ИСТИНА

Writing its own history post-factum, Russian theater created its own mythology driven by its institutional needs at particular moments. Versions of this mythology emerged in memoirs (Ivan Dmitrievsky), quasi-historical journeys (Shakhovskoy), and in plays themselves, as the history of the theater became a dramatic storyline in its own right (Shakhovskoy’s Fyodor Grigorevich Volkov, ili den’ rozhden’ia russkogo teatra, 1827; Polevoy’s Pervoe predstavlenie “Mel’nika, kolduna, obmanshchika i svata,” 1839; and Ostrovsky’s Komik XVII stoletiia, 1872). My argument is that such plays increasingly cultivated the myth that theater developed in response to the nation itself, rather than resulting from government initiative. This myth allowed the theater to present itself historically as a national institution that broadcast national interests rather than serving as a form of court entertainment that had been incorporated into Russian culture by enlightened social elites. The more the theatre depended on broad democratic audiences, the more it drew on that national myth for its institutional autonomy.