Art and culture took on a variety of forms in the forced labor camps of the Gulag system that existed across the Soviet Union during the first half of the twentieth century. Theater, music, visual art, and literature played a role in camp life for many of the millions of prisoners who passed through the Gulag system. Some creative endeavors were initiated and executed by prisoners themselves (sometimes in secret), while others were overseen by the camp administration. Some projects benefited from prisoners who had been professional artists; others were organized by amateurs. The robust presence of the arts in the Gulag camps is a testament to the resourcefulness and resilience of prisoners there, many of whom derived material benefits and psychological comfort from their involvement in artistic projects.
Theater and music One of the most visible forms of art within the Gulag was performance. Many prisoners, from experienced actors and musicians to total amateurs, either participated in or attended theatrical productions in the camps. Occasionally, even camp officials became involved: in his memoir Dear America!, Thomas Sgovio describes a production in which the leading role was played by the head of the Camp Administration.
Early Gulag theaters The phenomenon of Gulag theater dates back almost as far as the existence of Gulag. Prisoners at Solovetsky prison camp, the USSR's first Gulag camp, started an amateur theater group as early as 1923. Initially, the actors had no access to scripts, so they relied on memorized classics for material. The troupe was not officially recognized, and performers were given no special treatment; they often rehearsed after a full day of labor. The following year, however, the quality of performances at the camp greatly improved with the influx of a group of professional actors who had been arrested together.
Notable Gulag theaters By the 1940s, many work camps had developed theater troupes, some completely amateur and others highly accomplished. Directors of certain Gulags became competitive about producing the best theatrical performances, and officials like the commander at Unzhlag would hand-pick talented prisoners to participate. According to Lev Kopelev, the priority that Unzhlag's commander placed on high-quality theater led the camp to become known as an “asylum for artists."
Talent was plentiful among Gulag prisoners, a number of whom had professional performing experience. The singers Vadim Kozin and Lidia Ruslanova, the actresses Valentina Tokarskaya and Zoya Fyodorova, and a host of other illustrious performers spent time in Gulag camps. Sometimes, too, non-prisoners were hired to supplement the camp's supply of performers. (This was the case in the theater at Vorkuta, where a professional director from Moscow was hired for certain shows.) The commander at Ukhtizhimlag, a camp in Ukhta, organized what writer and prisoner Lev Razgon called “a real opera troupe” featuring a soprano from the Harbin operetta, a dancer from the Bolshoi Ballet, and a well-known viola-player. The troupe's director was Konstantin Egert, an actor from the Maly Theater who had starred in the 1926 film The Legend of the Bear’s Wedding. Performances at Ukhta rivaled those of professional companies in cities like Moscow. The imposing building that once housed the Ukhtizhimlag theater still stands in Ukhta today.
The Dalstroy industrial construction trust, whose operation was based mainly on labor camps in the Kolyma region centered around the city of Magadan, emerged as a cultural hub with the arrival of director Ivan Fedorovich Nikishov in 1939. Nikishov and his staff sought to bolster their own prestige by creating a flourishing arts scene at Magadan. To that end, they built several new theaters and playhouses throughout the city.
Dalstroy developed a renowned theater troupe known as the Sevvostlag Club (Klub USVITL), which included many professional singers and dancers from among the local camps’ prisoners. The troupe performed mainly for the higher-up officials in Magadan but also sent “cultural brigades” to entertain officials and prisoners throughout Kolyma.
Types of performances staged Gulag theater represented a wide variety of genres, from drama to dance performances to operas and operettas. Material was often (although not entirely) controlled by camp officials, who would make requests and censor plays and songs that a troupe intended to stage. Soviet propaganda was encouraged, and a certain amount of pro-Soviet material did end up being performed, including plays like The Russian Question (which follows an American journalist whose bosses force him to slander the USSR).
Most troupes, however, preferred the classics and popular pieces. In its early years, the theater at Solovetsky performed Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, Maxim Gorky’s Children of the Sun, and plays by Leonid Andreyev and Nikolai Gogol; it also held acrobatic and orchestral performances and films. At Vorkuta, performers staged the operas Eugene Onegin (by Alexander Pushkin) and Rigoletto (by Giuseppe Verdi). One troupe at Magadan performed operettas including Marketplace of Brides, Rose-Maria, and selections from Dona Juanita and Kholopka. The actress Tamara Petkevich appeared in Chekhov’s Jubilee and The Bear. Lev Razgon reports that performers at Ustvymlag staged “the most fashionable plays of the day,” including Gusev's Glory and Korneichuk's Plato Krechet, and singers sang popular songs like “ The Blue Scarf,” “Seagull,” and “You are waiting, Lizaveta.” He also recalls attending a performance of Emmerich Kálmán’s opera Silva.
Often, the stress and isolation of Gulag life prompted prisoners and officials alike to request positive and optimistic works rather than melancholy ones. Comedic acts were usually a great success. The theater troupe at Veselaya performed Shkvarkin’s comedy A Stranger’s Child and Karatygin’s vaudeville Dear Uncle on Three Legs, and Dimitri Panin’s memoir The Notebooks of Sologdin recounts the antics of a professional clown named Feigin.
Prison bands More than other types of performance, music in the Gulag was often closely involved with the actual labor. Several camps incorporated music into the prisoners’ workdays. Sometimes, individual musicians or entire bands would accompany prisoners as they assembled in brigades and marched to work. Kazimierz Zarod describes how the camp band, consisting of a mix of amateurs and professionals who “together...made quite good music,” would be stationed at the gate each morning to play military-style music as prisoners set off for work. Tenor Vadim Kozin, Eddie Rosner's band performed in Kolyma region.
Treatment of performers The treatment of performers involved in Gulag theater varied widely over time and among the different camps. Solovetsky's earliest theater group was completely voluntary and self-organized, and the actors (all amateurs) were afforded no special privileges. Like other prisoners, they put in full workdays clearing forests, and they had to schedule rehearsals during the few hours they had free. The musicians who comprised the band in Kazimierz Zarod's camp were also treated like non-performers: after the prisoners had passed through the gates on their way to work in the forest, the musicians simply put down their instruments and joined the march at the end of the line.
As the theater became a more prominent part of Gulag life, though, performers did begin to enjoy certain advantages, from work exemptions to better living quarters. Many performers were given extra rations and more comfortable beds and assigned easy or “soft” jobs instead of the hard labor demanded of other prisoners. In Unzhlag during the 1940s, performers were regularly employed to be nurses or clean the hospital; at Dmitlag, members of the camp orchestra received special clothing, including officers’ boots. Actors and musicians at Ustvymlag were registered as part of the “weak team,” occupying spots that would otherwise have been filled by the ailing and crippled, to avoid their having to go out to work. Sgovio recalls that all of the camp musicians slept in an unusually luxurious barrack and had “soft jobs—the cook, the barber, the bath manager, the accountants, etc.” Inmates who had been famous artists prior to their arrest might receive even more preferential treatment: the well-known tenor Pechkovsky, for example, was housed separately from other workers and regularly dined with officials’ wives on delicacies like butter and hot port wine. For non-celebrity prisoners, winning officials’ favor with a successful performance could sometimes mean the difference between keeping one's position and being transferred to a more strenuous job or a harsher camp. Dimitri Panin writes about a clown named Feigin who saved himself from transfer to a penal camp by performing a humorous dance for camp officials at their New Year's Eve party.
Many artists felt they gained spiritual as well as material benefits from being allowed to perform. Playing a role helped actors forget the brutal reality of their situation and provided a temporary escape from the hunger and oppression that characterized imprisonment. Georgy Feldgun, a violinist in the Dalstroy orchestra, reported that he “breathed the full air of freedom” while performing. Prisoners who had no performing experience sometimes taught themselves acting or music so they too could experience the relief it provided; Alexander Dolgun, for example, arranged for a fellow inmate to teach him guitar chords so he could play while the other men in the barracks sang. To actress Tamara Petkevich, the circumstances of the Gulag made performing an even deeper emotional experience; a particularly moving performance could feel like “the resurrection of the normal world.”
But even when they reaped material and psychological benefits, performers were still considered prisoners, and most aspects of their lives were far from comfortable. After a performance, singers in the renowned Ukhta opera troupe changed from their colorful costumes into plain uniforms and were ushered back to their quarters by guards who cursed and prodded them impatiently. Razgon describes witnessing this process and being shocked to see the faces that had appeared “handsome, young, happy and elegant” in the operetta overcome by exhaustion and despair, “just like the rest of us.” In The Gulag Archipelago, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn recalls how, at the larger theaters in Vorkuta, Norilsk, and Solikamsk, armed guards waited behind the scenes to escort performers whose acts had been well-received back to camp and to lead those who had not been so successful to the punishment block. Although they may have had lighter work, performers were still treated like slaves; they were still at the mercy of camp officials, and female actresses were often forced to become commanders’ mistresses. Indeed, even though they enjoyed superior treatment, actors in the Gulag faced the unique psychological pressure of having to portray free men and women while remaining enslaved themselves. It may have been this challenge that led to particularly high suicide rates among performers.
Still, involvement in a camp theater almost always meant a reprieve from at least some of the hardships of Gulag life. Actress Tatyana Leshchenko-Sukhomlina wrote in her autobiography that being accepted into her camp's theatrical troupe was “a great stroke of luck, for it meant working in a warm building and countless other benefits.” Simeon Vilensky, a Gulag survivor who later studied theater in the camps, confirmed that, all things considered, prisoners who participated in theatrical performances had a higher likelihood of survival than their counterparts who worked in the mines.
Significance of theater to non-performers