The Frightful Stage by Robert Justin Goldstein

Author:Robert Justin Goldstein [Goldstein, Robert Justin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction, Health & Well Being, Psychology, Mental Health
ISBN: 9781317788805
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2014-05-22T04:00:00+00:00

Conclusion

The Russian censorship statutes in force between 1865 and 1917 did not differ greatly from those of other European countries. In Russia, however, the application of the rules remained more stringent for a longer period of time than most, if not all, other European countries. While constitutions and civil rights were slowly granted to most Europeans during the nineteenth century, Russia remained an autocracy until the 1905 revolution forced some concessions from the tsar, and the harsh Russian censorship was a product of Russia's autocratic order. In 1906 the censorship of publications and the press eased somewhat in Russia, but the theater continued to be subject to the rules established in 1865 until the overthrow of the autocracy in 1917.

What was the impact of censorship on Russian theater? To be sure, the burden of censorship was heavy, especially for writers, who were forced to self-censor themselves if they wanted their plays to be staged. As Lev Tolstoy once wrote, “What matters is not what the censor does to what I have written, but what I might have written.” Still, Russian drama developed considerably in the last decades of tsarist rule, when playwrights such as Ostrovsky, Chekhov, and Gorky created works that even today have not lost their resonance. After the tsarist regime collapsed in 1917 there was a widespread expectation that the abolition of censorship would result in the appearance of many previously banned plays, but this did not happen, although the complete uncensored texts of some plays could now be performed. (Similar expectations after the collapse of the Communist Party's rule in the 1990s also turned out to be unfounded.)42 For Russian directors, the problem centered on getting permission to stage the works they wanted and, once permission was obtained, being able to actually present their plays without a sudden intervention by the authorities. Censorship, however, did not stifle the innovations of Stanislavsky, Meyerhold, Evreinov, and other experimenters. The text, after all, is only one of the raw materials that the director uses to craft a performance. To be sure, censorship did have a negative impact on Russian theater, as it did elsewhere in Europe, but that impact should not be overstated. Tsarist Russia's theatrical culture was innovative, and left behind a vital legacy.

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