Boris Zingerman. Letters to the Teachers (Publication, Introductory Article and Comments)

The letters of Boris Zingerman (1928–2000) to the older generation of theatre critics, Grigory Boyadzhiev (1909–1974) and Boris Alpers (1894–1974), were written at different times and on different occasions. What unites the two letters is that they were addressed to Zingerman’s teachers at the State Institute of Theatre Arts (GITIS), where he studied at the theatre studies department (1945–1950) and then did a postgraduate course (1950–1954). However, he had not only happy memories of those times. The end of the ‘luxurious hothouse’, as Zingerman saw GITIS, came after the editorial article in the Pravda newspaper of January 28, 1949 entitled “On One Anti-patriotic Group of Theatre Critics”. In February 1949, a two-day meeting of the GITIS Academic Council was held, where Vs.N. Vsevolodsky-Gerngross, B.V. Alpers, N.M. Tarabukin, S.S. Mokulsky, G.N. Boyadzhiev, and S.S. Danilov were exposed as ‘enemies of the Soviet culture’. Students and postgraduates were then forced to attend the civil execution of the teachers. Some were frightened by it, others used it to advance in their careers. Yet others formed the generation of the sixties: B.I. Zingerman, V.M. Gaevsky, I.N. Solovieva, N.A. Krymova, Yu.S. Rybakov, M.I. Turovskaya, N.M. Zorkaya, T.I. Bachelis, and K.L. Rudnitsky. The memory of 1949 remained with them forever, having become a ‘family trauma’. The plots of professional theatre studies are combined with existential plots, personal biographies merge in a common historical destiny. The latter testifies to the survival of thought and talent, capable of straightening out with the slightest weakening of external oppression.