Cultural Relations as a ‘Cold War Operation’

From the British government perspective, Hamlet was part of a wider political operation. It was the first major mission of the Soviet Relations Committee, a body established as a somewhat belated response to the cultural offensive launched by the Soviet Union after Stalin's death. Following several years of relative isolationism, the new reform-minded Soviet leadership seemed eager to promote cultural relations with the West, especially Western Europe, to send their performing artists abroad and receive Western artists under the banner of international peace and understanding. Behind this public rhetoric lay a number of impulses, not least a desire to demonstrate the superiority of Soviet socialism by exploiting the prestige of Soviet high culture at a time when American culture was perceived by many European intellectuals to be materialistic and shallow.Footnote ¹⁹

Initially the British government was unsure how to respond to its adversary's new onslaught. Foreign Office officials were reluctant to abet what they regarded as just another variety of communist propaganda designed to encourage pro-Soviet sentiment in Britain. For example, in autumn 1953 one of the earliest proposals for developing British–Soviet cultural relations – that the Bolshoi Ballet might be invited to Britain – sparked concern in the Foreign Office that such a visit would be exploited not only by the Communist Party but also by pro-Soviet organisations such as the British–Soviet Friendship Society (BSFS) and the Society for Cultural Relations with the USSR (SCR).Footnote ²⁰ The latter societies, described somewhat dismissively by the government as ‘fronts’, were a particular source of concern, despite their relatively small size: in 1954 the BSFS and SCR had memberships of about 12,000 and 2,000 respectively. The smaller and less overtly political SCR was regarded in some ways as the most threatening since it had ‘a more respectable façade’ than the BSFS, which had been proscribed by the Labour Party and enjoyed the support of some influential non-communist intellectuals and cultural figures.Footnote ²¹

However, it is clear that by boycotting cultural relations with the USSR, the British government simply played into the hands of the ‘fronts’, since the Soviet Union chose to rely on the latter as intermediaries when sending its performing artists to Britain. Increasing numbers of high-profile Soviet performers started to descend on Britain for the annual ‘British-Soviet Friendship Months’ held under the auspices of the BSFS and SCR.Footnote ²² In 1953 a delegation of twenty arrived (compared with only seven in 1952), including the violinist Igor Oistrakh and the director of the Moscow State Puppet Theatre, Sergei Obraztsev. The group toured the country, performing in front of substantial audiences at a variety of prestigious venues such as the Royal Albert Hall. The performances received attention in the press and, for the first time, from the BBC.Footnote ²³ The 1954 ‘Month’ was even more ambitious: at the direct instigation of the Soviet Presidium, the size of the delegation was increased to twenty-seven and prominent figures such as David Oistrakh and several Bolshoi Theatre artists were included.Footnote ²⁴ Outside the framework of the Friendship Months, the BSFS and SCR also facilitated tours arranged by commercial impresarios: in 1954, with their support, the impresario Peter Daubney organised successful visits of the Berezka folk dance ensemble and the Moscow State Puppet Theatre.Footnote ²⁵

The Foreign Office was at once impressed and alarmed by this new-style Soviet show of strength. Following the 1953 Friendship Month, the Northern Department's Harry Hohler reported that Soviet artists had enjoyed ‘a well deserved success.’ Noting the absence of overt Soviet propaganda at the events, he concluded that ‘there must be many intelligent people who have been persuaded, as likely as not unconsciously, to lend a more sympathetic ear to Soviet claims and pretensions’.Footnote ²⁶ Over the course of 1954 anxiety mounted about the wisdom of allowing the ‘fronts’ to act as mediators of Soviet culture in Britain (and of British culture in the USSR.)Footnote ²⁷ In theory, the government could have denied visas to the Soviet visitors, but brandishing the visa weapon was regarded as politically inflammatory. Instead, government officials were instructed to decline Soviet Embassy invitations to all Friendship Month events.Footnote ²⁸ By this stage, many in the Foreign Office had reached the conclusion that the only effective way to marginalise the Soviet ‘stooges’ would be for the government to channel British–Soviet cultural relations through a more politically suitable agency. They based this idea on the assumption that ‘the Soviets are always very ready to discard local communists when they become more nuisance than use’.Footnote ²⁹

As it happened, the ‘fronts’ were indeed starting to be regarded as a nuisance in Moscow. Concerns were developing within the Central Committee's Department of Culture about their ability to cope with the increasing volume of Soviet visitors to Britain. Ironically, whereas British officials had been struck by the success of the 1954 Friendship Month, the Soviet authorities were unhappy with the BSFS's management of the proceedings. According to Soviet reports, the concert halls were half-empty and apart from David Oistrakh's very successful event, no other solo concerts had been arranged. The whole episode convinced Soviet officials that the USSR should consider establishing direct contacts with impresarios and other relevant agencies, rather than simply relying on the friendship societies. Such arrangements would have obvious financial advantages, but more importantly, they would allow Soviet artists to get a proper showing: ‘the chance . . . to compete on a level playing field with the best musicians and singers from capitalist countries, the chance to demonstrate more fully and convincingly the advantages of Soviet art’.Footnote ³⁰

So, it transpired that both Britain and USSR shared a common interest in bypassing the friendship societies. But squeezing out the ‘fronts’ was not the sole argument in favour of the government embracing cultural relations. By the mid-1950s it was becoming increasingly clear that it was not in Britain's interest to be perceived to be erecting ‘its own, rather ineffective, Iron Curtain’ by boycotting cultural links with the Soviet Union.Footnote ³¹ There was also a growing sense that a policy of ‘cultural infiltration’, as Hixson calls it, was likely to have a desirable political effect on the USSR. Influenced, no doubt, by modernisation theory, British officials argued that exposing Soviet citizens to ‘Western’ culture and ideas, from which they had been cut off under Stalin, could stimulate a process of evolutionary change within the USSR, which might, over the longer term, help to bring about the end of the Cold War.Footnote ³² The educated Soviet elite was assumed to be the natural ‘target’ for this variety of political warfare. British overseas propaganda, unlike that of the United States, had always been oriented exclusively towards elites, the so-called ‘opinion-formers’, and Foreign Office officials spoke explicitly about the ‘new Soviet bourgeoisie’, the ‘new class’ and the ‘intelligentsia’ as the ‘primary “target” in terms of political warfare’ over the long term.Footnote ³³ Educated professionals and white-collar workers, commonly referred to in the USSR as the ‘intelligentsia’, made up an increasing proportion of the USSR's population by the mid-1950s.Footnote ³⁴ It was suggested that this element was more likely to be dissatisfied with the status quo and in a position to exert some political pressure on the leadership. This ‘class’ was also thought to be especially susceptible to an injection of European high culture: officials spoke about exploiting ‘the nostalgia which educated Russians undoubtedly feel for the culture of Western Europe from which Stalinism has practically excluded them’, observing that the Comédie Francaise's path-breaking visit had given the ‘intelligentsia’ a chance to express ‘these pent-up feelings’.Footnote ³⁵

From a British perspective, this gradualist version of political warfare seemed a better option than the more militant strategies hitherto favoured by the United States, which continued to harbour hopes of ‘liberating’ the peoples behind the iron curtain and to rely on methods such as broadcasting stridently anti-communist messages on Radio Free Europe. While some members of the Eisenhower administration were starting to recognise the advantages of a ‘cultural infiltration’ approach, at this stage there was still considerable resistance in the United States to the idea of any form of cooperation with the Soviet Union.Footnote ³⁶ It is worth emphasising here that the Churchill and Eden governments had always been more interested in finding diplomatic solutions to the East–West conflict in the early 1950s.Footnote ³⁷ Britain was understandably averse to methods likely to provoke conflict on the continent of Europe and keen to exploit the opportunities presented by geographical proximity and a shared European culture and history. It was also becoming ever more apparent that Britain would have to rely on soft power, including cultural diplomacy, if it was to maintain its influence on the world stage at a time of declining military and economic power.Footnote ³⁸

Although there were strong arguments in favour of Britain engaging in cultural relations with the Soviet Union, there were some equally strong objections to the notion of cooperating with what was perceived by many to be a hostile, ‘totalitarian’ regime. Fears were expressed that such a policy would serve to legitimise the Soviet Union, to make it appear ‘a normal and reasonable country’. There was also anxiety about the political risks of exposing Britain to yet more Soviet influence. It was suggested that the policy might have a disarming effect and that Britons might come to believe that ‘because the Russians are displaying the arts of peace, they are neglecting the arts of war’. The international repercussions could also be considerable, with the possible US reaction to British–Soviet ‘cultural flirtation’ a particular cause for concern. Even if these risks were perceived to be outweighed by the potential benefits, there was also the question of cost: could the expense really be justified at a time when the budgets of the Information Services were under considerable strain?Footnote ³⁹

In the end, after some prevarication, the case for British involvement prevailed, in part thanks to a campaign led by the Labour MP, Christopher Mayhew, a fervent proponent of measures to counter Soviet propaganda.Footnote ⁴⁰ In early 1955 the government agreed to set up a Soviet Relations Committee (SRC) under the auspices of the British Council. Chaired by Mayhew, it included a Conservative MP, the Chair of the TUC, a Foreign Office representative and the Director General of the British Council.Footnote ⁴¹ This association between the British Council and the SRC always had the potential to be problematic. Whereas the Council was supposed to refrain from overtly ‘political’ activity and operate at arm's length from government, the SRC was an undisguisedly political body which was expected to work closely with the Foreign Office.Footnote ⁴² As the Foreign Office's Robin Turton explained to the Treasury, this was not a normal British Council programme, so could not be financed out of existing Council funds. Instead it was ‘a cold war operation designed to frustrate the activities of the Dean of Canterbury and suchlike persons’ (a reference to the chairman of the BSFS): the British Council was simply serving as an umbrella.Footnote ⁴³ At the first meeting of the SRC in April 1955, it was initially suggested that the committee's objective should be ‘to spread a knowledge of Britain inside the Soviet Union primarily by encouraging visits to this country under proper auspices and discouraging visits under communist auspices.’ Presumably this overtly anti-communist slant and the emphasis on one-way communication rather than dialogue were regarded as too contentious for activity nominally under British Council auspices, for it was decided that the ‘formal definition’ of the SRC's objectives should be less obviously political: ‘to encourage on a reciprocal basis mutual understanding between the two countries, primarily by sponsoring under approved auspices visits in both directions of groups concerned with a variety of professional and similar subjects’.Footnote ⁴⁴ Rhetoric about ‘mutual understanding’ notwithstanding, it is clear that, from the very start, the SRC was viewed primarily as a weapon in the battle against communism both at home and abroad. Hamlet was an essential first step in this ‘Cold War operation’.

The Importance of Playing Shakespeare: Theatre and National Prestige

Why was Hamlet chosen as the SRC's first major mission in the USSR? The committee had identified three priorities: first, to bring ‘influential Russians’ to Britain; second, to send ‘sensible representatives of Britain’ to the Soviet Union; third, ‘to promote, on a reciprocal basis, artistic and cultural manifestations’.Footnote ⁴⁵ ‘Manifestations’ – performing arts tours, art exhibitions and so on – were relegated to third place not only because of the expense involved but also because of the perception that this was the area in which the Soviet Union had the most to gain. As Mayhew put it, manifestations ‘give the maximum impression of free contact, and create the maximum goodwill for the Soviet Union, while necessitating the minimum real breach in the Iron Curtain’.Footnote ⁴⁶

Although manifestations were not the top priority, it was agreed that if the SRC was to succeed it must kick off with a highly visible cultural event. From the outset, Foreign Office officials exerted a remarkable degree of influence over the selection of this manifestation. Their prime consideration was that it should be of the highest quality and guaranteed to enhance British prestige in the USSR. They were particularly concerned that there should be no repeat of a recent blow to prestige – Dinamo's 5–0 victory over Arsenal in a ‘friendly’ football match in Moscow. Sport, like culture, was an important Cold War battleground (and one where it was more than usually obvious who the winners and losers were.) Arsenal was the first British club to play in the USSR and the match coincided with a British Parliamentary Delegation visit to Moscow. The humiliating defeat was thus the source of much angst, with officials complaining that the match had done ‘nothing to enhance British prestige in the field of sport or to improve Anglo-Soviet relations . . . its main effect was to minister to Russian self-satisfaction and to their conviction of their complete superiority over us even in fields in which we are traditionally expert’.Footnote ⁴⁷ Ambassador Sir William Hayter wrote to the foreign secretary Sir Anthony Eden stressing that lessons must learned: whatever cultural manifestation Britain chose to send to the Soviet Union should be of the ‘highest quality’ and matters of this importance should not be left to ‘politically irresponsible’ bodies such as the Football Association.Footnote ⁴⁸

It appeared to go without saying that a manifestation of British ‘high’ culture was required for the latest round of British-Soviet competition. Like a football match, a cultural contest needed a common terrain,Footnote ⁴⁹ and it was assumed that Britain would respond to the predominantly high cultural offensive of the USSR with an offering designed to underline its own commitment to high culture and guaranteed to appeal to its political target, the educated Soviet elite, with its strong interest in European high culture. A tour by a suitable British theatre company seemed the most logical choice. Theatre occupied a privileged position in Soviet cultural life and the Soviet authorities had been signalling their interest in a theatre visit since 1953.Footnote ⁵⁰ More importantly, literature and theatre were widely recognised as Britain's greatest cultural strengths. As Lord Silkin subsequently acknowledged during a parliamentary debate on the arts, Britain had not produced any truly great composers or painters but ‘Shakespeare and Dickens are as familiar in the Soviet Union and in other countries behind the Iron Curtain as they are in this country and in Germany’. He described this as ‘a wonderful cultural inheritance which has been handed to us . . . a great bond between nations’.Footnote ⁵¹ Literature and theatre had traditionally played a prominent role in Britain's cultural relations with other countries: Jessica Gienow-Hecht observes that whereas Germany tended to stress music and France art when cultivating ties with the United States before the First World War, Britain relied on its literature and theatre.Footnote ⁵² In the aftermath of the Second World War, British theatre diplomacy assumed particular importance: an Old Vic tour of war-ravaged Europe in the summer of 1945 was followed by a succession of international theatre tours, including a remarkable British Council-sponsored seven-month tour of Australasia by the Old Vic in 1948.Footnote ⁵³

In the context of Cold War cultural competition, theatre was one sphere in which Britain had some chance of demonstrating its superiority vis-a-vis the Soviet Union. At this stage it was considered too risky to try to compete in any of the obvious Soviet areas of strengths, such as ballet. For example, the SRC expressed concerns that Sadler's Wells ‘might not be of a sufficiently high technical standard to be favourably received in the Soviet Union’.Footnote ⁵⁴ Similarly, in 1956 the Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs advised against Khrushchev and Bulganin attending an opera or ballet at Covent Garden during their visit to Britain ‘because we cannot match the Russian performances’. It was suggested that the Soviet leaders could see a Shakespearean production at the Old Vic instead.Footnote ⁵⁵

Shakespeare, one of Britain's most valuable cultural assets, was the obvious candidate for the SRC to take to the USSR. According to what Dennis Kennedy calls the ‘myth of cultural ownership’, Shakespeare is often deemed to ‘belong’ to England by virtue of having been born in Stratford and writing in English.Footnote ⁵⁶ He has been defined as ‘our Shakespeare’, ‘the National Poet’ or, as Silkin put it in his aforementioned speech, ‘a wonderful cultural inheritance which has been handed to us’. Yet, as Silkin's speech also implied, Shakespeare has been valuable for Britain precisely because of his status as a transnational as well as a national icon, a figure whose appeal transcends geographical borders. This appeal has meant that Shakespeare has often served to create common bonds across cultures, for example in his role as a ‘European’ writer.Footnote ⁵⁷ However, he has also been the focus of national and ideological conflict. During periods of international tension, rival nations have sometimes vied over ownership of Shakespeare. Britain has not been alone in claiming Shakespeare as its ‘National Poet’: in nineteenth-century Germany, he was adopted by romantic nationalists as ‘unser Shakespeare’, and at times of heightened British–German rivalry, arguments flared over who actually owned him. For example, in the midst of the First World War, the German dramatist Hauptmann proclaimed: ‘there is no people, not even the English, which can with more justification claim Shakespeare as their own as the German people . . . And even if it was in England that he was born and lies buried, Germany is the country where he truly lives’.Footnote ⁵⁸

The nineteenth century also witnessed growing Russian infatuation with the bard, particularly amongst writers. Turgenev was notably enamoured: in a speech to mark the 300^th anniversary of Shakespeare's birthday he too claimed ownership of Shakespeare, declaring that he had become ‘our flesh and blood’.Footnote ⁵⁹ Shakespeare continued to be revered in the Soviet Union, where the Communist Party's civilising mission included the selective but energetic promotion of European classical realist culture to the masses in the name of what Yurchak calls ‘good internationalism’.Footnote ⁶⁰ While the ambivalence of the writer's work meant that he ‘could, and usually did, simultaneously serve and subvert the official ideology’, it was the state's harnessing of Shakespeare to the cause of Soviet socialism that was perhaps more immediately striking than his appropriation for subversive purposes.Footnote ⁶¹ This was especially true of the Stalin years, when an elaborate official cult of Shakespeare developed based on his role as the ‘founding father’ of socialist realism. Shakespeare was ‘Sovietised’ to the extent that in 1939 the director Sergei Radlov could assert: ‘In twenty-five years, in the anniversary year of Shakespeare's 400^th birthday, bewildered Western scholars will have to certify that Shakespeare has changed his place of birth, and [instead] of the countries which speak his native English tongue, he now prefers the variety of dialects and languages of the great family of nations which populate our Union’.Footnote ⁶² Soviet Shakespeare veneration continued after Stalin's death, along with official claims that only in the USSR was the ‘people's writer’ truly understood and appreciated.

This Soviet cult of Shakespeare presented Britain with certain opportunities. The predominantly non-verbal, less overtly ideological, arts of music and dance are the mainstay of much cultural diplomacy. Theatre does not always translate between cultures so readily, but Shakespeare's popularity in the Soviet Union meant that his plays had the potential to serve as a lingua franca. Shakespeare's Europeanness was also an asset. By deploying Shakespeare Britain could deliver an important message about the two countries’ common European identity, which was useful at a time when the USSR was, for its own reasons, choosing to emphasise the cultural unity of Europe and recalling the connections between Russian/Soviet artists and their counterparts across the rest of the continent.Footnote ⁶³ It would also allow Britain to distinguish itself subtly from the United States, with which it had often been associated in Soviet propaganda about ‘Anglo-American warmongers’. Finally, a top-quality British production might challenge Soviet assumptions about the inherent superiority of ‘their’ Shakespeare: as Hayter commented when a tour was first mooted, ‘Soviet propaganda suggests that capitalist England has commercialised Shakespeare and discarded its poetic birthright and it would do a certain amount of good if even a small selected company of students could see that British theatrical and Shakespearean tradition are still high’. Rejecting a suggestion that Soviet actors could be used for the crowd scenes, he argued that ‘Russian productions of Shakespeare are stereotyped and half the point of bringing a British company over to Russia would be lost if we could not present the best of our production as a whole’.Footnote ⁶⁴ The Northern Department's George Jellicoe also supported sending a Shakespearean company, partly because of Soviet familiarity with the plays, but also because ‘we can act Shakespeare better than the Russians can’.Footnote ⁶⁵

The political advantages of presenting Shakespeare were thus abundantly clear. Only one other serious suggestion was floated – that Britain should send a production of Ibsen's Hedda Gabler. Although this production was highly-rated, the playwright's nationality created problems. Hayter expressed strong reservations: ‘it seems to me slightly absurd that the first English company to come here should present a foreign play in translation; it creates the impression that there are no English plays’. The Deputy Under-Secretary Sir Harold Caccia was adamant that the government would not pay for a play by a Norwegian author. Although there was some discussion about whether such a ‘nationalist line’ was justified, the project was in any case killed by the Cultural Counsellor at the Soviet Embassy who declared Hedda Gabler ‘too gloomy’ and expressed a strong preference for a British play.Footnote ⁶⁶

For the purposes of prestige it was vital that Shakespeare be performed by a company of the highest quality – as Hayter put it, ‘no second team would do’. From the Foreign Office's typically conservative perspective the two safest options were the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre (SMT) and the Old Vic, although concerns were expressed about the quality of both these.Footnote ⁶⁷ In an explicit comparison with the recent football fiasco, the British Council's Kenneth Johnstone commented that sending the Old Vic would be like ‘sending Arsenal to represent British football’. Johnstone's preference was for the SMT, but others felt that its standards had fallen recently because of its policy of ‘favouring the young and unknown’ and ‘the regrettable experiments of Anthony Quayle’. However, the fact that Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh were due to return to the company in 1955 was cause for optimism. The couple were well-known in the USSR thanks to their film roles, the Soviet authorities had explicitly mentioned that they wanted them to come and Olivier was apparently eager to have the distinction of being the first major British actor to perform in the USSR.Footnote ⁶⁸

In the end, however, it proved impossible to secure the services of either company within the necessary timeframe.Footnote ⁶⁹ By August 1955, as Soviet–British relations entered their post-Geneva summit ‘honeymoon’ phase, the pressure on Britain to offer a demonstration of its commitment grew increasingly urgent.Footnote ⁷⁰ At the last minute a new option presented itself in the form of Tennent Productions’ Hamlet, directed by Peter Brook and starring Paul Scofield. Although not as obviously prestigious as an Old Vic or SMT production, there were strong indications that it would of suitable quality to take to Moscow.Footnote ⁷¹ H. M. Tennent Ltd had dominated the West End for years under the guidance of the influential Binkie Beaumont, who could count Sir Anthony Eden amongst his personal friends.Footnote ⁷² Beaumont was in a position to attract the finest actors and directors, including the young Peter Brook, who by the mid-1950s had already established his reputation as an innovative Shakespearean director.Footnote ⁷³ Brook had a long history of successful collaboration with Paul Scofield, regarded as one of the outstanding actors of his generation.Footnote ⁷⁴ Expectations for the Brook-Scofield Hamlet were thus justifiably high.

The choice of Hamlet proved to be particularly serendipitous. Of all Shakespeare's plays, it undoubtedly enjoys the greatest international renown, in part because of its capacity to address such broad socio-political and philosophical questions.Footnote ⁷⁵ As the Polish critic Jan Kott famously put it, ‘Hamlet is like a sponge. Unless produced in stylized or antiquarian fashion, it immediately absorbs all the problems of our time’.Footnote ⁷⁶ Hamlet had always provided a rich medium for nations such as Germany and Russia to engage in self-analysis. In Kott's communist Poland Hamlet’s status as an officially-sanctioned Shakespearean ‘classic’ meant that it could be used to explore the experience of dictatorship without unduly provoking the authorities. It served a similar Aesopian function of veiled critique in other Soviet Bloc countries, including the USSR itself.Footnote ⁷⁷

In the USSR Hamlet had experienced a predictably chequered fate. Prior to the revolution, the most significant production had been the Moscow Art Theatre's modernist 1911–12 version co-directed by Stanislavsky and Britain's Gordon Craig (it was fortunate that this earlier example of Anglo-Russian Hamlet collaboration was still warmly remembered in the Soviet Union of the 1950s.) The interwar period saw two major Soviet productions – Mikhail Chekhov's of 1924–5 and Nikolai Akimov's of 1932 – both of which attracted criticism from the authorities. Stalin reportedly loathed Hamlet, with its vacillating intellectual protagonist, and no important productions of the play appear to have been staged during or after the war.Footnote ⁷⁸ Only after Stalin's death did Hamlet return to the Soviet stage with a vengeance: ‘Hamlet fever’ broke out almost immediately as the play came to be identified with the reformist spirit of the Thaw.Footnote ⁷⁹ At the end of 1953 Grigorii Kozintsev's production based on Pasternak's translation opened in Leningrad, while a year later the erstwhile ‘formalist’ Nikolai Okhlopkov mounted his more well-known version at Moscow's Mayakovsky Theatre. Radical for its time, it featured a spectacular set dominated by a pair of huge metal gates designed to emphasise the theme of Denmark as prison. For Soviet citizens beginning to grapple with the legacies of Stalin-era terror and dictatorship, the contemporary resonances were all too evident. In the West, it became known as the ‘Iron Curtain Hamlet’. Okhlopkov's production was followed by a whole crop of Soviet Hamlets: the play was staged more often than any other Shakespearean tragedy in the period 1954–62. The Hamlet fever of the Thaw culminated with Grigorii Kozintsev's internationally acclaimed film version of 1964.Footnote ⁸⁰

It clearly made sense for Britain to capitalise on this Hamlet fever. Violet Conolly, the well-informed head of the Soviet Section of the Foreign Office Research Department, emphasised that a British production would be warmly received thanks to ‘the lively and intelligent interest in Shakespeare in Russia’ stimulated by Pasternak's translations of Hamlet and other Shakespeare plays.Footnote ⁸¹ Others in the Foreign Office were concerned not only that a British Hamlet should be received well, but also, given the highly competitive nature of these cold war operations, that it should be perceived as superior to Soviet versions, particularly the Okhlopkov production. In the eyes of some British officials, this duel of the two Hamlets was to be a contest not unlike a football match.

Precautions were taken to ensure that there would be no recurrence of Arsenal's defeat. Once the Soviet authorities had finally agreed to the tour, the Foreign Office went to some lengths to guarantee that the quality of Brook's Hamlet was beyond reproach. It is now generally acknowledged that although this was not one of Brook's masterpieces, it had several strengths, notably its striking simplicity.Footnote ⁸² The amateur critics of the Foreign Office shared this view: Jellicoe reported that his colleague Mark Russell had vetted it during its provincial run and deemed it ‘pretty good’. Russell thought that, ‘without attempting anything spectacular’, the production was ‘thoroughly convincing, with many clever touches’. The costumes were ‘simple, but colourful’. Russell commended the generally high standard of acting, singling out Alec Clunes (the King), Ernest Thesiger (Polonius) and Mary Ure (Ophelia) for particular praise. Although, in his opinion, Scofield spoke too quickly and was weak at the start, he improved as he went on, especially in his scenes with Ophelia which he acted ‘with a restraint, which made them most moving’. Importantly, he ‘avoided any temptation to try to out-Olivier Olivier.’ Jellicoe seemed satisfied that the production would showcase the strengths of the contemporary British approach to Shakespeare and offer a suitably sharp contrast to the more elaborate, melodramatic Soviet style. Using the typical British language of ownership, he mentioned that Russell thought it deserved to be shown in the USSR ‘as an example of our own school of Shakespearean acting and an interpretation of one of our own classics’.Footnote ⁸³

The Foreign Office made several interventions designed to maximise the likelihood that the play would be well received and seen by the largest possible audiences. For example, Jellicoe asked the British Council to convey to the company the importance of speaking slowly. Officials were especially keen to take advantage of the opportunity to make Hamlet accessible to potentially millions of TV watchers. Television was just starting to take off in the Soviet Union in the mid-1950s and the Minister at the British Embassy observed that when a Comédie Francaise performance had been televised, people had gathered in groups in each other's homes to watch it. Aware that this might create problems with the actors’ union, Equity, as it was not the Soviet custom to pay for TV rights, he urged that appropriate pressure be applied to ensure that Hamlet could be televised without hindrance.Footnote ⁸⁴

Interpreting the Hamlet Performance

Following these extensive preparations, the company set off on their mission, arriving in Moscow on 21 November 1955. Between then and their departure on 3 December they not only gave thirteen performances of Hamlet (a veritable endurance test), they also ‘performed’ in various other ways, including attending numerous official receptions, appearing on Soviet TV and giving interviews. What was the impact of the British ‘performance’ in its widest sense? Did it function as an effective advertisement for Britain in the way that officials had hoped? In his despatch to the new Foreign Secretary, Harold Macmillan, Hayter described the tour as ‘an unqualified success’. He and others in the Foreign Office were confident it had demonstrated the vitality of Britain and had had a ‘profound impact’ on the target audience.Footnote ⁸⁵ Naturally their interpretations were coloured by engrained Cold War stereotypes; however other evidence suggests that the tour did indeed make a big and largely positive impression, a fact which proved disconcerting to those Communist Party officials who were determined to resist any challenge to the idea of the hegemony of the Soviet system and its culture. It is also the case that Foreign Office officials may have underestimated the extent to which the tour had a ‘profound impact’ not only on Soviet citizens but also on the British visitors themselves, some of whom returned from their trip behind the iron curtain with rather favourable impressions of the Soviet Union.

The Soviet authorities always had ambiguous feelings about visits by Western artists: they feared their potentially subversive effects, yet they also wanted them to succeed, not least because a successful visit reflected well on the hosts and made the task of sending their own artists to the West that much easier. They certainly went to considerable lengths to ensure the success of Hamlet. Even before the tour had begun it received advance publicity in the Soviet press.Footnote ⁸⁶ When the cast finally arrived at Vnukovo airport they received a rapturous welcome and were ‘drowned in bouquets and kisses’ by representatives of the theatre establishment, according to Hayter, who made a point of highlighting how the artists’ spontaneous enthusiasm for the British guests went beyond the norms of official protocol: ‘so uncontrolled were the demonstrations of affection that the formal part of the proceedings of welcome were almost swept aside and the head of the receiving delegation, the Deputy Minister of Culture, was practically trampled on in the stampede’.Footnote ⁸⁷

The company was allocated the affiliated theatre of the prestigious Moscow Art Theatre, which had the advantage of being able to seat large numbers. Tickets were predictably in great demand, but 16,000 people managed to see the live performances and many more had the opportunity to watch it on television. The first night was attended by senior officials and theatre people including Chekhov's widow, while a subsequent performance was honoured by the presence of Presidium members, including Molotov, Mikoian and Suslov, who hosted a small private dinner with the principals afterwards (Khrushchev and Bulganin were paying a visit to India, where they were busy lambasting British imperialism.) The tour received plenty of coverage in the Soviet press with the major newspapers all providing regular updates.Footnote ⁸⁸ The political significance of the occasion was thus made abundantly clear by the Soviet authorities.

How was the British performance, both onstage and offstage, received? According to Hayter, audience responses to the production itself were largely positive. Language appeared not to present a significant barrier to Soviet spectators so familiar with the play – no simultaneous translation was offered as apparently this would have been ‘insulting’ (‘every educated person here knows “Hamlet”’ wrote the Shakespeare scholar Aleksandr Anikst in the programme notes.)Footnote ⁸⁹ The ambassador heard a few grumbles at the first night from those who thought they had been ‘fobbed off’ with a second-rate production and that Olivier would have been better in the lead role. There were also some criticisms of the female actors. However, the main roles attracted much favourable comment, with Scofield and Thesiger garnering particular praise.

Most importantly, Hayter believed that the production was regarded as superior to the Okhlopkov version with which it was inevitably compared. This comparison/competition between the two Hamlets was actively encouraged by the Soviet hosts: Brook was flown to Baku to see the Okhlopkov production, then the Soviet Hamlet (Evgenii Samoilov) and Ophelia (Galina Anisimova) flew to Moscow and were televised performing scenes from the play alongside Ure and Scofield. Hayter was satisfied that Britain had ‘won’ this latest Cold War competition:

He concluded that Britain had ‘gained a great deal’ from the venture: ‘we pitted our youth against the crowds of old stagers who clutter up the boards of the Arts Theatre. We showed to the Russians that English actors free Shakespeare from all the traditional claptrap of the Moscow stage and make him real and vital.’Footnote ⁹⁰ Hayter's determination to draw such a sharp distinction between the two Hamlets is striking. Deploying binary frameworks characteristic of Cold War thinking (simple realism versus melodramatic romanticism, old Dutch master versus pretentious canvas, youth versus age), he presented the tour quite explicitly in terms of a contest, in which Britain had ‘gained’ a victory and the opponent was reduced to ‘learning’ from Britain.

In the Ambassador's view, it was not merely the production itself which seemed to have had a profound effect, but, equally importantly, the company's offstage performance. One of the advantages of a performing arts tour as a form of cultural diplomacy was the opportunity it afforded for valuable ‘people-to-people’ contact.Footnote ⁹¹ Hayter reported that the company had created a very favourable impression by acting as ‘charming and patient guests’. Both Brook and Scofield had pleased their hosts by making speeches in Russian. All members of the cast had graciously attended receptions and concerts nearly every night despite their exhaustion. Hayter seemed particularly delighted that the British ‘team’ had outperformed the French in this respect, citing one Soviet theatre director's view that the British visitors had enjoyed greater success than the Comédie Francaise because as well as being great artists ‘they are human’.Footnote ⁹²

Hayter's assessment of the tour reflected his confident assumptions about the superiority of British culture and values. However, other evidence also indicates that the visit made a positive, if not unequivocally favourable, impression. The play seems to have been appreciated by at least some members of the political elite: it was reported that in private even Mikoian acknowledged the merits of the British Hamlet, rejecting Scofield's suggestion that Okhlopkov's production make a return visit to Britain on the grounds that it would be perceived as inferior to British Shakespeare productions.Footnote ⁹³ The official seal of approval was registered more publicly in the form of press notices which were remarkably complimentary and full. The critics stopped short of suggesting that the British production was superior to their own and were at pains to commend those elements of the play which aligned with official Soviet aesthetic norms, such as its ‘realism’ and the fact that Hamlet was played as a fundamentally strong character in the Russian/Soviet tradition. But they also hinted at ways in which the USSR might learn from Britain. For example, the actor-director Boris Zakhava highlighted the ‘courageous’ simplicity of Brook's Hamlet. He wrote that ‘the play lacks false pathos and actors’ posturing’ and remarked on the simplicity of Georges Wakhevitch's set. He also alluded to the youth of Scofield and Brook (both in their early thirties.) The implied contrast with the much more grandiose Okhlopkov Hamlet and its older cast (Samoilov was forty-four) was surely deliberate.Footnote ⁹⁴ Anikst commented favourably on the almost cinematic quality of the play, its restraint and absence of affectation, the minimalism of the set and the clever use of lighting. Acknowledging Brook's reliance on formal devices, Anikst observed that these had also been a feature of early Soviet theatre and suggested that it might be time for their own theatre to return to them.Footnote ⁹⁵ Evidently, in the reformist climate of the Thaw, it was considered desirable that Soviet critics and artists take some aesthetic lessons from their Western counterparts as well as drawing on indigenous cultural legacies.

Memoirs, interviews and private correspondence reinforce the impression that the play left a strong mark on theatre people, particularly when juxtaposed with the Soviet Hamlets. Senelick cites the case of a student at Moscow State University who posted a glowing review of the play in a lecture hall under the headline ‘This is Hamlet’, thereby implying that Okhlopkov's production was deficient. Senelick also points out that Okhlopkov was forced to reconsider his approach in the light of the Brook production, replacing Samoilov with twenty-one year old Mikhail Kozakov.Footnote ⁹⁶ While examples such as these suggest that Brook's production was the unambiguous victor in the battle of the Hamlets, the picture is rather more complicated. Kozakov himself stresses that both Hamlets were enormously influential in the mid-1950s and that not everyone liked Brook's austere approach, although he does acknowledge that the chorus of praise for Okhlopkov's Hamlet started to subside after Brook brought his production. Theatre historian Aleksei Bartoshevich recalls that as a fourteen year old he found Brook's version grey and colourless compared to Ohklopkov's, only appreciating its merits later. Kozintsev, the director of the Leningrad Hamlet, was impressed by some, but not all, aspects of Brook's production. He was excited by Scofield's acting and the stylistic novelty of the play but regretted that it had so little to say about ‘the contemporary, living relevance of this whole history’. What is certain is that, in part because it was so controversial, Brook's Hamlet exerted a lasting influence on Soviet theatre and culture. Anatoly Smeliansky concludes that it ‘stunned Moscow's theatre world’, making ‘an indelible impression on all who were to decide the course of Russian theatre for decades to come’. Bartoshevich made a similar point, observing how it went on to influence the style of the innovative Sovremennik theatre, founded in 1956. For Azary Messerer, Scofield's performance was simply ‘a breakthrough in the country's cultural history during the Cold War isolation . . . Scofield was the first Western artist who satisfied the hunger that the Moscow public felt for foreign art’.Footnote ⁹⁷

Just as striking as the interest in the production were the displays of enthusiasm towards the British visitors as individuals. Westerners still had curiosity value in Moscow and Paul Scofield in particular was treated rather like a ‘pop star’ according to Brook. At a time when US popular culture was becoming more familiar in the USSR, he acquired the nickname ‘Johnnie Ray of Moscow’ after the young American singer. Members of the public seemed anxious to cultivate a distinctly personal relationship with the actor: some of the audience tried to storm the stage to get his autograph and he was ‘besieged’ by star-struck autograph hunters on the street. He received warm and emotional letters from fans, sometimes accompanied by small gifts. One sent him a penknife and notebook, writing, ‘you are a great actor. I have forgotten English language, but I cannot forget your Prince of Denmark by William Shakespeare, your voice, your eyes’. A Moscow University student wrote to ‘the most wonderful Hamlet’, enclosing photos of herself and her dog.Footnote ⁹⁸ It is worth noting that the whole notion of a celebrity culture was in many ways antithetical to official Soviet ideological norms which discouraged what was considered to be a superficial preoccupation with actors as individuals. Yet, as Kristen Roth-Ey reminds us, displays of ‘fandom’ were not unusual in the USSR of the 1950s, although they remained largely unreported in the Soviet media.Footnote ⁹⁹ Soviet film and stage actors were on the receiving end of these behaviours just as much as charismatic Western visitors like Scofield, although foreignness probably intensified the phenomenon. A few years later, Van Cliburn, the American winner of the first International Tchaikovsky Competition, would be subjected to similar outpourings of emotion.Footnote ¹⁰⁰

Such effusive displays of ‘fandom’ directed at Westerners must have been particularly troubling for Communist Party officials responsible for the nation's ideological health. Certainly, the enthusiastic reception accorded to both the production and the British guests was a source of tension within the CC (Central Committee) Department of Culture. Although the Soviet government had endorsed the tour, this did not mean that the public was supposed to embrace it in an uncritical fashion. The discourse of late Stalin era ‘anti-cosmopolitanism’ resurfaced in the CC's internal reports, with the euphoria around Hamlet being equated to a lack of ‘Soviet patriotism’. Press notices were accused of being too laudatory and insufficiently critical of the play's deficiencies.Footnote ¹⁰¹ It was reported that Soviet artists had engaged in ‘sycophantic and servile behaviour’ at receptions in honour of the guests. The singer Valeriia Barsova made a toast in which she praised British theatre and stated that Soviet artists had much to learn from it; in the CC's eyes, this was tantamount to denigrating Soviet theatre. After the final show, the actor Vasilii Toporkov gave an ‘incoherent’ speech during which he summoned one of the British actresses to the front of the stage and complimented her ‘boogie-woogie’. Only after much criticism did he revert to script, paying tribute to the principals and presenting his book Stanislavsky in Rehearsal to Brook with the words ‘everything is said there’.Footnote ¹⁰² The CC department concluded from all this that measures must be taken to educate artists in ‘Soviet patriotism’. Thus, it seems that whereas Hamlet did represent a welcome lifting of the iron curtain for many members of the Soviet public, for some Soviet officials, as for their British counterparts, the whole experience simply intensified cold war stereotypes and fears.

But what was the significance of this encounter with the Soviet Union for the British visitors? Studies of the influence of Western cultural initiatives in the USSR tend to be rather one-sided, focusing on their effects on members of the Soviet public.Footnote ¹⁰³ Yet it is clear that the ‘infiltration’ process could work both ways. The Foreign Office had always worried that cultural relations with the USSR might lead to undesirable Soviet influence over Britons and when the question of a theatre visit was first discussed, particular concerns were expressed about the susceptibility of British actors. One official had disapproved of the whole project on the grounds that many of the best British actors were communists or fellow-travellers: ‘what would they would say in Moscow might be embarrassing and even more so what they might say when they returned’, while at the first meeting of SRC it was observed that British actors visiting the USSR might be ‘too easily carried away by ‘Soviet attentions and propaganda’.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ In his despatch, Hayter doubted whether members of the company had been ‘taken in’ by what he called ‘the propaganda which ran through the Soviet hospitality’ and suggested that they were eager to leave the Soviet Union at the end of the tour.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ In fact, the attitudes of Brook, Scofield and others accompanying the tour, including theatre critics, were more complex. Whatever Cold War assumptions they may have arrived with were modified by their first encounter with the Soviet Union. For them, the Moscow visit provided an opportunity to get to know fellow Europeans, to find common bonds through a shared love of drama and to learn from Soviet theatre in the spirit of internationalism. Rather than the process of one-way communication envisaged by the Foreign Office, they experienced the visit as a dialogue.

For all British participants, it was an intense and exciting experience: ‘we never touched ground’, said Brook.Footnote ¹⁰⁶ For Paul Scofield the tour marked a ‘turning point’, which made him question Cold War stereotypes. He was overwhelmed by the warmth of the Russians and the sense of ‘kinship’ which developed between the two communities. He noticed how the audiences embraced Hamlet despite the language barrier: ‘they followed effortlessly every nuance of our performance, in terms of artistic endeavour and human compatibility they made the great ideological divide between Eastern and Western Europe seem unimportant. It was an experience of kinship. The breaking down of barriers and an awareness that we are none of us as our political leaders proclaim us to be.’Footnote ¹⁰⁷ Whereas Hayter had cast the Soviet receptions and speeches in terms of ‘propaganda’, Scofield was impressed by the warmth of the speeches, the ‘kindness and openness and generosity’ of his hosts. He clearly valued the letters and small gifts he received from fans, retaining them in his personal archive along with other souvenirs of the trip.Footnote ¹⁰⁸ For Scofield this visit marked the start of long-lasting friendships and professional collaborations with Russians which he would continue to describe in terms of kinship: when he played a Russian spy in Michael Winner's 1973 film Scorpio, he commented ‘the Russian agent I play is not like any kind of Russian I've ever met. The Russians I know are mostly concerned with the arts and I feel a tremendous sense of kinship with them’.Footnote ¹⁰⁹

Like Scofield, Brook was struck by the warmth of his hosts and disinclined to be cynical, writing in his notes: ‘I am happy here, everyone is friendly, everyone talks of peace. I am not going to be grudging, pick at the surface, question motives, mistrust appearances. There are enough political correspondents around to do that: we are their guests and with their Byzantine conception of doing a job grandly they have seen to it that they've won our hearts.’Footnote ¹¹⁰ Brook's experience of kinship was more literal than Scofield's. His Russian-Jewish parents had emigrated from Latvia before the First World War, so for him the visit represented ‘a return to the land of my fathers’. While in Moscow he seized the opportunity to see Valentin Pluchek's revival of Mayakovsky's The Bedbug, one of the most exciting Soviet productions of the mid-1950s. Hugely impressed, Brook had the strange sense while watching it: ‘now, that's exactly how I would have done that scene’. He subsequently discovered that Pluchek was actually his cousin, the son of his father's sister. After this first encounter, the cousins continued to stay in contact and follow each other's work.Footnote ¹¹¹

The Bedbug was just one of many plays Brook saw while in Moscow: over the course of the visit, he managed to take in at least one show every day.Footnote ¹¹² With his long-standing interest in European and world theatre, he relished the opportunity to familiarise himself with the culture of the country that had produced Chekhov, Stanislavsky and Meyerhold. Although not uncritical of current Soviet productions, Brook acknowledged the merits of the USSR's theatre art and displayed an interest in learning from it.Footnote ¹¹³ Confessing to one interviewer that he had come to Moscow armed with stereotypes about the uniformity of Soviet culture, he admitted he had been pleasantly surprised to learn that each theatre had its own style, singling out the Moscow Art Theatre and Pluchek's Theatre of Satire for particular praise.Footnote ¹¹⁴ Brook was clearly impressed by the high regard in which Shakespeare was held in the USSR (less possessive than Foreign Office officials, he declared that ‘Shakespeare is ours and yours’).Footnote ¹¹⁵ Even though the style of Soviet Shakespeare was not to his taste – ‘it is all Paris-Opera 1850’ – he was prepared to recognise its strengths. While critical of Okhlopkov's interpretation of Hamlet, he admired its ‘masterly’ execution and envied the staging, which was far more elaborate than anything he could afford. He also praised its ‘realism’ and the quality of the acting.Footnote ¹¹⁶ More generally, Brook was struck by the consistently high standard of acting and directing in Moscow, which he attributed not only to the Russian theatrical tradition but also to the Soviet system of permanent ensembles. In his view, this was vastly superior to Britain's commercial system of temporary companies, since it allowed a group of actors to get to know each other over a long period, offered them a chance to experiment with a range of roles rather than being typecast and gave them the confidence which comes with job security.Footnote ¹¹⁷

Others were similarly impressed by aspects of the Soviet order. Scofield was equally enthusiastic about the permanent ensembles, observing subsequently that these encouraged a standard of acting that ‘English and American companies could not begin to emulate’.Footnote ¹¹⁸ The critic Kenneth Tynan found plenty to compliment, including the quality of the older generation of actors ‘the finest I have ever seen’, the system of permanent companies and the choice of plays on offer. He concluded ‘My ideal would be to have a Western theatre organised on Russian lines but without Russian ideology. But I fear that without the driving force of an ideology, such a theatre could never be created.’Footnote ¹¹⁹ For Tynan, and for the other visitors, this journey behind the iron curtain thus represented a unique opportunity for critical reflection on the nature of both the Soviet Union and the West.

So, it seems that the Hamlet tour had a ‘profound impact’ not only on the Soviet public but also on several of the British visitors, including some of the most influential names in British theatre. Their first-hand encounter with the USSR left them rather sceptical about the rigidities of Cold War thinking and led them to the conclusion that the Soviet Union might have something to offer the West. They particularly admired the Soviet state's support for theatre and their positive experiences doubtless contributed to the growing pressure for increased state funding for British theatre. By the end of the 1950s this pressure was already beginning to produce concrete results, as Britain, like many other Western states, felt compelled to keep up in the ‘cultural arms race’ which was one of the more productive consequences of the Cold War.Footnote ¹²⁰