Political Denunciations in the Soviet Past

[innopac]

Has anyone every written about the pressure on dancers to denounce their colleagues? Or written specifically about political pressures/threats - direct and indirect - that they felt during their own careers?

I have been reading about a very respected ballerina who publicly "criticized" Shostakovich and others who denounced Valery Panov. And yet dancers like Vasiliev and Plisetskaya seem to managed to avoid succumbing to what must have been similar pressure.

I was wondering if there have been any articles written about this with particular reference to the ballet world of the Bolshoi and the Kirov.

[Sacto1654]

If I remember from Maya Plisetskaya's autobiography, she said that because of her Jewish heritage the Bolshoi management treated her pretty poorly, which mean it wasn't until 1959 (some sixteen years after she graduated from choreographic school in 1943!) that she was allowed to tour with the Bolshoi troupe outside the Soviet Union.

Of course, we also know of the unfortunate situation with Konstantin Sergeyev and his wife Natalia Dudinskaya after Rudolf Nureyev suddenly defected to the West in 1961--both were heavily criticized and also the Kirov troupe was not allowed to tour in the West until 1986, some 25 years later!

[cubanmiamiboy]

I can't remember where, but i sure read-(was it here in BT?)-that Vasiliev had visited Panov after the last one's fall to offer support, in which Panov asked him if he wasn't afraid about being seen with him, to which Vasiliev answered that ..."hell yeah, i am..."

[Mel Johnson]

Of course, we also know of the unfortunate situation with Konstantin Sergeyev and his wife Natalia Dudinskaya after Rudolf Nureyev suddenly defected to the West in 1961--both were heavily criticized and also the Kirov troupe was not allowed to tour in the West until 1986, some 25 years later!

I don't know about that. I've got programs here from their 1964 season at the Old Met.

[Sacto1654]

I don't know about that. I've got programs here from their 1964 season at the Old Met.

Whoops! I forgot about the Kirov US tour in 1964. I do know that after a number of high-profile defections (Rudolf Nureyev in 1961, Natalia Makarova in 1970, and Mikhail Baryshnikov in 1974) that both Konstanin Sergeyev and his wide Natalia Dudinskaya were subject to a lot of sanctions from the Soviet government, and we didn't see the Kirov troupe in the USA after 1964 until 1986, right at the beginning of the Glasnost period.

As such, I personally think that the Bolshoi troupe definitely benefited from the sanction against the Kirov (the Bolshoi continued to tour the West extensively after 1964), and Western audiences were able to see the final years of Maya Plisetskaya's legendary career.

[Mel Johnson]

Makarova bailed on them in London, I think, and Baryshnikov in Canada. I remember thinking at the time, "Oh cripes, now they'll never come back!" I do agree that this situation worked out well from the Bolshoi's point of view.

[Mashinka]

The situation was different in London. Prime Minister Harold Wilson (rumoured to be a closet Soviet Ballet fan) made representations to the Soviet Government on behalf of the Panov's but his success came at a cost and the Bolshoi season of 1974 was to be the last until 1986, needless to say we didn't see the Kirov during those empty years either.

[Sacto1654]

The situation was different in London. Prime Minister Harold Wilson (rumoured to be a closet Soviet Ballet fan) made representations to the Soviet Government on behalf of the Panov's but his success came at a cost and the Bolshoi season of 1974 was to be the last until 1986, needless to say we didn't see the Kirov during those empty years either.

In fact, according to what I read from my copy of the World Book Encyclopedia 1988 Year Book, the Bolshoi didn't tour the USA after 1979 (probably no thanks to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan!) until 1987, one year after the Kirov returned to the USA for the first time since 1964. I remember it was in 1989 that Natalia Makarova was able to return to Russia to visit and work with her old friends at the Kirov during the height of glasnost. Thanks to Bolshoi continuing to tour in the West, older balletomanes recognize the names of Natalia Bessmertnova, Ekaterina Maximova and Ludmila Semenyaka, while we knew much less about the Kirov ballerinas of the same period (in my humble opinion!).

But getting back on topic, I do know that Prokofiev got denounced quite a lot during the Stalin era, especially over the structure of the Romeo & Juliet ballet. Not only did the Soviet censors object to the "happy" ending (now there's a lot of irony in this!), but the Kirov rejected the original Prokofiev version and it only premiered at the Bolshoi after a LOT of changes from Leonid Lavrovsky's choreography. And the circumstances of how a part of Dmitri Shostakovich's controversial Symphony No. 7 ("Leningrad") got turned into a ballet was quite interesting from a political perspective.

[Mel Johnson]

Going back into the 1920s, Lydia Ivanova received the BIG denunciation - they found her body floating in the Gulf of Finland with a bullet hole in the head. It's unclear whether it was a politically-motivated murder (she was about to leave Russia on a tour of Germany) or the result of a romantic triangle.

Whatever plans her colleagues (Balanchine, Danilova, Geva, et al.) at Evenings of the Young Ballet had had before, her murder argued strongly in favor of defection. They did.

[dirac]

Has anyone every written about the pressure on dancers to denounce their colleagues? Or written specifically about political pressures/threats - direct and indirect - that they felt during their own careers?

I can't point you anywhere specific, but something that comes up regularly in discussions and interviews related to Nureyev's defection is the way the dancers were encouraged to spy on each other when abroad, reporting on when their colleagues left the hotel, when they came back, who they were with, etc. Gennady Smakov's book, "The Great Russian Dancers" if I'm recalling the title correctly, has some details on who was In, who was Out, and how some dancers fell out of favor.

[innopac]

Thanks dirac! I also just found the following on google.

The Dancer Defects: The Struggle for Cultural Supremacy During the Cold War

By David Caute

Published by Oxford University Press, 2005

ISBN 0199278830, 9780199278831

824 pages

[bart]

innopac: a warning about the caute book. It's long and packed with detail -- almost none of it having to do with "dancers." (There IS a chapter, as I recall, at the very end, in which Nureyev, Makarova and Baryshnikov make an appearance.). I have no idea why he chose this title.

[innopac]

innopac: a warning about the caute book. It's long and packed with detail -- almost none of it having to do with "dancers." (There IS a chapter, as I recall, at the very end, in which Nureyev, Makarova and Baryshnikov make an appearance.). I have no idea why he chose this title.

Thanks for the warning, bart. I will see if I can track down a library copy rather than buy it.

[Sacto1654]

By the way, to get an idea of what ballet during the Soviet era was like, you might want to read this PhD thesis as the basis for the subject matter of this message thread:

http://etd.lib.fsu.edu/theses/available/etd-04072005-133328/

It explains why both the Bolshoi and Kirov/Mariinsky Ballet currently have these ballets from that period more or less in the repertoire:

The Fountain of Bakhchisarai (most definitely still in repertoire)

Romeo & Juliet (after extensive changes!)

Cinderella (though not performed on a regular basis currently)

It was essentially a minor miracle of sorts that The Flames of Paris was even revived by the Bolshoi even in its currently revised form.

[innopac]

By the way, to get an idea of what ballet during the Soviet era was like, you might want to read this PhD thesis as the basis for the subject matter of this message thread:

http://etd.lib.fsu.edu/theses/available/etd-04072005-133328/

Thank you very much!

[Sacto1654]

It's interesting that The Fountain of Bakhchisarai (the place really does exist!) is one of the few ballets created during the Stalinist era that is still in the repertoire of the major ballet companies in Russia now. According to the thesis, it lucked out for one reason: it was created just before Stalin really tightened his grip on artistic control in the Soviet Union, when artists were trying to figure out the idea of "socialist realism."

One really wonders would either the Mariinsky Theatre or Bolshoi Theatre want to revive The Bronze Horseman, probably the last major ballet written during the Stalinist era. I think probably not, due to a lot of older Russians who remember Stalin's purges and they don't want any ballet to remind of those purges (which explains why it was a minor miracle of sorts that the Bolshoi would even revive The Flames of Paris).