Yuly Aykhenwald in the debate about the theatre. Article two

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Abstract

The article examines, for the first time ever, in detail the attitude to aesthetic views on the theatre of the critic Yuly Isaevich Aykhenwald (1872–1928) in discussions that flourished after the October revolution of 1917. The polemic inertia is analysed and it is shown that it was conditional on the polemics of the 1900–1910s. It is demonstrated how the purely aesthetic assessments typical of such theatrical figures as Aleksandr Tairov, Aleksandr Kugel, Sergei Radlov, Pavel Gaideburov were in Soviet times gradually replaced by ideological and political assessments (publications by Yakov Brookson, Emmanuel Beskin, Platon Kerzhentseva et al.). This trend was especially strong in the early 1930s triggered by the exposure of the “Gvozdev school” of theatre studies. The article brings to the front the standpoint of Aykhenwald himself in the first post-revolutionary decade and the degree of his participation in the theatrical life of Moscow and Berlin after his expulsion on the “philosophical steamer” in 1922.

About the authors

Elena A. Takho-Godi

Lomonosov Moscow State University; A.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences

Author for correspondence.
Email: takho-godi.elena@yandex.ru

Doct. Sci. (Philol.), Professor at the Faculty of Philology; Leading Research Fellow

Russian Federation, 1 Leninskie Gory, Moscow, 119991; 25a Povarskaya Str., Moscow, 121069

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