I F IT can be said that an aristocracy exists in the classless society of the Soviet Union, then the artists of the theatre are a part of it. As Russia advances, a certain differentiation of types—I will not say classes—is developing. In proportion to the contribution which each man makes to the collective enterprise, privileges and remunerations are allowed him. The old misconception of the bourgeois world that the Communists insist that every man is in every way the equal of every other and that all must share and share alike, has been gradually dissolved by the consistent reports of observers of the U.S.S.R. who see quite a different situation working out, more in line with the Communist slogan, "From every man according to his ability, to every man according to his needs.” The other belief, that in a workers’ state all men are reduced to the status of day laborers, which actually led one of my intelligent friends to ask me to try to find out when I got to Moscow if it were true that all professional actors had to work in factories by day and could act only in the evenings, is equally preposterous.
The artists of the theatre straight through the years of the Revolution have been the darlings of the government. When others were starving the artists were given subsistence—poor, of course, but still all that was possible. For the Soviet government does not, and never has, subscribed to the romantic notion that genius flourishes best in a gar-
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ret. Now that living conditions have improved, provisions for the material welfare of the artistic world have expanded, and it lives in as great comfort as any of the inhabitants of Moscow.
The Soviet government has paid a great deal of attention to honors for its citizenry. It has created the Order of Lenin, the Order of the Red Banner, of the Red Star, and half a dozen other Communistic investitures as rewards for distinguished services chiefly in technological work. For the artists also it has a system of honors which involves not only titles but privileges. The Council of People’s Commissars, an organization vaguely comparable to the Cabinet, but with more collective power, is authorized to confer upon worthy artists the title of "Honored Artist of the Republic,” "Honored Worker of Art,” "People’s Artist of the Republic.” There are about five hundred Honored Artists, the least honor of the three, and but a select handful of People’s Artists. Recommendations are made to the Council of People’s Commissars by the directorates of the theatres who judge the artistic talent of their candidates, by the party representatives in the theatres who subscribe to the candidates’ political orthodoxy, and by the Narkom - pros which reviews the citations.
"Honored Artist” is a rank to which almost every good actor may be raised after he has proved his ability and sincerity over a certain number of years. "Honored Worker of Art” is a higher position which comes to artists as a reward for distinguished service to the profession over a long period of time. It does not, however, stamp the artist as really great. Only People’s Artists are that: Stanislavski, Kachalov, Moskvin, Meierhold, just this year Tairov, and others of their preeminent ability. It is an honor which comes late in life. There are no young People’s Artists, but the young Honored Artists may look forward to becoming one day People’s Artists, for the system is progressive.
These honors are not empty ones. They bring with them certain privileges. In Moscow, because of the terrific overcrowding, a limit has been placed upon the household space which any one individual may occupy. A short time ago it was nine feet square. But this maximum may be exceeded by certain privileged citizens, among whom are numbered the creative artists. The right to have one’s own apartment is granted to honored artists some of whom occupy alone or with their families apartments of four or five rooms. A few of the great People’s Artists have an entire house. They all may have one or two servants.
The medical aid which artists may receive is superior to the average citizen’s. They need not stand in line at the free clinics but may receive more personal attention. I was told of the time when one of the finest actresses of the Vakhtangov Theatre developed serious complications after childbirth and whose life was in grave danger. The only specialists able to save her were attending a medical conference in Kiev hundreds of miles away. The director of the theatre telephoned the Kremlin at once, talked to the Secretary of the Central Executive Committee and explained that the life of his artist was at stake. The Kremlin ordered a fast military plane at once into service to fly the doctor back to Moscow. He arrived in a few hours and the actress’s life was saved.
Vacations for all members of the theatrical profession are provided with pay, and well-equipped rest homes and sanitoria are available. Some of the greater artists are even allowed freedom to travel abroad, a privilege which is extended to few citizens; and not only is the freedom to travel granted, but an allowance of a certain amount of valuta is made for the artist’s foreign expenses, since his own roubles are valueless outside of the country. Honored artists of all ranks enjoy the same internal privileges as
the highest members of the Communist Party, although few of them are members of it . 1
Honored artists are also privileged to perform less often than the regular members of the profession. Certain People’s Artists may appear only once in several weeks and yet receive steady salary. On the question of salary specific information is hard to acquire. The great artists possibly receive several thousand roubles a month, an income which allows them to live as comfortably as life can be lived in Moscow. A young playwright whose play was performed a year or so ago in a hundred theatres throughout the Union, from all of which he was receiving royalty, is rumored to be the richest man in Moscow today. He literally has more money than he knows what to do with!
It is of little use, however, to talk much about salary because, in the first place, the figures of one’s income are little indication of one’s advantages or disadvantages, since the taxations on the one hand and exemptions of one kind and another on the other, alter the meaning of them. The exemptions and privileges often amount to more, in the long run, than the actual monetary remuneration a man receives. In the second place, a large salary has little meaning because it is of little use. There are still so few niceties of life which can be acquired in Moscow that prominent artists continue to live simply. There are few fine automobiles—a handful of old Rolls-Royces and some shiny Lincolns convey high government officials; a two-thousand- rouble-a-week prima donna arrives at the opera’s stage door in a Ford or on foot. Leading men have no elegantly tailored suits, for there are no elegant tailors in Moscow to
1 It is interesting that Sudakov, regisseur of the Moscow Art Theatre and an Honored Artist, was the first member of the acting company of three hundred in that theatre to be elected to membership in the Party, and that took place seventeen years after the October Revolution. (There are a number of Party members on the technical staff of the theatre.)
do their work. Saving money for the future is unnecessary and is disapproved of.
The chief reason, however, why it is of little use to talk about salary is because the artists are not working for it. Acting is an art to which they have dedicated themselves for its own sake and for the service of the people. In New York an actor regularly talks about his "job.” I have never heard an actor in Moscow so refer to his occupation, for he does not regard it in this way. There has been a good deal of talk about the possibility of eliminating the desire for private profit from man, and the effect of the acquisitive urge upon the success of the Soviet "Experiment.” I can only say that among the artists of the Soviet Union this motive seems to me to have been completely sublimated. No one in the theatre is working for the sake of the privileges he' may be granted therefor, nor for the salary he may receive. To be sure, the usefulness of money is not denied and the advantages of comfortable material environment are not scorned, but the lust for wealth is absent. Devotion to art takes its place.
Privileges are allowed and remunerations offered in Soviet Russia in return for service and in proportion to earning capacity. All artists therefore have not the advantages which the honored artists enjoy. It is true that many of the beginners in the theatre receive only a hundred or two roubles instead of a thousand, that the living conditions of the average young actor, not an honored artist, are hard and inferior to those of the average young actor in New York. But he has one great advantage: he is sure of employment. His income is certain; he has not that fearful feeling of insecurity which all young actors in New York know before they become established, and which some feel even thereafter. There are no unemployed actors in Moscow.
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Noblesse oblige—sagesse oblige.
If the artists are members of an intellectual aristocracy in Soviet Russia with privileges and position, they have tremendous obligations to fulfill in return.
Everyone in Russia is working incessantly. The greater the contribution a man can make, the more are the demands which are put upon him. Therefore, this intelligentsia is among the hardest worked of all the laboring .masses of Russia; the artists of the Moscow theatres are busy from morning to night. Their lives are so different from the lives of American professional theatre people that apart from the significance of the implied commentary on the system which is there, the contrast is interesting for its own sake. In the first place, Moscow artists spend much more time on themselves than Americans. In the second place, Moscow artists spend much more time serving others than Americans. In the third place, there are no cocktail parties in Moscow.
Let me expand. The Russian actor devotes much of his day to keeping in training, just as great concert artists spend hours a day practicing. Most American actors spend no time at all. During the few weeks when they are in rehearsal, our actors will work on a part; once the show has opened, there is nothing more to do until it has closed and they have found another "job,” when their work will begin again. I do some actors an injustice. The influence of the Russian theatre has already been felt by some in New York and there are artists who "study” with Ouspen- skaya or Daykarhanova or who used to work with Richard Boleslavski; others who go to certain voice specialists and learn things about the use of the spoken word which the rest never bother about. They are a small minority.
I am inclined to agree with those critics who say that
when success comes in America, it comes too easily, too suddenly and too soon, that it stops the normal and measured development of the individuals’ talent. It is for this reason more than for any other that so few American artists spend time working on themselves and the art that is in them. Young actors come too soon to thinking that they are good, that they "know all about it.” It is true, too, I think, that the older generation of artists works more on itself than the younger, and that in itself is a disturbing sign. Too many young actors have the idea that education for a profession or an art is a specializing process that is to occupy those two to four years which center around twenty, that when it is concluded education is acquired and nothing more need be done about it.
The Russians believe that education and training must continue to be acquired for as long as one wishes to make use of them. Several hours a day are spent at their theatres by young and old actors alike in exercises which are designed to keep them flexible in body and mind. There are fencing and gymnastic and dancing classes, there are lessons in the Stanislavski system or in the principles of bio-mechanics. There are reading exercises and small dramatic problems at which they work.
I have already discussed the amount of time which actors spend each day in rehearsal for a new production. In addition to these rehearsals there are understudy rehearsals and general rehearsals of many of the plays already in the repertoire, and these they must attend also. The fact that the Moscow theatres perform in repertory does not make easier days for the artists.
A long time ago, for six years is a long time in the Soviet chronology, Maurice Hindus wrote, "Social service under the banner of the Revolution, insist the Bolshevists, will bring to man new interests and new raptures. . . . Social service is to be the great method and the great goal,
the great motive and the great fact. ... It is such enterprises [social tasks], they never cease to emphasize, that will give man a fuller sense of dignity, of personal worth, than any form of worship, for they will inculcate in him a sense of mastery instead of submission, of triumph instead of fear.”
This Bolshevist prophecy seems to have been realized in the theatre. In addition to their regular work in the theatre which is, as I have suggested, but part of the greater service to which that art is at all times dedicated for the people, the individual artists have work outside the walls of their theatres. Some of the actors and regisseurs are teaching in the State Theatre Technicum and Institute; others are instructing the students of their own technicum (not strictly speaking extra-mural activity, but still not part of the regular rehearsal schedule). Many of the regisseurs and actors of the large theatres are directing productions in other and smaller theatres. Sudakov has more or less taken over the TRAM and is assisted there by several other MXAT regisseurs. Zavadski, besides being managing director of his own studio theatre, also acts occasionally at the Moscow Art Theatre and sometimes directs plays for the Red Army Theatre. Still other regisseurs and actors spend many hours each week at the clubs where they are in charge of dramatic circles. Some even journey out to collective farms to carry on the same kind of work there. I once asked for an interview with a prominent regisseur on a special day and was told that she would not be at home until after eleven o’clock at night as she was rehearsing three different productions in three different places from ten in the morning until eleven at night.
The "'concert” is an institution which is important in the social life of the urban people and a constant occupation for theatre workers. These concerts are really variety programs which are the entertainment at the big collective
parties given by institutions and factories for their employees, and the performers are largely drawn from the opera and the professional dramatic theatres who go to give readings, a form of entertainment very popular in Russia, and to present sketches, to sing, to dance.
These concerts are private affairs open only to the members of the factory or organization, but there are concerts of the same description, though a bit more pretentious, to which the public is admitted by ticket. 1935 was the year of the seventy-fifth anniversary of the birth of Chekhov, and his widow and other actors of the Art Theatre were in constant demand to talk of him and to give readings of his works at these public concerts. All these things are part of the cultural education of the masses and the artists recognize it as their duty (and perhaps their pleasure, if the spirit of social service is as triumphant as the Bolsheviks announce) to accept all requests for appearances outside their own theatres.
Many Moscow actors top off all this labor with cinema engagements which must be fulfilled at the same time as their regular theatre work, for, unlike the American actors who seldom perform and rehearse in both media at once, the Muscovite star shines half the day and night on the stage of his theatre, to which he has permanent obligations, and the other half of the time blends his glitter with the Klieg lights of the film studios.
I do not know whether I should say that there are no cocktail parties in Moscow because the people are working so hard all the time, or that the people work so hard because there are no cocktail parties. At any rate the hours which the New York professional theatre spends meeting social obligations the Moscow world knows not of. To a certain extent the social activities of the New York theatre people are part of their business; it is one important way to sell themselves to their public and their services to each
other. Nobody in Moscow has to do that, therefore he doesn’t. Not that there are no parties at all there, but there is not the same perpetual round of gayeties to weary the spirit and soften the brain. When parties take place, they are events.
Social life in the Soviet Union is tied up with the economic collectives. The collective works together and it plays together. The common forms of entertainment among actors are banquets or parties given by the theatres for all its members who share the expenses and are joint hosts. They may invite a few outside guests but the party retains its homogeneous character. At such parties, which usually take place at the theatre after a performance and which last the better part of the night, there will be a supper first which will last until two o’clock or so, then a long program of entertainment. At one of these, I heard the composer Prokofiev play, Kachalov read, one of the leading prima donnas of the Bolshoi Opera sing, Otto Schmidt, the Soviet polar hero, speak of his adventures. After this there will be dancing, but since it has only recently been looked upon with favor in Moscow, more people are on the sidelines than on the floor.
Private parties are not unheard of, even though collective amusement is the order of the day. More and more, small groups and couples seek entertainment according to their individual tastes. But time is scarce and many of the young theatre people would prefer to spend their leisure on the hockey rink than in the restaurant—a most understandable choice to anyone who has made the rounds of Moscow restaurants.
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There is in Moscow an institution which New York sadly lacks—a central meeting place for members of the theatrical profession. The Actors’ Dinner Club, the Lambs’
and the Players’, the Actors’ Equity Association, divide among them some of the functions of the Moscow Club of Masters of Art, but that organization has them al) beaten on breadth of its activities. The year book of th' ( Club states that it was organized to promulgate Party work and to improve artists’ knowledge (of that work), to carry on organized endeavor, to improve artistic quality, to further the exchange of experiences, the critical analysis of artistic production, to cater to the cultural life and the leisure hours of its members, to offer concrete assistance in productional work, to connect artists with manual laborers and farmers—people outside the theatre, in other words—to recruit art workers to the study of the fundamental principles of political life and of the reports of Joseph Stalin, to take care of the publication of activities, conferences, debates, and so on, of its members.
The members of the Club are creative workers of the Moscow theatres—i.e., actors, regisseurs, designers, musicians—painters, dramatists, historians of art, critics, composers, cinema workers. There are in the neighborhood of four thousand of them. They pay dues appropriate to their incomes; those whose salaries are one hundred roubles a month or less pay fifty kopeks, and so on up to those who receive over 350 roubles and pay three roubles a month. Honored and People’s Artists pay no fees.
Two buildings house the Club’s activities, one quite near the center of town, the other not far from the old Hermitage. To enter the main one, we descend the stairs, for the Club is in a basement. Here there are attractive lounges with muraled ceilings of Tony Sarg-like caricatures of various "Masters of Art.” The walls of one room are devoted to exhibitions of recent paintings by members, walls of others are covered with photographs of prominent artist members. There is a small but excellent auditorium with a little stage, there are special rooms for meetings of the dif-
ferent artist groups, there is a restaurant, a library. The branch club house has its auditorium also, and its library, a small ballroom, a dining room, billiard rooms, card rooms, several small rooms for group meetings, a barber shop.
The work is carried on under the Presidium of the Moscow District Committee of the Union of Theatrical Workers, by a board—of which the Club’s director is a member—elected by the membership. This board arranges the program of activities. There are series of meetings at which prominent men of letters discuss the great masters of art— a series about Pushkin, another dedicated to Chekhov, were held during my stay. There are meetings at which the work of the different creative collectives and of individual artists is reviewed; for instance, a series of evenings dedicated to the Maly Theatre, when representatives from it talk of its past and its present, and when outside critics analyze its work. There was an evening when Meierhold talked about Pushkin and Chaikovski and what he was trying to do with their "Queen of Spades”; another when Tairov talked about Shaw, Shakespeare and Pushkin, and explained his ideas for the production of "Egyptian Nights.”
There are evenings when the members may hear special reports—a lecture by Natalie Satz on her trip to Prague and of theatre work there, one by Tairov and Amaglobely on the International Theatre Congress in Rome at which they represented the Soviet theatre. The artists are eager to hear news of the outside world. There are special conferences arranged between the painters and the theatre workers when they discuss their problems with each other. There are social evenings, dances in the branch club house on the evenings before free-day, and very popular they are. There is an institute for instruction open to young members under the direction of a special bureau, where
special courses are offered in Marx-Leninism and where round-table discussions on various trade union subjects are held. There are recitals and "concerts” for and by the members; one evening I attended a dance recital by a visiting foreign artist there. Once a week free law consultations are available for members.
The combined libraries in the two buildings contain about 35,000 volumes in fields of sociology and politics, history of art, literature, drama, art, children’s books, encyclopedias, periodicals—there are thirty foreign magazines available. The library has a traveling fund to send these books around Moscow to the various factory and trade union clubs with which the Theatrical Club is in constant contact. The library organizes children’s exhibitions, it arranges meetings between writers and readers, it helps in the selection of literature of use in play production, particularly for the amateur circles.
One night before free-day I found myself in a company of young artists at this Club of Masters of Art. None of them were famous, all of them were regular members of good theatres in Moscow, young men and women in their twenties. There were about a hundred others dancing there to the small and inferior jazz orchestra that the Club had provided. I looked about me, curious to make comparisons with similar groups of my friends of the same age at home. They presented no very prepossessing appearance externally, and they could not fox-trot very well, but there were qualities which I liked. The young Soviet artists have none of the superficiality, none of the self-consciousness of young artists elsewhere. They lack their sophistication but they have sincerity. There is no striving for effect, no artificial "personalities,” only simplicity, earnestness, eagerness. The artists of the Soviet Union are a healthy lot; they present a much more normal and "average” appearance
than a like group of artists elsewhere. Abnormality of every sort seems to be absent. There is complete absorption in work. Long discussions about the art of the theatre were in progress at tables around me, and they knew what they were talking about. Their earnestness, however, has room for humor. There was laughter enough that evening.
All these young artists possess personal dignity. Is it the innate dignity which the peasant and the common man have but which the bourgeoisie, as a class, lack? Or is it that "fuller sense of dignity, of personal worth” that Hindus says the Bolsheviks assert will attend an awakened social consciousness? Is it dignity which arises from pride in their art, in their own work, in their position in Soviet society, in the consciousness of a mission? I think so. Artists of the theatre in the Western world have difficulty in forgetting the very near past when acting was a hardly respectable occupation. They still feel, perhaps ever so slightly, that they are jesters to the public. If they feel that their art is a high and great calling, they are confused by a surrounding society which disagrees with them, and, in an effort to rid themselves of what they feel to be an unrightfully imposed social inferiority, fall back on conduct and an attitude of mind which robs them of dignity. The artists of Moscow are not jesters to the public, they are its leaders, its teachers, its servants; they are Russia’s respected citizens, its great men.
CHAPTER ELEVEN