Lot 96: Meyerhold, influential Russian actor and director who was murdered by Stalin, rare autograph note signed

Very Rare Letter by the Great Russian Theater Director ********* MEYERHOLD, VSEVOLOD. (1874-1940). Influential Russian actor, director and impresario. ANS. (“Vs. Meyerhold” and “VM”). 1p. 4to. November 1925, Moscow. On the letterhead of the People’s Department of Education Vs. Meyerhold State Theatre. To Comrade Miachina. In Russian with translation. Meyerhold has crossed out a section of a typed letter and written in black ink across the text: ********* “To: Com[rade] Miachina, retype and could you stop forcing me to sign the recommendation of actor Somov created by who knows whom. It is too premature to recommend him since I don’t know him well enough. Vs. Meyerhold. And his ‘importance’ is not obvious. Vs.M.” ********* The typed letter to which Meyerhold is responding declares: ********* “To: CHIEF OF THE 6th POLICE PRECINCT OF THE CITY OF MOSCOW The actor of Meyerhold State Theatre com[rade] Somov V.V. has a residency permit at Vakhtangov Street #13, Apt. 7, in Moscow until November 25th of this year. Com. Somov is a very important member for the production. The administration of the theatre is highly interested in his permanent residency in Moscow. [Crossed out by Meyerhold] I am asking to provide assistance in obtaining his extended residency permit. Director of the theatre, People’s Artist of the Republic: /Vs. Meyerhold/” ********* After abandoning his law studies, Meyerhold became a pupil of Moscow Art Theater founder Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko and method acting pioneer Konstantin Stanislavsky. He starred in numerous important theatrical productions between 1898 and 1902, when he began to direct as well as act, eventually moving from realist drama to more experimental works many of which were staged in St. Petersburg’s great imperial theaters. ********* Although his productions were popular, government officials pressured Meyerhold to return to conventional, realistic productions, leading him to embrace the 1917 Revolution which, initially, freed him from the old regime’s artistic constraints. “Meyerhold was deeply inspired by the revolution and several weeks after the Bolsheviks came to power arrived at the Bolshevik headquarters in Smolny, and declared he was ready to cooperate with the new government. He joined the Communist party [and] headed the theater department of the People’s Education Commissariat… Meyerhold’s ideas were becoming more and more radical. He kept experimenting: he wanted to abolish the acting profession and to let the common people participate in plays; he wanted to give free theater tickets to workers and peasants; he wanted to change all the names of the USSR theaters to the abbreviation ‘RSFSR’: ‘RSFSR-1’ (‘Russian Soviet Federated Socialistic Republic 1’), and ‘RSFSR-2’, and so on. In a year, The People’s Commissar of Culture removed him from the department. In 1920, Meyerhold founded a theater named ‘RSFSR-1’ to use as his own laboratory. This theater changed names many times, until in 1926 it finally became the State Meyerhold Theater,” (“Prominent Russians: Vsevolod Meyerhold,” Russiapedia). It is on this letterhead, the People’s Department of Education Vs. Meyerhold State Theatre, that Meyerhold has written our note. ********* Despite his commitment to the party, his artistic ideas and avant-garde productions earned him increasing criticism from party officials and Meyerhold soon earned scorn for his opposition to Socialist realism, a style which promoted communist values and was endorsed by Joseph Stalin himself. In the 1930s, Stalin banned avant-garde art and Meyerhold’s plays were censored or banned outright. The theater was shut down completely in 1938. The following year, Meyerhold’s wife was found murdered and, later, he was arrested and tortured into confessing to espionage. He was executed by a firing squad in 1940 as part of Stalin’s purge of his political opponents. During the de-Stalinization of the 1950s, Meyerhold was posthumously cleared of the charges against him. ********* With some nominal wear and in very good condition. Extremely rare.