Fowler, Mayhill C. Beau Monde on Empire's Edge: State and Stage in Soviet Ukraine (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 557 Russian Book presents the unfortunately truncated painting by Vladimir Dubossarskii and Aleksandr Vinogradov entitled ‘Russia’ (oil on canvas, 2008). The original shows a pair of eyes presumably belonging to a female reader who intently stares at her onlookers whilst the lower part of her face is covered by a book featuring just one word as its title: Russia. In the Palgrave Macmillan partial reproduction, however, any subtlety is gone — the image itself becomes nearly invisible, and the single piercing eye that survives from the original painting is recklessly blotted out by the green square of the series’ logo (‘New Directions in Book History’), as well as Pristed’s book title. Of course, the author is not to blame for the publisher’s lack of taste or, perhaps, for its limited production budget, but it is ironic that in the world of scholarly publications, and especially of those devoted to the intricate art of book history and cover design, aesthetic standards and marketing considerations are still considered to be insignificant. Department of Russian Studies Yuri Leving Dalhousie University Fowler, Mayhill C. Beau Monde on Empire’s Edge: State and Stage in Soviet Ukraine. University of Toronto Press, Toronto, ON, Buffalo, NY and London, 2017. xvi + 282 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Selected bibliography. Index. $75.00. Beau Monde on Empire’s Edge provides a fascinating study of early twentieth-century theatre in Soviet Ukraine. Mayhill Fowler examines conventional questions such as the relationship between artists and the state and the role of art in society. She also illuminates broader concerns about empire, the relationship between periphery and centre, Soviet nationality policy and ‘internal transnationalism’, defined as ‘the exchange of peoples, goods, and ideas across the real — and imagined — borders inside the Soviet Union’ (p. 87). Arguing that the periphery was ‘central to early Soviet cultural production and reception’ (p. 9), Fowler traces the region’s declining significance as the Soviet cultural topography evolved into a hierarchy with Moscow (and to a lesser extent Leningrad) at the top and Ukraine and other regions increasingly identified as a periphery with lower-quality art. She approaches these questions through a collective biography of important Soviet artists and officials from the region of ‘the Russian Imperial Southwest’ (p. 9) and their interactions primarily in the Kharkiv ‘beau monde’, Fowler’s term for the ‘elites, artists, officials, hangers-on, friends, enemies, and the loose circles of milieux crossing the world of the arts and the world of officialdom’ (pp 15–16). Some artists, such as Mikhail Bulgakov, Les Kurbas and Solomon SEER, 96, 3, JULY 2018 558 Mikhoels (not from Ukraine but many of his GOSET artists were) will be familiar to scholars. Other artists, usually those who stayed in Ukraine, will be new (and their ongoing obscurity outside Ukraine speaks to her argument). Fowler highlights the richness of the cultural production among Ukrainians, Russians, Poles and Jews, although she focuses less on aesthetic achievements and more on the circumstances that made them possible (p. 20). She does analyse specific productions when they demonstrate the workings of the beau monde. ‘Soviet Ukrainian’ culture emerged from competing struggles within Soviet Ukraine as well as between Soviet Ukraine and Moscow. Although highlighting the unique developments in Ukraine, Fowler also shows that the entire Soviet Union represented a larger beau monde, and other regions throughout the country had their own. By the late 1930s, the Kremlin stood at its apex. Fowler discusses the impact of pre-Revolutionary expectations regarding theatre on post-Revolutionary developments. Most importantly she notes that despite tsarist censorship, local needs trumped central prescriptions, and the centre could not intervene because it lacked staff and these officials did not have the necessary language skills. Artists embraced the growing role of the state in arts affairs and ongoing local control in the 1920s. Government funding provided viable livelihoods after pre-Revolutionary instability. That support facilitated the developments of two key trends: officialization and provincialization. Many pro-Revolutionary artists in Ukraine viewed their role as creating a new Soviet Ukrainian culture, but they discovered that officials did not always agree that it could emerge from Western European as well as domestic traditions. The extensive development of a professional...