Encyclopedia of Russian History
Page 225
In its first twenty seasons (1898-1917), MAT revolutionized theatrical art through the production of a repertoire of more than seventy plays. The theater opened in 1898 with two major works: Alexei Tolstoy’s Tsar Fyodor Ionnovich, which brought mediaeval Russia vividly to life with arche-ologically accurate designs, and Chekhov’s The Seagull, which added psychological realism in acting to illusionistic stage environments. MAT premiered all of Chekhov’s major plays between 1898 and 1904, with Stanislavsky’s staging of The Three Sisters (1901) hailed as one of the company’s greatest triumphs. Realistic productions, characterized by careful detailing in costumes, properties, sets, and acting choices, predominated. MAT produced more plays by Henrick Ibsen than by any other playwright, with An Enemy of the People (1900) providing Stanislavsky with one of his greatest roles. Even Ibsen’s abstract play, When We Dead Awaken, was directed realistically by Nemirovich (1901). For Gorky’s The Lower Depths (1902) MAT used representational detail to create a social statement about the underclass. Nemirovich especially furthered the cause of stage realism, often overburdening plays with inappropriate illusion. His unwieldy realistic production of William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar (1903) garnered much criticism.
Stanislavsky’s growing interest in abstracted styles led to MAT’s production of a series of symbolist plays. Notable among these were Stanislavsky’s stagings of Leonid Andreyev’s The Life of Man (1907), which featured stunning stage effects developed by its director, and Maurice Maeterlinck’s fantasy, The Blue Bird (1908), as well as Gordon Craig’s theatricalist production of Shakespeare’s
MOSCOW BAROQUE
Hamlet (1911). 1907 saw the two MAT styles collide uncomfortably when Nemirovich presented his overly naturalistic version of Ibsen’s Brand alongside Stanislavsky’s abstracted production of Knut Hamsun’s The Drama of Life. When Stanislavsky began to apply his new ideas about acting to Ivan Turgenev’s A Month in the Country (1909), he utilized abstraction both in the symmetrical set design and in the actors’ use of static gestures in order to focus on inner states. This production caused a permanent rift between Stanislavsky and the company.
Although MAT greeted the 1917 revolution optimistically, it lost economic viability. Its first postrevolutionary production was Lord Byron’s Cain in 1920, interpreted by Stanislavsky as a metaphor of the postrevolutionary civil war. MAT struggled to find the necessary funds and materials to realize the production. In order to survive financially, half of the company toured Europe and the United States from 1924 to 1926 with their most famous realistic productions, among them Tsar Fyodor Ionnovich from 1898 and Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard from 1904. This tour solidified the international fame of Stanislavsky and MAT. In the late 1920s, MAT participated in the general theatrical trend toward a Soviet repertoire. Stanislavsky staged Mikhail Bulgakov’s controversial view of White Russia in The Days of the Turbins (1926) and Vsevolod Ivanov’s Armored Train 14-69 (1927). During the 1930s and 1940s, under the yoke of Socialist Realism, MAT’s work lost its verve, its productions becoming undistinguished. In the 1970s, Yefremov reinvigorated the company by employing talented actors and revived its repertoire by staging new plays, such as Mikhail Roshchin’s portrait of young love in Valentin and Valentina (1971) and Alexander Vampilov’s Duck Hunting (1979), in which Yefremov played the fallen hero. See also: CHEKHOV, ANTON PAVLOVICH; MEYERHOLD, VSEVOLOD YEMILIEVICH; MOSCOW; SILVER AGE; SOCIALIST REALISM; STANISLAVSKY, KONSTANTIN SERGEYEVICH; THEATER
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Benedetti, Jean. (1988). Stanislavsky [sic]: A Biography. New York: Routledge. Carnicke, Sharon Marie. (1998). Stanislavsky in Focus. London: Harwood/Routledge. Leach, Robert and Borovsky, Victor. (1999). A History of Russian Theatre. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Rich, Elizabeth. (2000). “Oleg Yefremov, 1927-2000: A Final Tribute.” Slavic and East European Performance 20(3):17-23. Worrall, Nick. (1996). The Moscow Art Theatre. New York: Routledge.
SHARON MARIE CARNICKE
MOSCOW BAROQUE
Moscow Baroque was the fashionable architectural style of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, combining Muscovite (Russo-Byzantine) traditions with Western decorative details and proportions; the term also sometimes applied to new trends in late seventeenth-century Muscovite painting, engraving, and literature.
The term Moscow Baroque (moskovskoe barokko) came into use among Russian art historians in the 1890s and 1900s as a way of categorizing the distinctive style of architecture which flourished in and around Moscow from the late 1670s, and in the provinces into the 1700s. In the 1690s, Peter I’s maternal relatives the Naryshkins commissioned many sumptuous churches in the style; hence the supplementary art historical term “Naryshkin Baroque,” which is sometimes erroneously applied as a general term for the style. Some of the early examples of Moscow Baroque are reminiscent of mid-seventeenth-century Muscovite churches in their general shape and coloration-cubes constructed in red brick with white stone decorations and topped with one or five domes-but the builders had evidently assimilated a new sense of symmetry and regularity in their ordering of both structural and decorative elements. Old Russian ornamental details were replaced almost entirely by Western ones based on the Classical order system: half-columns with pediments and bases, window surrounds of broken pediments, volutes, carved columns, and shell gable motifs. One of the best concentrations of Moscow Baroque buildings was commissioned by the regent Sophia Alexeyevna in the 1680s in the sixteenth-century Novodevichy Convent in Moscow, which includes the churches of the Transfiguration, Dormition, and Assumption, with a refectory, belltower, nuns’ cells, and crenelations on the convent walls in matching materials and style. Similar constructs can be found in the Monastery of St. Peter (Vysokopetrovsky) on Petrovka Street in Moscow. Civic buildings were constructed on the same principles: for example,
MOSCOW, BATTLE OF
Prince Vasily Golitsyn’s Moscow mansion (1680s) and the Pharmacy on Red Square (1690s). A number of these projects were carried out by the architectural section of the Foreign Office.
In the 1690s builders regularly incorporated octagonal structures, producing the so-called octagon-on-cube church. One of the finest examples, the Intercession at Fili, built for Peter’s uncle Lev Naryshkin in 1690-1693, with its soaring tower of receding octagons, gold cupolas, and intricately carved limestone decoration, bears witness to both the Naryshkins’ wealth and their Westernized tastes. Inside, all the icons were painted in a matching “Italianate” style and set in an elaborately carved and gilded iconostasis. This and other churches such as the Trinity at Troitse-Lykovo, Boris and Gleb in Ziuzino, and Savior at Ubory, with their tiers of receding octagons, also owe something to distant prototypes in Russian and Ukrainian architecture (the wooden architecture of the former and the dome configuration of the latter), while the new sense of harmony in their design and planning evokes the Renaissance. The style spread beyond Moscow.
Analogous developments can be seen in allegorical prints of the period, embellished with a characteristic Baroque mix of Christian and Classical imagery, most of which originated in Ukraine. A characteristic example is Ivan Shchirsky’s engraving (1683) of Tsars Ivan and Peter hovering above a canopy containing a double eagle, with Christ floating between them and, above Christ, a winged maiden, the Divine Wisdom (Sophia). In icons painted in the Moscow Armory and in workshops in Yaroslavl, Vologda, and other major commercial centers, influences from Western art can be seen in the use of light and shade and decorative details such as scrolls, putti-like angels, ornate swirling cloud and rock motifs, dramatic gestures, and even some borrowings from Catholic iconography: for instance, saints with emblems of their martyrdom; blood dripping from Christ’s hands and side. In poetry, syllabic verse and Baroque motifs and devices were imported from Poland and practiced by such writers as Simeon Polotsky, court poet to Tsar Alexis, and Polotsky’s pupil Silvester Medvedev.
Art historians have debated whether Moscow Baroque was a direct derivative of Western Baroque, represented
a spontaneously generated and original form of baroque, or was the decadent, over-ornate last phase of the “classical” forms of Russo-Byzantine art. It may be best to view it as an example of the belated influence of the Renaissance upon traditional art and architecture, which picked up elements from both contemporary and slightly earlier Western art. No Russian architects are known to have visited the West during this period, and there is scant evidence of Western architects working in Russia. However, Russian craftsmen did have access to foreign books and prints in the Armory, Foreign Office workshops, and other libraries, while contacts with Polish culture, both direct and via Ukraine and Belarus, were influential, especially in literature.
The term Moscow Baroque is not generally applied to the architecture of early St. Petersburg, although many buildings constructed in the reigns of Peter I and his immediate successors had much in common with the preceding style: for instance, the use of octagonal structures and the white decorative details against a darker background. In Moscow and the provinces, Moscow Baroque remained popular well into the eighteenth century. See also: ARCHITECTURE; GOLITSYN, VASILY VASILIEVICH; MEDVEDEV, SYLVESTER AGAFONIKOVICH; POLOTSKY, SIMEON; SOPHIA
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Cracraft, James. (1990). The Petrine Revolution in Russian Architecture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Cracraft, James. (1997). The Petrine Revolution in Russian Imagery. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hughes, Lindsey. (1977). “Western European Graphic Material as a Source for Moscow Baroque Architecture.” Slavonic and East European Review 55:433-443. Hughes, Lindsey. (1982). “Moscow Baroque: A Controversial Style.” Transactions of the Association of Russian-American Scholars in USA 15:69-93.
LINDSEY HUGHES
MOSCOW, BATTLE OF
The Battle of Moscow was a pivotal moment in the early period of the World War II, in which Soviet forces averted a disastrous collapse and demonstrated that the German army was, in fact, vulnerable. The battle can be divided into three general segments: the first German offensive, from September 30 to October 30, 1941; the second German offensive, from November 16 to December 5, 1941;
MOSCOW, BATTLE OF
and the Soviet counteroffensive, from December 5, 1941, to April 5, 1942.
The German attack on Moscow began on September 30, 1941, under the code name “Typhoon.” The German High Command hoped to seize the Soviet capital before the onset of winter, surmising that the fall of Moscow would presage the fall of the Soviet Union. With this goal in mind they arrayed a massive force against the Soviet capital, concentrating 1,800,000 troops, 1,700 tanks, 14,000 cannons and mortars, and 1,390 aircraft against Moscow. Led by General Heinz Guderain, this enormous army quickly took advantage of the weakened and retreating Soviet forces to capture several towns on the approaches to the capital in the first week of the campaign. By October 15, the German army, having circumvented the Soviet defensive lines and taken the key towns of Kaluga and Mozhaisk, was within striking distance of the capital.
The lightning speed with which the Germans reached the outskirts of the capital spawned a panic in Moscow as many Muscovites, fearing a German takeover of the city, began to flee to the east. For several days, local authority crumbled completely, and Moscow seemed on the verge of chaos. Even as the capital teetered on the edge of collapse, however, several factors combined to slow the German onslaught. First, the German forces had begun to outpace their supply lines. Second, Josef V. Stalin and the Soviet High Command appointed General Georgy Zhukov as the commander of the Western Front. Fresh from his triumph stabilizing the defensive lines surrounding Leningrad, Zhukov moved to do the same for Moscow, and the Red Army began to stiffen its defense of the capital. Third, the German supply line problems gave the Red Army time to bring reserves from the Far East to Moscow. Until these reserves could be put in place, however, the city’s defense leaders ordered ordinary Muscovites organized into opolchenie, or home guard units, into the breaches in the capital’s defensive lines. These units, often quickly and poorly trained, paid a high price to shore up Moscow’s defenses.
Once the German supply had regrouped, German forces mounted another attack in late November. Initially the German forces scored several successes in the areas of Klin and Istra to the northwest and around Tula to the south. The tenacity of the Soviet defense and severity of the Russian winter, however, slowed the German advance and allowed time for Soviet forces to recover and even begin to mount limited counterattacks by early December.
Emboldened by their success in stemming the German onslaught, the Soviet command attempted a more concerted attack against the German invaders on December 5-6, 1941. With the aim of driving the Germans back to Smolensk, Stalin and Zhukov opened a 560-mile front stretching from Kalinin, north of the capital, to Yelets in the south. The ambitious operation quickly met with success as the Red Army, bolstered by units from Central Asia, drove the Germans back twenty to forty miles, liberating Kalinin, Klin, Istra, and Yelets and breaking the German encirclement attempt at Tula. In many places German forces retreated quickly, weakened by their supply problems and their exposure to the Russian winter. Soviet forces, despite their advances, could never capitalize on their initiative. While the Red Army advanced as much as 200 miles into German-held territory on the German flanks to the north and south of Moscow, they had great difficulty dislodging German forces from the Rzhev-Gzhatsk-Viazma salient due west of the capital. By late January their resistance had stiffened to the point that the Red Army’s advance began to stall. Although the Soviet offensive continued to grind its way westward, it had lost momentum. This stalemate continued until April 1942 when the Soviet command called a halt to the offensive. It was not until the spring of 1943 that the Red Army finally drove the Germans back from Moscow.
The Battle of Moscow was important for several reasons. It was the first real setback that German forces had absorbed since World War II began in 1939. Despite the fact that Moscow was on the verge of collapse in mid-October 1941, Soviet forces proved that the German army was not invincible. Also, the struggle for the Soviet capital revealed a new breed of Soviet commanders who came to prominence in the defense of the capital. Commanders such as Zhukov, Konstantin Rokossovsky, Ivan Boldin, and Dmitry Lelyshenko demonstrated their competence during this critical period and became the backbone of the Soviet military command for the remainder of the war. Finally, the defense of the capital was an important moral victory for the Soviet command and people alike, and made an indelible impression on the Soviet nation and on the other countries participating in World War II. See also: MOSCOW; WORLD WAR II; ZHUKOV, GEORGY KONSTANTINOVICH
MOSCOW OLYMPICS OF 1980
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Erickson, John. (1999). The Road to Stalingrad: Stalin’s War with Germany. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Overy, Richard. (1998). Russia’s War: A History of the Soviet War Effort, 1941-1945. New York: Penguin. Werth, Alexander. (1964). Russia at War, 1941-1945. New York: Avon Books.
ANTHONY YOUNG
MOSCOW OLYMPICS OF 1980
The city of Moscow hosted the Summer Olympic Games from July 19 to August 3, 1980. The International Olympic Committee awarded Moscow the games in 1974, in the hopes that international competition might contribute to d?tente. But superpower politics had a direct impact on these games. Under the leadership of the United States, sixty-two nations boycotted the Moscow Olympics to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan during December of 1979. The Soviet government, along with its allies, retaliated by boycotting the 1984 Los Angeles Summer Olympic Games. Great Britain, France, and Italy supported the condemnation of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, but participated in the games.
The Moscow Olympic games were the first held in a socialist country. Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, visibly aged, opened the games. The Soviet leadership intended to use the games to showcase the advantages of the socialist system. Toward that end the government ordered that the Moscow streets and parks be cleaned and that petty criminals and prostitutes be rounded up. Gov
ernment officials also hoped that Soviet athletes would dominate the games. They were not disappointed. The USSR won 195 medals, including 80 gold; the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) won 126 medals, including 47 gold; followed by Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, and Cuba in that order. Eighty- one nations had participated in the Moscow games, and the USSR and its East European and other socialist allies won the vast majority of the medals. Soviet fans demonstrated poor sportsmanship by constantly jeering Polish and East German competitors. Since 1952, when the USSR first participated in the Olympic games, government officials recognized how gold, silver, and bronze medals
The Olympic flag is carried out of the Lenin Stadium at the closing ceremony of the 1980 summer Olympic Games. © BETTMANN/CORBIS might be translated into propaganda achievements for the nation.
Some of the notable individual achievements of the games included gymnast Nadia Comaneci of Romania winning two medals; Soviet swimmer Vladimir Salnikov becoming the first to break fifteen minutes in the 1,500 meters; Teofilo Stevenson, a Cuban boxer, becoming the first boxer to win three gold medals in his division; Soviet gymnast Alexander Dityatin winning eight medals; Miruts Yifter of Ethiopia winning the 5,000- and 10,000-meter runs in track; and Britain’s Sebastian Coe outkicking countryman Steve Ovett in the 1,500 run. At the closing ceremony, it was said that the mascot of the Moscow Olympics, Misha the Bear, had a tear in his eye. See also: AFGHANISTAN, RELATIONS WITH; SPORTS POLICY; UNITED STATES, RELATIONS WITH