Soviet Ukrainian Culture as a Category

This article consciously takes one theatre production as a site of analysis of larger questions of state and society. Theatre was not separate from, but central to, Soviet state-building and social construction. Here I build on Christopher Balme’s and Tracy Davis’ call for a theatre history that explicitly engages social history (Davis and Balme Reference Davis and Balme2016). Theatre as a site of analysis is particularly fruitful in the Soviet case, where state finances were funneled into the theatre, and where officials and audiences conceived the theatre as a space of both entertainment and social engineering. In addition, theatre audiences were “organized;” in other words, individuals did not purchase tickets, but rather, theatre managers sold blocks of seats to unions and party-state institutions. The result was that theatres, like Les’ Kurbas’ Berezil’ which, as an experimental theatre focusing on new work and new methods might seem like an exclusive space, were open to all. In fact, the Berezil’ (and other arts institutions) became pathways for workers and students newly arrived in the city to gain cultural capital and to become part of Soviet society (Shevel’ov Reference Shevel’ov2008). Theatre offers, therefore, a fruitful lens on the structures and practices through which and by which people understood the world.

One of the central challenges of this period was building the category of Soviet Ukrainian. Scholars have analyzed the dynamics of indigenization (korenizatsiia), and korenizatsiia in a multi-ethnic place, such as Soviet Ukraine (Pauly Reference Pauly2014; Hirsch Reference Hirsh, Francine2005; Martin Reference Martin2001). Yet this production, of a (largely) Ukrainian-language play at a (largely) Ukrainian theatre with audiences of mixed ethnicity shows how even the category of “Ukrainian” was up for grabs. For the characters in the play, Ukrainian had radically different meanings: it was a language, a name, in opposition to Russian, similar to Russian, a past, a future, a political ideology, pro-socialism, anti-socialism. In other words, the world of Myna Mazailo—and by extension, the world of the audience—was one of deep disunity hardly united by ethnicity or the Soviet project.

The Berezil’ Theatre offers a fruitful lens on the category of Soviet Ukrainian culture precisely because it is often analyzed as removed from the Soviet, or as in opposition to the Soviet (Shkandrij Reference Shkandrij1992; Korniienko Reference Korniienko1998). Indeed, as Irena Makaryk has shown, the Berezil’ very much ended up on the wrong side of the Soviet state (Makaryk Reference Makaryk2004). However, the Berezil’, in its rise and its fall, offers an example of Soviet Ukrainian theatre, and the challenges, limitations, and possibilities of Soviet Ukrainian as a cultural category.

What Was Soviet About Soviet Theatre?

Soviet theatre was part of the Soviet state. Confusing this question can often be the aesthetic continuity over the revolutionary divide; notions of transforming—revolutionizing—the theatre began, for most young artists, well before the Russian empire collapsed. Oleksandr “Les’” Kurbas himself provides an example of how aesthetic revolution in the theatre occurred well before political and social revolution. Kurbas did not come from the Russian Empire, but rather from Austrian Galicia, and he brought with him a different theatrical style than that to which audiences in the Russian empire were accustomed (Volyts’ka Reference Volyts’ka1995; Makaryk Reference Makaryk2004). Yet he fit perfectly in the atmosphere of young artists wanting to fundamentally change their theatre. Kurbas created a minor sensation among the younger generation of spectators when he began performing in Kyiv in 1916. Theatre critic Aleksandr Deich later recalled: “I had seen this kind of actor in Germany—the main thing for them is thought, flawless technique, no declamation” (1966, 177). This emphasis on technical mastery linked Kurbas with the leading actors he would have seen at university in Vienna, including the school of Max Reinhardt. This is the technique that Kurbas brought with him to the Russian empire—a psychological richness without melodrama and with “flawless technique.”

This new style attracted graduates of Kyiv’s Lysenko Drama Academy to Kurbas, and they ultimately founded the Molodyi teatr, the Young Theatre, which was active for barely two years, but formative in the lives of all who participated (Labin’s’kyi Reference Labin’s’kyi1991; Tkacz 1987). In young theatre afficianado Vasyl’ Vasyl’ko’s diary the Young Theatre receives much more attention than current political events: a short entry on March 5, 1917 notes the imperial collapse in St. Petersburg, and the next entry (in May) registers a soupçon of doubt about the possibility of a federal solution to the Russia-Ukraine problem (DMTMKU “Vasyl’ko” inv. 10369, 112–113). Through the vicissitudes of the Ukrainian Rada, the 1918 Bolshevik occupation, the Hetmanate, Petliura’s directory, and the 1919 Bolshevik occupation, the artists of the Young Theatre attempted to transform theatre in Ukrainian by bringing it away from melodrama and closer to the experimental forms on European stages. In other words, the search for new forms continued despite (and apart from) the political upheavals.

Kurbas, like his contemporaries, looked to Western European models for inspiration for aesthetic revolution, noting that “something is wrong in the kingdom of theatre.” Italian actress Eleonora Duse, Kurbas continued, “advises nothing more nor less than hanging all actors and destroying all theatre until the arrival of a new and unpolluted generation.” Kurbas, one assumes, hoped that his would be that generation. But he further included theorists of theatre advocating renewal and rebirth: “Georg Fuchs laments that now the most cultured people have come to hate the theatre. Gordon Craig declares that European theatre is in death throes” (Kurbas, “Teatral’nyi lyst,” Labin’s’kyi 1995, 24). In this pantheon of theatre greats, Kurbas finally referred to Russian theorist Nikolai Evreinov, “without a doubt the greatest theatre scholar these days in Eastern Europe” (Kurbas, “Teatral’nyi lyst,” Labin’s’kyi 1995, 23–31). Duse, Craig, Fuchs, Evreinov: all were major players pushing for a revolution in the theatre, well before the Russian Revolution. Like other artists, such as Konstantin Stanislavskii and Vsevolod Meierkhol’d, Kurbas followed these models to focus on actor training. Of his amateur actors Kurbas demanded oral presentations on all aspects of theatre, intensive text work, and repetitive acting exercises involving the presentation of short silent sketches, meant to fine-tune physical and emotional clarity and focus (TsDAMLM f. 988, op. 1, s. 9, ark. 7).

Experimental ideas about the theatre continued throughout the years of civil war. Yet the theatrical infrastructure in which these ideas developed changed radically because state structures responded to aesthetic experimentation variously. Kurbas’ companies under non-Soviet governments operated as amateur theatre; the artists made no money, and they had very little funding from any state organization. All the theatre members had day jobs and trained with Kurbas in a studio when they could find the time. Kurbas wrote the theatre department of the German Hetmanate in 1918 requesting funds, but received one-tenth of the sum he had requested (TsDAVOV f. 2201, op. 2, s. 589, ark. 1–4). The tables turned for the Young Theatre with the Bolshevik occupation of 1919, however. Party member Volodymyr Zatons’kyi allocated funds to the group and even gave them a huge financial gift when the Bolsheviks fled town at the end of August. The Kyiv branch of the Commissariat of Enlightenment sent a memo to the Central Executive Committee in which they praised the group: “Throughout the two years of its work [the theatre] showed the spirit of searching for new forms of theatrical art—it must stay exactly the same, a theatre of searching for new forms, a theatre of the new school, being, of course, by national content a theatre of Ukrainian culture and nationality” (DAKO f. P-142, op. 1, s. 37, ark. 17).

Of course, the state intervened in Kurbas’ idols’ theatrical search for new forms as well. Mussolini famously consulted Duse on founding an Italian national theatre in 1922 (Sheehy Reference Sheehy2003; Mather Reference Mather2004). Evreinov would become caught up, like Kurbas, in the Soviet project, ultimately leave the Soviet Union, and spend his life in France (Carnicke Reference Carnicke1989). Fuchs became deeply involved in the project of bringing modernism together with right-wing politics in Munich (Jelavich 1985, 188). Officialdom and politics were, therefore, never far from theatrical experimentation.

Yet Kurbas’ theatre would become part of a full state monopoly on the arts, and, like all the arts, part of the Soviet state-run cultural system. In fact, when Kurbas’ new troupe—the Kyidramte, for Kyiv Dramatic Theatre—left Kyiv in 1919 to find food and performance possibilities in the countryside, they acquired the patronage of the Red Army. Specifically, in the city of Uman army general Iona Iakir, leader of the 45th division of the Red Army, patronized the young artists. Iakir supported the artists, local army officials organized performances, and when the group returned to Kyiv they were assured hot meals in the Red Army cafeteria and held in high regard by the Soviet party-state (Iermakova Reference Iermakova2012; DMTMKU f. “Kyidramte” inv. # 7400s, 3–11). It was because of this state support that Kurbas was able to found the Mystets’ke ob’iednannia “Berezil’” (Artistic Organization “Berezil’”) in 1922. When the Berezil’ Theatre left Kyiv for Kharkiv in 1926, almost every single city, county, and republic agency was involved in honoring the theatre’s achievements (DAKO f. R–112, op. 1, s. 1336). Kurbas’ group had grown from an amateur troupe unable to garner state support, to the leading state-supported theatre of a Soviet republic. This kind of state involvement proved one of the central features of the Soviet cultural infrastructure, and one that made the Berezil’ a Soviet theatre (Fowler Reference Fowler2017).

Soviet theatres were part of a broad network of enterprises supported by the state at republic and local levels. By 1931 the Commissariat of Enlightenment reported that there were 64 theatres on the state budget, including eight Russian-language theatres, five in the Yiddish language, one in Polish, and one in Bulgarian (TsDAVOV f. 166, op. 9, s. 1177, 6–8). By the time of Myna Mazailo in 1929, the Berezil’ was allocated the highest republic-level state subsidy, as well as “pick up” funding from local state and party organizations. For the 1928–1929 season, in which Myna Mazailo premiered, the Berezil’ received 120,300 karbovantsy in state and municipal subsidies. This is twice the monies received by any other academic theatre. And in fact, they received more throughout the year: their allocation was 95,000 from the republic, but they actually recived 157,431 over the season (TsDAVOV f. 166, op. 9, s. 1177, ark. 91).

In general, the season ran from October through April, with touring in the summer, and several weeks off for training and rest. The season (1929–1930) after the premiere of Myna was unusual because the theatre building needed emergency renovations, which meant there were no performances until March 9, 1930. Instead, the company did 67 visits to 36 factories—performing Myna Mazailo, among other repertory, a total of six times for 4,880 spectators and netting 6224.74 karbovantsy (TsDAVOV f. 166, op. 6, s. 10773, ark. 88). The theater company received some income from selling seats to groups. The theatre had 1129 seats total, but 41 were always reserved for state officials (who did not need to pay) and 55 always reserved for military officials. While occasionally the theatre managed to sell each and every one of those seats available, say, for large meetings of regional cooperatives, occasionally the theatre did not sell any blocks of seats. One evening’s production of Upton Sinclair’s Jimmie Higgins, for example, netted only 200 seats sold for a total of 251.23 karbovantsy (TsDAVOV f. 166, op. 6, s. 598, ark. 136–141). But regardless of several evenings of small audiences, state support ensured that the theater would continue, and would continue with new productions of new plays. This deep level of state support could lead (and did lead, of course) to state control of theatrical repertory and productions. But all theater in the Soviet system, even in the experimental 1920s, operated in this state infrastructure, and all artists, managers, and state officials worked together to produce artistic products and create Soviet culture. Soviet theater was, for better or worse, inextricable from the Soviet state.

What Made Soviet Theatre Ukrainian?

Part of what made Soviet theatre Soviet was that it was in Ukrainian (or in Georgian, or Chuvash, or Tajik, for example). In other words, Soviet theatre embraced, at least in the abstract, the Soviet Union’s multi-ethnicity. Soviet theatre was supported, managed, censored, and enjoyed, in just about every language of the Union. That the Berezil’ was a Ukrainian-language theatre funded at the highest levels was part of its Soviet-ness. Theatre, in other words, was one of the objects of the series of policies known as korenizatsiia, indigenization, here, Ukrainianization (Martin Reference Martin2001; Hirsch Reference Hirsh, Francine2005; Pauly Reference Pauly2014).

Korenizatsiia posed a challenge to the elites making and organizing culture because it relied on assumed categories. It assumed that there was something called “Ukrainian” theatre or culture, when in fact, it was the content and form of that category that were under contestation. Moreover, several of the best theatrical productions of the period engaged precisely in the task of defining Soviet Ukrainian culture, and as, such, reflect and refract Soviet Ukraine itself. One of these productions was Kurbas’ production of Kulish’s Myna Mazailo.

A Soviet Ukrainian Theatrical Production: Myna Mazailo , 1929

Mykola Kulish rose from nothing to—via the Red Army and the party—become one of Soviet Ukraine’s top playwrights (if not the top playwright) by the late 1920s. He wrote his best plays in collaboration with and for the artists of the Berezil’ Theatre, and worked together with artistic director Les’ Kurbas to create productions still talked about and written about today: The People’s Malakhii (1927), Myna Mazailo (1929), Sonata Pathétique (1930), Maklena Grasa (1933). Never were these productions allowed by the party-state to continue for a long run; some, such as Sonata, were not allowed to be performed in Soviet Ukraine at all. Kulish was a true believer in socialism because he recognized that it was thanks to the revolution and service in the Red Army that he was able to achieve his dream of working as a writer. Yet he was a true believer in the deepest sense. When he was disillusioned, he wrote about it, because he felt the state should hold to its promises (Fowler 2015; Kuziakina Reference Kuziakina2012; Stech Reference Stech2007).

But that does not mean he did not write comedy. Myna Mazailo is a funny play; it was funny in 1929 and it’s still funny today. Natalia Iermakova argues that the play is a romantic comedy, in the sense of baroque vertep-inspired humor, operating on multiple levels, with multiple perspectives. Unlike Soviet plays that eschewed ambiguity, Kulish here embraced the ambiguity, chaos, and challenge of the process of Ukrainianization (Iermakova Reference Iermakova2012; Plamper Reference Plamper2001).

The plot is fairly simple: a Soviet apparatchik in Kharkiv, named Myna Mazailo, longs to Russify in order to rise up the party ladder. He tries to do so by attempting to change his name to the more Russian-sounding Mazenin—and by hiring a teacher of “proper pronunciation” to correct his Ukrainian dialect in Russian. His son, Mokii, by contrast, responds with chagrin, because he is a proponent of Ukrainianization and the Ukrainian language and does not believe his father should Russify. Myna’s daughter, Ryna, supports him in his efforts, but her best friend, Ulia, soon falls for Mokii and his romantic talk of Ukrainian. Into this mess of Russification, Ukrainianization, surzhyk, and miscommunication arrive two extremes: Uncle Taras from Kyiv (a representation of Cossack-esque Ukrainophilia) and Aunt Motia from Kursk (a representation of anti-Ukrainian Russophilia). Complications ensue. At the end of the play, after essentially every “type” has been made fun of, Myna is fired from his job for not honing to the values of Ukrainianization. Curtain.

Although the plot might seem obvious, in fact the various character types and their concerns reflect the very real realities of Ukrainianization in a bilingual, or often majority-Russophone, place such as Kharkiv, the capital of Soviet Ukraine. No one was untouched by Ukrainianization, and everyone—one imagines—found themselves somewhere on the spectrum of the characters presented in Kulish’s play. And these were challenges specific to Soviet Ukraine, a republic with well-developed nationalism (Uncle Taras), close ties with the Russian republic (Aunt Motia), and a dynamic between language and power that was real.

The very first lines of the play set out the paradox. Ryna complains to Ulia that her brother has “gone mad over ukrmova [the Soviet term for Ukrainian language]” and expresses her hope that her father can change their “little Russian” last name to something better (Kulish Reference Kulish2001, 7). Clearly, Ryna is not a proponent of Ukrainianization—yet, also clearly, the play is in Ukrainian, performed at the signature Ukrainian-language theatre in Kharkiv, promoted by the state as a signature theatre in this era of Ukrainianization. The local audience would have picked up on these ironies.

Kulish’s play has no heroes; there is no “correct” representative of Soviet Ukrainian culture. Ryna and Ulia are more concerned with how their other friend has started dating a Communist, which allows her access to his attractive physique and beach vacations, than high politics or ideology. Mokii—whom one might think would serve as the hero figure given that Kulish was a proponent of Ukrainian-language culture—seems obsessed with the poetry of Ukrainian without really understanding the politics. Myna himself is almost a tragic figure in his inability to rid himself of his accent (replacing “g” with “h,” in a comic set piece with his teacher). Uncle Taras is blatantly anti-Soviet: “there’s the word UNR and you write USRR”—referring to the Ukrainian People’s Republic that briefly existed in Western Ukraine during the Civil War (Kulish Reference Kulish2001, 52). Aunt Motia is a Moscow-phile with a twinge of anti-Semitism thrown in for good measure. Explaining what language they speak in Kursk, she says, “Everyone speaks Russian (rus’koiu). Wonderful Moscow talk, it’s only too bad that the Jews have spoiled it a little for us, now they are allowed to live in Kursk” (Kulish Reference Kulish2001, 66). Mokii’s Komsomol chums might seem like beacons of the future, but then they are responsible for Myna Mazailo ultimately losing his job and being accused of not supporting Ukrainianization. The play, in fact, ends abruptly, with no clear resolution, and no idea what will happen to our hapless identity-seekers.

Yet Kulish is clear about the focus of the play. Aunt Motia queries, “So I don’t understand, what Ukrainians are, who they are: Jews, Tatars, Armenians. Please, tell me, whom do you call Ukrainians?” Myna responds, “They call Ukrainians those who teach the unhappy workers so-called Ukrainian. Not Little Russian and not Taras Shevchenko speak, but Ukrainian—and that is our Little Russian tragedy” (Kulish Reference Kulish2001, 62). Many, including Kulish’s colleagues in the institutions of culture in Kharkiv, echoed Motia’s query, working out who “Ukrainians” were in the Soviet context. Moreover, while Myna’s response might suggest that he does not understand Ukrainianization, in fact, it might also show he understands it very well. Matthew Pauly, for example, has shown how hard it was to Ukrainanize schools when teachers were not clear on precisely what constituted proper Ukrainian and when they did not even have textbooks (Pauly Reference Pauly2014). The members of the Soviet Ukrainian Politburo themselves worried about which dialects would constitute the proper Ukrainian language in Soviet Ukraine (TsDAHO f. 1, op. 6, s. 40, ark, 3–4). Myna later warns his son, “And you, Mokii, I advise you not to believe in Ukrainianization. In my heart I sense that Ukrainianization is a method of making a provincial out of me, a second-rate state servant and not to give me a pathway to a higher position” (Kulish Reference Kulish2001, 65). Myna was not wrong. Russian language did remain, in the Soviet Union, necessary for advancement in the Communist Party, certainly, and certainly, theatre in non-Russian languages was always considered second to any theater in Moscow. In other words, Aunt Motia’s query about who “Ukrainians” were might remain unanswered in the play, but Kulish clearly showed all the facets of possible answers.

Constructed Soviet Ukrainian Identity On Stage

The play premiered in 1929 not at the Berezil’, but at Dmytro Rovins’kyi’s theatre in Dnipropetrovs’k (now Dnipro). Vasyl’ Vasyl’ko notes that the Kharkiv elites, including Kulish, and other writers Arkadii Liubchenko, Ostap Vyshnia, and Mykola Khvyl’ovyi, behaved badly at the performance. When Kulish entered the theatre he (apparently, according to Vasyl’ko) refused to shake Rovyns’kyi’s hand. After many speeches, the dress rehearsal began only at 1 a.m. Yet Vasyl’ko admits he laughed a lot and concluded that it was a good play. Kulish was concerned with the quality of the production after the presentation, and the Kharkiv writers told Rovyns’kyi he may have ruined the play—but still, they left on the 7 a.m. train back to Kharkiv pleased that the play was a success. (DMTMKU “Vasylko,” inv # 103669, ark. 213–219). Myna was a success in Kharkiv as well. It premiered at the Berezil’ on April 18, 1929, and was performed seven times in one month, all before the end of the season. This, for a repertory theatre company, constitutes a lot of performances of one play and suggests that the performances must have been garnering full organized houses (TsDAVOV f. 166, op. 9, s. 557, ark. 40).

As in other productions, Kurbas underscored the universal in the particular by placing specific aesthetic or acting choices in an abstract setting. Vadym Meller’s set design involved realistic contemporary costumes, yet a more “theatricalized...almost abstract” set design (Vasyl’ko 3). In a summary article of the season, critic Iona Shevchenko wrote that Kurbas’ production brought out the best of Kulish’s play by transforming an “everyday” (pobutovy) play into something greater, with characters made larger-than-life in the performances (Shevchenko Reference Shevchenko1928, 113–114). Kurbas also played with the play’s ideological spectrum by having Mokii’s three Komsomol chums toss a ball around when uttering their pointed political remarks. The game-playing undercut the sharpness of the politics, and offered yet another “type”—young people who might talk Ukrainianization or Russification, but who were really interested in fun, games, and falling in love. Natalia Iermakova argues that Kurbas incorporated the Komsomol figures as a kind of vertep. The notion of vertep, a two-level theatrical experience with “earthly” figures below and “religious” figures above, was prevalent throughout the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 17th and 18th centuries, and had gained cultural currency once again in this period of early Soviet Ukraine. The Komsomol figures thus became a kind of Greek chorus, commentators from another world yet smashed into the world of the mundane figures of the Mazailo clan. Yet it is the Komsomol that is responsible for Myna’s firing; such denunciations were, of course, already part of everyday Soviet life and so the ending conveys a sense of dread (Iermakova Reference Iermakova2012; Cherkashyn and Fomina Reference Cherkashyn and Fomina2008, 59). Kurbas then was able to tease out elements of tragedy from a comedy, as well as suggesting universal qualities of the challenges of Ukrainianization.

The production benefitted from the talents of Berezil”s best actors. Marian Krushel’nyts’kyi played Uncle Taras; Iermakova argues that he found many nuances in his portrayal of the Cossack, and thought up so many physical details that the character emerged from a one-note stereotype to a three-dimensional figure more appealing to the urban Soviet audience. Natalia Uzhvii played Aunt Motia; apparently Amvrosii Buchma and Les’ Serdiuk also occasionally played the role in drag. Uzhvii, according to contemporaries, perfectly captured the qualities of “meshchanstvo,” or “petty bourgeoisie,” and it seems to be one role often recalled in later biographical sketches of the actress. Iosyp Hirniak played Myna, designed in this production as an almost-tragic figure of the quintessential Soviet apparatchik. Young actor Les’ Serdiuk was the production’s Mokii. In his work with Kurbas he uncovered Mokii not as a pro-Ukrainian firebrand, but rather as a representative of the younger generation engaged in Ukrainianization and in promoting the Ukrainian language, but who were one step removed from the generation that had fought in the Civil War. Mokii seems as entranced by Ulia’s beauty and her fascination with his Ukrainian, as in promoting the Ukrainain language itself. As was typical in Kurbas’ productions, the director helped his actors find multiple layers in their portrayals, thus preventing the production from being merely a motley group of caricatures (Cherkashyn and Fomina Reference Cherkashyn and Fomina2008; Iermakova Reference Iermakova2012; Hirniak Reference Hirniak1982).

Audience Reception

Myna Mazailo hit a nerve. A denunciation by a contemporary notes that there were “many events in connection with the appearance of the comedy Myna Mazailo”; the denouncer complains about the “laudatory illiterate reviews” in the major papers (SBU f. 60, S–183 “Khvilevoi N. G,” 35). Yet there were bad reviews as well, to be sure. One critic wrote devastatingly, “This is not a play.” And further, “The author made a big mistake in calling this a comedy, and the Berezil’ made a bigger mistake giving this to the audience as a comedy in four acts… The play is a feuilleton and the author is not a feuilletonist and it is on themes of yesterday, not of today.” For this critic, the problem was that in the production’s presentation of Ukrainian and Russian nationalism, the audience would—presumably because of the quality of the actors?—side with “Ukrainian chauvinism” (Kostko Reference Kostko1929, 22). The play seems to have started a ruckus at the Blakytnyi Literary House, where on one particular occasion Kulish called critics who had written bad reviews of the play “shit” and then in a later meeting “berated everyone with disgusting foul abuse (maternoi bran’iu)” (SBU f. 60, S–183 “Khvilevoi N. G,” 38). Ukrainianization and its consequences were not only fodder for a comedy, but also reflected deeply held values and beliefs about the future of culture in the Soviet Ukrainian republic.

Despite this sharp disagreement, actors rememberd the production fondly. Valentyna Chystiakova, Kurbas’ wife, noted years later that the play “was a satire by Kulish of all Ukrainian and Russian chauvinists…we actors in these plays were deeply certain that these works served the revolution, our people, and the Party” (SBU Kurbas 110). Lesia Datsenko, the dubl’er, or understudy/second-cast for Ulia, also remembered the production and its creation with nostalgia, especially the day when she and her friend Orysia Steshenko watched rehearsals all day in plush chairs in the Blakytnyi Literary House. When, at some point, the chairs were needed, actor Iosyp Hirniak came over and improvised a funny sketch about pulling the chairs out from under them. It seems to have been a moment of camaraderie and joy in making theatre (DMTMKU f. “Datsenko,” inv. # 10028, 1-1zv).

So how was Myna Mazailo Soviet Ukrainian theatre? Although Kurbas’ techniques of directing may have reflected aesthetic continuity from the pre-revolutionary period, his theater was part of the Soviet system. The play was performed at the theatre with the highest state subsidy, by actors—assisted by technical personnel—on state salaries, for organized state audiences, reviewed by state-employed critics, and discussed at the places of sociability frequented by cultural and political elites. Yet the play was Soviet Ukrainian in its attempt to unpack that very category, and to investigate the dynamic between ethnic Ukrainian, the Ukrainian language, and the Soviet. Who were the Soviet Ukrainians in Myna Mazailo? In a sense they all were (except Aunt Motia from Kursk). Whether striving to Russify or Ukrainianize, embrace the Ukrainian or the Russian language, the characters presented on stage were all types encountered on the streets of Kharkiv negotiating the complications of Ukrainianization. The play spoke to concerns in the republic, and reflected them with serious laughter. In the end, that may not have been the purpose of truly Soviet theatre, which was to socially engineer, to refract the world more than reflect it. But Myna Mazailo seems to have created a cultural product that was specific to Soviet Ukraine, that spoke to Soviet Ukrainian society, and that treated one of the larger questions of the day with complexity and laughter.

Myna Mazailo played at the Berezil’ until 1931 and then was not performed until 1988 in Soviet Ukraine. That complex palette of identities presented by Kulish had no place in the cultural infrastructure of representation in the Soviet Union. After all, form and content were supposed to be clear, and “Ukrainian” was supposed to be an emboirdered shirt, a comic dialect, a dance move, not an entire way of seeing the world. And because no one was a hero in Kulish’s play, no one was a villain. As the critic suggested, it was not clear which point of view the audience was supposed to support and who the “good guys” were supposed to be. Rather, the play suggested that figuring out Soviet Ukrainian identity was as difficult as hapless Myna’s attempt to get rid of an accent. The humor, and presumably, the resonance with the contemporary audience, lay precisely in that complexity. The audience was filled with the first generation of new Soviet people code-shifting their dialect, trying on new ideologies, negotiating new jobs and new lives in a new place, occasionally in a new language. One the Soviet hierarchy was fixed, however, it was more complicated—and consequential—to make fun of it.

Myna Mazailo was, however, performed in Poland in the early 1930s. Roman Lavrentii (Reference Lavrentii2013) shows how Volodymyr Blavats’kyi’s production at the Tobilevych Theater in Stanisławów (Ivano-Frankivs’k) and later Lwów (L’viv) provoked a multiplicity of reactions. Blavats’kyi himself believed that the theme of the Ukrainian-Russian cultural conundrum could easily be compared with the Ukrainian-Polish cultural mix in Galicia. Audiences and critics, however, responded more to the Soviet setting all along the political spectrum, whether finding in the play successes in the Soviet project or a condemnation of its failures. Iosyp Hirniak—the Berezil”s Myna—staged a production during Nazi occupation in L’viv in 1942, and one critic noted that at this point the political undertones in the text seemed to fade and the comedy was paramount (Lavrentii Reference Lavrentii2013).

Myna could not be staged in Soviet Ukraine for decades, but in 1988 theatre students in Kharkiv staged a production that is still performed today at the former Berezil’ Theatre. The production had the tagline, “A comedy, which was forbidden for a half-century.” As one actor notes, the production hit audiences “like a bomb.” To hear Aunt Motia’s line, “What do you have written on the train station? Kharkiv. They ruined our city” in 1988 was provocative indeed. (“Actor,” interview by Nataliia Otrishchenko, UStories project of the Center for Urban History of East Central Europe, collection “Artistic City and City Art: Lviv Theatres after 1945). As the play had found resonance in the first generation of Kharkiv Soviet Ukrainians, so did it find renewed meaning for the last generation.

Myna Mazailo Today: Ukrainian Theatre and the Soviet Legacy

The play and its characters have remained relevant. Laada Bilaniuk (Reference Bilaniuk2005) references the play when discussing language politics in contemporary post-Soviet Ukraine. Yet of course, audiences read texts and productions differently over time. In its early years the play surely highlighted the quandaries of the Soviet Ukrainian identity and its multiple manifestations along a recognizable spectrum. By 1988 the play highlighted the challenges of Ukrainian identity, and what to do with the Soviet in a changing landscape. In the post-Soviet period, Myna is one of several cultural products that address the construction of culture in Ukraine and its particular challenges directly. One might think of the many comic sketches, for example, in the variety show Vechernyi kvartal, which also plays on knowledge of Ukrainian and Russian, such as an oft-quoted sketch where Kyiv and Moscow are in marriage counseling. One might think of the pop icon Verka Serdiuchka, analyzed neatly by Serhy Yekelchyk as an example of quintessential surzhyk and contemporary Ukrainian culture (Yekelchyk Reference Yekelchyk2010).Footnote ³

In the 2000s productions opened in L’viv, Ternopil’, and Donetsk. Long before the events on Maidan, the seizure of Crimea, and the war in Ukraine’s East, theatre artists perceived the question of “what is Ukrainian culture” as relevant. For example, Vitalii Malakhov’s 2006 production at the Theatre on Podil was actually titled, Premonitions of Myna Mazailo, inspired by Myna’s very concern that focusing on Ukrainian would make of them all “second-rate state servants.” After the events of the Orange Revolution, and perhaps more importantly, its perceived failures, the relationship between Ukraine and Russia, the former center, seemed all the more piquant and important.

The relationship between Ukraine and Russia and culture inspired a young director in Donets’k as well. Igor Matiiv titled his 2012 production Aunt Motia Has Arrived and re-worked the script to be performed in multiple langauges. Largely, the play was in Russian, but Mokii spoke Ukrainian. So Matiiv took Kulish’s text a step further, by pushing the Russian and Ukrainian nature of the linguistic landscape on stage. In a city like Donetsk the question of language, political affiliation, and losing one’s job was all too relevant. An actress from the production explained that changing the name of the play was crucial, because “the Donetsk spectator...would not have come to Myna Mazailo. Because they don’t understand, what that Myna Mazailo is, who it is.” The play was “a provocative production, horribly so.” The actress notes that the audience was essentially divided in two, and after the first act 200 people stood up and left. Everyone was in a panic and the administration ordered it staged less and less (“Actress,” Materials of the UStories project of the Center for Urban History of East Central Europe, collection “Artistic City and City Art: Lviv Theatres after 1945).

Yet in one significant way these new searches for Ukrainian identity differ from those in the Soviet period. In the Soviet period, this search for culture’s form and content was state-sponsored. The Soviet Ukrainian state was intimately involved in this creation, in its funding and management of theatre. The Berezil’, after all, was fully funded by the state and accountable to the state. Building the Soviet Ukrainian state was inextricable from building its culture.

This is not the case today. The search for Myna’s last name continues, but the search is neither funded nor managed by the state. Myna Mazailo may be performed across Ukraine, but it hardly received the attention that the play did in its heyday. Yet, Aunt Motia, Uncle Taras, Mokii, Ulia, and Myna himself are still in Ukraine, walking the streets, studying in universities, fighting the war, and serving in local administrations. The regime may have changed, but the quest for language, for belonging, for how culture in Ukraine should look and sound and who should decide, remains. If Kurbas’ 1929 production of Myna Mazailo was quintessential Soviet Ukrainian theatre, a production of the same play today might serve, in fact, as quintessential Ukrainian theatre.