’s “theatre of play” is a complete rejection of Socialist Realism. The “superobjective” of Cerceau is

27 Anatoli Vasiljev. “Comments by Anatoli Vasiljcv.” trans. Ton v.d. Lee; hereafter. Vasiliev. in Slavkin, Cerceau 129. 28 Vasiliev 129. 29 Alma Law. "Vasilyev Plays for Keeps.” American Theatre March 1989: 22. 131

unclear, ambiguous, and jumbled. The success of the play in the Soviet Union, its entrance into the repertoiy of the Taganka in 1985, and its success abroad (in a tour sponsored by the Soviet government) repudiated all previous notions of a cultural line hostile to such expression.

Further, Vasiliev’s production of the play would initiate a stunning de- mythologizing of Stanislavsky, as noted above, long the only officially appropriate source for the training of actors in Russia. In 1987, Vasiliev would clarify his aesthetic position, one which would have been anathema to the great director: “During rehearsals,

I have often remarked that the ideology, the atmosphere is in fact determined by the way you feel on stage. Try to get away from yourself, learn how to play an environment, the atmosphere. The atmosphere itself is ideology already.”30 Here, Vasiliev discourses on the theatrical hierarchy, for he champions a theatre of art or what he calls “play,” as opposed to a theatre bound to literature or what he calls “the power of the word.”31 Of course the philosophy of theatre expressed by Vasiliev has been expounded upon for decades, but in a Soviet context defined by strict adherence to socialist principles, it was a liberating and defiant break with tradition.32

30 Vasiliev 130-31. 31 Vasiliev 131. 32 Directors such as lurii Liubimov were well known in the West, of course, but they were seen as courageous dissenters, whose works often attempted to critique blatantly the Soviet system. The harassment such directors received at the hands of the government was viewed as a natural offshoot of cultural control under totalitarianism. Vasiliev’s appearance in the West was a strong sign of renewal by virture of the production he brought with him. Further, since Vasiliev had not been hounded and threatened by cultural officials and politicians for attempting to manifest an “unofficial” aesthetic, the kind of theatre he promoted could be read as something other than courageously “anti-Soviet.” 132

The appearance of the play in the West at the least connoted a significantly different attitude toward the function of the theatre on the part of the Ministry of

Culture. Finally, the play introduced Vasiliev to a western audience largely unfamiliar with his work. Cerceau is an important representative of the theatre in transition from the waning years of stagnation and failed reform to the era of “new thinking.” Produced before any real changes had been instituted by any cultural organization and before theatre practitioners could assess the mood of Gorbachev, Cerceau may be called the last substantial play of the Soviet period before the articulation of “new thinking,”

Sarcophagus (Sarkofag)

In the pre-dawn hours o f April 26, 1986, one o f the four nuclear reactors at

Chernobyl exploded. '’' Located not far from the ancient city of Kiev in the Soviet

Ukraine, the explosion posed an enormous threat to literally millions of people, particularly since the fire which followed the explosion in the reactor “sent huge quantities of radioactive material into the atmosphere, contaminating many parts of

Europe and making the immediate area around Chernobyl uninhabitable.”34 As a result of the explosion, the reactor now contains “plutonium, uranium, caesium, and strontium.

Plutonium’s natural decay produces americium-241, a highly-cancerogenous substance

33 For a full accounting of the disaster, see Grigori Medvedev, The Truth about Chernobyl (New York: Basic. 1991). 34 Robert G. Kaiser. Why Gorbachev Happened: His Triumphs. His Failure, and His Fall (New York: Simon and Schuster. 1991) 125. 133

which is volatile and soluble and therefore demands close attention.”35 A 3,000 ton slab of concrete was “tossed up” during the explosion and now rests in an “upright position,

supported by its flanks, but with nothing below it.”36 If the slab should fall, more radioactive dust and debris will enter the atmosphere.

More than 116,000 people were evacuated from the Chernobyl area, but not until weeks after the accident.37 Many were contaminated already. The Soviet government under Gorbachev did not respond officially to the disaster until May 14, eighteen days after the explosion. In that response, Gorbachev announced to the Soviet people that two people had died as a result of the explosion and that of 299 people who had been hospitalized with radiation sickness, seven had died.38

Vladimir Gubarev, chief science editor of Pravda. was one o f the first official representatives of the Soviet government to assess the impact of the explosion on the

Chernobyl plant. A Party member whose support of the use of nuclear energy remains strong, Gubarev was commissioned by the journal, Znamia. to write a lead story about his experiences at the plant. He wrote Sarcophagus instead. Amazingly, Znamia published the play, untouched and completed less than two months before, in its

September issue. When the board of the journal attempted to secure permission to publish the play, they approached Aleksandr Yakovlev, Central Committee Secretary.

35 Yu. Kobzar, “A Report from Hell.” Moscow News 28 Apr.-5 May 1991: 15. 36 Kobzar 15. 37 Vladimir Orlov. “Chernobyl Still Unsafe. Experts Judge,” Moscow News 29 Apr.-5 May 1994: 1. 38 Sec Mikhail S. Gorbachev, “On the Reactor Accident at Chernobyl,” Toward A Better World (New York: Richardson and Steirman. 1987) 230: hereafter. Chernobyl. 134

Yakovlev, according to Gubarev, replied, “What kind of magazine is this that can’t

decide for itself what it wants to print? Print it and send me a copy.”39

After the publication of the play, the Moscow Art Theatre expressed an interest

in producing it, “but a letter-writing campaign had been mounted against the

playwright.”40 It is true that the play posed a problem in that it was clearly an indictment

or the irresponsible and arrogant attitudes of many Soviet bureaucrats unwilling to

administer accountability for the explosion, but it was also deemed “not theatrically good

enough” by Kirill Lavrov, at the time board chairman of the theatre union.41 The

Moscow Art Theatre did not produce the play; in fact, no Moscow theatre did.

Sarcophagus premiered in Tambov, a provincial city more than 300 miles southeast of

Moscow.42 Following several other provincial productions of the play, subsequent premieres took place in Vienna, London (Royal Shakespeare Company), and Stockholm.

The American premiere took place at the Los Angeles Theatre Center on September 18,

1987, in an English translation by Michael Glenny who stated unequivocally that

Sarcophagus “marks an absolute turning point, a milestone in the history of relationships

39 Qtd. in Michael Paller. “Chernobyl and Beyond.” Theater Week 6 Mar. 1989: 51. •,0 Pallcr 51-53. 41 Qtd. in William J. Eaton. "Chernobyl: Disaster as Theatre,” Los Angeles Times 6 Sept. 1987: 48. Clipping. Los Angeles Theatre Center Archive, Lawrence and Lee Theatre Research Institute. 42 The Tambov company brought the play to Moscow for a sold-out, four-day run not long after its Soviet premiere. Gubarev implies official resistance to the production, but this position seems abrogated by the fact that Gubarev was allowed to travel to various western premieres of Sarcophagus (including its American premiere in Los Angeles). It is highly unlikely that the play had not passed the censors in Moscow. Whatever the case, the play was not produced in Moscow by a Moscow company while Gorbachev was in office. Alma Law notes that a popular and controversial play, Compensation (Voznagrazhdenic). “based on interviews of evacuees conducted by the psychologist Adol’f Kharash and other documentary material ” was produced by the studio theatre. On the Boards (Na doskakh), and directed by Sergei Kurginian. Sec Law, Revolution 2. 135

between the Soviet Communist Party and the Soviet people, and of course, the outside world, too.”4?

Perhaps because Gubarev was a journalist and not a playwright, there is an oddly ascetic quality to Sarcophagus, mixed, however, with a breadth of deeply emotional personal experience. A product of its time, the play is an excellent example of the dokumentarnost’ (“documentariness”) genre of glasnost era drama and literature which places “verifiable truth” ahead of “finesse and fantasy.”44 The play is factual in the sense that the data it examines is based on Gubarev’s own knowledge of nuclear energy and in the sense that he witnessed the heroic attempts to extinguish the raging fire inside the reactor. The play utilizes the best attributes of docudrama without resorting to a litany of facts. Gubarev is not so much concerned with a critique of the deadly potential of unchecked nuclear power, but with dramatizing the ways in which the bloated Soviet bureaucracy perpetuates laxity, inefficiency, and secrecy.

Central characters include Bessmertnyi (Russian for “immortal”), a permanent resident of the medical experimentation section of the Institute of Radiation Safety; Anna

Petrovna, a physician at the institute; Lydia Stepanovna, Professor of Surgery; and

Sergeev, the medical director of the institute. The setting is a sleek, sanitized hall used for conferences. The stage also contains ten cubicles or “isolation chambers” placed

43 Qtd. in Richard Slayton. “He Brought Chernobyl to America,” Los Angeles Herald Examiner 27 Sept. 1987: n.p. Clipping. Los Angeles Theatre Center Archive. Lawrence and Lee Theatre Research Institute. 44 See Doming Brown. “Literature and Perestroika.” cd. Jane Burbank and William G. Rosenberg, Michigan Quarterly Review 28 (1989): 765. 136

upstage of the conference area. When the play begins, Bessmertnyi alone occupies a cubicle. After the accident occurs at Chernobyl, additional patients flood the room and are briskly moved into the isolation chambers.

Bessmertnyi is Gubarev’s Greek chorus and wizened prophet, accepting his fate and ready to entertain. He has occupied his cubicle for 487 days, and has effectively severed all ties with his immediate family and the outside world in anticipation of his impending death. Anna Petrovna explains his predicament to three young doctors who arrive at the institute for training just hours before the explosion:

The fact is that this patient of ours was dead drunk and fell asleep alongside some experimental apparatus in a nuclear physics laboratory. Unfortunately, no one noticed him. The experiment lasted about three hours. His total dose of radiation exceeded 600 roentgens. He was brought here unconscious.45

The immortal Bessmertnyi peppers the play with a philosophical humor which does much to level the melodrama, although that, too, is kept in check by Gubarev’s scientific rationalism.

In the most overwrought scene in the play, one of the new young female doctors,

Vera, sits quietly with a young Fireman, who saw the explosion and essentially killed himself for all practical purposes since the radiation dose he received trying to extinguish it was lethal.46 When orderlies bring him to the institute, he has just a few hours to live.

1S Vladimir Gubaryev. Sarcophagus: A Tragedy, trans. Michael Glcnny (New York: Vintage-Random House. 1987) 14. Hereafter, all quotes from the play will be listed parenthetically with page number only. All punctuation is as in the original. 46 In an interview with William J. Eaton. Gubarev stated: “In the first two weeks 1 spent there (Chernobyl). I saw more heroism, tragedy and greatness of the human spirit than I had seen in my lifetime.” The Fireman is obviously the dramatic manifestation of that “greatness.” See Eaton 48. 137

The young Fireman has apparently never known love, so Vera consoles him. The

Fireman dies in act II, having given vital information about the explosion to the Physicist writing a report about the accident.47

When Anna Petrovna tells Vera that the Fireman has died, Vera, of course, wishes to see him. Anna Petrovna, however, states flatly: “Too late now. No one will see his face again. A lead coffin and a concrete sarcophagus ... It has to be like that because his body is emitting two or three roentgens an hour. And it will go on doing so for several decades. I’m afraid you can’t go in there again” (89). With the exception of this obligatory scene of young love thwarted, the majority of the play takes as its focus the notion of accountability for the accident in a Soviet context.

The first among the group of radiated individuals to justify his actions is the

Geiger-Counter Operator, who attempts to convince the Control-Room Operator that the instruments at his disposal were incapable of measuring the explosion; thus, he was incapable of warning those around him that a catastrophe was at hand. The Control-

Room Operator wonders why government officials refused to evacuate the area around

Chernobyl to which the Investigator points out that they were “waiting for a government commission to arrive” (69).

Everything in Soviet society, it seems, has been reduced to a struggle between the honest citizen who wishes to improve the system and the government apparatchiki

17 With the exception of Bessmertnyi. all of the radiation victims are characterized by profession alone. This is in keeping with Gubarev’s stance that the official reports on the disaster dehumanized all those involved. 138

who interfere in order to preserve the status quo. In an angry exchange with the

Investigator, the Control-Room Operator exclaims:

And we bust our guts to speed things up, make promises. ‘Yes, we’ll finish it three months ahead of schedule,’ ‘We’ll have it working forty- eight hours ahead of time.’ But when he asks for a proper set of Geiger counters, nobody up top lifts a finger. Yet we always do what the bosses ask us to d o .. . . Now, why is it like that? We ask them—not a dicky­ bird. But when they ask us, it’s ‘Come on lads!’ and off we go (70).48

This is an attitude which stems back to the satirical prose and drama of Gogol and one which flourished during the first years of the Soviet regime. Only with the ideology of

“new thinking,” however, is the line maintained by Gorbachev encouraged.

Several more exchanges between the Investigator and others at the plant occur during the course of the play, all with the intention of producing some evidence of blame.

The Director of the plant articulates the reason why nothing will come of any investigation. No one will be found guilty because

In an affair like this they’d have to try too many others as well. It would start a chain reaction that might become unstoppable. You know, it would be much better to forget about this accident altogether. . . better for everyone. And that’s what’ll happen, I’m telling you, because it’s bad news for plenty of others besides myself—others who are much, much higher up on the ladder than me (86).

These are candid assessments not only of the way in which the nuclear energy industry was operated in the former USSR, but a quite encompassing declaration of the bureaucratic entanglements which prohibited individual initiative. It is this frankness which allowed William J. Eaton to proclaim on the eve of the American premiere of

48 This is. of course. Michael Glcnny’s British translation from the original Russian. 139

Sarcophagus in 1987, that the play is “remarkable for its candor even in the new era of

glasnost ordained by Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev.”49

Popular Soviet playwrights such as Aleksandr Gelman in the pre-glasnost era had

written plays which exposed inadequate management in industrial circles in the Soviet

Union, for example, Gelman’s Minutes of A Meeting (Protokol odnogo zasedaniial. first

performed in 1976. Sarcophagus, however, under the auspices of glasnost, was the first

play to dramatize an event which had worldwide implications and whose root cause was

inefficiency within the Soviet system. Significant, too, is the fact that the play had its

genesis in a journalist’s public accounting of the disaster, an extremely telling sign that

restrictions imposed upon news agencies in the Soviet Union were being lifted. As

Michael Glenny explains:

Basically, up until Chernobyl there had been very strict censorship rules in the Soviet Union which had been in force since the early 1930s. These rules were imposed by Stalin. They stated what no Soviet publication was allowed to mention under any circumstances. Heading the list of events which the Soviet press had to suppress were natural disasters and man-made disasters. The whole idea was that the Soviet press only contained three elements: optimistic news, news which was only critical of certain bureaucrats and administrators, and occasionally criticism of a certain class of criminals. ... the bad news was always about the outside world.50

The reality of Chernobyl ushered in a new era of Soviet journalism and the theatre apparatus profited.51 Glenny goes further in his assessment of Sarcophagus, calling it

49 Eaton 48. 50 Qtd. in Stayton. n.p. 51 So, too. did Gubarev. In the articles quoted above, the playwright stresses that he chose to render the tragedy through dramatic literature, rather than the newspaper or journal, because he had witnessed it 140

“the first really important outcome of Gorbachev’s policy of so-called openness,

glasnost”52

Because restrictions on the media had not been uniformly lifted prior to

Chernobyl, “wild rumors” about the accident at the nuclear reactor spread; “some got

into print in the West, reporting hundreds of thousands of casualties.”53 When

Gorbachev finally issued an official statement on May 14, the tone of the address was

smug and condemnatory of what he viewed to be the irresponsible coverage, particularly

by the United States, of the events at Chernobyl.

In his statement, Gorbachev begins by explaining—somewhat incorrectly, but

based on the information available to him-what happened:

According to specialists, the reactor’s capacity suddenly increased during a scheduled shutdown of the fourth unit. The considerable emission of steam and the subsequent reaction led to the formation of hydrogen, an explosion, damage to the reactor, and the resulting radioactive discharge.54

This is the extent of the explanation. Gorbachev praises the Party for its reaction to the

event and, as noted above, reveals the number of people known dead or hospitalized.

But the body of the address focuses on western media coverage of the event.

According to Gorbachev, news agencies in the West used Chernobyl as

a pretext to exploit in order to defame the Soviet Union and its foreign policy, to lessen the impact of Soviet proposals on the termination of nuclear tests and on the elimination of nuclear weapons, and, at the same

"firsthand” and the memory of such human valor was too subjective an experience. It is a base point, but Gubarev also stood to make much more money if his play were successful. 52 Qtd. in Stayton. n.p. 53 Kaiser, Why Gorbachev Happened 126. 51 Gorbachev. Chernobyl 229. 141

time, to dampen the growing criticism of the U.S. conduct on the international scene and of its militaristic course.55

For Gorbachev, at least publicly, Chernobyl did not signify the disastrous consequences of the Soviet news apparatus as a state controlled entity subjected to bureaucratic inefficiency, but, instead, as a “grim warning that the nuclear era necessitates a new political thinking and a new policy.”56 This was Gorbachev the astute politician, denigrating the hyperbole characteristic of the frantic western news coverage of the disaster for the sake of tradition, while conjointly using the accident itself as a pretext for advancing his own ideological line. After all, the speech to the Twenty-Seventh Party

Congress was barely two months old and the reality of Chernobyl threatened to undercut the ideological shifts—however slight—which had begun to take place.

Chernobyl was the first outstanding crisis of the Gorbachev era, entailing enormous political consequences during the formulation of “new thinking.” The publication of Sarcophagus in September 1986, about four months after the disaster first captured the world’s attention, was an astounding coup for those who advocated a propelling of the Gorbachevian line, despite Gorbachev’s initial anger surrounding media coverage of the event in the West. Indeed, Robert G. Kaiser does not exaggerate when he proclaims that

Soon after Chernobyl, Soviet information policy began to change dramatically. Glasnost, until then largely a slogan, began to take on a life of its own. This was first evident in stories about Chernobyl itself. In July, after many weeks in which the press played down radiation dangers,

55 Gorbachev. Chernobvl 234. Gorbachev also uses the occasion to invite then President Reagan to meet with him “say, in Hiroshima.” for a summit on nuclear weapons (237). 56 Gorbachev. Chernobvl 235. 142

Komsomolskaya Pravda published a detailed description of the different types of radioactive elements and their possible effects, including their ability to cause various cancers.57

Gorbachev knew well that “another disaster like it (Chernobyl),” according to Evgenii

Velikhov, an influential scientist and pro-Gorbachev politician who led efforts to deal with the disaster, “would be a catastrophe for perestroika and for people’s trust in the state.”58 Gorbachev knew, too, that if his cherished perestroika was to institute the change he had predicted in his speech to the Twenty-Seventh Party Congress in February

1986, glasnost must prepare the way. Sarcophagus, then, acted almost as a cultural emissary during the following year, proving to audiences in Vienna, London, Los

Angeles, and several other cities in the West, that glasnost was a reality.

Cinzano

It is Russia’s jo y to drink. We cannot do without it.

St. Vladimir, Prince of Kiev (965-1015)

Alcoholism has long been a disease associated with the Slavic people. Based on fact or folklore, this association has never really been proven, but anyone who has walked down a street in Moscow or St. Petersburg, Minsk or Kiev, can bear witness to it. The socialist motherland was no more successful in dealing with the problem than the tsarist regime, but during the Soviet era, the militia quickly cleansed the streets of any

57 Kaiser 129. 5S Qtd. in Voices 163. 143

undesirable drunken citizens so as not to distress the foreign tourist. In this sense, then,

the problem was at least out of sight if not out of mind.

Gorbachev launched a major anti-alcohol campaign in the spring of 1985. He

and his strong supporter in this endeavor, Egor Ligachev, mobilized their forces in order

to begin a huge curtailment of the “alcohol culture” of Soviet society. In the rush to

implement the reforms, the entire state apparat participated in the attempt to impede the

production of alcohol: “Vineyards were destroyed, plants dismantled, thousands of

stores closed, vodka prices doubled, and punishments for public drunkenness became

strictly enforced. Police confiscated more than 1 million moonshine stills and 4 million

liters of raw brandy.”59 Liquor production fell by 44% according to official estimates.60

At the same time, press accounts revealed the shocking counterpart to this news:

500,000 people “were brought to administrative and criminal responsibility for moon-

shining” in 1987, as opposed to half that number in 1986.61 The distillation of moon­

shine (samoeon) led to a substantial shortage of sugar throughout the USSR as well.

Most important, the shortfall in tax revenue, once heavily cushioned by liquor sales, was

estimated at 49 billion rubles by 1988.62

There was some good news, however, for the abstemious crusaders. Pro-

Gorbachev journalist, Lev Ovrutskii, writing for Sovetskaia kul’tura in 1988, pointed out

59 Isaac J. Taraswo. ed.. Gorbachev and Glasnost: Viewpoints from the Soviet Press (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources. 1989) 174, 60 Nikita Demidov, “Alcohol Output to Increase to Prevent Turmoil,” The Glasnost Reader, ed. Jonathan Eisen (New York: New Amcrican-Penguin. 1990)21. 51 Demidov 21. 62 Taraswo 174-75. 144

some very encouraging factual information regarding what he felt to be the successful campaign against alcoholism:

For the last three years crime accompanied by drinking has decreased by 40 percent, and the number of accidents involving drunk drivers has dropped by one third. .. . The number of failures to report to work has decreased, and life expectancy increased. Finally, the most important and “final” result o f anti-alcohol policies: For the last two years there have been an average of two hundred thousand fewer deaths than in 1984.63

The evidence for and against the continuation of the campaign to eradicate excessive drinking notwithstanding, the first concerted reform measure of the Gorbachev era began its revision early in 1988 when “the output of some categories of alcoholic drinks, including brandy, grape wines and beer” was increased.64 The anti-alcohol campaign was cancelled outright in 1990.

According to Richard Sakwa, the failure of Gorbachev’s anti-alcohol campaign stemmed back to the way it was conducted. Not only was the intensity of the endeavor unusual considering the Slavic propensity for inebriation, but the method of approach seemed rooted in the command system of the past rather than in the proclaimed spirit of

“new thinking” in the present:

The campaign, conducted in an administrative-command way, was reminiscent of Stalinist crusades, permeated by an authoritarianism and irresponsibility as of old, but in the conditions of the 1980s it was wholly inappropriate and aroused enormous popular resentment against Gorbachev personally. . . ,65

63 Lev Ovrutsky, “Impasses of Sobering Up.” in Taraswo 198-99. Demidov 21. 65 Richard Sakwa. Gorbachev and His Reforms (New York: Philip Allan-Simon and Schuster, 1990) 271. 145

This assessment is valid and, surprisingly, was soon recognized and articulated via Tass. the official Soviet news agency. Glasnost had become a working reality by 1988 and the ill-advised anti-alcohol campaign came under close scrutiny in the press. The campaign was “being carried out in a perfunctory manner,” particularly since it was begun “without thorough consideration of the social consequences of the decisions” which were being made.66 These assessments in and of themselves were important signifiers of the changes already wrought by the implementaion of glasnost less than three years before.

Late in 1987, in the middle of the debate surrounding the benefits and drawbacks of the anti-alcohol policy of the Party, the Chelovek Theatre Studio revived Cinzano, a play by Liudmila Petrushevskaia, which had been written in 1973, but had seen only limited, unofficial studio productions in Moscow and Leningrad in the early 1970s. The young Chelovek company chose to remount the play at a very conspicuous juncture in the glasnost era.

With the exception of Three Girls in Blue (Tri devushki v golubom. 1980),

Petrushevskaia’s one-act play, Cinzano, is the most recognized of her dramatic output.

Written in the Russian vernacular, her plays are ostensibly more baffling than illuminating in English translation. They typically focus attention on the mundane lives and the incon­ sequential actions of embittered people locked into automaton-like lives. In Three Girls in Blue, for example, Ira, Svetlana, and Tatania do nothing but bicker about who will

66 A. Logvinov, “Sober Statistics on Drunkenness.” The USSR Today: Perspectives from the Soviet Press. Selections from the Current Digest of the Soviet Press, ed. Robert Ehlers. ct al. (Columbus, OH: Ohio State UP, 1988) 144. Hereafter, source material from this anthology will be listed as Ehlers. ct al. 146

occupy a certain room in a dusty dacha. The men in their lives are generally shiftless fools. It is a dramatic paradigm which Petrushevskaia has made use of repeatedly in plays written before the Gorbachev era such as Music Lessons (Uroki muzyki, 1983) and

The Staircase (Lestnichnaia kletka. 1983).

There are three male characters in Cinzano: Pasha, Valia, and Kostia.67 Each is probably in his late twenties. (Petrushevskaia is stingy where character description is concerned.) As with Slavkin’s Cerceau, there is generally no conventional plot. The play is a character study which gets its impetus from each character’s relationship to the

Italian vermouth he craves. All three characters relate brief stories and anecdotes, truths and half-truths, about their seemingly squalid and unproductive lives. Their respective marriages are little more than formal arrangements; their wives are discussed only in relation to some personal problem. They are happiest and most content when fully drunk or quickly on their way to that state, because the good thing about drinking is that

“everything slips into the background.”68

Unlike the majority of Petrushevskaia’s plays, in which the intensely colloquial language comes across in English translation as spare to the point of incomprehensibility,

Cinzano offers some honest insight into alcoholism as a disease of the Soviet spirit.

Regardless of the play’s inception and first unofficial performances years prior to 1985, it

67 Smirnova's Birthday (Den’ rozhdeniia smirnovoi. 1977) is Pctrushcvskaia’s companion piece to Cinzano. In it, the women in the lives of the characters in Cinzano receive a hearing. 68 Liudmila Petrushevskaia. Cinzano: Italian Vermouth without Intermission, trans. Elise Thoron, Theater 20.3 (1989): 56. Hereafter, all quotes from the play will be listed parenthetically with page number only. 147

may be read as social commentary presented in the context of Gorbachev’s anti-alcohol

campaign. The play belittles administrative attempts to “cure” a prevalent social problem by both the pathos it engenders and the way in which the playwright diversifies the

subject of alcoholism in order to address all manner of Soviet social ills.

When Pasha, Kostia, and Valia drink, the obligatory foolish and rowdy

swaggering takes place, but they are clearly not just participants in a natural diversion, i.e., “drowning” their troubles periodically in order to persevere. Through the haze of alcohol, the whole of Soviet society comes under concerted fire. Again, although written in 1973, every social problem addressed is relevant to the time of the remounting of the play by the Chelovek company in 1987: the housing shortage, the phenomenon of apartment exchanges, rampant divorce rates, the difficulty of obtaining permission to travel abroad. All three characters are faced with the inconvenience of these societal realities, and all three simply meet night after night to forget about them.

In a Gorbachevian context, the play makes clear that these drinking binges are more than mere attempts at coping with Soviet life. The binges have become the characters’ reality. Meeting in a darkened alley with a bottle or bottles of liquor is the significant and affirmative event of the day, not the inconsequential and unsatisfying job provided by the state, nor the comfort of a home or a family. Valia analyzes their situation thusly:

Why slip away from reality, if the reality is that we love to drink, we love this business, and not because we want to drown our sorrows. Why mask it with flowery phrases? We drink, because it’s beautiful in and of itself 148

to drink! And we have to give reasons for our celebration?! Whose business is it anyway? Who do we have to report to? (56).

Petrushevskaia’s drunks do not recall the romanticized drunken characters of an O’Neill,

Saroyan, or Williams drama, for example, and yet they inspire a far deeper sympathy.

Pasha, Valia, and Kostia do not drink because they are incapable of existing within the

confines of Soviet reality. They do not drink to escape baseness and inhumanity. They

do not drink in order to ruminate about the state of the world. They drink until they can

drink no more because they have nothing else to do. They are suffering from what

Kostia’s doctor calls “dysfunction”:

KOSTYA: Not long ago I had a small sailor’s binge. After a week I came home, went to bed, the doctor gave me a medical certificate with a diagnosis: dysfunction.

VALYA: Of the intestines?

KOSTYA: No. Of everything . . . dysfunction of the whole organism. (58-59).

The notion of the “organism” on a public stage in 1987 is clearly a metaphor for the

Soviet state. Alcoholism may be a major contributor to the apathy which saps worker

productivity, but it is merely one o f many. Official ideology, in which the proud Soviet

worker contributes enthusiastically to the building of socialism and, ultimately, full

communism, is subverted by its own vapidity, effectually framed on the stage via the

dramatized situation.

In 1987, as it was in 1973, rampant alcoholism reveals itself dramatically as a symbol of the state in decline. Produced in 1987, Cinzano was a strong manifestation of 149

the glasnost-infected milieu. It served the anti-alcohol campaign superficially at most. It

went further, though, in undermining that campaign because what the play could not

signify officially in 1973, it would fourteen years later produced publicly under the

auspices of glasnost. Because it was clear that alcoholism as a manifestation of an inert

society could not be tackled successfully until radical changes altered the reality of

housing shortages, divorce rates, and the multitude of pressing social problems in the

USSR, Cinzano countenanced a position opposed to Gorbachev’s own,

Petrushevskaia dramatized a common social phenomenon in Cinzano which had

been noted in the official organs of the Soviet press many times previously. In the early

1970s, for example, a “new form of drunkenness” had become popular:

... a new form of drunkenness has become very widespread and is now almost the principal method of consuming alcoholic beverages. Immediately after work, those who want to drink go to a store, ‘peel off a ruble or two and split a bottle of vodka among two or three persons, more often than not without a snack and glancing from side to side for fear of being caught. When a person who is tired after a day’s work drinks vodka on an empty stomach, it takes effect at once. Thus, we have people on trains, trolleycars, buses and the subway and on the street— candidates for the sobering-up station.69

The success of Cinzano fourteen years after its inception suggests that the dramatization

of the “new form of drunkenness” had lost none of its relevancy on a new generation of

spectators. The anti-alcohol campaign was being pursued vigilantly, but the system

69 N. Khodakov, “Drunkenness Through A Doctor’s Eyes.” Adams, et al. 86. Another contributing factor to the alcohol problem was the way in which vodka was sold. Writing in the mid 1970s, Robert G. Kaiser notes: “Vodka is sold in half-liter bottles with tops made of heavy metal foil. Once the top is torn off. there is no way to replace it; an open bottle is meant to be drunk to the end.” See Robert G. Kaiser. Russia: The People and the Power (New York: Athcneum, 1976) 79. 150

which harbored the problem was still intact. In Cinzano, alcoholism is a symptom of the inadequacies of the Soviet system, not a “legacy of Tsarism” as had been argued for years after the Revolution.70 Again, contextualized by Gorbachev, glasnost, and the anti­ alcohol campaign, the play becomes social commentary, placing ultimate blame for the kind of drunkenness demonstrated by Pasha, Valia, and Kostia at the feet of Soviet socialism.

In a country which saw alcohol consumption increase fivefold from 1940 to 1973

(when Cinzano was written),71 and in which a popular solution to the problem was the construction of additional “drunk tanks,” the politics of Cinzano were too radical for any hope of an official production in the 1970s, and too revealing to be passed by in the

1980s.

Stars in the Mornimz Sky (Zvezdv v utrennee nebo)

In 1985, Brothers and Sisters (Brat’ia i sestrv). an epic play based on a novel by

Fedor Abramov and directed by Lev Dodin, premiered at the Maly Dramatic Theatre in

Leningrad to much acclaim.72 Running seven hours in length, the adaptation “chronicles in almost anthropological detail the rituals, celebrations, intimacies and tragedies of people who, although they were far behind the front lines, suffered immeasurable losses

70 A. Sergeyev. "On the Trail of A Great Killer.” Adams, et al. 87. 71 The increase was estimated at 534%. See Khodakov 86. 72 For a press article relating to the planned American production, sec Alma H. Law, “Dodin Epic Headlines N.Y. Festival.” American Theatre June 1988: 42-43; hereafter. Dodin. 151

during the war and for years afterward.”75 The play was scheduled to be a bold Soviet entry in the New York International Festival of the Arts. The Maly was to be the first

Russian theatre company to perform in America in more than two decades. Brothers and

Sisters, however, was not produced. Two weeks before the play was to open in New

York, funding evaporated. It was an unsettling omen for the Soviet theatre which, in the past, had to deal with censorious bureaucrats, but had never wanted for huge subsidies.74

Dodin blamed the cancellation on the “Soviet bureaucrats” who, he felt, opposed the play on ideological grounds.75

As a substitute production, the Maly company drew from its extensive repertory a shorter, more contemporary play by Aleksandr Galin, Stars in the Morning Sky, which had a cast of seven rather than the more than forty who were to have peopled the stage in Brothers and Sisters. Still convinced that the cancellation of Brothers and Sisters had more to do with pugnacious hard-liners in the Ministry of Culture rather than with the economical aspect of art in capitalism, Dodin was pleased to note that “the bureaucrats can’t be too happy about our doing Stars in the Morning Sky either.”76

Galin based his play on a classic case of Soviet decorum at work. When the

Olympics were held in Moscow in 1980 (the year in which the United States initiated a boycott to protest the Soviet presence in Afghanistan), an attempt was made by city

73 Law, Dodin 42. 74 For an account of the cancellation of the play, see Simi Horowitz. '‘Theatrical Glasnost?”. Theater Week 11 July 1988: 51-54. 75 Qtd. in Horowitz 52. 76 Qtd. in Horowitz 52. 152

officials to purge the city of derelicts, drunks, and prostitutes. The “sobering-up stations” filled rapidly, as did mental institutions and prisons. Many prostitutes who usually worked the area around foreign hotels and inner-city metro stations were loaded into buses and moved outside the city limits. This “moral cleanup of the capital”77 provided Galin with the foundation he needed to explore the ramifications of what

Michael Glenny called “the entire removal of an awkward human element.”78

Soviet authorities faced two problems when trying to address prostitution as a social reality. The first was the government’s official stance which propagated the ridiculous line that there was no prostitution in the USSR. Glasnost destroyed that illusory position. By 1987, newpaper and journal articles about prostitution, vagrancy, and drug abuse proliferated. Descriptive articles detailed life in prostitution and its demoralizing cycle of sickness and disease. Some suggested criminalizing prostitution as it was inimical to socialist development.79 Revocation of a “residence permit” (an invaluable possession if residence were established in Moscow or Leningrad, for example) had already, to some extent, criminalized prostitution, but the punishment

• • 80 which was supposed to follow the revocation—deportment—was rarely administered.

Here was the second problem authorities faced. Fines for prostitution were introduced

77 L. Kislinskava, '“ Easy Virtue’ on the Scales of Justice.” Ehlers. et al. 140. 78 Michael Glenny. introduction. Stars in the Morning Skv: Five New Plavs from the Soviet Union (London: Nick Hern. 1989) x. 79 See Kinslinskaya 140. 80 It was relatively easy for prostitutes to return to their workplaces in the metropolitan centers even if they were actually deported. This was due to the draiveri or the “enablcrs”: pimps, taxi drivers, concicrgcs-anyone whose help might translate into an extra cut. Sec Kinslinskaya 140. 153

in 1988, but to little avail.81 The sheer number of stories which centered on the prostitution problem appearing in journals and newspapers suggested officialdom’s acceptance of prostitution as a reality as it was in any social system, regardless of whether or not that system was informed by capitalism or socialism.

Stars in the Momins Sky was first produced in Leningrad by the Maly in 1987, a time when, as discussed above, media coverage of the grimy underbelly of socialist reality was very popular. Like Sarcophagus. Stars in the Morning Sky was performed outside the Soviet Union as one of the first plays written under the auspices of glasnost.

Unlike Sarcophagus. Stars in the Morning Sky was performed in the West in the Russian language by the Russian company which first produced it.82 It was the first Soviet play produced in America by a Russian company which indicated a loosening of the censor’s hand. As such, it is an important indicator of glasnost in action on the cultural front.

Galin uses the deportation of the Moscow prostitutes prior to the 1980 Olympics as the substructure of the drama. The setting is a rickety hovel once used for the incarceration of mental patients. The proprietor, Valentina, keeps a close watch on the

“prisoners,” and a closer watch on her son, Nikolai. The play deals heavily in stereo­ types. This position is best supported by the characterization of the prostitutes: Laura,

Anna, Klara, and Maria They are a mixed lot, each with her own illusions. Laura is a self-deluded, self-important ethereal woman. Anna is an alcoholic, the veritable “whore

81 See M. Gurtovi. "At What Price. Love?”, Ehlers. et al. 141. 82 The first production of the play outside the Soviet Union took place in Glasgow, Scotland on May 9, 1988. The play was produced in New York in Russian in July 1988. The English language premiere took place at the Los Angeles Theatre Center in December 1988. 154

with a heart of gold.” The rambunctious and inimitable Klara takes her work very seriously and has no qualms about it. Maria, with whom Nikolai, Valentina’s son, is infatuated, has a child and longs to quit the business. The mysterious Aleksandr is an escaped patient from a nearby mental institution. It is he with whom Laura finds solace.

A playwright in the Soviet Russian tradition, Galin liberally mixes deeply felt pathos with boisterous humor. In this sense, Galin follows a long line of modern, pre-

Gorbachev playwrights such as Arbuzov, Radzinskii, and Mikhail Roshchin. The singularly distinguishing feature of Stars in the Morning Skv is its brash and explicit language and the portrayal of prostitutes as main characters. In one of the most stunning moments of the play, Aleksandr discourses on the subject of immaculate conception as a falsity. For him, Mary was perhaps “just an unfortunate prostitute” who was raped by a stranger.8'’ Considered in the context of official Soviet atheism as the scientific equivalent of religion, such a stance is not altogether a disquieting one. However, Anna, the alcoholic, reacts so violently to Aleksandr’s statement that after spitting at him and bitterly cursing him, she exclaims:

Don’t you dare touch her, our Queen of Heaven. (Weeps.)We 're the ones who get raped! Know how many men I’ve had in a night? They’d prick me with pins to make me move my arse . . . She’ll meet me up there . . . she’s pure . . . and holy . . . she’ll wash me clean . . . Shenever had a man! Not one! (106).

83 Alexander Galin. Stars in the Morning Sky, trans. Michael Glenny and Cathy Porter, Stars in the Morning Skv: Five New Plavs from the Soviet Union, ed. Michael Glenny (London: Nick Hern, 1989) 105. Hereafter, all quotes from the play will be listed parenthetically with page number only. 155

It is Anna’s defensive posture when faced with a negative interpretation of her one truth in life—the “purity of the blessed Virgin Mary”—that marks the play as something quite unlike its forerunners. Religion is posited, albeit through a pathetic, drunken prostitute, as a positive force championed even by the most hopeless individual.

Although the Communist Party fluctuated in attitude toward religious toleration, since the Revolution there had always been a strong network of religious believers throughout the USSR, sometimes faced with persecution, sometimes not. Of these believers, the most prominent sects were the Jewish, Roman Catholic, and Baptist

(Evangelical) organizations, along with the Russian Orthodox Church. The Party believed that religion, as a weapon used by the controlling classes to keep the proletariat subservient, would implode upon itself, allowing for a full flowering of scientific atheism.

Still, though, the subject of religion was taboo in any sort of conspicuous public realm.

In Stars in the Morning Skv. Anna’s espousal of religious fervor makes significant overtures to glasnost, particularly when framed by the walls of an official state- subsidized theatre.

After excessive self-revelatory epiphanies and liquor-ridden confrontations, the prostitutes have an opportunity to see the Olympic flame being carried aloft not far from their living quarters. In consummate Soviet dramatic fashion, the characters in the play forget their differences and unite in an emotional show of support for their country’s competitors in the Olympic games. Through tears, animosity is cast aside for the sake of a stirring, transporting moment of sheer theatrical beauty. Running, shouting, drinking, 156

crying, the women rush to the hillside to see the torch as it passes for a brief and

exhilarating moment of redemption. In a communal reaction to adversity, the women

shed themselves of sordid pasts and rejoice in the nationalistic spirit of competition.

When the play was produced in New York in July 1988, Erika Munk wrote that

it captured all the familiar elements o f the “familiarly Russian” dramatic scenario:

“enormous drinking bouts leading to cosmic truths; constant brutality; quick, crude

lurches from cynicism to piety to despair; melancholic singing and the recitation of

classic poetry at moments of crisis; gallows humor; religious fervor; tough, cranky

individualism.”84 Stars in the Morning Skv is all of these things, but its characters, its

situation, and its profane language add the political dimension of glasnost to the play,

historicizing it as a provocative exemplar of Gorbachevian drama.

Dear Elena Sergeevna (Dorogaia Elena Sergeevna)

In cultural terms, 1988 was a watershed year of the glasnost era. The Russian

Orthodox Church celebrated its millenium. President Reagan walked the stones of Red

Square. Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago and Zamiatin’s We were published officially for the first time in the Russian language. The USSR was in the grip of much praised and feared alterations.

On the political front, nationalism resurged as a potent complementary force of

Gorbachevian ideology. Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia balked at Russian dominance and

84 Erika Munk, "Glasnost Realism,” rev. of Stars in the Morning Skv. by Aleksandr Galin, Village Voice 5 July 1988: 86. 157

the Sumgait massacre further deteriorated the always mutually suspicious relations between Azerbaijan and Armenia. In February, Boris Yeltsin was dismissed from the

Politburo. Gorbachev warned of runaway perestroika, of a restructuring which was poorly conceived and in danger of being bungled by energetic reformers. The USSR had not been witness to such a diversity of publicly expressed opinion since the 1920s.

The theatre was not immune to the hurlyburly. The play which best expressed the tumultuous changes wrought by “new thinking” was one written, ironically, in 1980

(at which time it was promptly banned after its premiere). Liudmila Razumovskaia’s

Dear Elena Sergeevna was produced by two Moscow theatres in 1988, the Mossoviet and the Theatre on Spartacus Square.85 The play is a brutal indictment of the turgid bureaucratic centralism which served as the basis for Brezhnevian policy in all spheres of

Soviet life and the ways in which it corrupted those raised under it. Although written in

1980, every aspect of the play’s argument is easily transported to the USSR eight years later. Glasnost and perestroika were on everyone’s lips in 1988, but opposition to the concepts in the upper echelon of Soviet government remained very strong. The

Razumovskaia play is the best dramatic expression of the disillusionment and anxiety which began to parallel the anticipatory undercurrent so characteristic of the age. It is a play, too, which supported the Gorbachevian line insofar as it reflected his calls to chart

85 The play was produced in Estonia in the native language in 1980. It was banned during its Russian language premiere in Leningrad. See John Freedman. “Lyudmila Razumovskaya: Playwright by Chance.’’ Theater Three Final Issue. 10-11 (1992): 197, 158

a new course, at the same time usurping it since at the heart of the problematic it examined was the selfsame Party which was to chart that course.

The premise of Dear Elena Sergeevna is simple. Students Pasha, Vitia, Volodia, and Lalia pay a surprise visit to their teacher, Elena Sergeevna, on the occasion of her birthday. Elena Sergeevna is dumbstruck by their touching words and their selflessness.

Within minutes, the birthday wishes are revealed as a pretense for the real aim of the students. They want Elena Sergeevna to give them the key to the safe which holds their final exams—exams which will determine whether or not they will go to a prestigious university. A hugely symbolic battle between the disparate ideologies held by the school teacher and the students ensues. Although the ending is ambiguous, it is assumed that

Elena Sergeevna commits suicide, stunned by both her students’ callous sensibilities and by the realization that she is somehow largely responsible for their actions.

Volodia is the leader of the student faction; his sense of commitment to the task at hand is unswerving. When his young cohorts falter in their conviction, it is Volodia who urges them on. He is a fairly obvious metaphor for the unscrupulous Soviet citizen attempting to subvert the extensive bureaucratic maze which impedes the climb on the ladder of success. At the same time, Volodia claims that he himself does not need the key to the safe because his father knows the correct people and has played the Party’s game for years. For Volodia, the entire production is as if a macabre test administered to “Dear Miss Elena” in order to force her capitulation to the students’ level of baseness.

He essentially wants one thing: to get his school teacher to admit that the high ideals she 159

has attempted to instill in himself and his generation be laid bare as worthless idealism, utterly incapable of contributing to personal advancement with the context of Party domination.

The other three students vacillate between supporting Volodia (while opposing his methods) and allowing their genuine pity and respect for their teacher to keep

Volodia’s cruelty in check. Vitia is an alcoholic at seventeen; Pasha and Lalia most need the “A” grade to move ahead. Razumovskaia is careful not to depict these students as obscurantist hoodlums, but as victims—they can quote Shakespeare and Dostoevsky with complete surety. It is the “system” which is the enemy, not the teacher, but as the embodiment of the socialist principles which have been skewed by decades of falsity and inertia, it is Elena Sergeevna who must be held responsible.

All of the students have a rationale for the plan to obtain the key. For Lalia, the almost unattainable prospect of her own apartment motivates her. Pasha, a budding literary scholar, must have an “A” grade in mathematics to gain admittance to a notable university in order to continue his academic pursuits. The dypsomaniacal Vitia wants to go to forestry school so the grade is not as important to him, but he agrees to assist in the plan as an act of camaraderie. Volodia thrills to the idea of forcing the morally upright Elena Sergeevna to compromise her principles.

Elena Sergeevna is a child of the Twentieth Party Congress, very much committed to what she views as the moral constancy of socialist ideals: honesty, loyalty, kindness, compassion. Her own idealism has smothered any recognition she might have 160

had of the ways in which those ideals must be manipulated in order to survive and

succeed in the contemporary USSR. After the plan is broached, Elena Sergeevna retires

to her kitchen after ordering the students to take their gifts and leave, at which time

Volodia announces that their teacher has an “Antigone complex.” He explains:

It’s when an idealistic perception of reality gets elevated to a principle. When any force against your personality or your ideals provokes heroic resistance. There’s a really remarkable phenomenon called proportional dependence: the more pressure you apply, the more active and intense the resistance gets. This is the kind of character that produces iron heroes in wartime and leaders of revolutions. But in everyday life they mostly end up simple-minded moralizing freaks, heads in the clouds, holy fools, who nobody takes seriously and only raise a laugh.86

It is from this position that Volodia begins what he calls the “moral reduction” of the

enemy” (17).

Lalia does not comprehend the ethical ramifications of the group’s request. For

her, the quest for the key is a mere formality which must be successfully completed in

order to secure her future. She is the quintessence of the average Soviet citizen who has

been cheated by the entrenched Soviet bureaucracy and its stifling ideology. She has

convinced herself that “to live well these days you have to be a bad person” (21). Lalia

belittles the impenetrability of Elena Sergeevna’s moral code with honest insight: “Do

you want to know the difference between you and us, Elena Sergeevna? You fought all

your life for simple survival, but we’re fighting for a good life” (20). This is the banner

cry of youth in the context of the last years of the Brezhnev era (when the play was

86 Ludmilla Razumovskaya. Dear Miss Elena, trans. Zollan Schmidt and Roger Downey (Seattle: Rain City Projects. 1992) 17. Hereafter, all quotes from the play will be listed parenthetically with page number only. 161

written), but equally appropriate for Soviet youth under Gorbachev (when the play was

performed in Russia) who would incorporate the “new thinking” into their daily lives.

Lalia does not want wealth; her objective is clear when she tells Pasha that she

simply does not want “to live in poverty” (21). Razumovskaia gives her the most

substantial argument in the students’ favor:

Well, life’s a bitch generally, don’t you think so, Miss Elena? Do you ever ride the bus or the trolley? I guess you do since you don’t have your own car any more than I do. So you’ve seen the women’s faces, faces sealed up with heavy rust-eaten locks. Tired faces, as overloaded with troubles as the bags of potatoes and cabbage that they carry. They look their worst in the morning, taking their kids to day-care . . . But I’ve seen other women too. Getting out of fancy cars at the theater where the latest American movie is showing, just for insiders, just for people in the know. Slipping through the sweating crowd and security guards. Oh, those clean and shining faces, like gifts wrapped in cellophane! (19).

Lalia’s spiritual impoverishment is made clear via the above monologue, but it is not due

to her desire for what Elena Sergeevna calls “the plush life” (19). Instead, it is the direct

result of the transformation from socialist reality to the “new thinking.” Because she has

no special connections, no relatives of an appropriately significant Party rank, and no access to either, her confrontation with western culture by means of shiny cars, well- tailored clothing, and the material accoutrements of capitalism engenders a natural longing. For Lalia, there is no reason to cultivate the ideals proffered by her teacher; in her eyes, those ideals did little for Elena Sergeevna except maintain her subservience to the ideology of the old regime. The gap between idealism and its actual implementation 162

in the realm of an unbridled society in flux grows wider in the students’ eyes as “new

thinking” leads to unparalleled reformation of Soviet life.

The students continue to build an arsenal of reasons for their drastic plan. Elena

Sergeevna first refuses to acknowledge their commitment to it. Throughout act I, she,

like Lalia, is confronted with the extremities of “new thinking” in daily life. She numbly

witnesses her students transgress against every moral and ethical position she has

supported over the years. Each call for integrity is soundly contradicted. After being

“frisked” by Vitia, the boys begin to search the apartment for the key.

At the beginning of act II, Elena Sergeevna announces her intention to resign the

following morning: “All my life I’ve tried to inspire you with the ideals of honesty,

fairness, humane dealing with other people. Well, now what? Just set a tombstone on

being a teacher” (24). The students and teacher sit amidst the ruins of the searched

apartment and continue to advance their positions. Volodia continues in a philosophical

vein: “Morality is a human category, therefore it’s relative. I have to go by political

principle, not what’s moral but what’s profitable. When people talk about Peter the

Great, nobody even thinks about moral questions” (25). When Volodia laughingly

proposes marriage to his spinster teacher in exchange for the key, she exclaims: “God

will punish you, Volodya. You mustn’t talk that way” (27). Volodia counters: “What?

What kind of god are you talking about? I don’t recognize any gods! Who are you 163

talking about Miss Elena? We’re atheists, have you forgotten, you taught us that yourself at the school” (27). These duologues continue unabated.87

For these Soviet youth, there is nothing to be gained through honesty because honesty does not translate into monetary or professional success. Pasha explains:

At school we have to play the zealous young communist to get a favorable final evaluation or we can’t enroll in a university, now we have to act like criminals to get the right grade but she’s trying to throw us out, so next we’ll have to act crazy to get admitted to a nice sanitarium where if we’re lucky they might give us a certificate of insanity so they can’t draft us into the army. , . . Don’t you see, Miss Elena, you’re not defending the high ideals of the human race, only a bureaucratic machine and its fake hypocritical morality? (28-29).

Furiously, Elena Sergeevna berates this “generation of little bloodsuckers” (29) with her own testimony. Although she has preached virtue as the cornerstone of a good life under a Soviet flag, for her, it does not follow that virtue, then, is a negative concept:

Do you really think that I’ve seen less evil, hypocrisy, meanness, and deception than you have? What do you think you can surprise me with? What can those blinkered eyes of yours see besides fancy cars, gold trinkets and dazzling trash that gets you so excited your ears ring and your mouth waters? It turns my stomach! Look at these new revolutionaries! They’ve already learned to blame the world’s imperfections for their own meanness! (29).

87 In his review of the play in London (as produced by the Gate Theatre as part of the “Women in World Theatre” season). Irving Wardlc wrote that “several digressive tcacher-pupil duologues about Morality and the Real World” made the play less effective. See Wardle, rev. of Dear Elena Sergeyevna, by Liudmila Razumovskaia. Independent on Sunday. 15 Jan. 1991, rpt. in London Theatre Record. 27 Jan. 1991: 92. 164

After a spurious apology complete with tears and genuflections, Volodia attempts to execute the most sinister component of the plan. When Elena Sergeevna leaves the room, Volodia proposes a staged rape of Lalia. Using an earlier comment made by Lalia regarding Pasha’s inadequacies as a future provider and consort, Volodia urges Pasha to institute the rape so that their teacher will be witness to the crime, thus forcing her to turn over the key in order to stop the rape. Lalia, the intended victim, is unaware of the plan. A horrifying attempted rape ensues, transforming the philosophical ruminations about the old and new generations into a nightmarish few moments of violent reality. Elena Sergeevna, stupefied into dull submission, relinquishes the key and exits into the bathroom, locking the door behind her.

In winning the battle, Volodia loses the war. Vitia, recovering from his drunken stupor and encouraged by Elena Sergeevna’s defense of him during an earlier argument with Pasha, refuses to let Volodia depart with the key. Volodia then abruptly leaves the apartment, still assured of his entry into the prestigious Moscow State University of

Foreign Affairs because of his father’s special connections. Vitia, Pasha, and Lalia do not take the key. Both of the boys leave the apartment. Lalia is seen knocking meekly on the bathroom door, beseeching her “Dear Miss Elena” to open it. There is little doubt that she has killed herself.

Razumovskaia fashions great melodrama out of ideological turmoil in the USSR.

At the same time, since our sympathies undoubtedly find themselves placed squarely in

Miss Elena’s camp, i.e., the old-guard’s, the playwright has slyly moved the dramatic 165

conflict onto another less clearly delineated plane. Volodia’s contention that Elena

Sergeevna embodies the most vapid and misguided notions of Soviet ideology is understandable, but equally disenchanting are the students themselves, who use the

“system” as justification for their criminal actions. If Elena Sergeevna signifies “Soviet thinking” as opposed to the students’ “new thinking,” then the play suggests that the rampant corruption so indicative of the Soviet system will find an equally comfortable haven in a post-Soviet system—only official ideologies will have changed.

Tomorrow Was War CZavtra bvla voina)

If there was any doubt that Gorbachevian policies had initiated an enormously significant revision o f Soviet ideology by 1988, it was dispelled by the official announcement that history tests in the nation’s schools were being cancelled. The ever- widening gap between the consciousness engendered by “new thinking” and the ideology of Soviet reality could not impede the complete revision of what constituted historical truth. Official historical revision had occurred before in the Soviet Union in the realm of education, but rarely without an appropriate alternative vision to take its place.88

Many journalists, cultural figures, and average citizens inundated Soviet newspapers with commentary regarding the need to address the problem of historical truth in the spirit of glasnost. Many in this group supported an all-encompassing revision

88 For example, university exams in Party history were cancelled in 1956. See William B. Husband, “Secondary School History Texts in the USSR: Revising the Soviet Past. 1985-1989,” The Russian Review 50 (1991): 463. 166

of the past in order to recompense the citizenry with an acknowledgement of the moral and ethical transgressions of past Party figures. The following statement is typical of the period: “A grave defect in the discussion of Stalin is the absence of moral assess-ments.

But they must be made!”89 Equally vociferous were those Soviets parroting Stalinist homilies about substantial historical reassessment being the equivalent of slander

(kleveta).90

Historical facts made public for the first time filled the organs of the mass media, the theatre, and the cinema, and few voices of repute arose in defense of those who served the Soviet cause with honor and dignity years before Stalin’s criminal excesses were generally accepted as fact. Boris Vasiliev, a popular author since the 1950s and one of the youthful generation which found itself graduating from secondary school into the war in 1941, contributed a play to the churning social scene which did not revel in exposing historical facts, but was nevertheless based in historical reality. The play,

Tomorrow Was War, was adapted from the novel of the same name.

Vasiliev was one of the few important Soviet playwrights who had survived the aesthetic vicissitudes o f Soviet cultural policy. His novels, plays, and screenplays had never aroused official suspicion, yet they possessed a dignity and truthfulness which set

89 V. Svirsky. "History Passes Over in Silence.” Ehlcrs. ct al. 111. 9(1 The commentators in this camp had been reared in the 1930s and 1940s. The following is a representative letter to the editor quoted in a journal article about the Soviet Union’s confrontation with unvarnished history: “I experienced all the negative aspects of the personality cult because in 1937 my mother was arrested; there were just the two of us (my father had died earlier). But why do we dwell on the negative things that happened in those years? After all, there were many good things, a great deal of enthusiasm and pure faith in a just cause.” Quoted in Yury Orlik. “Treat History with Respect.” Elders, eta l. 111. 167 them apart from similarly themed war drama (his chief preoccupation). Because of this, he and his work were often viewed with disdain by those intellectuals who had been persecuted or refused publication. Vasiliev found himself in the paradoxical position of being a “classic” Soviet writer who served the regime with honor, but who had no conscious desire to do so. Because his concerns, his background, and his aesthetic manufactured literary expressions which seemed to validate the theoretical possibility of a socialist realist canon, Vasiliev was extemely popular with the Ministry of Culture. This coupling between Vasiliev and officialdom tarnished his reputation among succeeding generations, although his work remained celebrated among his own.

World War II has always remained the font of inspiration in Vasiliev’s work. His own biographical sketches read as if written by a typical Socialist Realist “positive hero”:

On the second day after Germany had attacked the Soviet Union, having finished the ninth form of a Voronezh school, Vasilyev together with his classmates turned up at the Komsomol district committee requesting to be sent to the front. Later he would write: For the generation born in 1924 taking part in the war was not a matter of heroism or self-sacrifice, because we acted naturally, and self-sacrifice and heroic deeds are something out of the natural. We were the direct result of the Revolution’s ideas.9'

Gorbachev himself viewed this generation with an awe that bordered on the reverential.

He and the Central Committee had “called upon Party leaders to pay greater attention to the labor, ideological and moral steeling of our young people” in January 1987.92 The

91 Ingrid Sokolova, afterword. The Burning Bush, by Boris Vasilyev, in Soviet Literature Oct. 1987: 70. 9: Gorbachev. Perestroika 115. 168

dramatic manifestation which best expressed his strategy for the successful implementation of glasnost via the “new thinking” was Tomorrow Was War,

The Soviet forerunner to Vasiliev’s play is Fadeev’s Young Guard, discussed briefly in Chapter Two. Tomorrow Was War is one of a long line of Soviet dramas about youth positively and powerfully influenced by Leninism. The students in these youth dramas are exceedingly mature, supremely patriotic, and full of zest and vigor.

They battle philistinism among cynical adults, lethargy among their own ranks, and often foreign enemies of the Soviet Union. The distinguishing mark of Vasiliev’s play, however, is its refusal to dramatize overtly the actual conflict between world historical forces (which in 1987, the year of the play’s premiere in Moscow at the Mayakovsky

Theatre, might be coined as democratization and discredited communism). In

Tomorrow Was War, the battle is not at the front, but in the mind. Both Tomorrow Was

War and Young Guard, for example, pay homage to heroic deeds, but the former understandably allows for a revaluation of why those deeds were performed via Zhora

(the “author” of the event) whose commentary is filtered through his post-war perspective. In this way, Vasiliev succeeds in laying bare “historical reality.”

The dynamic of Tomorrow Was War depends upon the conflicting sensibilities championed by young and old, students and teachers, children and adults. The adults in the play have experienced institutionalized terror, famine, and civil war. There is a paranoid urgency in their convictions which forces them to do battle for the students’ favor. On the brink o f adulthood, the students (members o f the ninth class “B”) are the 169

second generation of the Revolution. By 1940, the year in which most of the play takes

place, the USSR has signed its non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany. At the same

time, the aggression of “High Stalinism” has desecrated the present. Informants stalk

citizens of doubtful loyalty, gulags flourish under the weight of some of the world’s most

brilliant minds, and an unexpected knock on the door forebodes disaster.

With the exception of Vika, whose bookish, witty father is quite an anomaly in

the USSR of 1940, the students in the play are oblivious to the criminal acts perpetrated

by the Party’s ruling elite. They are Komsomol members reared on the ideology of their

country’s special calling. Vika’s father, Bolshevik hero and jaded intellectual,

encourages his daughter to balance her extensive knowledge of Soviet writers with the

more ambiguous virtues of Blok, Esenin, Tsvetaeva. When Valentina Andronovna, the

students’ teacher, discovers that the errant Vika has read Esenin, Grin, and the works of

other “drunken kulak poets”93 to the others, chaos ensues. Vika’s father is arrested on

unfounded charges of embezzlement. Despondency and guilt over her father’s arrest and imprisonment leads Vika to kill herself. Her father is freed just as Russia prepares to defend itself against the Nazi onslaught. The remaining students forgo the questions

93 Boris Vasiliev. Zavtra byla voina. ts., 1988: n.p. Tomorrow Was War is unavailable in English translation. Quotations from the typescript arc my translations. As there is no pagination in the typescript, page numbers will not accompany quotations from the play. The play was translated by an unnamed associate of Vanessa Redgrave when she provided the simultaneous English translation for the Mayakovsky’s production of the play at the International Theatre Festival in London in 1987. The production was directed by Andrei Goncharov. See Vanessa Redgrave. An Autobiography (New York: Random House. 1994) 295. 317. Redgrave also directed actors from the Circle in the Square Theatre School in New York in a benefit production of the play in 1989, when she was appearing on Broadway in Orpheus Descending. E. Colin O’Leary, letter to the author. 11 Aug. 1990. 170 about the ramifications of blind patriotism Vika engendered in them, responding only to the call to defend the ideals for which they would eventually perish.

The ideology of the glasnost era allowed Vasiliev the unprecedented luxury of extricating what had become for many succeeding Soviet generations the romanticized ideas of honor and loyalty from their association with Stalinism. In Tomorrow Was

War, the playwright is preoccupied with demythologizing those ideas, but only insofar as they might recall Stalinist ideologies. If Vasiliev’s depiction of Soviet youth, unaware of the dynamic behind the Stalinist regime to which they are bound, is to produce the desired empathy, then he must juxtapose the students’ innocence with the adults’ somewhat skewed comprehension of that dynamic. And the students’ innocence is the touchstone of Vasiliev’s concerns. Although seen through a shattered prism five decades old, the playwright’s valiant comrades are presented for the honorable and noble people they were.

In The Theater of Yuri Lyubimov. Aleksandr Gershkovich articulates the standard against which the mainstream Soviet theatre audience judged its theatre, glasnost notwithstanding:

In Western theatre a villain in a leather jacket is just a character, but in Soviet theatre this indicates a dangerous sedition, even if the “Cheka” uniform is worn by the smooth-tongued courtier of False Demetrius’s time. If, in addition, he has a wedge-shaped beard, then the whole epoch of the “iron Felix” rises up as if alive before the Soviet spectator 94

94 Alexander Gershkovich, The Theater of Yuri Lyubimov: Art and Politics at the Taganka Theatre in Moscow, trans. Michael YuriefT (New York: Paragon House, 1989) 6. The “iron Felix” is Feliks Dzerzhinskii. head of the feared Cheka and. later, the G.P.U. until his death in 1926. 171

Poliakova, mother to Iskra, one of the students in Tomorrow Was War, wears a leather jacket in the play.95 Commissar and Bolshevik warrior, Poliakova and the leather jacket immediately evoke the era of War Communism. This sign o f ruthlessness initially served to polarize the play’s chief characters, setting the atrophying ideals held by the revolutionary generation against the spirit of questioning characteristic of Vika and her post-Revolutionary classmates.

If “the theatrical sign inevitably acquires secondary meanings for the audience, relating it to the social, moral, and ideological values operative in the community of which performers and spectators are part,”96 then the leather jacket remains a powerfully connotative sign on the stage of a Moscow theatre. Playwright Vasiliev challenges an incipient glasnost-induced Russian sensibility by means o f his brief dimensionalization of the character wearing that connotative garment. When Poliakova’s daughter, Iskra, returns from the funeral of Vika, who has gradually usurped Poliakova as her ideological mentor, Poliakova begs that her daughter not arrange a tribute which might be construed as an affront to the authorities:

MOTHER: There will be many tragedies in your life. I know that this is your first—it is always the worst-but you must prepare yourself to live and not train yourself to suffer.

ISKRA: Maybe I should train myself for life?

MOTHER: Don’t mock me. I’m speaking seriously. I am trying to understand you.

95 In the script and on the stage (in June 1988.1 saw the Mayakovsky’s production of the play), Poliakova's costume plot is essentially all leather. 96 Kcir Elam. The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama. New Accents (New York: Methuen, 1987) 10. 172

ISKRA: Am I so mysterious?

MOTHER: Iskra, suicide is a sign of weakness, it is as simple as that. That’s why for centuries humankind has not respected suicides. You, of course, will go to the funeral... it is correct. Friends should pay their last respects. But I forbid you to arrange a tribute. Do you hear?

ISKRA: Vika was a Komsomol member. Why shouldn’t there be a tribute?

MOTHER: Because we don’t respect those with weak wills and weak nerves. That’s why I beg you—no speeches. Either you give me your word or I will lock you in your room and not allow you to go to the funeral.

ISKRA: Is it possible you could do that?

MOTHER: Yes, because I am not indifferent to your future.

ISKRA: Oh, mama, didn’t you teach me that the best future is a clear conscience?

MOTHER: Conscience for society! (Both are silent.) You’re the only thing I’ve got Iskra. I’m not the best mother, but even bad mothers dream that their children will one day be happy.

When Iskra returns from the funeral, Poliakova discovers that her daughter has, indeed, arranged a tribute. (Iskra reads Esenin’s suicide poem at graveside.) Poliakova removes the belt which tightly binds the leather jacket and raises it as if to strike her daughter.

Iskra responds: “I love you very much, mama, but if you hit me just once, just one time, you’ll never see me again.” The hand holding the belt falls and Poliakova accepts defeat.

Cathartic beyond measure for the Soviet spectator, Poliakova utters her final lines in the play: “Change your clothes, you’re soaked. A parcel has arrived for you. ‘To Iskra, private and confidential.’” The “parcel” is a book sent from Vika before her death and is 173

inscribed with a rationale for her suicide. Zhora’s final monologue reveals that the

German fascists hanged both mother and daughter not long after the Nazi invasion.

The absolute evil which marks Poliakova until she speaks her final lines gives way to a humane dimension of the sterotypical War Communist. In the rush to vilify the

Bolsheviks that accompanied the recuperation of history during the era of glasnost, these few lines act as a reminder that not all of the Bolsheviks were degenerates. Vasiliev is no apologist for the brutal excesses of the “leather jackets,” but he cannot condone the representation of his generation as essentially an evil lot. In Tomorrow Was War, glasnost era drama comes full circle.

Vasiliev contributed an essay to Moscow News in 1991 in which he wrote:

To regain what Russia was deprived of in 1917, when our historically evolved raison d’etre was replaced by the idea of class struggle, we must first and foremost put an end to the civil war raging in this country since Russia was taken over by the Bolsheviks. It is high time we stop dividing ourselves into “us” and “them.” We must try to recapture the meaning of life instead of standing firm at the rusty barbed-wire defences of yesteryear. We must revive Russia’s material and spiritual might. Our collective responsibility is not to party leaders of whatever colour, to the electorate or the Supreme Soviet. We are responsible before our own children.97

Tomorrow Was War is an excellent example of the drama of the glasnost era in that it appropriates the ideology of “new thinking” via the play’s acknowledgement of what Gorbachev continually referred to as the Party’s “past mistakes,” while never discrediting the Party overtly.98 Vasiliev’s young martyrs signify the best the Soviet

97 Boris Vasiliev, "Has Russia Lost Her Power?" Moscow News 21-28 Jan. 1991: 4. 98 In fact, Vasiliev sidesteps the issue of Stalin altogether, never once mentioning him during a play in which most of the action takes place in 1940. 174

Union produced. However, the irony of presenting those “children of Lenin” fighting and dying for the Stalinist regime in the context of the Gorbachev era is extreme.

The question, “What is to be done?”, which dogged Imperial Russia from Gogol to Chernyshevsky, from Gorky to Lenin, elicited some viable answers during

Gorbachev’s tenure as leader of the USSR. However, precisely because of the answers proffered by “new thinking,” a more pressing question hounded the reformers: “What did they die for?” It is this juxtaposition of innumerable answers initiating even more innumerable questions which plagued the reformers during the Gorbachev era. The dramatic and theatrical manifestations of glasnost participated, albeit without malicious intent, in destroying Gorbachev’s position as its chief spokesperson.

Onward! Onward! Onward! (Dal’she! Dal’she! Dal'she!)

If one playwright popular during the era of glasnost deserves the title

“representative,” it is Mikhail Shatrov, whose perspicacity in the realm of drama and historiography is undeniable. With such plays as The Bolsheviks fBol’shevika. 1966) under Brezhnev, and The Dictatorship of the Conscience (Diktatura sovesti. 1986) under

Gorbachev, Shatrov, like Vasiliev, has weathered many alterations and revisions of aesthetic policy. Unlike Vasiliev, Shatrov often impudently cast aside the temporal 175

necessities of a particular epoch’s “Party spirit” in his drama and, therefore, found himself at odds with the ruling elite on many occasions."

The “representative” label fits his work not so much for its dramaturgy (for in this regard he was unique), but for the ways in which his documentary drama best captured the convoluted state of Soviet ideology under both construction and destruction. According to Martin W. Walsh, Shatrov’s glasnost plays “might even be said to present this ideology’smutations , with the possible evolutionary promise this might entail.”100

Shatrov’s central concern as a playwright is the dramatization of significant events in Soviet history. In The Treaty of Brest Litovsk (Bretskii mir. written 1962; produced 1987), Shatrov theatricalizes what he sees as the great post-Revolutionary nexus of Bolshevik rule: the extrication of Russia from World War I. Lenin is at the heart of the controversy, of course, and Shatrov clearly comes down on his side. Like

Gorbachev (by all accounts an admirer of Shatrov’s brand of historical reassessment101),

Shatrov revered the founder of the Soviet Union, but opted for a less obsequious critique:

Only a truthful recreated epoch enables the author to outline Lenin’s image. To reveal the many facets of that image and its unique quality, it is necessary to convey the entire complexity and acuteness of ideological strife and depict the personalities of the Revolution as they were at the

99 For example, the “Lenin films” on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Lenin’s birth for which Shatrov wrote the screenplays and which were banned for almost two decades. Sec Edvard Tscrkover’s interview with Shatrov, "An Image of Greatness," Soviet Literature Jan. 1988: 121. 100 Martin W. Walsh. “Mikhail Shatrov and Gthe lasnost Lenin Play,” Theater Three Final Issue. 10-11 (1992): 104. 101 Sec Walsh 102. 176

time according to the role they played in history and the position they then occupied.102

This position is the exact equivalent of Gorbachev’s own, but Shatrov goes further:

“Today we have every opportunity in the arts and literature to win once again the battles

the Party and Lenin won in their day.”103 The dramatic manifestation of Shatrov’s brand

of glasnost was his highly controversial play, Onward! Onward! Onward!, never

produced in Moscow, Leningrad, or in any of the major cities of the various Soviet

republics during the Gorbachev epoch.104

The play is a fine example o f what Tovstonogov called “theatrical social

journalism,”105 more concerned with propagating the ideology of glasnost for the

successful implementation of perestroika than with dramatic nuance. Onward! Onward!

Onward! takes place on October 24, 1917, the day before the seizure of power by the

Bolsheviks from the provisional government, a time when, according to Lukomskii, a

Russian general and a character in the play, “there’s no freer country in the world than

Russia.”106 Shatrov goes to great lengths to connect the October Revolution with the

evolving revolution of “new thinking,” just as Gorbachev himself did in his speech

marking the seventieth anniversary of the dawn of socialism in Soviet Russia.

lo: Qtd. in Tserkovcr 124-25. 103 Qtd. in Tscrkover 125. 104 The play was published in Znamia in January' 1988 to a storm of praise and criticism. There have been provincial productions in Russia, but the ideology of the Yeltsin era is not in keeping with the play’s enthusiastic support of Gorbachev’s pro-Lenin positionality. 105 Gcorgi Tovstonogov. interview, “Perestroika. Glasnost. and Theatre.” Soviet Literature Sept. 1988: 185. 106 Mikhail Shatrov. Onward! Onward! Onward!, in The Bolsheviks and Other Plavs. ed. and trans. Michael Glenny (London: Nick Hern. 1990) 181. Hereafter, all quotes from the play will be listed parenthetically with page number only. 177

In Onward! Onward! Onward!, twenty-four characters discuss the consolidation of Bolshevik power on the eve of the revolution. Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, Kornilov, Rosa

Luxemburg and various others trade arguments and insults as they debate how and if

Stalin hindered the full flowering o f Leninism because of his “anti-democratic” tendencies. Interestingly, Stalin defends himself well in spite of the constant evocation of his moral reprehensibility which his opponents use as a basis for their position.

Shatrov does not propose a simulated courtroom for his dramatic scenario; instead, he uses the historical figures as a backdrop for scenes based on historical reality that for years had been either officially ignored or altered by the regime. It is Shatrov’s attempt to fulfill Gorbachev’s call “to assess the past with a sense of historical responsibility and on the basis of historical truth.”107 Thus, Rosa Luxemburg warns the

Bolsheviks of the dangers of curtailing certain freedoms in the name of securing their rule-even if only temporarily—because such a curtailment of individual freedom may

“harden into a permanent virtue” (199). Shatrov lets Lenin support this notion, but

Lenin also exclaims that “such an outcome is by no means inevitable,not it is programmed into our system!” (199). Here, the “new thinking” of the Gorbachev era takes center stage. The assumption being, of course, that Stalin calcified certain restrictive measures introduced under Lenin’s aegis which were intended as transitory stopgaps.

107 Mikhail Gorbachev, October and Perestroika: The Revolution Continues (Moscow: Novosti, 1987) 18; hereafter. 2 Nov. 1987. 178

The ghosts of the Revolution bicker about such things as whether or not the insurrection should have been postponed until the Congress of Soviets met and whether or not Lenin’s “last testament” should have been read to the Party Congress rather than to separate delegations. The White generals have their say, too, and Shatrov does not paint them exclusively as ruthless opportunists. This portrayal of the anti-Bolshevik forces is in keeping with the times in that it pays “due credit to all the heroic things in the past”108 whether achieved by a White general or a Red revolutionary.

Shatrov peoples the pages of this drama with many formerly forbidden political figures—Bukharin among them—less than one month before another group of one-time

“enemies” of the Revolution had been rehabilitated by order of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.109 With the government’s blessing in tow, Shatrov dramatizes the first legitimate debate among Bolshevik leaders concerning the entire history of their rule. He is able, then, to treat his audience with impassioned rhetoric from the triumvirate of

Lenin, Stalin, and Trotsky, a grouping unthinkable in a public forum just a few years before. But even this new objectivity ordained by the Party does not move Shatrov far from the official line on why criminal acts against innocent Soviet citizens were prodigiously carried out for decades under Communist rule. The actions of Lenin, for example, remain unimpeachable. Lenin via Shatrov via Gorbachev counters the claims to

“democratic” motives on the part of Stalin and Trotsky as “naked struggles for personal

108 Gorbachev. 2 Nov. 1987 18. 109 Included in this rehabilitated group was Aleksei Ivanovich Rykov, Shatrov’s uncle, sentenced to death in 1938. Sec Andrei Melville and Gail W. Lapidus. cds.. The Glasnost Papers: Voices on Reform from Moscow' (Boulder. CO: Westvicw. 1990) 103-04. 179

power” (229). Lenin continues: “ . . . you both subscribe to the same authoritarian creed: for both of you the masses are simply the object, the dumb beneficiaries of your good deeds, and not the subject, the initiators of creative political action” (228-29).

Most significantly, Shatrov allows Lenin the chance to apologize publicly (and posthumously) to the Soviet people for not insisting on Stalin’s removal from the ruling elite:

I am unquestionably guilty of failing to remove Stalin from his post in 1923—my accursed illness prevented me . . . but that is no excuse because I perceived the true state of affairs too late and did not reform the system in a way that would have prevented Stalin—or anyone else—from gaining absolute power (247).

From Shatrov’s perspective, the “true state of affairs” was Stalin’s intention to subvert the principles of Leninism for the sake of his quest for absolute power. Still, though,

Shatrov does not resort to a deification of Lenin. Stalin disputes Lenin’s position that tyranny was not “inevitable” after Lenin died. Stalin argues: “I really did nothing but take your methods and adapt them to new historical circumstances” (231). Lenin’s case is further weakened by Bukharin’s contention that because of Lenin’s postulate regarding Party loyalty, those who found themselves implicated during the purges refused to “break ranks” even if it meant execution: “It was Lenin, after all, who taught us that the unity of the Party was the supreme good. So we didn’t break ranks and appeal to the Party” (236).

After many personal vendettas have been explored and many versions of official

Soviet truth debated, Lenin and Stalin find themselves alone. Shatrov writes that Lenin 180

“wants to say something to us in private—something important, essential” (254), but that he is waiting for Stalin to leave the stage. Stalin does not leave, for he himself wants to talk with his mentor alone:

STALIN: I would like a word with you, to explain everything.

LENIN: (harshly). You and I have nothing to say to each other. (To the auditorium.) We must go onward . . . onward . . . and onward!

They continue to stand in the same positions, a considerable distance apart. We are all longing for STALIN to go. But he does not go (254).

Without Stalin, almost thirty years of Party rule is essentially meaningless. Without

Stalin, would there have been a Leninist legacy to ponder? This is the conjectural point of dramatic conflict which Shatrov wishes to judge, but as an admirer of Lenin and his

(then) contemporary protege, Gorbachev, Shatrov must adhere to the ideological underpinning of “new thinking”: that without Stalin, the USSR would not be grappling with such an extensive list of crimes committed against the Soviet people. In Onward!

Onward! Onward!. Shatrov uses the first head of the Cheka, Feliks Dzerzhinskii, to express this position: “How great was the potential of the October Revolution, if even under such nightmarish conditions it produced such results!” (248).

Onward! Onward! Onward! intensified the struggle between those who would continue to varnish the Soviet past for the sake of the future of socialism in the USSR and those who wished unlimited access to historical archives. A radical element of the former group (apologists for Stalinism) gained much exposure after the publication of 181

the Nina Andreeva letter.110 It included a broadside against Shatrov who, as a

playwright, “clearly ignores the objective laws of history as displayed in the activity of

the classes and masses.”111 The letter also criticized Shatrov for his deviation from “the

accepted principles of socialist realism,”112 an ominous allusion which just a few years

earlier would have translated into severe reprimands against the playwright and virtually

no hope of production for the play in question.113

The Andreeva letter was published a little more that two months after Shatrov’s

play had been published in Znamia. Many reviews of the play and much editorial

commentary appeared in the course of those two months. An article in Pravda published

in mid-February advanced the position that Shatrov’s play “contains a potential danger—

the danger of representing the historical process as one of conflicts between

individuals.”114 This is a standard Soviet Marxist reading of the play. The fear among

this group was that the masses, discombobulated by the maelstrom of information and

events surrounding “new thinking” would arbitrarily judge the actions of Stalin outside

of the historical conditions in which Stalin ruled.

1,0 The letter is discussed in detail in Chapter Three. 111 Nina Andreeva. “I Cannot Forego Principles." rpt. in Soviet Society Under Perestroika, cd. David Lane (New York: Routledge. 1991) 134. 11: Andreeva 133. 113 Before Gorbachev, an attack published in a major newspaper or journal made against a play or novel or film, almost always led to the removal of “ideologically impure” dialogue, for example, or the stoppage of production or further publication. Thus, cultural and political figures on both sides monitored the impact of the Andreeva letter’s denunciation of Shatrov to sec how permanent Gorbachev’s glasnost really was. Of course, the very appearance of the play in Znamia in 1988 was a telling sign. 1" G. Gerasimenko, ct al., “Only the Truth is its Own Judge.” Ehlcrs. el al. 177. 182

Appropriately, the other side of the debate was argued most forcefully by a group of theatre practitioners in an article published in Pravda in late February 1988, two weeks before the Andreeva letter saw print.115 This amalgamation of directors, actors, and playwrights took note of the criticism which had accompanied the publication of

Onward! Onward! Onward! and warned that “under the guise of discussing the historical problems reflected in the play,” certain critics, journalists, and historians were “closing off the very possibility of an artistic comprehension of our country’s history.”116 The limits of glasnost were being tested and both sides anticipated the worst.

Although the group of notable and much lauded theatre practitioners argued that the play should be read for its artistry rather than its politics, there is no escaping the fact that Shatrov’s play offered an absolutely revolutionary view of the past which, by using real historical figures in both real and imagined circumstances, succinctly challenged decades of more or less officially sanctioned Soviet history. The letter concludes:

Methods of suppressing artistic dissent are dangerous; pinning political labels and making ideological accusations that completely disregard the nature of art are dangerous. We have paid too dearly for this insight to have a new round start all over again.117

Such was the nature of the “theatre as art” camp’s position against those who saw in the play a “threat to the very legitimacy of the CPSU’s dominant role in Soviet society.”118

115 The letter was signed by, among others, Viktor Rozov, Georgi Tovstonogov. Mark Zakharov, and Oleg Efremov. Sec “A New Round?" Ehlers. ct al. 177-78. 116 Rozov, et al. 178. 117 Rozov, ct al. 178. 118 Robert Ehlers. ct al., "A Historical Political Plav Tests the Limits of Artistic Expression.” Ehlers. ct al. 174. 183

Heart of A Dog fSobaki serdtse)

Despite the ways in which the Gorbachev epoch glorified the new direction, the new method, the “new thinking,” the majority of the theatrical manifestations of the prevailing ideology of the time emphasized the “old” or, in other words, they were suggestive of a proclivity for staging the past rather than the future (or, at any rate, a present modified by the past). Insofar as “new thinking” stressed a coming to terms with unvarnished history and the Party’s inextricable role in it, the theatre’s preoccupation with the past via both the production of formerly banned works and of contemporary ones which dramatized historical events has dissipated considerably since the early

1990s. This is the inevitable result of what Nancy Condee and Vladimir Padunov have called Russia’s “reimagining (of) itself as it awakens from the last, rosy dream of perestroika ” 119

The rush to produce the past or that which was once unproduceable attracted the attention of expatriate Soviet directors and their native Soviet counterparts who were working in the West. Both camps threw their considerable energies behind productions of pre-Revolutionary plays and adaptations of classic novels. Indeed, some of the best work to come out of the Soviet Union during the Gorbachev era was first mounted outside its borders. Among the best of this group were an adaptation of Dostoevsky’s

Crime and Punishment in London and at the Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., directed by Iurii Liubimov, and Robert Sturua’s controversial production of Chekhov’s Three

119 Nancy Condee and Vladimir Padunov.“Perestroika Suicide: Not by Bred Alone.” Harriman Institute Forum Jan. (1992): 14. 184

Sisters which featured a triumvirate of Redgraves.120 At the Alley Theatre in 1988, famed Lithuanian director, Eimuntas Nekrosius, provided Houstonians with his much heralded version of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, and at the Public (Joseph Papp) in New

York, Oleg Tabakov directed the Moscow Art Theatre School in Aleksandr Galich’s My

Big Land (Maia bol’shaia narodnaia). first seen in dress rehearsals in Moscow in 1958 before its official banishment from the stage shortly after.121

In Gorbachev’s Russia, too, theatre companies dusted off scripts and dramatic adaptations which had remained officially unproduced for years. I have already discussed such plays as Cinzano and Dear Elena Sergeevna as representative of this trend in the context of the Gorbachev era. But nothing previously banned by the Party represents more fully theatrical glasnost at its most iconoclastic than the rehabilitation of the work of Mikhail Bulgakov, whose many novels and plays saw a multitude of incarnations on the Soviet stage during the late 1980s.122 Of these, his Heart of A Doe was the most important and popular contribution to the Gorbachevian dramatic Zeitgeist.

The manuscript of Heart of A Dog had been seized by government agents in

1926. The novella remained officially unavailable to Soviet citizens until it was published in the journal, Znamia, in 1986. The stage adaptation premiered in Moscow at two different theatres during the 1986-1987 theatre season. The adaptation and subsequent

120 For an insightful analysis of this production, see Dr. Susan Jonas. “Less Mattering and More Art: Chekhov’s Comic Dramaturgy and Sturua’sThree Sisters." Theater Three Final Issue.10-11 (1992): 202-10. 1:1 For a review of this production, see Richard F. Shepard, rev. of Mv Big Land, by Aleksandr Galich, New York Times 17 Aug. 1989: n.p. Clipping File. Lawrence and Lee Theatre Research Institute. The work of Mikhail Bulgakov is briefly discussed in Chapter Two. 185

production generally regarded as the most apt was staged by the company at the Theatre for the Young Spectator in Moscow.123 Like the novella on which it is based, the stage rendering of Heart of A Dog is a raucous and pointed satire of the Revolution, embodied by Sharik, a dog turned insufferable “new Soviet man” by the brilliant scientist, Philip

Philopovich Preobrazhenskii.

Through Sharik, Bulgakov lampoons all that is vulgar and most insidious about the Soviet system. Indeed, Sharik as man is the supreme philistine, a purger o f

Moscow’s cats, overloaded with empty ideological phrases, but determined to exploit them. He is a thief, a drunkard, and a liar. When he threatens to expose the doctor’s privileged lifestyle, the “experiment” comes to an abrupt end or is, at least, reversed.

Sharik finds himself under the knife again, but this time it is to transform the man back into a dog. At the story’s end, Sharik rests comparatively well at the feet of his doctor and benefactor. His dog state has gripped him completely.

In the whole of Soviet literature, there exists no more prophetic statement than that which Bulgakov’s Philip Philipovich utters near the conclusion of Heart of A Dog.

When Sharik’s human comrades question the doctor as to the whereabouts of their hero,

Philip Philipovich, shrugging his shoulders, says: “Science has not yet discovered methods of transforming animals into humans. I tried, but unsuccessfully, as you can

'"3 The play was adapted by Aleksandr Chervinskii. An English translation of this adaptation can be found in Stars in the Morning Skv: Five New Plavs from the Soviet Union, ed. and trans. Michael Glcnnv (London: Nick Hern. 1989) 1-59. 186 see. He spoke for a while, and then began to revert to his original state. Atavism.”124 In one sense, Bulgakov here indicts Marxism as legitimate “science”; in another, he acknowledges that Soviet Marxism deserved the chance it had been given. Still, though, the novella was written early in 1925 (less than a year after Lenin’s death), and for

Bulgakov, at least, the Soviet experiment had already proven a failure by that time.

The stage adaptation of Heart of A Dog was an astoundingly popular play of the glasnost era, garnering critical raves and the time and attention of thousands of Soviet citizens, including Andrei Sakharov. About the adaptation’s production, he wrote:

You meditate on the play, and you find yourself involuntarily returning to the irrefutable thought consecrated by time: the scientific and technological progress outstrips everything connected with the spiritual growth of man. It is fearsome even to contemplate that the spaceships of the future can be steered by people with foul hearts. Such people would befoul the whole Universe!125

Unlike the plays chosen as representative examples of the “recuperative” drama of the first half of the Gorbachev epoch above, the stage adaptation of Heart of A Dog is truly a play of a very different time and place, transposed to the late 1980s. Its appearance implied the Party’s recognition of the reality of over sixty years of Soviet disinformation, as if Bulgakov’s foresight, once officially considered traitorous and “class alien,” had finally been validated.

124 Mikhail Bulgakov, Heart of A Doe, trans. Mirra Ginsburg (New York: Grove. 1968) 121. The translation from the stage adaptation reads. “Science lias not yet discovered the means of turning animals into people. I tried but failed, as you sec. He can still talk a little, but he has already begun to revert to his primary, canine nature-’ (Glenny 59), 125 Qtd. in Soviet Literature July (1988): 5. 187

Conclusion

Cerceau was the opening salvo in the battle to liberate drama from socialist realist mandates. Sarcophaeus pushed the boundaries further by daring to indict the entrenched Soviet bureaucracy without resorting to allusion; instead, a specifically Soviet nuclear catastrophe known to the entire world served as catalyst. When Gorbachev advocated open discussion of prevalent social problems such as alcoholism and prostitution, Cinzano and Stars in the Morning Sky made manifest that openness in the theatre. Dear Elena Sergeevna, revived after its banishment eight years earlier, rebuked the Party as perpetrator of unrealistic, bankrupt moral positions within the context of its dominance. Both Tomorrow Was War and Onward! Onward! Onward! rehistoricize

Soviet history, taking Gorbachev’s affinity with looking anew at “past mistakes” to task.

Heart of A Dog, based on the novella banned for sixty years, brings “new thinking” full circle as it taps into a visionary literary figure’s prophecy about the dangers of eliminating what is generally referred to as the “human element” in any social experiment.

The abundant possibilities offered by “new thinking” to reexamine history, social problems, and the nature of Soviet aesthetic theories found actualization in many plays of that time, but were most fully realized in the eight plays discussed in this chapter. In this post-Gorbachev era, they appear excessively tame, but in their own political and social context, they remain weighty indicators of how an entire country grappled with all manner of restructuring. 188

The last half of the Gorbachev era, 1989-1991, may have witnessed a continued specifically political restructuring, but the theatrical apparatus had already experienced its most significant alterations during the first half of the era. The extent of these alterations, of course, was not fully felt until virtually all state subsidies were halted during the Yeltsin epoch, but by this time, purely aesthetic alterations were no longer the cause of extensive debate among the intelligentsia or within the government. By 1989, for example, not even Gorbachev himself could escape the satirical jabs aimed at the original perestroishchiki.126

Once the novelty of the exorcism of the past had worn off, the Soviet theatre faced (and continues to face) its most formidable task: the construction of a contemporary canon irrespective of classic Soviet plays previously banned, as well as the

“theatrical social journalist” pieces in the manner of Shatrov. Essentially, theatre as a vivid history lesson brought to life lost its appeal after usurpation by the availability of uncensored history books. All of this made more complicated by the reality of a market economy which began to infest the once insulated theatre community with commercialism. Although it is still too early to ascertain just how completely the Soviet theatre will succumb to western style economics, it seems well on its way to a necessary adjustment.127

1:6 The Associated Press reported that Gorbachev’s daughter left a Moscow theatre “before the curtain call” after a satirical play about her father. The Tribunal, by emigre writer Vladimir Voinovich, had been staged. The Ohio State Lantern 30 Nov. 1989: 12. 1:7 See Lurana Donnels O’Malley. “From Censorship to Openness. From Subsidies to Sponsors: Restructuring in the Recent Moscow Repertory,” Theatre Perspectives International 1.2 (1994). CHAPTER VI

CONCLUSION

Introduction

The first half of the Gorbachev epoch was wrought with cataclysmic economic, political, and aesthetic “re-thinkings.” Attempts made by Soviet reformers to recuperate

“real” history from decades of officially sanctioned obscurantism were met with enormous resistance, but the process of recuperation prevailed once it had become a full­ time occupation for scores of artists, politicians, and academics. As a result, a level of sorrowful knowledge unmatched in Russian history characterizes the period 1985-1991.

Soviet ideologies, stripped of all pretense and bloodied by each glasnost-induced revelation, were incapable of withstanding the sheer momentum of “new thinking.”1

The concept of a humane socialism (which, Gorbachev hoped, would be borne of “new thinking”’s coroliary ideological constructs, glasnost and perestroika) was too closely associated with pre-Gorbachevian political ideologies. Neither a solid majority of the

Soviet public, nor a vigorous enough faction of pro-Gorbachev politicoes could tolerate

1 Indeed, by 1991, not merely revelatory, but bizarre facts about the Soviet past (particularly those pertaining to the Stalin era) surfaced with amazing regularity. For example, the newspaper, Workers’ Tribune (Rabochnaia tribunal, reported that because Stalin "feared for his life” afler the murder of Sergei Kirov, he "had often used a lookalikc as a stand-in at public appearances. The man used as Stalin’s double was identified as Evsei Lubilsky, a Jewish accountant from Ukraine. The newspaper said that, in order to keep the secret from leaking out, all members of Lubitsky’s family had been killed, as well as the team of surgeons, hairdressers, and tailors who worked on Lubitsky’s appearance to improve his resemblance to Stalin.” Quoted in Vera Tolz and Melanie Newton, cds., The USSR in January. 1991: A Record of Events (Boulder, CO: Wcstview, 1992) 8. 189 190

Gorbachev’s pragmatic reformist tempo. The recuperation of history and the public’s voracious appetite for the restoration of each fact to the collective conscience did not allow for such tolerance. Gorbachev’s misguided espousal of the viability of Communist ideals to sustain a post-coup Soviet milieu alienated him from a people gripped by his own “new thinking.” Accompanying and contributing to this ideological alienation were the “real” offshoots of “new thinking,” i.e., longer lines, barren market shelves, and rising crime rates, particularly after 1988, when glasnost and perestroika began to reveal the social manifestations of their subversive underpinnings.

The passionate desire for what Iurii Afanas’ev called “a polyphony of voices” during the Gorbachev era did not go unfulfilled.2 Public discourse on the positive and negative aspects of “new thinking” could be heard throughout the USSR by the late

1980s. Opinion polls conducted by the “All-Union Center for the Study of Public

Opinion” during September and October of 1990 revealed the startling effects of five years of “new thinking,” the first being, of course, that certain questions were posed at all, and the second, the fact that the results were publicly announced in Moscow News.3

To the question, “Who was to blame? In your view, who is most responsible for the calamities caused by the Revolution and Civil War?”, 61% blamed the Bolsheviks, 14% blamed the intelligentsia, and 19% blamed the Russian people. Further, to the question,

■ Iurii Afanas’ev."Perestroika and Historical Knowledge.” Michigan Quarterly Review 28.4 (1989): 533. 3Sec Yuri Levada. "The Russian Revolutioin: As Judged by its Descendants.” Moscow News 11-18 Nov. (1990): 8-9. "Polled were 1.848 persons in 17 regions of the country.” Forty-six percent of those polled were men. Fifty-four percent were women. Sixty-three percent of the respondents were native Russians. 191

“In your view, were the following actions by the Bolsheviks needed, or were they unnecessary?”, 56% responded that the closure of other parties’ newspapers was

“unnecessary”; 77% that the execution of the tsar’s family was “unnecessary”; 53% that

“there was no historical necessity” for the nationalization of private property; and 64% that “there was no historical necessity” for the armed suppression of peasant uprisings.

When respondents were given a list of “personalities of the time of the Revolution,” and asked which “evokes in you the greatest sympathy or antipathy,” Lenin evoked 64% of the respondents’ “greatest sympathy,” and Stalin, 54% of the respondents’ “greatest antipathy.”

When, in March 1991, 4,600 people were asked, “What is Perestroika?”, the following percentages resulted:

An attempt to remain in power at the cost of a certain democratization of society, made by the ruling top level -18% A word used to disguise the struggle for power being conducted within the country’s top echelon -1 7 % An obsolete slogan which has outlived itself -14% The initial stage of the democratization of the country’s society -1 0 % A revolutionary transformation of the country’s society - 7% A renegation of socialist achievements4% - Hard to define - 29 %4

The results of public opinion polls, especially those conducted in a country where, five years earlier, such polls were non-existent, are easily manipulated to substantiate all manner of political positions, but it is telling that six years after Gorbachev initially

4 “These results were obtained from VCIOM public opinion poll involving 4.600 people residing in urban and rural areas of 15 Soviet Republics and representing a cross-section of society.” See Moscow N ews 24-31 Mar. f 1991V 7. 192

broached the revolutionary slogan of “perestroika,” 29% of a randomly selected group representing fifteen Soviet republics still found the word “hard to define.”

Although “new thinking” prompted an exciting optimism among the Soviet people when first put forth as an alternative to the methods of the past, its tangible, recognizable benefits—outside the realm of creative freedom—have been felt only sporadically among the great mass of post-Soviet citizens. This is not to say that the era of the “dictatorship of the proletariat” provided significantly more or better opportunities for the working masses; however, the prevailing Marxist-Leninist ideology of that era propagated such a position, just as the Gorbachevian version of such ideology did during the “High Glasnost” years. But in the sense that Gorbachev’s “new thinking” was an essentially humanist substitute for scientific Marxism, he would never succeed at reconciling one with the other. His deeply entrenched belief in the possibility of creating a contemporary Leninist version of such a combination, what Serge Schmemann has called “his futile search for an illusory middle,”5 precipitated his downfall.

Throughout this study, I have argued from the standpoint that Gorbachev himself was the primary reason behind the radical alterations and disintegration of the Soviet system. Having been inundated with generally negative appraisals of this position since the collapse of the Soviet empire, it is well worth remembering that in 1985 when

Gorbachev assumed Party and state leadership, the USSR resembled something less than a police state, but something more than an autocracy. When Gorbachev resigned in

5 Serge Schmemann. “Gorbachev. Energetic. Chatty, but Not Yet Political,” New York Times 3 Nov, 1993: A3. 193

December 1991, he left behind the tenuous foundation for a fledgling republic. The paradox arises when it is acknowledged that, to the extent that he advocated the Party’s role in the politics of the time, this was not his intention. (He never could have supported the decision by deputy prime minister under Yeltsin, Egor Gaidar, to initiate the economic “shock therapy” necessary to destroy the centralized command economy, for example.6) Gorbachev, the unrepentent Communist in a post-Communist world, trumpeted the achievements of the Party as his advocacy of glasnost encouraged the appearance of the public pronouncements concerning its often sordid past. Gorbachev, then, like the Party, signified that past, irrespective of his determination to transcend it by means of the “new thinking.”

Many of the post-Gorbachev attempts by former Sovietologists and Slavophilic historians to denigrate the last leader of the Soviet Union have their roots in an opposition to “the old theory of great men as movers of events, long ago abandoned by historians.”7 Pure Marxist historiography would support such a stance, but in the context of a realized Soviet Marxism, this “old theory” carries a considerable amount of weight. Stalin concentrated such power in the hands of the General Secretary of the

Party that whoever occupied that position after the Stalin era could easily wield it according to his whim. This is not to say that deviation from the accepted Communist line specific to an era went unchecked by the inner circle of power (n.b. Khrushchev),

6 Price controls w ere lifted in January 1992. less than a month after Gorbachev disappeared from the w orld political scene. 7 See Richard Pipes, rev. of The Great Transition: American-Soviet Relations and the End of the Cold War, by Raymond L. GartholT. Foreign Affairs 74.1 (1995): 158. 194

but the individual men who guided political, economic, and cultural policy during the

Soviet epoch undeniably made many personal decisions which “moved events” along

down the road toward the desired (and unattainable) “full Communism.”

The notion that Gorbachev’s personal power did initiate radical changes in the

cultural sphere generally, and in the theatrical realm specifically, is relatively easy to

sustain. Because of Gorbachev’s ambiguous cultural policy, restrictions on theatrical

production eased, finally disappearing altogether. Because o f Gorbachev’s continued

reiteration of the concepts of glasnost and perestroika, producers of culture, i.e., play­

wrights, directors, actors, offered dramatic and theatrical manifestations of those

concepts without fear of reprisals. Just as Gorbachev could never reconcile his vision of

a coupling of humane socialism and scientific Marxism, the theatre apparatus could not

reconcile its enthusiastic support of the Gorbachevian line with its potent ideological function in the transformative society. The Bolsheviks recognized the potential of the theatre as a possible threat to the stability of the regime and therefore forcibly influenced its capabilities as a disseminator of “anti-Bolshevik” ideology. Because “new thinking” did not condone such overt manipulation, intensely topical theatre during the Gorbachev epoch flourished, feeding on glasnost and contributing to the undermining of the power elite which left it, and its creators, alone.

Regardless of the stature they achieved in a historical context, it is unlikely that all eight of the plays I have chosen as representative examples of theatre during the first 195

half of the Gorbachev epoch, 1985-1988, will survive in performance. The sheer

immediacy of such plays as Sarcophagus and Onward! Onward! Onward! precludes easy

transposition from one era and its concerns to another, while the dramatic adaptation of

the rehabilitated Heart of A Dog may lose its relevancy once the Soviet canon has been

utterly exhausted. The prurient quality of Stars in the Morning Skv has already met its

match in any of a number of theatrical offerings in which nudity, profanity, and the ethos

of sexual liberation are given free rein. The future of Dear Elena Sergeevna is less clear;

however, its omnipresent theme of generational conflict may prove strong enough to

salvage it. Tomorrow Was War may stand an even greater chance of stage life in the

future, once it becomes possible to view the play as “history” by succeeding generations.

Since both Cerceau and Cinzano were produced during the Gorbachev era and, as such,

signified aspects of the prevailing ideological currents of the time, the plays have been used in this study as examples of the Gorbachevian theatre. At the same time, because both of the plays are essentially character studies grounded in an appreciation of the literary aspect of drama, they are, I think, more easily transposed to another social milieu. In this sense, then, their theatrical viability seems secure.

Performed in the context of the Gorbachev era, all of the plays above embraced the ideology of “new thinking.” The nature of a transitional society allows for serious examination of them as active contributors to the former Soviet Union’s reconstruction of its global position, its social system, and its past. More than mere cultural footnotes 196

to the politics of the time, these plays vigorously engaged their Soviet audiences in the world historical forces at work during the creation of a new society. BIBLIOGRAPHY

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