NIKOLAY GOGOL’S THE GOVERNMENT INSPECTOR: STALINIST AESTHETICS AND SUBVERSIVE STAGING IN THE SOVIET THEATRE
NIKOLAY GOGOL’S THE GOVERNMENT INSPECTOR: STALINIST AESTHETICS AND SUBVERSIVE STAGING IN THE SOVIET THEATRE

Summary/Abstract: Like Mayakovski a century later, Gogol’s young Khlestakov relates his identity to the social scene. In his discursive and theatrical exchanges with the public, Gogol initiates a personal exchange with his audience, an element that was to become an important characteristic of the Soviet theatre constructed on a close observation of public life. By adapting to the stage the ills of his society, Gogol inaugurated a public sphere of discursive exchange particularly attractive to directors like Vsevolod Meyerhold. Initially engaged in the communist theatre’s expansion to the mass audiences, Meyerhold also used the stage as a space of regenerative culture in the face of rising Stalinist terror.

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