Let's perform a miracle: The Soviet Yiddish State Theater in the 1920s

Slavic Review

Volumn 57, Issue 2, 1998, Pages 372-397

  Veidlinger, Jeffrey ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 34248109202     PISSN: 00376779     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/2501855     Document Type: Article

References (170)

1. For recent works dealing with the execution of Mikhoels and the post-World War II liquidation of Jewish cultural and social institutions, see Arkady Vaksberg, Stalin against the Jews, trans. Antonina W. Bouis (New York, 1994);
2. G. Kostyrchenko, V plenu u krosnogo faraona: Politicheskie presledovaniia euren v SSSR v poslednee stalinskoe desiatiletie: Dokumental'noe issledovanie (Moscow, 1994);
3. Shimon Redlich, War, Holocaust and Stalinism: A Documented Study of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee in the USSR (Luxembourg, 1995);
4. V. P. Naumov, ed. and comp., Nepravednyi sud: Poslednii stalinskii rasstrel: Stenogramma sudebnogo protsessa nad chlenami Evreiskogo antifashistskogo komiteta (Moscow, 1994);
5. Aleksandr Borshchagovskii, Obviniaetsia krov' (Moscow, 1994).
6. For reviews, background information, and exhibition catalogues of Marc Chagall's artistic work with the Soviet Yiddish State theater, see Jüdisches Museum der Stadt Wien, Chagall: Bilder, Träume, Theater 1908-1920 (Vienna, 1994);
7. Marc Chagall and the Jewish Theater (New York, 1992);
8. and Matthew Frost, "Marc Chagall and the Jewish State Chamber Theatre," Russian History 8, no. 1-2 (1981): 90-99.
9. For analyses of other selected productions of the theater, see Mel Gordon, "Granovskii's Tragic Comedy: Night in the Old Market," Drama Review 29 (Winter 1985): 91-122;
10. Béatrice Picon-Vallin, Le theatre juif soviétique pendant les années vingt (Lausanne, 1973);
11. and Mordechai Altshuler, ed., Ha-Teatron ha-Yehudi bi-Verit ha-Moatsot (Jerusalem, 1996).
12. Yehezekel Dobrushin, Mikhoels der aktior (Moscow, 1940);
13. Matvei Geizer, Solomon Mikhoels (Moscow, 1990);
14. Iakov Grinval'd, Mikhoels: Kratkii kritiko-biograficheskii ocherk (Moscow, 1948);
15. Osip Liubomirskii, Mikhoels (Moscow, 1938);
16. Peretz Markish, Mikhoels (Moscow, 1939);
17. Natalia Vovsi-Mikhoels, Mon père Salomon Mikhoels: Souvenirs sur sa vie et sur sa mort, trans. Erwin Spatz (Montricher, 1990);
18. M. Zagorskii, Mikhoels (Moscow, 1927).
19. See, for example, Richard Stites, Revolutionary Dreams: Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution (New York, 1989);
20. Richard Stites, Russian Popular Culture: Entertainment and Society since 1900 (Cambridge, Eng., 1992);
21. Lynn Mally, Culture of the Future: The Proletkult Movement in Revolutionary Russia (Berkeley, 1990);
22. Abbott Gleason, Peter Kenez, and Richard Stites, eds., Bolshevik Culture: Experiment and Order in the Russian Revolution (Bloomington, 1985);
23. Denise J. Youngblood, Movies for the Masses: Popular Cinema and Soviet Society in the 1920s (Cambridge, Eng., 1992);
24. Katerina Clark, Petersburg, Crucible of Cultural Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1995).
25. Benjamin Pinkus, The Jews in the Soviet Union: The History of a National Minority (Cambridge, Eng., 1988), 106.
26. For similar predominantly Cold War-era interpretations, see Lionel Kochan, ed., The Jews in Soviet Russia since 1917 (New York, 1970);
27. Salo Wittmayer Baron, The Russian Jew under Tsars and Soviets (New York, 1964);
28. Solomon M. Schwarz, The Jews in the Soviet Union (Syracuse, N.Y., 1951);
29. Nora Levin, The Jews in the Soviet Union since 1917: Paradox of Survival, 2 vols. (New York, 1990);
30. Yaacov Ro'i, ed., Jews and Jewish Life in Russia and the Soviet Union (Ilford, Eng., 1995).
31. Gershon Swet, "Jewish Religion in Soviet Russia," in Jacob Frumkin et al., Russian Jewry, 1860-1917, trans. Mirra Ginsburg (New York, 1966), 209-21;
32. Zvi Gitelman, Jewish Nationality and Soviet Politics: The Jewish Sections of the CPSU, 1917-1930 (Princeton, 1972), 291-318;
33. Levin, Jews in the Soviet Union, 68-119.
34. Gitelman, Jewish Nationality, 321-78.
35. For the Hebrew-language Habima theater, see Vladislav Ivanov, "Poetika metamorfoz: Vakhtangov i Gabima," Voprosy teatra, 1993, no. 13:188-222;
36. and Vladislav Ivanov, "Teatr Gabima v Moskve: Na vesakh Iova," Znamia, 1995, no. 12:168-92.
37. For film, see J. Hoberman, Bridge of Light: Yiddish Film between Two Worlds (New York, 1991), 87-102.
38. For art, see Ruth Apter-Gabriel, ed., Tradition and Revolution: The Jewish Renaissance in Russian Avant-Garde Art, 1912-1928, 2d ed. (Jerusalem, 1988).
39. See Konstantin Rudnitsky, Russian and Soviet Theater, 1905-1932 (New York, 1988), 41-47;
40. James von Geldern, Bolshevik Festivals, 1917-1920 (Berkeley, 1993);
41. J. Douglas Clayton, Pierrot in Petrograd: The Commedia Dell'Arte/Balagan in Twentieth-Century Russian Theatre and Drama (Montreal, 1993);
42. Clark, Petersburg, 74-121.
43. Viacheslav Ivanov, Rodnoe i vselenskoe (Moscow, 1994), 26-51.
44. A. V. Lunacharskii, O teatre i dramaturgii: Izbrannye stati, ed. and comp. A. Deicha, 2 vols. (Moscow, 1958), 1:129.
45. Moshe Litvakov, Funf yor melukhisher yidisher kunst teater, 1921-1925 (Moscow, 1924), 21.
46. See also his "Der tsushtand un di oyfgabz fun der sovetish yidisher literatur," Literarishe bleter, 13 January 1928, 37-9;
47. and Moshe Katz, "Di vegn fun dem yidishn teater," Baginen, June 1919, bk. 1:69-79.
48. Lunacharskii, O teatre i dramaturgii, 1:127-50;
49. Leon Trotsky, Literature and Revolution (Ann Arbor, 1960), 237.
50. Abram Efros, "Evreiskii teatr," Teatr i muzyka, 28 November 1922, no. 9:110-11.
51. Solomon Mikhoels, "Mikhoels-Vovsi vegn dem teatr," Literarishe bleler, 27 April 1928, no. 17:318-20.
52. Marc Chagall, My Life (New York, 1960), 159.
53. See especially Vladimir Maiakovskii et al., "Poshchechina obshchestvennomu vkusu," in Vladimir Maiakovskii, Polnoe sabranie sochinenii (Moscow, 1955), 13:244.
54. For a discussion of the various forms of iconoclasm in the Russian revolution, see Richard Stites, "Iconoclastic Currents in the Russian Revolution: Destroying and Preserving the Past," in Gleason, Kenez, and Stites, eds., Bolshevik Culture, 1-24.
55. Gosudarstvennyi teatral'nyi muzei im. A. A. Bakhrushina, rukopisnyi otdel (GTsTM), f. 584, d. 4 (Aleksandr Granovskii, "Nashi tseli i zadachi," June 1919).
56. For a general discussion of god-building and millenarianism, see Stites, Revolutionary Dreams, 37-46;
57. Clark, Petersburg, 30-38.
58. This claim, however, has never been fully established. See Zahnen Zylbercwaig, "Iz dos yidishe teater gegrindet in Berditshev Iosi gor in Konstantinopol?" Literarishe bleter, 24 February 1928, no. 8:149-50;
59. L. Dushman, "Iz dos yidishe teater gegrindet in Varshe?" Literarishe bleter, 30 March 1928, no. 13:269.
60. Voskhod, 1900, no. 93:14.
61. See also, Voskhod, 1900, nos. 17, 36, 61;
62. Voskhod, 1902, nos. 45-48;
63. and Budushchnost', 1900, no. 28;
64. Budushchnost', 1901, no. 12;
65. and Budushchnost', 1902, no. 32.
66. Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv literatury i iskusstva (RGALI), f. 2307, op. 2, d. 529, ll. 1-5 (founding principles of the Jewish Theatrical Society, July 1916).
67. For more on Jewish organic work in early nineteenth-century Russia, see Christoph Gassenschmidt, Jewish Liberal Politics in Tsarist Russia, 1900-1914: The Modernization of Russian Jewry (New York, 1995).
68. RGALI, f. 2307, op. 2, d. 530 (protocols of the Jewish Theatrical Society, 1916-1918), l. 47.
69. Vovsi-Mikhoels, Mon père Salomon Mikhoels, 39.
70. GTsTM, f. 584, d. 7 (list of Granovskii's work, 1920-1930).
71. RGALI, f. 2307, op. 2, d. 530, ll. 48-52.
72. Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (GA RF), f. 2306, op. 24, d. 510 (correspondence between Collegium of National Minorities and Theatrical Section of Commissariat of Enlightenment, October 1918-May 1919), ll. 3-4.
73. GA RF, f. 2306, op. 24, d. 510, l. 35.
74. For an explanation of this process, see Sheila Fitzpatrick, The Commissariat of Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1970), 139-61.
75. For the Proletkul't, see Mally, Culture of the Future.
76. For TRAM, see Lynn Mally, "The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Youth Theater TRAM," Slavic Review 51, no. 3 (Fall 1992): 411-30.
77. Irina Avanesian, "Master," Teatral'naia zhizn', May 1990, no. 10:17.
78. GTsTM, f. 584, d. 4, l. 1.
79. See, for instance, Mally, "The Soviet Youth Theater TRAM," 415.
80. Liubomirskii, Mikhoels, 8.
81. GTsTM, f. 584, d. 128 (autobiography of Solomon Mikhoels).
82. GTsTM, f. 584, d. 129 (contract for E. B. Abramovich).
83. RGALI, f. 2307, op. 2, d. 436 (posters, 1919-1923).
84. GTsTM, f. 584, d. 51 (Stroitel', a play by Solomon Mikhoels).
85. Lulla Adler Rosenfeld, The Yiddish Theatre and Jacob P. Adler, 2d rev. ed. (New York, 1988), 101.
86. See also Dalia Kaufmann, "Uriel Acosta le-Karl Gutzkov al ha-bimah ha-Yehudit (1881-1922)," in Mordechai Altshuler, ed., Ha-Teatron, 205-24.
87. Vovsi-Mikhoels, Mon père Salomon Mikhoels, 28.
88. See Fitzpatrick, Commissariat of Enlightenment, 151.
89. Richard G. Thorpe, "The Academic Theater and the Fate of Soviet Artistic Pluralism, 1919-1928," Slavic Review 51, no. 3 (Fall 1992): 389-410.
90. Abram Efros and Iakov Tugendkhol'd, Iskusstvo Marka Shagala (Moscow, 1918).
91. For the originals, see Sholem Aleichem, Komedien, in Ale verk fun Sholem Aleichem, vol. 3, bk. 2 (New York, 1942), 135-68, 197-218.
92. For Granovskii's version, see RGALI, f. 2307, op. 2, d. 176 (Dray pintelekk), ll. 11-23; RGALI, f. 2307, op. 2, d. 301 ("Agenty"). For an English translation of Granovskii's version of Agents, see Marc Chagall and the Jewish Theater, 164-71.
93. Solomon Mikhoels, Stati, besedy, rechi (Moscow, 1981), 152.
94. Zagorskii, Mikhoels, 14.
95. Clayton, Pierrot in Petrograd, 235.
96. For an analysis of the role of carnival in the Soviet Yiddish Theater, see Picon-Vallin, Le théâtre juif, 127-38.
97. See, for example, E. Iantarev, "Vecher Sholom Aleikhema," Teatr i muzyka, 12 December 1922, no. 11:236.
98. A. Vayter, Far tog (Wilna, 1922).
99. Rossiiskii tsentr khraneniia i izucheniia dokumentov noveishei istorii (RTsKhIDNI), f. 455, op. 1, d. 60 (correspondence between the Jewish Section of the Communist Party and the State Yiddish Theater, September 1920 to December 1925), l. 19.
100. Ibid., 1. 17.
101. For The Sorceress, see Avrom Gol'dfaden, Di kishufmakherin: Opereta in 5 akten un in 8 bildet (Warsaw, 1905).
102. For Granovskii's adaptation, see RGALI, f. 2307, op. 2, dd. 299-300 (The Sorceress). For Two Hundred Thousand, see Sholem Aleichem, Dramatishe shriften, in Ale verk fun Sholem Aleichem, vol. 3, bk. 1, 151-256. For Granovskii's adaptation, see RGALI, f. 2307, op. 2, dd. 302-3 (Two Hundred Thousand).
103. RGALI, f. 2307, op. 1, d. 98 (biographical data), ll. 7-23.
104. National Sound Archives of Israel, uncatalogued.
105. "Brambilla na bronnoi," Pravda, 14 February 1923.
106. See also "200,000," Izvestiia, 8 October 1923.
107. Nahma Sandrow, Vagabond Stars: A World History of Yiddish Theater (New York, 1977), 238.
108. Gordon, "Granovskii's Tragic Comedy," 92.
109. Gitelman, Jewish Nationality, 382.
110. RGALI, f. 2307, op. 2, d. 15 (correspondence between Aleksandr Granovskii and the Commissariat of Enlightenment, 1921-1928), ll. 114-15; GTsTM, f. 584, d. 142 (protocols of the Jewish Theatrical Society, 22 December 1926).
111. RTsKhIDNI, f. 455, op. 1, d. 60, ll. 24-25, 57-58, 82.
112. RGALI, f. 2307, op. 2, d. 12 (list of employees), l. 16.
113. RTsKhIDNI, f. 455, op. 1, d. 60, l. 42.
114. Ibid., l. 52.
115. Ibid., ll. 45-46.
116. The Union of Artists was composed primarily of nonartistic workers from the former municipal and private theaters. See Thorpe, "Academic Theater," 398-99.
117. RTsKhIDNI, f. 455, op. 1, d. 60, l. 160.
118. Ibid., l. 162.
119. RGALI, f. 2307, op. 2, d. 26 (correspondence regarding the conflict between Goset and the trade union, 1926-1929), ll. 14-18.
120. RTsKhIDNI, f. 455, op. 1, d. 183 (correspondence from the Jewish Section regarding Jewish theater, 1926-1927), l. 65.
121. Thorpe, "Academic Theater," 405-6.
122. Gitelman, Jewish Nationality, 330.
123. For recent evaluations of this play, see Gordon, "Granovskii's Tragic Comedy,"
124. and Rhone Shmeruk, "Ba-lailah ba-shuk ha-yashan me-at Y. L. Peretz be-teatron ha-Yehudi be-Moskvah," in Mordechai Altshuler, ed., Ha-Teatron, 239-53.
125. Gordon, "Granovskii's Tragic Comedy," 92-94.
126. P. A. Markov, "Noch' na starom rynke v evreiskom teatre," Pravda, 13 February 1925;
127. Er., "Noch' na starom rynke," Izvestiia, 13 February 1925;
128. V. B., "Noch' na starom rynke," Krasnaia gazeta (Leningrad), 11 September 1925;
129. Simon Dreiden, "Noch' na starom rynke," Leningradskaia pravda, 12 December 1926.
130. Yidishn glikn, directed by Aleksandr Granovskii, Moscow, 1925 (film). Hoberman, Bridge of Light, 87-102.
131. RTsKhIDNI, f. 455, op. 1, d. 60, l. 91; RGALI, f. 2307, op. 2, d. 15, ll. 18, 37-38.
132. RGALI, f. 2307, op. 2, d. 26, ll. 1-2, 14-18.
133. Thorpe, "Academic Theater," 396-97.
134. RTsKhIDNI. f. 455, op. 1, d. 60, ll. 139, 147, 170-73.
135. Ibid., l. 172.
136. RTsKhIDNI, f. 455, op. 1, d. 183, l. 136.
137. RTsKhIDNI, f. 455, op. 1, d. 60, l. 178.
138. RTsKhIDNI, f. 455, op. 1, d. 183, l. 93.
139. Ibid., ll. 94-95.
140. Ibid., ll. 97-98.
141. Ibid., l. 10.
142. Ibid., ll. 2-4.
143. Ibid., l. 5.
144. Ibid., l. 142.
145. RGALI, f. 2307, op. 2, d. 126 (137 kinder hoyzer), l. 71.
146. RGALI, f. 2307, op. 2, d. 26, ll. 28-29.
147. Moshe Litvakov, "Truadek," Der emes, 5 February 1927.
148. RGALI, f. 2307, op. 2, d. 450 (playbill). For an English translation of Mendele's original text, see S. Y. Abramovitsh (Mendele Moykher Sforim), Tales of Mendele the Book Peddler: Fishke the Lame and Benjamin the Third, ed. Dan Miron and Ken Frieden, trans. Ted Gorelick and Hillel Halkin (New York, 1996).
149. A. S. Lirik, "Izrael shpielt mit zayn shaten," Haynt, 24 May 1928.
150. Grinval'd, Mikhoels, 42.
151. Moshe Litvakov, "In Moskver melukhishn yidishn teater dos tsente gebot," Der emes, 3 February 1926;
152. "Vegn tsvey oyfirungen," Der emes, 4 December 1927.
153. Lipe Reznik, Oyfshtand (Kiev, 1928).
154. Moshe Goldblatt, "Der ufkum un umkum fun der yidisher teater-kultur in sovetn-farband," Moshe Goldblatt Papers, P-51/21 103, Diaspora Research Institute, Tel Aviv.
155. A. Gidion, "Kolonial'nye postanovki," Sovremennyi teatr, 1927, no. 15.
156. Em. Beskin, "Vosstanie v Gosete," Vecherniaia Moskva, 4 December 1927.
157. RGALI, f. 2307, op. 2, d. 26, ll. 28-29.
158. Ibid., ll. 37, 48.
159. Goldblatt, "Der ufkum," 105.
160. Cited in Max Erlik, "Menakhem-Mendl," Shtern, 1935, nos. 5-6:180-202
161. and Shtern, no. 8:82-90.
162. Liubomirskii, Mikhoels, 44.
163. I. Kruti, "Chelovek vozdukha," Sovremennyi teatr, 1928, no. 15.
164. Sh. Shamis, "Mikhoels - Menakhem Mendel," Der emes, 12 July 1929.
165. Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People, HM/2 7313 (correspondence of Commissariat of Enlightenment regarding Jewish theater, 1926-1928).
166. See Hiroaki Kuromiya, Stalin's Industrial Revolution: Politics and Workers, 1928-1932 (Cambridge, Eng., 1988);
167. Anne Dickason Rassweiler, The Generation of Power: The History of Dneprostroi (New York, 1988);
168. Lewis Siegelbaum, Stakhanovism and the Politics of Productivity in the USSR, 1935-41 (Cambridge, Eng., 1988).
169. This theme is also shared by many of the articles in Sheila Fitzpatrick, The Cultural Front: Power and Culture in Revolutionary Russia (Ithaca, 1992);
170. William G. Rosenberg and Lewis H. Siegelbaum, eds., Social Dimensions of Soviet Industrialization (Bloomington, 1993).