ABSTRACT
Outside the metropolitan cities by far the most important center of Russia was the Urals-Kuzbas area. One united area, with very intimate industrial bond. “Centre” indeed is the wrong word. It was an area so vast and so rich as to be new country in the world. Nine of the best theatres of Moscow and Leningrad came to this area, nine of best dramatic theatres, to say nothing of opera, ballet, musical comedy, operetta or young people’s theatres, nor those of other nationalities. The flowers of Soviet stage art in all their variety were in blossom in the gardens of the East. By the summer of 1943 there were thirty-five local theatres in Uzbekistan; and in Tashkent they had nearly completed the building of a new one, near the Komsomol Lake that was made there some years previously. The rapid development of industry, the sudden influx of Russian workers or evacuee families, caused a shortage of many comforts.
