N. Murray.

Street Theatre as Propaganda: Mass Performances and Spectacles in Petrograd in 1920

The October 1917 Bolshevik revolution aimed to destroy the old bourgeois society and to build a
new homogenous socialist state. As Fascist Italy or Germany would later, the new Bolshevik state
needed a new foundation, and with it a corresponding founding myth. When the Bolsheviks came to
power their party contained no more than 350, 000 people in a country of 140 million. Turned
overnight into the ruling party, the Bolsheviks aimed to use the power of mass propaganda in order
to establish this founding mythology and disseminate their ideas to an overwhelmingly rural and
illiterate population. A reason why culture was of such constant concern to the Bolsheviks was
because since the October Revolution, the sphere of culture and ideology was also the sphere of
legitimisation of the state.

In his book on totalitarian art, Igor Golomstock observed that: ‘In a totalitarian system art performs
the function of transforming the raw material of dry ideology into the fuel of images and myths
intended for general consumption.’1

In the 1920s Bolshevik festivals included many street performances which were used as a powerful
tool of social manipulation for the establishment of the new Soviet mythology.

By 1920, the Civil War was being won by the Red Army in almost all theatres. The threat of Entente
allied intervention faded: the British left by the end of 1919 and the Red Army had defeated the
White army in the Ukraine as well as the army led by Admiral Kolchak in Siberia.

The economic situation remained extreme, and the economy had actually collapsed over
the period. Some 60% of Petrograd workers were still laid off, and the total number of
factory workers fell from 3.5 million to barely one million by 1920 in the massive de-
urbanisation. Fuel remained scarce (coal production had fallen by 60%), food prices were
rising, while the large reserve of unemployed men ensured that wages remained low.
Rations fell to 900 calories a day, as against 2300 considered necessary for non-manual
labour. Contemporaries described Petrograd in 1920 as a severe, starving, ragged city – half-
empty, without electricity, cars or cabmen. 775 factories were closed down due to lack of
oil. Only 722,000 people remained in Petrograd (in the beginning of 1918 the population of the city
was two million). Evgeny Zamyatin evoked Petrograd in the winter: ‘Glaciers, mammoths, wastes.
Black nocturnal cliffs, somehow resembling houses; in the cliffs, caves…Cave men wrapped in hides,
blankets, wraps, retreated from cave to cave’.2

1
Igor Golomstock, Totalitarian Art in the Soviet Union, the Third Reich, Fascist Italy and the People’s
Republic of China, translated fr Russian by Robert Chandler (London: Collins Harvill, 1990), p. xii.
2
Quoted in Geoffrey Hosking, A History of the Soviet Union, Revised Edition (London: Fontana Press, 1985), p.
74.

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N. Murray. Street Theatre as Propaganda: Mass Performances and Spectacles in Petrograd in 1920

In 1920, the Third All-Russia Congress of Trade Unions decreed that all the salaries will be paid in
food, cloth, shoes and soap vouchers and the amount that one gets will depend on the category to
which one belonged.

By 1920 culture in all its forms was seen not just as a tool of informing or persuasion of the new
society, but now also of its control. In 1919 and 1920, mass theatrical performances and spectacles
became a last resort for free expression of artistic creativity. They also epitomised all the ambitions
of Proletkult.3

Theatre as an inherently collective art was at the cutting edge of the work of Proletkult studios and
clubs throughout Russia. Platon Kerzhentsev, one of its most active propagators insisted that the
people's theatre be not a theatre for the people but a ‘theatre of the people,' i.e. based on the
creative work of the lower classes.’4 He remarked that ‘the task of the proletarian theatre is not to
produce good professional actors who will successfully perform the plays of a socialist repertory, but
to give an outlet to the creative artistic instinct of the broad masses.’5

In Petrograd the first theatre to stage revolutionary performances belonged to Proletkult. Already in
1918-1919, Proletkult performances were laying strong foundations for the mass spectacles which
became the centre of all the Soviet festivals in the 1920s. In 1919 one of the theoreticians of
Proletkult, Vladimir Tikhanovich wrote: ‘Beauty has to penetrate into everyday reality… Theatre – is
the best means of aesthetisation of life and the development of a new culture, represented by not
single geniuses but aestheticized masses; a fusion of festivals and every day; leisure and labour.’ 6

Mass performances promised to bring art to common people and give them a chance to participate
in their very creation. The ‘masses’ were at the same time part of the spectacle and spectatorship –
they were acted upon and actors at the same time. They also provided an opportunity for
spontaneity and free expression of people’s feelings about recent events. In his book The Art of
Interruption, John Roberts has explained that definitions of the ‘everyday’ in revolutionary and post-
revolutionary Russia are debated ‘through the framework of proletarian culture’ and that ‘capturing
the ‘everyday’ and transforming the ‘everyday’ for a ‘true Bolshevism’ became the terrain on which
the right and left of the party fought out the cultural debate’.7

3
Proletkult - abbreviation of Proletarskaia Kul’tura [Proletarian Culture], an experimental organization
established in the new Soviet state in 1917 in conjunction with the October Revolution, to provide the
foundations for the development of proletarian art which strived to involve the masses in artistic creation
4
Quoted in James von Geldern, Bolshevik Festivals. 1917-1920, (University of California Press, 1993), p. 28.
5
Ibid.
6
Quoted in A. I. Mazaev, Iskusstvo I Bol’shevizm. 1920-1930 (Moscow: Komkniga, 2007), pp. 16-17.
7
John Roberts, The art of interruption. Realism, photography and the everyday (Manchester and New York:
Manchester University Press, 1998), p. 16.

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N. Murray. Street Theatre as Propaganda: Mass Performances and Spectacles in Petrograd in 1920

In the unstable economic and political situation in the midst of the Civil War, the 8th Congress of the
Communist Party, which took place in March 1919, called all the cultural workers to develop the
widest possible propagation of communist ideas. 8 By expressing the pathos of the fight against the
exploiters and class enemies, mass performances had to play the leading role in the revolutionary
education of the masses.

Following traditional elements of pre-revolutionary Russian fairs, which included balagans,

Before the October Revolution the army had served to acquaint Russian lower classes with theatre.
And it only had to be expected that in 1919, along with Proletkult studios, the Theatrical-
Dramaturgical Studio of the Red Army was given the task of producing the first, most important,
outside performances. It was organised by the director of the Mobile-Popular Theatre, Nikolai
Vinogradov, in 1919 and was awarded the status of a special military unit. They had become
‘revolutionary cabarets’ which comprised recital of satirical verse, clowns and choral singing and was
performed on the platforms attached to trams and lorries.

The idea of the mobile theatre performance was developed further on 1 May 1920 when such
famous theatre directors as Radlov, Soloviev, Piotrovsky and Rappoport staged short dramas on
tram platforms decorated by professional artists including Sarra Lebedeva and Vladimir Lebedev, and
moved them around Petrograd. One of Lebedev’s poster panels on a mobile theatre platform
included a slogan ‘This is a museum-piece citizen!!! Gather round and have a good stare!!!’.
Humorous slogans and caricatures replaced more conventional styles.

The Red Army Studio's productions introduced a new type of mass performance – so-called igrishche
– a mass performance with thousands of spectators and participation of both amateur actors and
such professionals as Vsevolod Meyerhold, Maria Andreeva, Alexei Gorky and Feodor Chalyapin.
They followed the format of Meyerhold’s early experiments with interludes performed amongst the
public. These performances were so successful that the TEO (The Theatre Department) of
Narkompros (People’s Commissariat of Public Enlightenment or Education) decided to move them
outside in order to allow more people to see and to participate in the spectacles.

8
See KPSS v rezolutsiiakh i resheniiakh s’ezdov, konferentsii I plenumov TsK. Part 1. 1889-1925 (Moscow,
1953), p. 420.

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N. Murray. Street Theatre as Propaganda: Mass Performances and Spectacles in Petrograd in 1920

The first igrishche took place on 12 March 1919 in the Iron Hall of the People's House [Narodny
Dom] in Petrograd, when the Red Army studio performed a version of The Overthrow of the
Autocracy - one of the first large-scale historical performances, dedicated to the events which led to
the earlier February Revolution. Ironically, the first mass spectacle of Bolshevik Petrograd was to
celebrate the February Revolution, which the Bolsheviks had overturned.

It was a true improvisation, which included the active participation of the audience, who sang along
and participated in some scenes. The performance was a game in all senses of the word; it was play
at revolution, a revolt by soldiers who had participated in the real events. On red and white
platforms at either end of the hall, actor-soldiers representing the autocracy and the Revolution,
spoke lines taken from the press, held stylized meetings, sang, and simulated combat. Improvisation
gave a chance for both actors and members of the audience to express their attitudes to the historic
events. Contemporaries remarked that ‘improvisation attracts attention of most theatre activists as
a type of art to which the future belongs’.9

So striking was the effect of ‘The Overthrow of the Autocracy’ that it was repeated 250 times in
barracks, camps, on the staircases of former palaces and in the Palace Square itself during the next
seven months – first in the same format as the original performance and later as an extended
version under the title ‘The Red Year’.

If in 1919 participation of spectators in performances was more spontaneous than planned, in 1920
the attraction of members of the audience to participate in mass performances was seen as a
primary purpose of the spectacle. The real epiphany of the mass outside performances took place in
1920, when the armies of Kolchak and Denikin were defeated and the Entente stopped the blockade
of Russia. The general spirit of the festivals was much more optimistic than in 1919, and it was
declared at the IX Communist Party Congress that May Day 1920 will be celebrated as a massive
subbotnik [work day] which will be culminated in the grandiose mass performance The Mystery of
Liberated Labour.

It was performed in front of the former Stock Exchange overlooking the Neva River and Peter and
Paul’s Fortress. More than four thousand professional actors and students, as well as soldiers from
the Red Army, took part in this performance. The script was written by Arskii; it was directed by
Kugel, Yuri Annenkov and Maslovskaia; decorations were painted by Dobuzhinsky, Shchuko and
Annenkov. Around 35,000 spectators came to watch this extraordinary drama, which aimed to
illustrate ‘the fight of slaves for freedom against the lords of all times and nations’. This colourful

9
N. Lvov, ‘Opyt improvizatsii v raboche-krest’ianskom teatre’, Vestnik teatra, 1919, No. 13, p. 5.

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N. Murray. Street Theatre as Propaganda: Mass Performances and Spectacles in Petrograd in 1920

spectacle included carousing emperors and capitalists dancing to cheap Gypsy music and the can-
can.

A huge gate of gold guarded a kingdom of brotherhood and equality—the forbidden land of
traditional myths and fairy-tales. Outside toiled the wretched of the earth, shackled and whipped
marching along accompanied by Chopin's ‘Funeral March’. Time and space were relative and Roman
slaves led by Spartacus ran towards red banners, followed by peasants with Stenka Razin ahead of
them. Then in the East, appeared a red star, heralding the liberation of mankind. In the grand finale
the Kingdom of Socialism was revealed in the form of a rising sun, a red star, a tree of liberty around
which the victors revelled, red banners, and a figure of Liberated Labour in front of which the
soldiers exchanged their weapons for the implements of peace. The effect of this scene was
strengthened by searchlights from ships on the river which shone onto the stage; shots which
boomed from the nearby fortress and four large bands which played the ‘Internationale’. The
audience seemed to merge with the performers as they crowded the stage and sang the anthem of
the revolution.

‘Liberated Labour’ was the first large-scale display of revolutionary myth to a mass audience. Its high
level of abstraction set it off from the rather simplistic Red Army productions.

Soon after 1 May 1920, the Petrograd Soviet decided to use the nationalised dachas on the Kamenny
Ostrov island which used to belong to the aristocracy before the Revolution, for ‘Doma Otdykha’
[Houses of Rest] for workers. These comfortable houses and regular meals felt for hungry
impoverished workers like real luxury.

For the main Square of People’s Meetings in the middle of the island, the sculptor Blokh created a
ten metre tall plaster figure of a naked Proletarian, which was supposed to be taller than
Michelangelo’s David. When the committee for Petrosoviet came to inspect the monument before it
was officially unveiled, they found that Blokh’s Proletarian was ‘too naked’ and ordered the sculptor
‘to dress him up immediately’. In her memoires the artist Valentina Khodasevich wrote that
originally Blokh refused to cover up his sculpture, saying that all the scaffolding was already
dismantled and he had run out of plaster. However the committee gave him a few workers and
obliged him to sort it out overnight. Frustrated, Blokh had to compromise and make an apron for his
Proletarian out of wood.10

One of the main parts of the carefully organised worker’s leisure activities was a mass performance
The Blockade of Russia, which was held on 20 June 1920.

10
See Valentina Khodasevich, Portrety slovami (Moscow: Sovetskii Pisatel’, 1987), p. 144.

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N. Murray. Street Theatre as Propaganda: Mass Performances and Spectacles in Petrograd in 1920

This play was suggested by the commissar of Petrograd theatres, Maria Andreeva, and was directed
by Radlov with decorations designed by the architect Fomin and the artist Khodasevich. The stage
was erected on a little island in the middle of the lake and an orchestra played on a floating platform.
This island was staged as a blockaded Russia, assaulted by the Entente, invaded by the Poles, and
rescued by the Red Army. There was no text; instead buffoonery, mime, circus elements, and the
usual array of fireworks, light, and sound were used. 750 Red Army soldiers performed in the scenes
of foreign intervention, the battle on the water and the final military parade.

This performance was a great success and marked an important shift in mass performances -
from eternal myths into an illustration of immediate political problems. The contemporary report
from the committee responsible for staging this spectacle sent to Petrosoviet stated:

Serving the audience, which exceeded by many times the number of people who could
attend conventional theatres, our group followed the following principles: Art should now
play an official role; it should become a weapon for agitation and propaganda of the ideas of
communism as well as cultural-educational ideals; it must become revolutionary – it must
charge the masses with positive political energy; it must become deeply democratic and use
techniques which would be accessible to even illiterate citizens; and at the same time it
must be artistic and express political and economic issues in beautiful forms.11

On 19 July 1920, the Second Congress of the III Communist International was opened in Petrograd
with great pomp. By 9am, dressed-up workers’ representatives from all Petrograd’s factories were
lined up in front of the Moscow railway station; the orchestra played revolutionary music on the
platform while members of the RKP(b) 12 Petrograd committee met the delegates who arrived at the
Congress from Moscow. All the guests and delegates were then put on brightly decorated trams and
taken to Smolny. But the main event of the Congress was undoubtedly the grandiose mass
performance called Toward a World Commune, directed by Andreeva and produced by designers
Radlov and Piotrovsky. More than 4000 professional and amateur actors, students and soldiers
participated in this performance, which lasted for over three hours. It was attended by Lenin himself
and attracted 30,000 spectators.

This performance had a rather complicated plot, which started as a retrospective of the Paris
Commune, the First World War, the February and October Revolutions. It was staged on the square
in front of the Stock Exchange and was lit up by projectors from Peter and Paul’s Fortress and from

11
TsGALI St. Petersburg, f. 283, op. 2, d. 146, p. 71.
12
In 1920 a special department of TsK (Central Party Committee), called RKP(b), responsible for agitation and
propaganda (Agitprop) was organised. With the help of Narkompros, Agitprop controlled all artistic production
and mass performances.

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N. Murray. Street Theatre as Propaganda: Mass Performances and Spectacles in Petrograd in 1920

military ships moored in the Neva. In the grand finale, the joyful liberated people of Earth marched
around the square accompanied by fireworks.

For the first time real cars and real troops and real cannons were used in this performance
and delegates of the Congress were invited to participate. The city itself played an important part in
the performance. Theatre was splashing out into life, the historical events were re-enacted and new
mythology was born. The Austrian writer, René Fulöp-Miller, who visited Russia in the 1920s, wrote
in his book The Mind and Face of Bolshevism:

They [Bolsheviks] tried, by the introduction of great festive mass-performances, to make the
streets themselves the arena for dramatic events, and to link up parades, processions, and
national festivals, so as to form an ordered and systematically total effect. In the slogan
‘Theatricalize life’, the dictators of revolutionary art saw the possibility of evolving with
scenic means of propaganda such as could never be attained within the theatre itself. …It
was no wonder that the Bolshevists began to regard the ‘theatricalisation of life’ as a task of
high political importance.13

Petrograd was indeed the most spectacular ‘theatre city’ which also played a crucial part in
revolutionary history. These useful qualities were exploited by Bolshevik leaders and theatre
directors. The overall effect of this show was memorable, but not very successful in terms of political
propaganda due to over-complicated plot. On 21 July 1920 the newspaper Petrogradskaia Pravda
published an article by P. Kudelli, who remarked on this performance:

‘Toward a World Commune’ encompasses far too many complicated events from the First
International down to our day, including both February and October of the Great Russian
Revolution. Not everyone could compile an artistic fictional scenario round all these
historical events. […] The haste with which the scenario was written could be felt in
everything, in the scenario itself and in its performance.

The scenario did not give a clear picture of the epoch. We saw nothing but a dramatization
of dull prose, written with the aim of giving a historical study from the First to the Third
International.

This dullness led to tedious slowness utterly inartistic prose.14

13
René Fulöp-Miller, The Mind and Face of Bolshevism. An Examination of Cultural Life in Soviet Russia
(London: G.P. Putman’s Sons, 1927), p. 133.
14
Petrogradskaia Pravda, No, 159, 21 July 1920, translated in Tolstoy, Bibikova, Cooke, Street Art of the
Revolution, p. 128.

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N. Murray. Street Theatre as Propaganda: Mass Performances and Spectacles in Petrograd in 1920

But despite these negative comments, mass performances attracted thousands of people and had
strong government support which now saw them as the most successful propaganda tool. With the
organisation of Glavpolitprosvet15, the state imposed strict control over all public celebrations. The
subject-matter of all the artistic production for Soviet celebrations was now under strict control of
the state – it had to be straight-forward rather than allegorical and it had to glorify the triumph of
socialism and Victory of the proletariat.

In October 1920, Vsevolod Meyerhold (who had recently been appointed as head of TEO
Narkompros16) announced that the third anniversary of the Revolution will become a ‘Theatre
October’. He strived to revolutionise theatre by making it political and agitational, and involving
spectators in all performances. Narkompros’ ‘Thesis on the political basis in the sphere of art’
stressed that art should be used exclusively for ‘bright illustration of political, revolutionary and
propaganda work’ and that a special support should be given to ‘choral singing and mass
performances.’17

These recommendations were implemented in the most famous mass performance of 1920 – The
Storming of the Winter Palace. It was the last great mass spectacle of the Civil War period,
performed on Palace Square with the participation of 6,000 performers—actors, theatre students,
soldiers and workers, including 125 ballet dancers, 100 circus actors, 1,750 workers and students,
200 women, 260 secondary actors and 150 assistants . There were also tanks and armoured cars
involved.

Dmitry Temkin was in charge of the overall organisation of this performance, which was called a
‘mass action’; it was directed by Nikolai Evreinov, Kugel’, Petrov and Derzhavin and all the
decoration and costumes were designed by Yurii Annenkov. In the eastern side of the square, by the
building of the Guards Corps Headquarters, two stages connected by a bridge were erected. They
divided all the participants into two groups – pro and counter Revolution. Annenkov’s decorations
included palaces on the white stage and factories and multi-story workers’ living quarters, on the red
stage. Kerensky, Provisional Government, members of the aristocracy, bankers and merchants
occupied the ‘white’ stage while the ‘red’ stage belonged to the faceless masses – at first chaotic,
and later organised and mighty.

This remarkable spectacle was performed twice – in the torrential rain on 7 November and in better
weather conditions on 8 November, when it was filmed. More than 60,000 people came to see this

15
Glavpolitprosvet - The Main Political-Educational Committee.
16
TEO Narkompros – Theatre section of Lunacharsky’s Commissariat of People’s Enlightenment.
17
Vestnik Teatra, 1920, No. 75, p. 9.

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N. Murray. Street Theatre as Propaganda: Mass Performances and Spectacles in Petrograd in 1920

historical performance. Among them was the most famous Soviet film director, Sergei Eisenstein,
who based his film October. Ten Days that Shook the World on this festival performance, rather than
on the

much less dramatic historical events. Eisenstein’s film has fired the imagination of several
generations all over the world, but the real storming of the Winter Palace was quite a modest affair.
The palace, which in October 1917 housed a powerless cabinet, was seized a day after the Bolsheviks
had taken power, and it was never really stormed.

According to James von Geldern, Eisenstein was not in Petrograd during the October revolution, but
he witnessed the 1920 performance, and based his film on it. 18 Interestingly enough, the film was
sponsored by Nikolai Podvoisky, who was a member of the troika that commanded the 1917 seizure
of the Winter Palace. However, he chose to base the description of the storming of the Winter
Palace in his memoires not on the real events he witnessed, but on the over-dramatized vision of
thousands of angry Red Guardsmen, led by Lenin, charging across the vast square, which he had
seen on 7 November 1920.

These stories prove once again the success of the mass performances including ‘The Storming of the
Winter Palace’ in political propaganda and in Bolshevik re-creation of historical events.

The Communist Party also regarded this performance as a great success, and generously rewarded
Temkin with a stove and samovar (which were used in the spectacle itself), Evreinov received a fur
coat made of red fox and Kugel’, Annenkov, Derzhavin and Petrov – tobacco enough for a hundred
cigarettes and two kilos of frozen apples each.

The spectacles and mass performances of 1919-1920 constituted the new mythology of the
Bolshevik Revolution. Instead of presenting a vision of the future, they provided trusting viewers and
participants with an improved version of the Bolshevik past and present - they carried them into
Utopia, and showed them the mythical path to it. At the time of economic shortages and starvation
they gave people hope and faith in a bright, Bolshevik, future.

18
See James von Geldern, Bolshevik Festivals. 1917-1920, (University of California Press, 1993), pp. 1-2.

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N. Murray. Street Theatre as Propaganda: Mass Performances and Spectacles in Petrograd in 1920

Pantomime ‘Transfer of slave’s labour into bright construction’ on a mobile tram

Scenes from the mass enactment of ‘Toward a World Commune’. 19 July 1920.
Photo: Archive of the State Theatre Museum, St. Petersburg.

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N. Murray. Street Theatre as Propaganda: Mass Performances and Spectacles in Petrograd in 1920

Mass dramatization ‘The Storming of the Winter Palace’. 7 November 1920.

11