At the dawn of the Soviet ballet: The Mariinsky ballet company in the first half of 1918

Abstract

The history of the ballet troupe of the state (former Imperial) The Mariinsky Theatre in the first months of Soviet power has still not been studied enough. Following a brief period of anti-Bolshevik “sabotage”, which generally ended in January 1918, the time came when the ballet company had to find its place in the new political realities. At that time, self-government bodies and mechanisms played an important role in the life of artists: an elected committee and general meetings of the troupe. A variety of topics were discussed at the meetings, from ideological and creative issues to avalanche-like growing household problems. In the first half of 1918, the troupe went a long way, from cautiously starting negotiations with the Bolsheviks to actually fully integrating into the Soviet system of state power. The proposed article is devoted to the study of this period, based mainly on the documents of the archival fund “Committee of the State Petrograd Ballet Company”, stored in the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art.