IN DEFENSE OF THE SOVIET ARTIST OF DANCE (A LETTER OF K. N. DERZHAVIN TO NKVD CONCERNING THE ARREST OF N. A. ANISIMOVA)

Abstract

The article introduces a previously unknown archive document, namely a letter of Professor Konstantin N. Derzhavin relating to repression against cultural figures and ballet artists in eve of the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945. To date the document that might be useful for the reconstruction of the history of Leningrad ballet in the 1930s has been kept in the Management of the Russian Federal Security Service in Saint Petersburg and Leningrad oblast. The author comments Derzhavin’s letter written in defense of Nina A. Anisimova, the soloist of St.-Petersburg State Academic Theatre of Opera and Ballet (GATOB) named after S. M. Kirov, arrested and convicted in 1938 under Article 58 of the RSFSR Criminal Code (anti-Soviet and counter-revolutionary propaganda and agitation) for contacts with the German Consulate Employee in Leningrad and ‘alleged complicity with a foreign state at war with the Soviet Union’