Vladimir Kirshon’s production plays in the reception of English-language criticism of the late 1920s and early 1930s

УДК 821.161.1-2+821.111.09
DOI 10.20339/PhS.2-26.122

Fedorov Maksim L.,

Candidate of Philology, Senior Researcher

Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences

e-mail: maksimfyodorov@yandex.ru

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6540-1767

A proletarian writer and functionary of proletarian literary institutions Vladimir Kirshon remained in the history of Soviet drama as the author of propagandistic production plays that answered the era of socialist industrialization and collectivization with their problems and were staged both on domestic and foreign stages. The responses of foreign critics to the productions were published in the world newspaper and magazine periodicals and became available today thanks to the Writer’s Foundation in the IWL RAS. Newspaper clippings with critical reviews from the English-speaking, French, German, Hungarian, Czech, Japanese, and Danish press are today the main source for studying not only the creative biography of the forgotten writer Kirshon, but also the reception of the young Soviet proletarian drama in the countries of the capitalist West. They also remind us that from the mid-1920s to the mid-1930s, every new play by Kirshon became an event in the theatrical life of the country, that his plays were staged on the best stages and famous masters participated in them. Kirshon’s performances became a vehicle for discussions about the future of Soviet drama. Kirshon became the first Soviet writer whose plays became noticeable phenomena on the stages of America, Europe, Asia.

Keywords: proletarian literature, Soviet production play, foreign reception, Kirshon, archive, publication

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