Reading again about Meyerhold, I found some disturbing elements that are making him such an impressive character in the history of theatre. From comisar of the people and a major influence on Soviet art to decay was such a small step.
Because Meyerhold was openly against socialist realism and in the 1930s, when Stalin rejected any form of avantgarde art or experimentation, his works became antagonistic and alien to the Soviet people. His theatre was closed down in 1938 and in 1939 Meyerhold was arrested and imprisoned.
In Simon Sebag Montefiore's Stalin: The court of the Red Tsar from 2004 there are some terrible details related to Meyerhold's imprisonment. The file on Meyerhold contains his letter from prison to Molotov: "The investigators began to use force on me, a sick 65-year-old man. I was made to lie face down and beaten on the soles of my feet and my spine with a rubber strap... For the next few days, when those parts of my legs were covered with extensive internal haemorrhaging, they again beat the red-blue-and-yellow bruises with the strap and the pain was so intense that it felt as if boiling water was being poured on these sensitive areas. I howled and wept from the pain. "When I lay down on the cot and fell asleep, after 18 hours of interrogation, in order to go back in an hour's time for more, I was woken up by my own groaning and because I was jerking about like a patient in the last stages of typhoid fever." The interrogator, he added, urinated in his mouth. Meyerhold wrote this letter on January 13 1940 having confessed to whatever it was they wanted him to confess to (spying for the British and the Japanese, among other charges). He was sentenced to death by firing squad on February 1, 1940. The date of his death is unclear; some sources say he was killed on February 2, 1940.
Because Meyerhold was openly against socialist realism and in the 1930s, when Stalin rejected any form of avantgarde art or experimentation, his works became antagonistic and alien to the Soviet people. His theatre was closed down in 1938 and in 1939 Meyerhold was arrested and imprisoned.
In Simon Sebag Montefiore's Stalin: The court of the Red Tsar from 2004 there are some terrible details related to Meyerhold's imprisonment. The file on Meyerhold contains his letter from prison to Molotov: "The investigators began to use force on me, a sick 65-year-old man. I was made to lie face down and beaten on the soles of my feet and my spine with a rubber strap... For the next few days, when those parts of my legs were covered with extensive internal haemorrhaging, they again beat the red-blue-and-yellow bruises with the strap and the pain was so intense that it felt as if boiling water was being poured on these sensitive areas. I howled and wept from the pain. "When I lay down on the cot and fell asleep, after 18 hours of interrogation, in order to go back in an hour's time for more, I was woken up by my own groaning and because I was jerking about like a patient in the last stages of typhoid fever." The interrogator, he added, urinated in his mouth. Meyerhold wrote this letter on January 13 1940 having confessed to whatever it was they wanted him to confess to (spying for the British and the Japanese, among other charges). He was sentenced to death by firing squad on February 1, 1940. The date of his death is unclear; some sources say he was killed on February 2, 1940.
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