Moscow Entertainments
By ELIZABETH HUNKIN AFOREIGNER acquainted with Soviet literature and accus- tomed to read the Soviet Press may wonder if the inhabi- tants of Moscow ever really relax, ever shed their taut social and political skins. What place can there be for diversion in such a life of " inspired labour " and stern purpose? But diversion has, of course, a place, even if a place which becomes smaller with almost every new Party decree, and it does not always fit so neatly as you might think into the tendentious pattern of Soviet life. .
Soviet audiences are worthy of study. They are simple-hearted, within limits well-informed, and seldom discriminating. In opera, ballet or drama they appear to enjoy most what is loud or startling to the eye. The performers respond generously to their enthusiasm, and show the same stamina as Soviet citizens in all other professions. The enthusiasm goes hand in hand with the absence of sophistication which is a marked feature of almost all Soviet entertainment. Only the older theatres are less ingenuous; and the programmes devised and executed by the celebrated Sergei Obraztsov with a variety of puppets, from dolls whose bosoms heave and whose eyelashes move ingratiatingly to wooden animals and plain wooden balls, are full of subtleties not often found in Soviet actuality.
RepertoireS are varied and usually almost equally divided between Soviet and non-Soviet plays. All the emphasis, however, is on the modern plays, and it is to performances of Soviet works that Stalin Prizes are almost always given. A Party decree passed in August, 1946—"On the repertoire of the dramatic theatres and measures for its improvement "—declares that the Soviet theatre can only fulfil its important function if it is active in doing propa- ganda for the policy of the Soviet State. The theatre must further the Communist ideal by demonstrating the qualities of the new Soviet man and exposing the survivals of the bourgeois past. By the demands of the decree all Soviet drama is measured. In January, 1949, when the Union of Soviet Writers took stock of developments since its publication, it was found that too few plays reached the required ideological and artistic standard. Many dramatists were still " divorced from the common life and struggle of the Soviet people." It was also pointed out that criticism, despite the strictures in the decree, was still the most backward sector of Soviet culture. Formalistic, " snobbist " critics were trying to shake the theatre's faith in the dramatic possibilities of Soviet themes.
There followed the orgy of exposure in which theatre critics (later literary, music and film critics became involved in their respective sphere) were made the scapegoats for the shortcomings of Soviet drama. Complaints at the lack of craftsmanship in Soviet plays were taken to imply criticism of the Soviet life the plays portrayed. Critics whose remarks were based on literary judgement were branded as a gang of " anti-patriots," " cosmo- politans," " tools of black reaction."
The critics routed, the path is still a thorny one. Plays whose setting is the routine of a textile combine or of railway offices, with clear-eyed, devoted, and characterless builders of Socialism as their heroes, tend to be dull. And too often the cupidity, inefficiency and vacillation—capitalist survivals—of, the villains prove more interesting to the audience than the exploits of the. heroes. Some dramatists have been concentrating lately on plays exposing Western manners. I Want to go Home at the Children's Theatre, for example, tells of children in D.P. camps, kept from their yearning parents by brutal Anglo-American officials; The House in the Side Street unmasks the heinous doings in a foreign embassy; or there are plays about the war in which one of the villains is Churchill, corpulent and delaying the Second Front, and the hero a calm and purposeful Stalin.
All the more surprising is it that Lord Goring, Mr. Pickwick and even Higgins of Pygmalion should be well knoWn to Moscow theatre-goers. Works by Shakespeare, Moliere, Calderon, Lope de Vega, Bernard Shaw and Wilde, as well as, of course, plays by pre-revolutionary Russian dramatists, are performed to full houses. Indeed, audiences are, on the whole, larger at non-Soviet than at Soviet plays; at the Moscow Art Theatre or the Maly it is usually much easier to get tickets for the, latter.
Seats in the stalls at the best theatres cost twenty-five to thirty roubles, that is, at a general estimate, about 5 per cent. of the monthly earnings of an unskilled worker, 21 per cent. of those of an engineer, and 1 per cent. of those of a stakhanovite or high- ranking army officer. At the smaller theatres they are rather cheaper. Quite good seats can be had for fifteen to twenty roubles. The cheapest cost. five roubles. Students, army officers and a fringe of visitors from other parts of the Soviet Union form a part of every audience; the rest are less easily identifiable. There are facilities in factories and institutions for the employees to obtain tickets without queueing at the box-office; whether they take advantage of them or not depends largely on their hours of work and whether they can get home after the theatre.
Contemporary humour, whether on the stage or in print, is too tendentious to be 'really funny, although gifted comedians like Raikin of Leningrad, who comes to Moscow for a part of every year, can make even the baldest propaganda entertaining. The Theatre of Satire draws enthusiastic audiences to innocuous comedies which derive their humour from mistaken identities, striped pyjamas and by-play with galoshes; but only its political satire wins favourable mention in the Press. A high measure of ideological content is demanded of the circus, were acrobatic turns are interspersed with jokes about the Marshall Plan.
Since the cinema more than any other form of entertainment can be used for mass propaganda, the film repertoire is the most circumscribed of all. The line for the cinema was dictated in the first of the recent cultural decrees. In their one-sidedness and intensity Soviet films can be quite frightening. One light-hearted attempt, a comedy called The Train Goes East, was given a sound rating in the Soviet Press. The critics complained that the only speech really befitting a Soviet production, one in which the hero described the defence of Leningrad, was drowned in the hooting of railway engines and other station noises. It was, in fact, from every point of view, a shockingly bad film; but there are one or two lighter films which are fresh and charming. , The demands made on the film industry are very exacting, and even though local film-studios are developing, in many of the Republics, very few Soviet films are released each year. The gap is being filled mainly by pre-war German and. Austrian films. They are dubbed, and the words, one suspects, not infrequently altered. They are advertised simply by their titles and a little notice saying Foreign Feature Film." Even with Soviet films, of course, little publicity is given to the stars, and their names do not appear on the posters. The tickets are inexpensive. If you are a member of the Supreme Soviet, a Minister in a Union Republic, a Hero of the Soviet Union, or, curiously enough, a foreign national employed in an embassy, you need not join the queue, but can show your credentials to the administrator and be given tickets without waiting.. The programmes are short, one film and a newsreel, and are preceded by a brief concert or talk, given in a crowded ante-room. Most cinemas also offer a refresh- ment counter, a reading-room and a' bookstall.
The West is perhaps today too-little aware of the high calling of drt and entertainment in the community. The Soviet Union. on the other hand, has surely gone too far. Entertainment in Moscow is marked by freshness, naiveté and zest; but super- imposed are one-sidedness, rigidity and lack of humour. It would be sad indeed if these were to paralyse in the Russians their natural facility for -enjoyment.
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