Art Archives Research Articles

Self-Imagining

While Western Europe’s visual cultural resistance to populism is often highlighted in both the media and academic studies, resistance to populism through artistic and cultural production is very seldom addressed in the academic studies dedicated to East-Central Europe. This does not mean that the cultural producers from the former East do not confront the surge of neo-populism in the region. How do artists understand and figure out cultural alternatives and resist right-wing populist politics and its culture in East-Central Europe? What are their strategies to react against ‘culturally popular’ formats and ethnoreligious nationalist culture in an age of generalised anxiety? This article focuses on alternative archives of visual art against populism, within which it addresses self-portraits, double-self-portraits, and multi-self-portraits understood as visual cultural productions that resist the pre-existing depictions of ‘the people’ – employed by the right-wing populist entrepreneurs – to polarise societies into friends versus enemies.

The Artists’ Association branches of Revolutionary Russia: experience of interaction with regions

Importance. The activities of the Artists’ Association branches of Revolutionary Russia (1922–1932) are considered. During this period, the organization had a significant and sometimes decisive place in the artistic life of the country. The subject of the study relates to the culture of the country as a whole and touches on local history issues. The purpose of the work is to assess the influence of the central organization on the local branches development and analyze their importance in the Association work.Materials and Methods. The research is based on materials from the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art, the State Archive of the Yaroslavl Region and published memoirs of participants in the events. In the course of the work, the biographical method is used, as well as historical-genetic and historical-comparative methods traditional for historical science.Results and Discussion. It is noted that the Association participants paid great attention to the creation of representative offices at the local level. The presence of artistic traditions in a particular region played an important role in the development of local branches of the AARR. At the same time, established traditions are not the determining factor. The presence of a bright creative personality in it, who set a certain pace of work, could be of significant importance in the development of a particular branch.Conclusion. It is revealed that some of the regional branches ceased their activities even before the liquidation of the AARR. Despite this, the work of branches of the Artists’ Association of Revolutionary Russia contributed to the accessibility of art for the local population, attracting regional residents to artistic life and preserving cultural monuments. Museums and creative studios are created, and active exhibitions and lectures are carried out.

Documenting the ephemeral: An ontology for the performing arts

The performing arts domain, addressing the ephemeral nature of its main study subject, the performance, calls upon Digital Humanities’ techniques to document, record and analyse the performative event, thus offering a new perspective to research and education. In this context, many digital projects have been completed, including digitising art archives, creating databases of art productions and developing metadata schemas and conceptual models. The study of these efforts revealed a need for a universal and comprehensive way of documenting performance. This article, which benefitted from the experience gained thus far in the performing arts in the digital world, attempts to unify the domain’s acquired knowledge and organise it in an ontology. While the overall success of such a project proved to be greater than the scope of this research, we propose a core ontology for the performing arts, which has the potential to evolve in the future.

Tantangan Pengarsipan Seni Pertunjukan di Institut Seni Indonesia (ISI) Surakarta

This research aims to do a theoretical study for recognizing the challenges related to archivingperforming arts at the Indonesian Institute of the Arts (ISI) Surakarta as an integral component of the development of the ISI Surakarta Arts Archive. Employing qualitative research methods with a literature review approach, it gathered information from various sources such as books, academic journals, and previous research. Data analysis is carried out by describing and interpreting the diverse viewpoints and procedural aspects. This research uncovers a fundamental challenge in archiving performing arts at ISI Surakarta due to their ephemeral nature—these arts exist solely during live performances, making preservation a complex task. Tracking the existence of performing arts relies on annotations, recordings, and documents that serve as historical records of these live events. The annotations, recordings, and documentsare derived from the artist's creative process, performance management, audience feedback, artcritics, and public reception. The results of the research state that the challenges faced in archiving performing arts at ISI Surakarta include (1) the need to enhance archivists' understanding of the genesis of performing arts to trace and compile performance-relatedannotations/recordings effectively; (2) the importance of cultivating archival literacy among artists to grasp better and acknowledge the significance of documenting the creative process of their artistic works throughout production and post-performance phases; and (3) the necessity of developing an interactive digital archive for performing arts to draw the artists, the public, and users an access right to contribute authentic and pertinent records, documents, and documentation associated with specific performing arts.

«Как нам жить дальше»: комбинаты Ленинградского отделения Художественного фонда СССР накануне «оттепели» на рубеже 1940–1950-х гг. По материалам ЦГАЛИ СПб

The article is devoted to the activities of the combines of the Leningrad Branch of the USSR Art Fund in the mid-1950s. The article is based on materials from the Branch's fund deposited in the Central State Archive of Literature and Art of St. Petersburg. The research approach according to which the material is analyzed is connected with the study of everyday life as one of the relevant areas of modern historical science. Researchers advocate the “chamber propaganda program” that operated in the art production of the USSR in the mid- second half of the 20th century. The material of the Leningrad Branch's fund allows us to trace the specific problems faced by the implementation of this plan in practice. Basing on this source, we reveal how reality corrected ideological attitudes. The focus of the article is on the activities of the Painting and Sculpture and Art-design combines of the Branch. The year 1956 was chosen as a chronological marker, as the moment of transition from one political and cultural period to another, from the period of “late Stalinism” to the period of “Thaw”. The archival materials analyzed in the article allow us to draw the following conclusions. Firstly, the personal factor made significant adjustments to the work of the combines. On one hand, there was a struggle against bureaucracy and routine. On the other hand, policy on combating anti-Semitism was publicly announced. Both were supposed to demonstrate a new ideological atmosphere, “correction of the mistakes in the past”. Secondly, an important role in the real participation of combines in the process of forming the living environment of a Soviet citizen was played by the distribution of funding in specific areas of activity. The most artistic trends related to the manufacture of applied art and interior design received the least money. The main funds were spent on direct propaganda and ongoing technical work. Finally, another factor of adjustment was the accepted system of wage payment. It made more profitable work not creative, but routine, related to the repetition of what had already been done earlier. All that complex of factors, of course, left its mark on the implementation of ideological attitudes and corrected the implementation of the "chamber propaganda plan". It seems that this trend of research may be of significant interest both for studying the activities of the enterprises of the USSR art industry, and for the political history of the country and the history of its everyday life. The scientific potential of the relevant archival materials, some of which did not attract the attention of researchers, is extremely great.

From the Franco-Russian Alliance (1894) to the Franco-Soviet Treaty on Mutual Assistance (1935): Two Rounds of Acquaintance with the Fine Art of the Ally

This article considers the emergence of mutual interest in the art of France and the Russian Empire in the period from the conclusion of the Franco-Russian Alliance in 1894 to the Franco-Soviet Treaty of Mutual Assistance in 1935. The author of the article singles out two stages in the appeal to the fine arts of a friendly state: the turn of the twentieth century and the period following 1924 after the recognition of the USSR by France. Describing the first period of interest in the fine arts, the author refers to events that took place in the Russian Empire and in France, organised with the cooperation of French and Russian cultural and art figures. It is concluded that the organisation of numerous art exhibitions in both countries testified to the mutual desire of the parties to get acquainted with the novelties of the art genre of the other, as well as comprehend the episodes of common history (in particular, the war of 1812). Describing the new round of acquaintance with the culture of France and the USSR after 1924 and drawing on sources from the funds of the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art, the author proves that both in France and in the USSR, interest in the fine arts of each other remained and was fueled by the desire of the People’s Commissariat of Education of the RSFSR to cooperate with France. The work focuses on the fact that it was the smaller exhibitions through which the complementarity and commonality of cultures of both countries were recognised and which were the main place of cultural interaction. The author concludes that despite the different political systems in France and the Russian Empire / USSR, cultural ties between the two countries played a significant role, both at the turn of the century and in the 1920s–1930s, when cultural ties between them became a new impulse due to their respective revolutionary past.

СОВЕТСКИЙ ХУДОЖЕСТВЕННЫЙ КИНЕМАТОГРАФ 1960-Х ГГ. КАК ИСТОЧНИК ПО ИЗУЧЕНИЮ ИСТОРИИ ИНДУСТРИАЛЬНОГО СТРОИТЕЛЬСТВА

The article considers as historical sources Soviet feature films of the 1960s – “As Long as Man Lives” (1963), “On Tomorrow’s Street” (1965). It deals with some aspects of the filmmaking, thereby treating feature films as full-fledged historical source for studying not only the history of cinema, but also the history of science and technology. To reconstruct the plan and the actual process of filming, the authors used the documents of fund No. 2944 from the Russian State Archives of Literature and Art (fund of the State Committee of the USSR Council of Ministers for Cinematography {Goskino SSSR} of the period from 1963 to 1992. The archival materials helped to vividly show how the USSR Goskino initiated and controlled the process of creating feature films. The most informative in that respect were the production reports and the correspondence with the management of film studios and art councils, etc. Methodologically, the article is based on the concept of the cinema-photo-phono-documents elaborated by V.M. Magidov. According to the above concept, Soviet feature films are considered to be an integral part of the cinema-photo-phono-document identity, in which the cinema, through visualization, content of the film frame and the montage specifics brings to the screen items of machinery, objects of industrial production and attributes of industrial development. By transferring the visual symbols into the field of historical research, there appears the need to interpret the director’s decisions and assess the authenticity of the depicted events.

The Art of Memory: Archiving Street Art using the CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model

This paper presents a detailed discussion of the data modelling and functional implementation of a semantically-enabled knowledge base related to the creation, digitisation and archiving of large-scale public art works. Based on principles of international best practice, standards and interoperability, the paper focuses on the use of the CIDOC-CRM ontology used in conjunction with the Arches Digital Cultural Heritage data management system to model street art-related entities and their semantic relationships. The work presented here is an extension of the work of the mementoArtem Digital Street Art Archive Project being carried out in conjunction with the INSYTE-Cooley Research Laboratory (I-CRL), South East Technological University (SETU), Waterford, Ireland.

Systematic Literature Review of Art Archive Management in Indonesia

Several studies on the management of art archives in Indonesia have been carried out in line with the discourse, awareness, and practice of art archiving which have also become increasingly visible in the last one and a half decades. Seeing these developments, this study aims to explore studies of actors, processes, and conditions for managing art archives that have been running in Indonesia, using the Systematic Literature Review method. The results show that archiving actors can be categorized into government institutions, non-governmental organizations, as well as individual and community initiatives. The archive management processes studied cover a series of stages from upstream to downstream, or focus on certain stages such as acquisition, preservation, and dissemination. In the process, several obstacles were encountered; high utilization of digital technology and internet; and emphasized the importance of collaboration, creativity, and public involvement and interaction in the art archive itself. Based on the results of the discussion, it can be said that there is a need for further research on art archives in order to help improve the quality of their management.

Did Ernst Herzfeld Find the Qaṣʿat Firʿawn (Pharaoh’s Bowl) in the Caliphal Palace at Samarra?

Ernst Herzfeld’s (1879–1948) papers on his excavation of the Abbasid city of Samarra, held at the National Museum of Asian Art Archives, include two maps indicating the existence of a large circular basin at the center of the square domed chamber south of the Caliphal Palace’s throne room. The details of this basin are provided in an orthographic drawing, and the captions of two photographs tersely attribute it to the palace. Now in the Madrasa al-Sharābiya in Baghdad, this basin has sometimes been identified as Qaṣʿat Firʿawn (Pharaoh’s Bowl), a large basin cited in medieval sources as having been part of the fountain of the Great Mosque of al-Mutawakkil. Strangely enough, not the slightest mention of this basin has been found in the written records of the excavations or in the published reports. A careful examination of other documents in Herzfeld’s archives and publications, as well as a number of reports of the Iraqi Directorate General of Antiquities, has established that the basin must have been discovered under unknown circumstances at an unspecified location in the palace several years after Herzfeld’s excavation. Furthermore, the study of medieval textual sources and other data related to the basin has shown that the latter is not Qaṣʿat Firʿawn but might well have been a similar basin. Originally a Roman labrum, the basin in question was repurposed during the Abbasid period as part of a low fountain with a unique water-circulation system that bears some similarities to the fountains of Islamic Spain.

Infrastructures for Digital Arts Teaching and Research in Higher Education (LeFo): The “Connecting New Media Art Archives Worldwide” Initiative

The project titled “Infrastructures for Digital Arts Teaching and Research in Higher Education” (LeFo) funded by the BMBWF between 2020 and 2024 is being carried out at the University of Continuing Education Krems, the University of Arts Linz and the University of Applied Arts Vienna. In addition to the expansion of the Archive of Digital Art (ADA) for research and teaching at universities and the development of innovative New Media Art documentation with VR and mixed-reality experiences, the project supports the establishment of a global network of New Media Art archives. This paper focuses on the (pre)history, special challenges and selected solution approaches of the initiative to date.

Exploring a digital art archive in mixed reality

Exploring a digital art archive in mixed reality

Под охраной музейного отдела: судьба усадебных коллекций Подмосковья и их владельцев после революции 1917 года

В статье анализируется судьба дворянских имений Подмосковья и находившихся в них усадебных коллекций, национализированных после революции 1917 года. Использованы материалы Государственного архива Российской Федерации и Центральногогосударственного архива литературы и искусства, статьи музейных исследователей, воспоминания современников. Отмечена роль бывших владельцев усадеб как хранителей и руководителей музеев, впоследствии возникавших на основе имений. Характеризуются принадлежавшие бывшим владельцам произведения искусства и исторические артефакты, описывается последующая история коллекций, как правило, становившихся частью музейного фонда советской России. Выявлены и обобщены в виде таблицы разнообразные формы приспособления усадеб под общественные и государственные нужды, получившие распространение в послереволюционный период. Определен ряд тенденций, связанных с послереволюционной судьбой культурных ценностей, входивших в состав подмосковных усадебных коллекций. The study aims to systematize the processes that took place after the 1917 Revolution with collections of art, books and other cultural property located in the noble estates of Moscow Oblast. The materials were documents stored in the State Archive of the Russian Federation and the Central State Archive of Literature and Art, monographs and articles by researchers on the history of estates near Moscow in the 19th and 20th centuries. Historical-systemic, comparative and other methods applied in historical research were used. The study notes that estates near Moscow and collections of art works located in them during the events of the 1917 Revolution were rarely plundered by peasants. The author describes the role of former owners of estates as curators and managers of museums that subsequently arose on the basis of estates; analyzes the process of registering and describing property located in estates near Moscow; characterizes the works of art and historical artifacts that belonged to the former owners and the subsequent history of the collections, which, as a rule, became part of the museum fund of Soviet Russia. In some cases, the author comments on the fate of the former owners. The study focuses on the Moscow Oblast estates of the Uvarovs (Porechye), the Shcherbatovs (Brattsevo), the Sheremetevs (Vvedenskoye), the Olsufievs (Ershovo), and others. In total, the author briefly characterizes the post-revolutionary history of about one and a half dozen estates near Moscow and their collections. The forms of adaptation of estates for public and state needs, which became widespread in the post-revolutionary period, are diverse, and the author identifies and summarizes them in a table. The several important trends related to the subsequent fate of cultural values that were part of the Moscow Oblast estate collections the author identified are: (1) conflict-free relations between landlords and peasants had a positive impact on the preservation of the estate heritage of Moscow Oblast; (2) the so-called “museums of landlord life” (“museums of the nobility”), which existed in the first years of the Soviet power, became widespread in the region; however, this trend did not develop further: over the following ten years, most of these museums were closed due to ideological inconsistency; (3) the last owners of estates played a major role in preserving cultural values at the beginning of the Revolution. Thanks to their contribution, unique cultural values that were previously part of estate collections today adorn exhibitions of the best museums in the country.

Представительство СССР на XVI Венецианской Биеннале 1928 г.: к истории советско-итальянских культурных связей

The article analyzes the participation of the Soviet delegation in the XVI International Art Exhibition in Venice in 1928. The successful presentation of Soviet art at the XIV Biennale in 1924 noticeably strengthened the USSR’s position in the development of cultural ties with Italy and contributed to the formation of an attractive image of the Soviet man among ordinary Italians. In 1926, the difficult economic situation did not allow the Soviet dele-gation to participate, but two years later, as part of the XVI Biennale in the Russian Pavilion in Venice, the public could once again see the work of Soviet masters. With the success of the 1928 Biennale, Soviet art’s position as a relay of the new state idea was consolidated and a massive response was generated. The official Italian press, despite many negative reviews, noted the timeliness and fullness of Soviet culture, and the system of state order made the strongest impression. The article is based on a large number of documents from the State Archive of the Russian Federation, the Russian Archive of Literature and Art, periodicals and memoirs of the events’ participants.

Archives and Art: Living Archives of Javanese Performing Arts

The study is aimed at exploring the theoretical basis of living archives and formulating the concept of living archives of Javanese performing arts at ISI Surakarta, as higher education which is a center of learning and development of performing arts. Qualitative research methods with library research are used to explain the ideas explored. When discussing the archives of Javanese performing arts, it is necessary to emphasize the importance of process to performance. In general, archives tend to focus on a single end product. Javanese performing arts are continuous activities in a state of being and having a dynamic and inclusive end. The results of the discussion show that the management of Javanese performing arts archives cannot be merely a conservation measure but needs to encourage a shift from recorded events to dynamic articulations of practice so that they can become a reference for working on Javanese performing arts according to the context of the times, supported by involvement and interactivity. Living archives are the right alternative. This approach is intended to implement a dynamic and flexible visualization model that gives the user an active role in how he or she accesses and explores archives by leveraging digital platforms.
 
 Keywords: archive, living archive, conceptualization, performing arts, ISI Surakarta

Exhibitions of Japanese children’s drawings in the USSR: Depicting Japan, showing the world

The article is devoted to the history of exhibitions of Japanese children’s drawings in the Soviet Union in 1920s – 1980s, as well as to the critical interpretation and perception by the Soviet audience of the artistic works of Japanese children. The importance of such events can be seen not only in the artistic value of the exposition material, but also in the influence of the expositions on the image of Japan in mass consciousness.The material is devoted to key exhibition projects related to the presentation of Japanese children’s art, in particular, the “Exhibition of Children’s Books and Children’s Art of Japan” in 1928, as well as a series of international exhibitions “I See the World,” held in the USSR since the late 1960s. The greatest attention is paid to the peculiarities of Soviet art criticism towards Japanese children’s drawing in the pre-war and post-war period, as well as the influence of Soviet ideology on the interpretation of children’s art from Japan.The author comes to the conclusion that the approach to the exhibitions was characterized by ideological indoctrination, as well as certain stereotypes about Japan, which created a request for exoticization of the creative products of the Japanese children. During the initial period of the Russian-Japanese cultural ties, despite the controversial nature of the Soviet art criticism of Japanese children’s drawings, the exhibition had substantial importance for the cultural ties of the two countries. In the post-war period, not only mono- national exhibitions, but also large projects involving multiple countries drew attention to various creative works of Japanese children. Since the early 1990s, the past importance of such exhibitions as an important element of cultural exchange receded, which is also true for the present times, despite the episodic exhibition projects of this sort in various regions of Russia. The “propaganda” component of children’s drawings faded. It is, however, regrettable that such exhibitions stopped attracting public attention due to the lack of interest of the media to these initiatives, as well as of systematic study of the works of Japanese children from the point of view of art studies and psychology.The article is based on documents, many of which are being introduced into scientific circulation for the first time, from the following archives: the State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF), the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art (RGALI), the Central State Archive of St. Petersburg.

Editor’s Note

Previous articleNext article FreeEditor’s NoteTanya SheehanTanya Sheehan Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreIt is with deep gratitude that I acknowledge this as the final issue of the journal overseen by Liza Kirwin, interim director of the Archives of American Art from 2020 to 2023. It was Liza, as deputy director, who led a comprehensive review of the journal’s operations resulting in its relaunch as a peer-reviewed publication distributed by the University of Chicago Press in 2015. When she hired me as executive editor that year, Liza challenged me to prioritize innovative thinking about primary sources in selecting research articles and reach a broader audience than ever before, while providing her unwavering support and excitement for the work. In every issue we produced together, managing editor Emily D. Shapiro and I relied on Liza’s deep knowledge of the Archives’ collections and the artworld figures represented in them, built over a remarkable forty-three-year career at the institution. Liza’s wisdom, however, extends far beyond the facts of American art. She possesses a unique combination of critical acumen, generosity of spirit, and sensitivity to the human relations at the heart of any collection. Emily and I dedicate this issue to her.“New Research” opens with efforts to think about American art history as a network of relations. Engaging material in the Archives related to Polish-born painter Henryk Stażewski, Marta Zboralska asks how we can better understand American art through a non-American’s work. Martyna Ewa Majewska underscores the collaborative structure of art-making and artistic development through her exploration of the relationships among Senga Nengudi, Maren Hassinger, and other Los Angeles-based artists in the late twentieth century. Majewska’s essay also reflects on the roles of medium and intermediality in defining American modernism. Writing about holographic art in the 1960s and 1970s, Elizabeth Johnson shares this interest in how medium can serve as a critical tool with aesthetic and political implications.In this issue we debut “Out of the Box,” which invites responses to a single collection at the Archives. In collaboration with Amelia Groom, who introduces the feature here and edited it with me, we asked seven contributors to each select and meditate on one object from the Beverly Buchanan Papers—a recent acquisition that poses timely questions about environmental and racial justice.Similar questions are explored by Ken Gonzales-Day, whose commissioned artwork redraws the flora and fauna in artistic depictions of lynching found in the records of a 1935 antilynching exhibition. As Shawn Michelle Smith observes in her introduction to the work, Gonzales-Day shows how the natural landscape served as unwilling witness to racial violence. Previous articleNext article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Archives of American Art Journal Volume 62, Number 1Spring 2023 Sponsored by the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/725118 © 2023 The Smithsonian Institution. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Remixing a Cultural Festival - FESTAC ’77: The 2nd World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture Decomposed, An-Arranged and Reproduced by Chimurenga; Misdirections in Music by Ntone Edjabe Edited by Chimurenga with Ntone Edjabe, Graeme Arendse, Ziphozenkosi Dayile, Duduetsang Lamola, Stacy Hardy, Bongani Kona, Ben Verghese, Moses März, Akin Adesokan, Mamadou Diallo, Dominique Malaquais, Terry Ayugi, Andrea Meeson,

Remixing a Cultural Festival - FESTAC ’77: The 2nd World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture Decomposed, An-Arranged and Reproduced by Chimurenga; Misdirections in Music by Ntone Edjabe Edited by Chimurenga with Ntone Edjabe, Graeme Arendse, Ziphozenkosi Dayile, Duduetsang Lamola, Stacy Hardy, Bongani Kona, Ben Verghese, Moses März, Akin Adesokan, Mamadou Diallo, Dominique Malaquais, Terry Ayugi, Andrea Meeson, and Eva Munyiri. Cape Town: Chimurenga; London: Afterall Books, in association with Asia Art Archive, the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, and RAW Material Company, 2019. Pp. 445. $32.09, paperback (ISBN: 9781846382123). - Volume 64 Issue 1

The mood of the Romanian intelligentsia in the early 1960s through the eyes of a young Soviet writer

The Russian State Archive of Literature and Art (RGALI) contains reports of Soviet writers and cultural figures who traveled in the 1950s-1980s on creative business trips to socialist countries. Not yet in high demand by researchers, they are at the same time of undoubted interest as a historical source, since they reflect information related to the establishment of bilateral and multilateral cultural ties, the development of literature and art in foreign (in particular, Eastern European) countries, as well as the mood of foreign intelligentsia. The article deals with the report on the trip to Romania in the spring of 1962 by the young playwright Mikhail Filippovich Shatrov (1932–2010). A sincere supporter of the genuine renewal and democratization of the Soviet system, M. Shatrov was pleased with the reception given to him in Romania and highly appreciated the state of theatrical performances in this country. At the same time, he got the impression based on communication with Romanian interlocutors (writers and theatrical figures) that the Romanian society was lagging behind the Soviet one in its readiness to break with the Stalinist legacy. In his view, those responsible for cultural policy preferred to play it safe when it came to staging the Soviet plays in Romania that were critical of Stalin's personality cult, as they might lead the public to undesirable parallels with the current situation in Romania. Moreover, according to M. Shatrov, an atmosphere of fear continued to flourish in Romania, “a terrible legacy of the era of the cult of personality”. On the other hand, he drew attention to the reluctance of some Romanian cultural figures to advertise their old Soviet connections in the face of public opinion, because they were afraid of being compromised in the eyes of their colleagues in the conditions when the Romanian communist regime began to keep distance from the USSR.

Е.К. Малиновская и балет

Elena Konstantinovna Malinovskaya (1875–1942) played a significant, albeit, at a first glance, not a particularly distinguishable role in the history of the Russian stage. After the revolution, she directed a number of Moscow State (which held the appellations of Academic starting from 1919) theaters until 1924, during the years 1930–1935 she was the director of the Bolshoi Theater. For eleven years, Malinovskaya's personality, artistic views and administrative tactics influenced in various degrees the development of one of the two largest ballet companies in the country. She was compelled to take into account the tastes of high-ranking “curators” of the theater (Anatoly Lunacharsky, Avel Enukidze et al.), to comply with the demands of a powerful trade union organization, adapt to Communist Party censorship, struggle against the desires of choreographers and dancers for tours abroad, which frequently turned into one–way trips. Malinovskaya had to deal with, and not unsuccessfully, not only management of theaters, and also provide for the living conditions of artists. On the basis of materials introduced into scholarly circulation for the first time (first of all, from Malinovskaya's extensive personal funds in the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art and the A.A. Bakhrushin State Central Theater Museum), this article examines the complex relationships of Elena Malinovskaya, the Bolshoi Theater Ballet Troupe and various public figures from the world of art and politics, involved in ballet in various degrees, during the years 1918–1935. Overall, Malinovskaya's artistic activities have been evaluated highly in the history of Russian ballet.