?
«Колхозники требуют постановок Шекспира …»: шекспировский юбилей 1939 г. и деятельность М.М. Морозова в его подготовке и проведении.
«Farmers need performances of Shakespeare’s plays ...»: the Jubilee of Shakespeare in the USSR in 1939 and M.M. Morozov’s activities in its preparation and implementation
The Shakespeare Jubilee in the USSR in 1939 (375 years since his birth) had official status, and the goal of celebrating his anniversary was to define the ideological appropriation of the English writer as “Soviet” classic. M.M. Morozov (a well-known Shakespeare expert and the director of the Shakespeare Cabinet, a foundation attached to the All-Russian Theatrical Society) was one of the initiators of the celebration and the chairman of the Jubilee commission. Thanks to his energy and scientific qualifications of employees of his Cabinet, an ideological event became a national holiday. Despite the ideological instrumentalization of literature in the 1930s, Morozov’s activity had scientifically significant results and conduced to the popularization of Shakespeare in the Soviet Union. The article dwells on new archival documents (letters and documents of the fund of the Shakespeare Cabinet from the Moscow archives, transcripts of the government meeting, the Jubilee press).