How Ibsen Fared in Russian Culture and Politics

Abstract

Flying into Moscow from the West in the Soviet era, one could see the city ringed round by a green belt. This was the Khimki Forest, an immemorial woodland of old-growth birch trees that harbored a dense ecology of flora and fauna. Nowadays the passenger sees the forest pocked by the roofs of Mcmansions, built by oligarchs in defiance of zoning laws or natural topography. What’s worse, a highway to St Petersburg has been projected, evoking mass protest on environmental grounds. The project was suspended in 2010, but not before Mikhail Beketov, a crusading investigative reporter, was severely beaten, losing one leg and four fingers as a result. Beketov died in Khimki on 8 April 2013 of cardiac arrest, a belated result of the attack. Three weeks later, the first Russian production of An Enemy of the People in over a century opened at the Mayakovsky Theatre in Moscow. The poster displayed a Victorian gentleman in a morning coat and top hat, wearing a gas mask. It signaled that the production would be a provocation. The title itself was a challenge. Konstantin Stanislavsky’s production of 1901 had been called, less provocatively, Doctor Stockmann. “Enemy of the people” (vrag naroda), originally a Jacobin term of abuse, was revived by Lenin in 1917 to tar the Constitutional Democratic Party. The aspersion was cast far and wide by Stalin during the agrarian collectivization movement of the early 1930s to attack “kulaks,” recalcitrant peasants, and again during the purges of 1937. The accused were made to denounce themselves and others as enemies of the people, an accusation constantly repeated in the charge sheets. In a Russian context, it is heavily freightedwith sinister connotations. Ibsen Studies, 2014 Vol. 14, No. 2, 91–108, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15021866.2014.998046