Popular theater and society in Tsarist Russia
By: E. Anthony Swift.
Series: Studies on the history of society and culture ;; 44
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: 2002
Place of publication: Berkeley, Calif
Language: eng
Number of pages: 346
Subjects: Theater -- Russia -- History; Popular culture -- Russia
Description: "This is the fullest and most richly detailed study available of the popular theater that developed during the last decades of tsarist Russia. Swift brings alive the world of Ostrovsky, Stanislavsky, Chekhov, and Tolstoy as he examines the origins and significance of the new 'people's theaters' that were created for the lower classes in St. Petersburg and Moscow between 1861 and 1917. His extensively researched study, full of anecdotes from the theater world of the day, shows how these people's theaters became a major arena in which the cultural contests of late imperial Russia were played out and how they contributed to the emergence of an urban consumer culture during this period of rapid social and political change."--Cover leaf.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 303-326) and index.