ISSN: 2158-7051 ==================== INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF RUSSIAN STUDIES ==================== ISSUE NO. 10 ( 2021/2 ) |
AMATEUR AND PROLETATIAN THEATER IN POST-REVOLUTIONARY RUSSIA, By Ayse Dietrich*, Published by: Bloomsbury
Publishing Plc, Edited by Stefan Aquilina, Year of Publishing: 2021. Subject
Area: Russsian Amateur Theater. Book Type: Russian
Performing Art. Total Number of Pages: 217. ISBN: 978-135-017-097-1,
hardback, $ 135,77.
Shortly after the Bolsheviks seized power in October 1917 they issued a decree of the Soviet of People’s Commissars on 9 November
1917 that placed all the theaters under the authority of the arts section of the State Commission for Education, and all
served as agitprop
(agitation and propaganda) theater. So the Soviet theater was a director’s theater, but not a writer’s
theater. It was utilized to do what has been ordered rather than provide
only entertainment, and used as a propaganda
and communication agent.
An experimental artistic institution, the Proletkult was founded in September 1917 by Alexander Bogdanov
during the course of the war. Its stated goals were a total break with the
bourgeois past, radically
modifying existing artistic forms, rejecting all existing
professional theater and
promoting a new, so-called proletarian culture. However,
the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party approved a decree on 1 December
1920 which condemned both the institution as a duplication of services that competed with existing
bureaucratic systems, like Narkompros headed
by Anatoly Lunacharsky, and its hostile idealist
philosophy. As a result, Proletkult
was integrated into Narkompros.
During the Civil War, Proletkult opened theaters in factories, and supported amateur theater
activities all around the country that helped to transmit the culture of the
working classes.
This book is a collection of translations of primary
sources related to the amateur and proletatian theater.
It is about how the proletarian theater was used as a propaganda agent and the difficulties
faced by the amateur theater and their actors after the Bolshevik Revolution.
The book consists of five parts. The first part, “Aims
and Objectives” includes nine articles by Lunacharsky, Bogdanov, Kerzhentsev,
Lvov, Kogan, Piotrovsky and Shklovsky. Those
by Lunacharsky and Bogdanov contain information on proletarian culture. The Kerzhentsev, Lvov,
Kogan, Piotrovsky and Shklovsky articles provide information on amateur theater, explain what drew people to
the amateur theater, and how it diverted the workers from tackling the
difficulties of real life.
The second part of the book, “Amateur-Professional
Relations” includes three articles by Kalinin, Pletnev and Kerzhentsev, that are
concerned about the relations between amateur and professional theaters; they discuss how the proletarian theater
functioned as an “amateur-professional hybrid”.
The third part, “Repertoire Issues” includes six articles by Mgebrov, Kerzhentsev
and Pletnev that discuss the
repertoire of the proletarian theater which was mostly an imitation of the professional stage and adaptation of old
plays.
The fourth part, “Production Approaches and Examples” includes
thirteen articles by Kerzhentsev, Mgebrov, Kalinin, Gaideburov, Smyshlaev, Tikhonovich, Moscow Proletkult and N.N.V. that examine the amateur stage
performances and the aesthetics of the amateur theater.
The fifth part, “Training” includes four articles by Smyshlaev, Kerzhentsev
and Moscow Proletkult, discussing how to raise the standards of the artistic formation of the workers.
The book which consists of primary
sources related to the amateur and proletarian theaters are the first-hand
accounts from the first decade of the Revolution. It is a valuable source for
researchers who are interested in the amateur and
proletarian theater of this specific period.
*Ayse Dietrich - Professor, Part-time, at Middle East Technical University, Department of History, and Eurasian Studies. Editor and the founder of the International Journal of Russian Studies e-mail: editor@ijors.net, dayse@metu.edu.tr, dietrichayse@yahoo.com
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