The Circus

Partisans of popular culture could follow two paths: remain faithful to tradition and develop a theater in which message yielded to action, the whole to the part; or tie the disparate segments of popular entertainment into a unified artistic whole. The ways that the new authorities used the circus provide illustrations of both paths.

When the Soviet circus became a focus of artistic attention in 1919, it was a reservoir of untapped performance skills. The TEO Circus Department was staffed by talented artists: Kamensky, Ilya Ehrenburg, Ivan Rukavishnikov, the avant-garde artist Boris Erdman, Kuznetsov, and Konenkov, and the choreographer Kasian Goleizovsky.^[26] Artists fascinated by the circus were not entirely new; the circus had been fashionable with the prerevolutionary artistic intelligentsia.

The Sovietization of the circus could not be effected with the entire repertory. Some elements did not undergo transformation easily. Shklovsky suggested that only clown acts and pantomimes could be performed as art; acrobatics and other skill-based performances, in which plot, rhythm, and meaning-bearing structures were marginal, could not.^[27] The more risk or chance in an act, the less suitable it was for the new circus. Randomness resists a message or ideology. The early Soviet circus shied away from the risk factor, from trapeze artists and tightrope walkers, preferring the verbal performance of clowns and the dramatic art of pantomime.^[28]

The clown in the Russian circus was traditionally verbal; Lazarenko and the Durov brothers, supporters of the new regime, read verse they had written themselves as part of their routines. Lazarenko even performed a series of anti-White couplets written by his old friend Mayakovsky, entitled The Soviet ABCs . Clowns could function as spokesmen for the Bolsheviks without violating the traditions of their craft. Pantomimes, which had been popular during the First World War, could be assimilated, as the Cinizelli Circus in Voronezh in 1918 had shown. New figures could be grafted onto old plots: the Turks and Germans of World War I could be replaced by French and English interventionists; the cops and robbers by Reds and Whites. The same traditions, however, made clowns a double-edged sword. The most popular entertainment in Civil War Moscow was the clown duo of Bim and Bom. Their popularity, alas, rested not only on their wit but on its target, the Bolsheviks. Bim and Bom desisted from mocking the Bolsheviks only when their couplets so offended Latvian Riflemen in the audience that they shot up the circus and threatened to do the same to the clowns.^[29]

For some popular spectacles to carry the new political ideas, they first had to undergo radical revision. Wrestling, a major circus attraction in the early twentieth century, could be exploited only at the expense of its sporting qualities. Skill and strength determined the outcome of the sport, but propaganda demanded a fixed conclusion. Lazarenko per-

formed a skit written by Mayakovsky entitled World Wrestling Championship, in which David Lloyd George, Woodrow Wilson, Wrangel, and Józef Pilsudski squared off unsuccessfully against the Russian champion, Revolution (the Russian words for wrestling and [class] struggle are the same).^[30] Combats of skill, which might have culminated in a bourgeois victory, became instead a symbolic battle in which Revolution inevitably triumphed.

Circus spectators were unpracticed in the interpretation of wrestling. A wrestling match with a plot—a controlled sequence with an established ending—was unaccustomed entertainment; wrestling as a political language was unfamiliar; and most alien of all was the notion that wrestling could be language. If the message was to find its target, the audience needed to be warned that new cultural functions were active. Propagandists had not only to create the message but to highlight it and even supply the proper interpretation—much as they had for May Day 1918.

Popular culture provided a ready vehicle for this function, the intermediary. Intermediaries were essential to circus, vaudeville, and fairground-theater performances, which were filled with gaps as they passed from one skit or episode to the next. Because dead air was the greatest sin imaginable, gaps were filled by the appearance of an intermediary. The role allowed for great freedom of movement; it breached the time gap between skits, and the space gap between performers and audience. The role was filled by, among others, both the clown and ringmaster of the circus, vaudeville's master of ceremonies, and the compère of the artistic cabaret. Intermediaries performed an invaluable function when popular entertainment moved to a lecture hall: continuing to provide a structural bridge, they also explained the action to the audience and guaranteed that the proper message was received. The intermediary was a carrier and enabler of meaning. In Championship, the role was filled by the ringmaster, who combined the duties of referee and announcer, and helped spectators along by providing narration and exegesis.

All these functions were featured in one of the most influential shows of War Communism, Annenkov's August 1919 production of Leo Tolstoy's First Distiller . Performed in, of all places, the Heraldic Hall of the Winter Palace, the First Distiller used Tolstoy's antiliquor tract as the scenario for a concoction of circus, vaudeville, and balagan .^[31] Tolstoy's original intent, and much of the text, disappeared in Annenkov's remake. The fable involved a demon sent to earth to tempt a peasant with liquor. It was a "modernized lubok, "^[32] and Annenkov used popular

culture's loose time structure to insert clown acts, risqué folk ditties (chastushki ), and other tidbits into the action. Although some of the insertions were justified by the text, many were not: "Ditties were incorporated as the songs of peasants drunk on the 'devil's brew.' Accordions and choral dances were also inserted into the drunken scene. Acrobats appeared as demons; a circus was the model for Hell. And, lastly, an eccentric clown in red wig and broad 'formal' trousers appeared without the slightest motivation. He simply showed up in Hell and strolled around as though it was a nightclub."^[33]

Assuming that the skeleton taken from Tolstoy was still present (some critics claimed it was lost entirely), the insertions were essentially full stops, moments when the progress of Tolstoy's play was suspended. Most were performed by the clown Georg Delvary, whose role was specially created by Annenkov. The clown had no place in the plot as such; rather he fulfilled an intermediary role traditional for clowns, standing on the forestage and commenting on the action occurring behind him. Annenkov claimed that his insertions could effectively carry the message: "A five-minute number can with a few phrases or gestures offer a joyful and convincing solution to any problem and convert an unexpected zigzag in the action into a weapon of propaganda, stronger than a public speech. . . . It screams, knocks, and burns a thought into the spectator's head—instantly, unimpeded by thought, at full swing."^[34] But the claim was doubtful. The devil's antics, similar to commedia dell'arte lazzi, were entertaining, but carried no message. Not only did the antics not correspond to the play's specific message, they did not always assign the desired positive or negative value, which is a cardinal duty of propaganda.

Directors of the popular school faced a considerable quandary in propaganda productions like Mystery-Bouffe and First Distiller . Negative, anti-Soviet characters were depicted comically; positive characters were depicted monumentally. But in popular culture (for example, the Petrushka puppet play) comic characters were often more praiseworthy (more entertaining if less ethical) than the straight characters, usually pompous boors. The bad guys were more fun than the good. Interpretation was further complicated by the lack of signals about what in the play was significant (demanding interpretation) and what was not: insertions interrupted the intent of the play; halting the progress halted the transmission of the message. Ultimately, First Distiller was well done and well liked; only the claims to a message were unjustified.

Meyerhold, who had started the circus fashion in theatrical circles,

warned against its going too far. "The circus must not restructure itself at someone else's bidding," he said. "Reform must unfold within the circus, initiated by the circus itself. There cannot and must not be a theater circus; each is and must be a thing in itself, [although] the work of masters of the circus and the theater can draw close to one another."^[35] The distinction went unheeded by the TEO Circus Department. Its artists fancied circus the art form of the future and were interested in it less as a popular entertainment than as a series of disconnected acts to be formed into a unified drama. One of the first reforms the department set about introducing was the "elimination of separate circus numbers and the reduction of circus performance to a single, unified action [deistvo ]."^[36]

This approach was not entirely contrary to circus traditions; there were wartime precedents. At the Manège, for instance, popular attractions had been allegorical processions and tableaux vivants celebrating tsar and country, and pantomimes starring trick riders and special effects, such as Russian Herves in the Carpathians and The Inundation of Belgium .^[37] Lazarenko, who would produce many such spectacles for the Bolsheviks, gained experience during the First World War. On December 16, 1914, before assembled diplomats of the allied nations, his circus had presented The Triumph of the [Allied ] Powers, a play in two acts, five scenes, written by A. V. Bobrishchev-Pushkin (who in 1919 would denounce Meyerhold to White forces in the South). The characters were Russia, France, England, Belgium, Serbia, Montenegro, Japan (played by Lazarenko), Breslau, Alladin, Sultan-Bey, two dancing girls, and a dervish.^[38]

Still, giving the circus new Soviet functions entailed some redefinition. Wartime pantomimes afforded spectacular action, but the Soviet pantomimes praised more abstract qualities. The circus was robbed of its dynamism; and the resulting spectacles, but for the fact that they took place in the circus arena, were indistinguishable from allegories like that performed in the Voronezh Opera House in 1918 or even baroque court spectacles. In fact, one TEO proposal, which was rehearsed for almost a year in the Second State Circus, was a revival of Sumarokov and Volkov's Minerva Triumphant, first performed at the coronation of Catherine the Great.^[39]

It seems that the greatest obstacle to imbuing circus with a message was its essence, action. Circus action is simply unreliable. Perhaps for this reason artists turned to tableaux vivants, an older, less eccentric form. Tableaux are allegorical and static, and can be counted on to make

their point. The sculptor Konenkov, who had just completed a group of wooden figures from the Razin lore for Lobnoe Mesto, was hired to direct a performance at the Second State Circus for the November 1919 anniversary. His choice of a theme, Samson and Delilah, was unfortunate (although he claimed it was a "song of the struggle for freedom"). The performance was a series of static tableaux, like a comic strip, portraying the stages of the Samson legend: the slaying of the Philistines with the jawbone of an ass; the seduction by Delilah; Samson's imprisonment; the final test of strength.^[40] Konenkov employed wrestlers as the material of his sculpture; he made wigs and costumes, and carved wooden figures to encircle the tableaux. As the papers reported, "A long series of rehearsals was needed to create muscular memory in the performers and to force them to portray the sculptures with super-balletic exactitude."^[41] The wrestlers, naturally enough, wanted nothing to do with it.

Another allegorical tableau presented that day in Moscow, Standing Guard for the World Commune, almost completely ignored the principles of the circus. It was based on the pyramid, a tumbling formation that had obvious social implications in revolutionary times.^[42] The skit could have been played anywhere: "In the center of the arena a red stage rises up into a rainbow-shaped tower. There, on a platform, is the symbolic figure of a woman, Freedom, around which are grouped a peasant, a worker, a sailor, a soldier, and an intellectual . . . . Below on the steps are the corpses of Bavaria and Hungary, crushed by the imperialists. The figure reads poetry, expressing . . . confidence in the impending arrival of world revolution."^[43] During the reading, statues of Marx and Engels flanking the tower came to life.^[44]

Oddest of all circus presentations on November 7, 1919, was Political Carousel . Written by Rukavishnikov, whose wife ran the Second State Circus, where it was shown, Political Carousel was directed by Forreger, who by now was the director of the Moscow Balagan.^[45] Forreger should have known better. This mass drama was performed on a three-tiered stage designed by Kuznetsov.

On the top level is a monster depicting imperialistic capitalism; near it are the Russian tsar, his court, family, and ministers. On the second level are bureaucrats . . . . On the third tier a prison is shown in which workers are imprisoned, guarded by soldiers and cannons . . . . The war with Germany is symbolically depicted, with the participation of all the imperialistic countries. The pantomime closes again with a symbolic representation of the Russian Revolution: the people drag the monster out of the tower onto the street, burn the monster, then dance and make merry.^[46]

One could only agree with Shershenevich when he accused Rukavishnikov and the Circus Department of destroying the circus.^[47]