The Director and the Revolution: V. E. Meyerhold's Public Activity at the Mariinsky Theatre at the turn of 1917 and 1918

At the end of 1917 Vsevolod Meyerhold paid great attention to social work in the Mariinsky Opera Company. Among the anti-Bolshevik actors of the Alexandrinsky Theatre, the direc- tor, who chose the path of rapprochement with representatives of the Soviet government, was in comparative isolation. While in Mariinsky Theatre there was the circle of like-minded opera actors. The most important of the latter was the conductor Nikolay Malko. Together with Meyerhold he supported the power of the Bolsheviks. Meyerhold and Malko devoted considerable time to the general meetings of the troupe (most of which were chaired by Meyerhold in December 1917 and early January 1918). They acted in several directions at once. Meyerhold and his supporters consistently engaged in discrediting in the eyes of the singers the manager of the opera company A.I. Siloti and the chief commissioner for state theatres F. D. Batyushkov. Both of the last theatre directors (opponents of the Bolsheviks) were showed in every possible way as the opposed ones to the democratic collective. Any actions of A. V. Lunacharsky and his comrades, even the most authoritarian, received a different as- sessment, it was emphasized that they corresponded to the interests of the actors. Hard work was rewarded: as a result, Meyerhold managed to prepare Lunacharsky's first visit to the state theatres formally led by him, which took place on January 3, 1918 in the Mariinsky Theatre and became an important milestone on the path of the “Bolshevization” of the Russian stage. Meyerhold's role in this process was very significant: he not only personally introduced the People's Commissar to the troupe, but also actually directed all the behind-the-scenes activities, which resulted in Lunacharsky's arrival at the “Petipa House”.