ABSTRACT
Lazarenko's leap goes a long way toward explaining why the circus, a Western European import that was peddled by bourgeois entrepreneurs and patronized by the Imperial autocracy, was incorporated into the Soviet cultural administration the following year. In January 1921, the Circus Section supervised the incorporation of all private circuses within the Russian Republic into local departments of public education. Two years later, these circuses came under the centralized control of the Central Management of State Circuses (TsUGTs), this had administered the two Moscow circuses since it was founded in 1922. The circus was one of many popular entertainments, art forms, and mass media that the Bolsheviks pressed into political service after the revolution. In Russia, as in Western Europe, the circus held broad popular appeal, and, as a consequence, it attracted entrepreneurs who recognized it as a sensible business venture.
