Abstract

Between October and November 1917, Moscow became the scene of the fierce fighting between the supporters of the Bolsheviks and the forces loyal to the Provisional Government. Active hostilities took place in Theater Square, and as a result, both state theaters, the Bolshoi and Maly, were damaged. The Bolshoi Theater was relatively lucky, but the Maly was pillaged at the hands of a Red Guard detachment, which was formed at the Kolchuginsky plant in the Vladimir province. It arrived in Moscow on 1 November and occupied the theater on the night of 2 November. As soon as the Red Guards were induced to leave the Maly Theater on 4 November, the heads of the latter (artists A.I. Sumbatov-Yuzhin and O.A. Pravdin) initiated a scrupulous calculation of the losses. The damage caused to the state property was generally compensated within a few months, unlike the significant losses of the personal property of the artists and employees. Correspondence about the compensation for the latter lasted for at least a year, while progressing inflation was depreciating the originally claimed compensation. The plunder of the Maly Theater had such political consequences as a sharp surge of anti-Bolshevik sentiments not only among the members of its troupe, but in Moscow theatrical circles as a whole. The press described the “pillage” of the “Shchepkin’s Home” in minute detail, the journalists did not spare harsh words to characterize the Red Guards, and the actors of the Maly Theater themselves at a general meeting on 7 November accepted the resolution proposed by A.I. Sumbatov-Yuzhin in which they sharply demanded non-interference in their activities by any institutions or persons that did not belong to the troupe. That was an obvious attack on the Moscow Military Revolutionary Committee and its appointee “commissar for theatre” E.K. Malinovskaya. The plunder of the Maly Theater contributed to the strengthening of the positions of irreconcilable opponents of the new government in the theater department, in particular, F.D. Batyushkov, whom A.I. Sumbatov-Yuzhin gave a detailed report about the events in Moscow.