ABSTRACT
When Meyerhold was arrested in 1939, he was accused of having been ‘the head of an anti-Soviet Trotskyist group’. Absurd though this charge was, there were connections between the two men which this paper uncovers and evaluates. Trotsky was not only a theatrical politician, he had a deep and continuing interest in the theatre itself. Before the 1917 Bolshevik revolution, Meyerhold’s theatre practice was rooted in ‘aestheticism’, but he now joined the Bolsheviks and his practice changed accordingly. Connections between Trotsky and Meyerhold from this period are noticed at various levels, not least in Meyerhold’s close alliance with Troysky’s sister, Olga, who was chair of the government’s Theatre Department. Trotsky challenged Soviet theatre practitioners to ‘take possession’ of the classics for the new Soviet society, and to create a new form of Soviet comedy. Meyerhold’s repertoire is seen as a response to these challenges, just as his later work well into the 1930s is seen as a response to Trotksy’s demands for the liberation of women.
