From Bashkim Trenova
Part Twenty-Seven
– NAZIBOLSHEVISM – LITERATURE AND THE ARTS –
PREFACE
Memorie.al / Historians, political philosophers, intellectuals from different schools or positions, have dedicated thousands and thousands of pages, entire volumes, studies, and articles to the comparison between Nazism and Communism. Generally, in their publications and studies, they focus on the police control of society by these dictatorships, the role of the dictatorial state hierarchy, the head of state, as suppressors of free thought, the omnipresence of official propaganda in society, the mass massacres and the network of concentration camps, the activity of the police, the NKVD in the USSR (later the KGB) and the Gestapo in the Third Reich. In his book “Le Passé d’une illusion” (The Past of an Illusion), François Furet notes that Nazism and Communism share the same opposition to liberal democracy and what they call “capitalist bourgeoisie.” Both ideologies claim to be socialist and use the image of socialism. Communist countries called themselves “socialist.” “Nazism” is an abbreviation of National Socialism.
Continued from the previous issue
THEATRE
Boris Romashov also plays an important role, in the 1920s, in the formation of the Soviet stage, primarily its satirical branch. His comedies ‘Воздушный пирог’ (‘Air Pie’) from 1925 and ‘Конец Криворыльска’ (‘The End of Krivorylsk’) from 1926, were written in the spirit of Soviet ideology and denounce the philistines, i.e., narrow-minded people without artistic taste, etc. His drama ‘Огненный мост’ (‘The Fiery Bridge’) from 1929, deals with the fate of the intelligentsia during the Revolution. Boris Romashov received the first-class “Stalin” Prize in 1948 for his drama ‘Великая сила’ (‘The Great Force’).
The author of the play “The Great Force” prefaced his work with an epigraph taken from a remark by J. V. Stalin at the VI Congress of the RSDLP (b) in August 1917: “We must abandon the outdated idea that only Europe can show us the way.” The play shows how the director of a Research Institute, Professor Miliagin, bows before the external brilliance of bourgeois culture, forgetting his sense of national pride. He is opposed by progressive patriotic scientists – Professor Lavrov and Academician Abuladze.
While working on his discovery, the implementation of which Miliagin hinders by all means, Lavrov fights for a science that serves the homeland and the people. Lavrov works successfully on developing a new breed of chicken with high egg production. The bold experimenter is supported by the Central Committee of the Communist Party.
During the following decade, Russian theatre continues in its Bolshevik tradition. Nikolai Fyodorovich Pogodin writes ‘Темп’ (‘Tempo’), staged in 1930 at the Vakhtangov Theatre. The play is dedicated to the five-year plan, the construction of the Stalingrad tractor factory. In 1932 he publishes ‘Мой друг’ (‘My Friend’), which depicts life in a factory.
His most famous play is ‘Аристократы’ (‘Aristocrats’) from 1934. In it, the author speaks about the construction of the Canal between the White Sea and the Baltic Sea by forced laborers. He shows the clash of two forces: the Chekists, i.e., the secret police agents, and the prisoners.
The convicts are divided among “specialists” (engineers convicted of sabotage, counter-revolution, treason) and “bandits” (thieves, prostitutes, believers, kulaks, and others). Both categories of convicts consider themselves aristocrats. This is because they have never worked honestly during their lives and have never wanted to commit any crime!
Initially, all refuse to work, but the Chekists gradually manage to involve the “aristocrats” in collective actions, transforming and morally regenerating them. The comedy of the play lies in the fact that engineers – talented, cultured, intelligent people – need more time than common prisoners to understand the usefulness of working for the good of the proletariat.
In the early 1930s, Pogodin also writes ‘Поэма о топоре’ (‘Poem about the Axe’). He is among the first to write about factory work and to bring onto the stages of famous theatres a special character – the man of creative labour. What can this man do? An axe. In those years, in one of the Ural factories, a new technology for the mass production of the axe was created – a simple but extremely necessary tool for the country’s large population. Nikolai Fyodorovich, as a contributor to ‘Pravda’, wrote imaginative sketches and articles about the workers of the Zlatoust mechanical and metallurgical factories. These literary sketches served as the basis for ‘Poem about the Axe’.
Among the plays performed in the 1930s, we can also mention ‘Страх’ (‘Fear’) by Alexander Afinogenov. It was written in 1931 and is dedicated to the re-education of the intellectuals of the old regime. After the victory of the October Revolution, representatives of the old intelligentsia were accused by the Bolsheviks as saboteurs. Many of them were sentenced to death, others ended up in prisons.
The idea that the old intellectuals could not integrate into the new Soviet life and that they only caused harm were extremely popular in those years. The play gives a response to these events. The drama “Fear” tells the story of a physiologist, Professor Ivan Borodin, who works at the Institute of Physiological Stimuli and conducts experiments on animals.
In his conclusions about animal behaviour, the professor compares their fear of concrete actions with human behaviour. After a long struggle within the Institute and some backstage intrigues, Borodin decides to give a public report. In a packed hall, among other things, he declares: “Eighty percent of those surveyed live in perpetual fear of insult or loss of social support.
The milkmaid fears the confiscation of her cow, the peasant fears forced collectivization, the Soviet worker fears constant purges, the party activist fears accusations of deviations, the scientist fears accusations of idealism, the technician fears accusations of deviation, the worker fears accusations of sabotage.
We live in a time of great fear. Fear drives talented intellectuals to renounce their mothers, to falsify their social origins, and to reach high positions. Yes, yes, at the heights, the risk of exposure is not so terrible. Fear follows a person. A person becomes suspicious, withdrawn, unscrupulous, negligent, and unprincipled…!
A rabbit that sees a boa constrictor is unable to move, its muscles are numb, it obediently awaits the boa’s coils to squeeze and crush it. We are all rabbits! Is it possible to work creatively after this? Certainly not! Destroy fear, destroy everything that causes fear, and you will see to what extent the country will flourish richly and creatively!”
After the professor finishes his lecture, an old Bolshevik woman, Klara, goes to the podium and gives a fiery speech, emphasizing that Borodin was wrong and that in his supposedly objective scientific research, he had in fact sided with counter-revolution. For fear to disappear, says Klara, a true Bolshevik must take example from the revolutionaries who died in prisons and from those who forged the October Revolution. Fear, according to her, will only end with the conclusion of the class struggle. The author, through the Bolshevik Klara, delivers a Marxist lesson on the class struggle and its consequences in communist society.
Another Soviet playwright, Viktor Mikhailovich Gusev, known in the late 1920s as the author of the comedies ‘Американский житель’ (‘An American Resident’) and ‘Закрытие Америки’ (‘Closing America’) – the latter in collaboration with another author – writes ‘Слава’ (‘Glory’) in 1935. This play was performed in almost all theatres and companies of the Soviet Union. It raises the issue of new socialist morality, heroism, and duty to the homeland.
During the 1930s and 1940s, Gusev publishes the dramas ‘Дружба’ (‘Friendship’), ‘Сын Рыбакова’ (‘The Son of Rybakov’), ‘Москвичка’ (‘The Muscovite’), and ‘Твоя песня’ (‘Your Song’). In these dramas, he shows open sympathy for honest workers, as well as great contempt for those who seek to benefit unfairly, for petty, cunning officials.
His dramas are a continuation of the revolutionary tradition. Gusev’s true masterpieces are found in lyrical comedies that place the youth of the time at the centre, such as ‘Весна в Москве’ (‘Spring in Moscow’) and ‘Свинарка и пастух’ (‘The Pig Girl and the Shepherd’). After his visits to the Novokuznetsk construction site and the metallurgical factories of Uralmash, etc., Gusev sang the praises of the great achievements of the five-year plan and the incredible energy poured out by the workers to realize this plan.
His plays are highly politicized. During the 1950s, another author, Leonid Zorin, writes the drama ‘Гости’ (‘The Guests’). It is dedicated to three generations. The first is represented by Aleksei Kirpichev, an old Bolshevik faithful to his origins, the second by his son, Pyotr, a cynical, corrupt senior official, the third by Aleksei’s two grandsons.
Hearing the conversation between Pyotr and his wife, his sister Varvara, who, like her parents, remains faithful to the spirit of the Revolution, exclaims: “God, how I hate these bourgeois!” Likewise, Aleksei, the father, reminding his son Pyotr how he once fought alongside the Bolsheviks, tells him: “I worked alongside them and did not experience the taste of power. But you have tasted it since childhood, and that has corrupted you.”
At the same time (December 1953), a young critic, Pomerantsev, a defender of sincerity in literature, criticized official aesthetics as not being clever. Pomerantsev calls the Byzantine discussions of critics about “positive” and “negative” heroes ridiculous. “If the negative characters themselves reveal their vices,” he asks, “why should positive characters be brought on stage?”
Satirical plays like Zorin’s (which was performed only twice) and articles like Pomerantsev’s caused strong opposition among powerful Party officials responsible for the “literary front.” Their protests sparked the first ideological “tightening” campaign after Stalin’s death. An article by Aleksei Surkov, secretary of the Writers’ Union, targeted the “nihilistic howls of the alarmed petty-bourgeois, ready to slander” the Soviet Union.
At a special meeting at the Collegium of the Ministry of Culture, he denounced Zorin’s thesis – that power and wealth have a corrupting effect – as a “harmful absurdity.” The declaration: “it is enough to look around you to be convinced why such an explanation is unfounded,” was the “argument” of the revolutionary assault brigade.
In 1954, a campaign began in the Soviet Union that resulted in increased dissatisfaction of the Soviet public with theatre. In November 1955, the new Minister of Culture, N. Mikhailov, at a conference of theatre activists, noted that “lately public interest in some theatres or certain performances had fallen, and the number of spectators had dropped significantly, especially brutally, since the new season.”
He also emphasized that a number of well-known playwrights had written nothing for a long time. Authors are always invited to place emphasis on “contemporary” themes. Most plays seem not to match this slogan. In reality, they often seek only a background or a pretext to address themes related to individual and collective morality. This morality is no longer that of Stalin’s time.
It even deviates from the ethical concept defined by Lenin: “We say that morality is entirely subordinated to the interests of the class struggle of the proletariat… We say: morality is that which serves to destroy the old society of exploiters and to unite all workers around the proletariat.” In the 1950s, the name of Nikolai Pogodin appears again. In 1953, he publishes the comedy ‘Когда ломаются копья’ (‘When the Spears Break’).
In 1956, after the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, he publishes ‘Сонет Петракки’ (‘Petracca’s Sonnet’), one of his best works. Pogodin sets the events in the offices of a Siberian construction site, where communists of various tendencies work. The spokesman for liberalism is the Party leader himself, who wants to “return to the spirit of Kirov,” that is, before the great Stalinist purges.
In ‘Petracca’s Sonnet’, the outline of the thesis is also seen, according to which personal problems, such as that of love, are not solved by communism and are outside the Party’s competence. Aleksei Arbuzov is another well-known Russian playwright with his first works from the 1930s – ‘Класс’ (‘The Class’), ‘Идиллия’ (‘Idyll’), ‘Третий Ян’ (‘The Third Jan’), ‘Дальняя дорога’ (‘The Long Road’), ‘Таня’ (‘Tanya’). His fame comes from the drama ‘Иркутская история’ (‘An Irkutsk Story’) from 1959. This drama crossed the borders of the Soviet Union.
It is a work that depicts simple human feelings and sparked numerous discussions. ‘An Irkutsk Story’ was performed more than nine thousand times in the country’s theatres in 1960-1961. The event is set at a construction site and in a production environment. The action takes place almost entirely near a giant excavator, used for the construction of the Irkutsk hydroelectric plant.
The characters of the work are well-studied. We are far from the old “Stakhanovite” type of plays. In 1980, the author was honoured with the USSR State Prize. Immediately after the October Revolution, in the first years following it, Soviet dramaturgy paid special attention to life in the country’s collective farms (kolkhozes) and the distribution of the theatrical network in the Soviet village.
In 1923, Leonid Arsenievich Subbotin was one of those who created the first peasant theatre of the USSR, in Moscow. He is the author of ‘Агрорьес’ (‘Agrories’). Subbotin, together with Vladimir Masin, wrote ‘Комсомольцы в деревне’ (‘Komsomol Members in the Village’) in 1924. In 1933 he wrote ‘Другое сердце’ (‘Another Heart’) and subsequently the plays ‘Старый знакомый’ (‘The Old Acquaintance’) and ‘Проигранная игра’ (‘Lost Game’).
Another author, Viktor Mikhailovich Gusev, with a revolutionary, enthusiastic style, writes several theatrical works about the village. His signature is behind the plays “Герои едут в колхоз” (‘Heroes Go to the Kolkhoz’) from 1931, “Слово бригадира” (‘The Brigadier’s Word’) from 1932, ‘Современники’ (‘Contemporaries’) from 1933, ‘Гений’ (‘The Genius’) from the same year, ‘Сыновья диктатуры’ (‘Sons of the Dictatorship’) from 1937.
The village is the object of a special effort on the part of the Bolsheviks, related to the needs of the moment, mainly during collectivization. In 1927, the Дом деревенского театра (House of the Village Theatre) was created in Moscow, a travelling village theatre, performing topical plays with revolutionary themes.
During the first season alone, 1927-1928, this theatre’s troupe travelled to 55 villages gave 140 performances, and hosted 60,000 spectators. These beginnings are quite modest, but they were followed by rapid development. In 1936, in Russia there were 107 professional theatres and companies that performed exclusively for the kolkhozes. The Bolsheviks placed the theatre stage and the playwrights who nourished it under a suffocating tutelage, within the grip of an absolute dictatorship. This policy gained momentum in 1919, with the decree of September 9 for the nationalization of theatres.
The decree established the creation of the Central Committee of Theatres, under the People’s Commissariat for Public Education. Russian and generally Soviet authors and directors are required by the Bolsheviks to dedicate themselves to optimistic works, conveying a courageous spirit, reflecting a joyful life, devotion to the Party, blind faith in it, in the revolution, mobilization for the realization and surpassing of the five-year plans.
As a result of this line, the number of Soviet theatrical plays performed on the country’s stages increased, from 90 in 1924 to 248 in 1933. Playwrights or theatres that, in the official view, did not prove fanatical, that even unconsciously might commit some “sin” – even invisible, implied, figurative, interpretable – were subjected to discriminatory labels, persecution, sentences, imprisonments, gulags, shootings.
Over the years, Soviet dramatic art was deprived of its best elements. Viktor Rozov, one of the most prominent Russian dramatic authors of recent years, presents this reality as follows: “Some directors ask themselves…! Will I make a good impression by allowing this play to be performed, will it bring me personal success?… These are opportunists…! They always look for plays ‘without trouble’, which are, in fact, the least successful, and they throw the responsibility for failure onto the author… It also happens that a theatre accepts a play and starts its production, but then refuses to continue working because, somewhere, someone has expressed their dissatisfaction.”
The facts show that a large number of playwrights and stage artists were victims of the policy of dictate and brutal repression that the Bolsheviks pursued even against theatre. In 1926, the play ‘Я хочу ребенка’ (‘I Want a Child’) by the “enemy of the people” Sergei Tretyakov was condemned. It was anathematized as a brazen slander of the Soviet family and for having hatefully deformed Soviet reality. In 1928, the last play of Nikolai Erdman, ‘Самоубийца’ (‘The Suicide’), was also severely condemned.
Both authors were arrested. Erdman was arrested in 1933. Tretyakov was arrested in 1937, locked up in Moscow’s Boutyrka prison, and shot. He was accused of espionage. Sergei Tretyakov is one of the victims of the great purges of 1937. Vladimir Kirshon had the same fate, arrested in 1937 and shot in 1938. / Memorie.al
To be continued in the next issue
