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Meyerhold: the Final Act

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2009

Edward Braun
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Abstract

The process of rehabilitating the reputation of the great Soviet director Vsevolod Meyerhold began soon after Krushchev's repudiation of Stalinism in 1955. However, it was only with the recent opening of the KGB files on ‘Case No. 537’ that the mystery surrounding the circumstances of his trial and presumed execution was finally resolved. The full story, which combines the horrific torture of an old, sick man with the petty niceties of bureaucratic form-filling, has been gradually unfolding in Russian-language journals over the past three years: and here Edward Braun provides the first detailed account in English of what happened to Meyerhold – and to his wife, the actress Zinaida Raikh – between the liquidation of his theatre in January 1938 and his own liquidation on 2 February 1940. Edward Braun, Professor of Drama in the University of Bristol, edited the pioneering English-language selection from Meyerhold's writings, Meyerhold on Theatre, in 1969, and in 1979 published his major critical assessment, The Theatre of Meyerhold, now in process of revision to incorporate the new material released in recent years. He also contributes to this issue of NTQ a report on the opening of the new Meyerhold Centre in Moscow.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Theatre Quarterly , Volume 9 , Issue 33 , February 1993 , pp. 3 - 15
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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References

Notes and References

1. See Zolotnitsky, D. I., ‘V. E. Meierkhol'd: posledniy srok’, in Zolotnitsky, D. I. and Mironova, V. M., eds., Iz Opyta russkoy sovetskoy rezhissury 1930-kh godov (Leningrad, 1989), p. 45–7Google Scholar.

2. See Conquest, Robert, The Great Terror: a Reassessment (London, 1990), p. 438–41Google Scholar.

3. Quoted in Kotovskaya, M. P. and Isaev, S. A., eds., Mir iskusstv (Moscow, 1991), p. 414Google Scholar.

4. Ibid., p. 421.

5. Ibid., p. 421, 435; Teatr, Moscow, No. 2, 1974, p. 36–9.

6. Mir iskusstv, p. 416.

7. Ibid., p. 437–75.

8. Teatr, Moscow, No. 2, 1974, p. 39–44; Kaun, Alexander, Soviet Poets and Poetry, Los Angeles, 1943, p. 96–7Google Scholar.

9. Yelagin, Yury, Tyomny geniy, New York, 1955, p. 406–10Google Scholar.

10. See Shcherbakov's, Vadim discussion of the conference in Sherel, A. A., Meierkholdovsky sbornik (Moscow, 1992), Vol. II, p. 216–24Google Scholar.

11. Mir iskusstv, p. 453.

12. Ibid., p. 455.

13. Ibid., p. 459.

14. Ibid., p. 461.

15. ‘Iz vospominanii K. L. Zelinskogo ob A. A. Fadeeve’, Teatr, No. 1, 1990, p. 144.

16. Mir iskusstv, op. cit., p. 442.

17. See Tyapkina, Ye., ‘Poslednyaya vstrecha’, Teatralnaya zhizn, No. 5, 1989, p. 7–8Google Scholar.

18. A different view of the effect of Raikh's letter is taken by the Military Procurator who reviewed the case for rehabilitation in 1955. According to him, it was the ‘direct cause’ of his arrest, but in that case it must have been an earlier letter. None of these letters has ever been discovered. See Teatralnaya zhizn, op. cit., p. 9.

19. Unless stated otherwise, all details referred to below of Meyerhold's case are taken from the account in Teatralnaya zhizn, No. 2, 1990, p. 1–13, 33–4.

20. Meyerhold abandoned plans to stage I Want a Baby in 1930. Work on The Suicide was halted following a run-through in the presence of Kaganovich and other Party functionaries in October 1932.

21. First published in Sovetskaya kultura, 16 February 1989, p. 5, and again in Teatralnaya zhizn, No. 5, 1989, p. 2–3 (cited below).

22. Matskin, Alexander, an authority on the period, describes Rafail as ‘a long-forgotten rank-and-file Trotskyist’. See ‘Vremya ukhoda’ in Teatr, No. 1, 1990, p. 43Google Scholar.

23. Elsewhere, Meyerhold refers to a fourth interrogator, Serikov.

24. ‘Three months’ in the text. In fact, Meyerhold had been in prison for two months by this time.

25. It is not clear whether he remained in solitary confinement.

26. Ryabov, Valentin, ‘Case No. 537’ in Ogonyok, No. 15, 1989, p. 12Google Scholar.

27. Also referred to in Teatralnaya zhizn, No. 2, 1990.

28. Ibid., p. 11.

29. For an account of Babel's interrogation see Ogonyok, No. 39, 1989.

30. See Robert Conquest, op. cit., p. 422–3.

31. The most recent assessment by the Union of Soviet Writers is that some 2,000 literary figures alone were repressed, of whom about 1,500 met their deaths in prison or camp. See R. Conquest, op. cit., p. 297, quoted from Literaturnaya gazeta, 28 December 1988.

32. Teatralnaya zhizn, No. 5, 1989, p. 1.

33. The record of the court proceedings is published in facsimile in Teatralnaya zhizn, No. 2, 1990.

34. For a detailed account of Meyerhold's rehabilitation, see A. A. Sherel, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 23–157.

35. Vechernyaya Moskva, 14 June 1991, p. 6.