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Soviet Theater Audiences

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Mikhail Deza  and
Mervyn Matthews
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Extract

Soviet authorities have always maintained that their national theater is a truly popular form of art, enjoyed by broad masses of the people. This view has been expressed or implied in every official statement on the medium for many years. “Soviet theatrical art,” according to a 1958 Central Committee statement, “has become a truly popular art, close and comprehensible to the broad masses of the toilers…. Our theater, by carrying the most progressive ideas of socialism, peace, and democracy to the masses, has rightly earned widespread recognition, and become an important factor in the development of all progressive art… “

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 34 , Issue 4 , December 1975 , pp. 716 - 730
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1975

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References

1. “Vsesoiuznoi konferentsii rabotnikov teatrov, dramaturgov i teatral'nykh kritikov. Privetstvie TsK KPSS,” Pravda, October 10, 1958, in KPSS o kul'ture, prosveshchenii, i nauke (Moscow, 1963), p. 253. This was the first such gathering of the post-Stalin period.

2. London, 1967, p. 824.

3. Florinsky, M. T., McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Russia and the Soviet Union (New York, 1961), p. 1961 Google Scholar.

4. The material used in this paper is of two types. First, we have relied on books and articles which were published in the normal manner. In addition we have made extensive use of results of a survey conducted by Mikhail Deza and Soviet colleagues for the RSFSR Ministry of Culture in 1967-68. The study was entitled “The Theater and the Viewer—An Economic, Mathematical, Sociological Investigation of the Work of Dramatic

6. Kul'turnoe stroitel'stvo SSSR (Moscow, 1956), p. 293. The figures may not be entirely accurate, and no data are provided in this source for the years 1915-27. We use USSR rather than RSFSR figures here and in table 1 because they are more complete.

7. This is a problem which requires further elucidation. Short discussions are to be found in Izvekov, N, “Teatral'nyi Oktiabr',” Sbornik, vol. 1 (Moscow-Leningrad, 1926), p. 79 Google Scholar, and Borodin, A. P. in Sovetskoe iskusstvo, no. 8 (1925), p. 30 Google Scholar.

8. The need for caution in interpreting this study is, of course, particularly great here.

9. William J. Baumol and William G. Bowen, The Performing Arts, the Economic Dilemma : A Study of Problems Common to Theater, Opera, Music and Dance (New York, 1966). Smaller surveys—of the Broadway stage—but ones not without interest, were described by Moore, T. G. in The Economics of the American Theater (Durham, N.C., 1968)Google Scholar. We shall refer to these when necessary.

10. T. G. Moore, p. 76.

11. Baumol and Bowen, p. 101.

12. Included, to improve comparability, are American clerical and sales staff, who made up 13 percent of the audiences surveyed. It is doubtful whether these can be considered as belonging to the United States middle classes, but similar categories are included in the Soviet “employees” category. We have attributed students to the middle classes (despite their probable low incomes) in both the American and Soviet data.

13. United States figures for 1967 (United States Statistical Abstract 1968, p. 111. Persons fourteen years and over, metropolitan.) ; United Kingdom—General Household Survey, Introductory Report (London, 1973), p. 230, abstracted from 10 percent Census (1966), but not closely comparable with the American figure.

14. The figures for the preferences of the Moscow Sovremennik Theater audiences by social group are, unfortunately, too complex to lend themselves to interpretation here. The data included in all some 1, 200 entries.

15. The organizers of the survey purposely used the term “repertoire” to elucidate attitudes toward the theater in general, rather than the quality of a given performance.

16. Zhidkov, V, “Izucheniia teatra—kompleksnyi podkhod,” in Ekonomika i orpinizatsiia teatra, vol. 1 (Leningrad, 1971), p. 68 Google Scholar.

17. Petrosian, G. S., Biudzhet vremeni, vol. 2 (Novosibirsk, 1969), p. 56 Google Scholar. This survey was conducted in November 1967 and covered 3, 363 workers and employees aged 16-65 of four Erevan factories.

18. T. G. Moore, p. 77. It will be noted that the figures are methodologically not directly comparable.

19. Shkodin, B. M., “Gorodskie teatry RSFSR,” in Ekonomika i organizatsiia teatra, vol. 1 (Leningrad, 1971)Google Scholar.

20. See Ekonomika i organizatsiia teatra, vol. 1, p. 74.

21. Zhidkov, V, “V usloviiakh reformy,” Teatr, 1970, no. 5, pp. 78–85Google Scholar.

22. B. M. Shkodin, p. 31.

23. See Ekonomika i organizatsiia teatra, vol. 1, p. 78.