‘A Woman's Kingdom’: Minister of Culture Furtseva and Censorship in the Post-Stalinist Russian Theatre

Abstract

The late 1960s and early 1970s are known as a period of rebellion and turbulence in the Soviet Russian theatre. Dynamic directors such as Georgy Tovstonogov, Anatoly Efros, Oleg Efremov, and Yury Lyubimov, with varying degrees of acceptance by the authorities, revolutionized the staging of classics and inspired a number of new works based on the realities of everyday life. Less well known is that this activity took place during the regime of Elena Furtseva (1910–74), first as a member of the Presidium, then as Minister of Culture. Furtseva is a paradoxical figure: the very model of a line-toeing Party member, she also used her femininity to advance her career. Uncultivated in the arts and ruled by her personal taste, she alternately bullied and coddled the artists she was supposed to control. Although Furtseva's influence was ever present from the Khrushchev era to the early Brezhnev years, she is rarely mentioned in Western accounts of Soviet theatre, and this sketch of her career is the first in English. The author, Laurence Senelick, is Fletcher Professor of Drama and Oratory at Tufts University. His books include The Chekhov Theatre: a Century of Plays in Performance (1997) and A Historical Dictionary of Russian Theatre (2007). Several of his articles have appeared in Theatre Quarterly and New Theatre Quarterly, the most recent being an article on Michael Chekhov in NTQ 99.