Dancing Through a Revolution:

Content and Artistry in Soviet Ballet

By Jana Jedrych

After the Russian Revolution, the future of Russian ballet— an imperial entertainment far removed from the daily lives of the proletariat—hung by a precarious thread. Radicals argued that ballet was inherently incapable of adapting to the new regime, but others saw the moving quality of ballet as a valuable propaganda tool with which to shape a new society. Russian ballet was forced to strip itself of the artifice and frivolity of its past and take on a new, Communist character, a difficult process full of missteps which had harsh consequences for those involved. While ballet was inextricably intertwined with politics in Soviet Russia, meant to be a tool of the state, to imagine that all ballet was simply propaganda— or artistically worthless—is an unjust and oversimplified view of what was in reality a complicated, contradictory machine. Soviet cultural policy in regard to ballet paid overwhelming attention to content over artistry, which led to various ballet artists expressing their own artistic preferences even amidst the stifling and brutal confines of what constituted Soviet ballet, especially under Stalin but continuing on after his death. The Soviet preoccupation with content over artistry lead to drambalet but was not able to entirely stifle the creativity of those working at the time, and some notable persons even used compliant content to veil and justify subversive artistry. This analysis of several notable Soviet ballets will discuss the power and controversy of Soviet ballet in regards to politics, focusing on the ways in which ballet was used to promote Soviet ideology. Ultimately, this allowed for artists with subversive identities or affiliations, most notably Jewish choreographer Leonid Yakobson, to veil the dissident sentiments expressed in their artistry with content that very literally complied with Soviet ideology.