RussiaProfile.Org, an online publication providing in-depth analysis of business, politics, current affairs and culture in Russia, has published a new Special Report on the performing arts in Russia: Bodies in Motion. Twelve articles by both Russian and foreign contributors examine the current trends in theater, music and adjacent forms of art both as creative activities and as social institutions. The following article is part of this collection.
At Central Moscow Arts Club Tsedri, the Soviet Artistic Tradition Lives On.
The Central House of Arts Workers (Tsedri) is one of many “houses” built for those working in certain professions, from railway workers to journalists, during the Soviet era. While some of Tsedri’s counterparts have moved away from their Soviet past and now cater to a broader audience, Tsedri has retained much of the atmosphere and traditions that it had before the collapse of the Soviet Union. But with a prime location opposite Kuznetsky Most metro station in central Moscow, and financial issues making the club less and less viable, how long can it survive?
The Director of Tsedri, Engelisa Pogorelova, is a thin, energetic woman. Named after Engels, she continues to call her native St. Petersburg “Leningrad.” She enters Tsedri carrying a bunch of carnations and immediately points to some of the club’s friends and performers, whose photos hang in the building’s entrance hall. “Tsedri is the house that unites all of the houses and was created so that everyone could come together. It unites artists, writers, architects and musicians,” Pogorelova said. “There is one aim here—to develop all the different types of the arts, while allowing them to nourish each other.”
At the end of its 81st season in May, Tsedri looks a little worn from the outside. But inside it is clean and the walls are covered in artworks and photographs of those who have performed at the club. Even the entrance to the restrooms is covered in murals. It is a bit like a cross between a high school art department and a theater, and the tangible enthusiasm and informal atmosphere add to its charm, rather than indicating a lack of professionalism. “At Tsedri people can sing, dance, put on magic shows and art exhibitions. Everyone has the right to work here. In the other houses, people just meet people from the same field—architects at the House of Architects for example, but here you can meet everyone,” said Pogorelova.
Its scope is indeed diverse. It has councils that deal with every conceivable form of art, from theater to circus performances to the visual arts. Not to mention individual clubs for film, magic, photography and journalism. Pogorelova said that some of the most popular events, though, are those that celebrate key anniversaries in artists’ lives. “These are very valuable evenings; people come to congratulate the artist. It is an important stage in a person’s life, particularly when you see someone developing as an artist over the years. I don’t just mean physical changes, but also creative changes, that’s very interesting to observe,” Pogorelova said.
In late May Film Director Georgy Babushkin hosted a retrospective of his work in the run-up to his 75th birthday. Looking back on a career which includes many films of performances and documentaries about the arts, he combined anecdotes with short screenings and performances by his friends from other artistic disciplines. In his welcome address to these performers and other guests, his affection for Tsedri and the importance of the occasion to him was clear. “You are real friends,” he said, “because the season ended three weeks ago, and yet you’re here.”
Babushkin also mentioned Moscow State Pedagogical University, his alma mater, which he is clearly still proud of. Some current students joined him onstage to pay tribute to him and perform a song, and he was visibly moved by the fact that the links between the older and younger generations remain strong.
The atmosphere in Tsedri that evening, quieter than usual in the off-season, reflected what Pogorelova said about the role the club plays in its members’ lives. “Tsedri is not just a club or a theater, it’s a real home. There is a nice atmosphere here, people share their joys, they can always find space and support at Tsedri,” she said.
Pogorelova herself is a good example of this philosophy and peppers her talk about Tsedri with anecdotes from her own life. Evacuated from St. Petersburg during the war, she returned to complete most of her education before making the move to Moscow in 1962. “The following year I graduated from the Moscow State University of Culture and Arts, married a fellow Leningrader, and had a daughter—all in one year!” she said.
Pogorelova trained as a theater director and club organizer; the latter prepared her for work in the cultural clubs set up to entertain workers in the Soviet era. “I worked in two clubs that were attached to factories—Krasny Bogatyr [a shoe factory] and in the cultural section of a chemical factory,” Pogorelova said. By 1970, she was at Tsedri, heading the youth branch of the club.
She reels off a list of the people who passed through her direction in the early years, including stars of stage and screen Sasha Philipenko, Sasha Lazarev and Gennady Khazanov, as well as Yuri Saulsky—one of Russia’s first jazz composers.
Fresh Blood
Tsedri’s youth program is one of its strong points, and the club continues to attract Russian youth interested in performing arts, from small children to students. In mid-May it hosted one of the rounds of “Festos,” a Moscow-wide student arts festival. That evening’s contest was for folk acts, and while the students seemed on edge, there was a friendly rather than nervous atmosphere in the air. A guitarist with technical problems was quickly offered the use of somebody else’s instrument, and it was easy to forget it was a competition. Each act, ranging from solo performers to 12-strong choirs, performed one song. Some of them seemed accustomed to the stage and put in strong performances, others were less sophisticated, but enjoyed taking part. While the jury decided who to send through to the next round, a middle-aged couple that used to perform at Tsedri in their own student days played a few songs and talked about the past. At the end nearly all the contestants made it through to the next round and were given a cake, amid endless rounds of applause.
Pogorelova said a wide age range is normal at Tsedri events: “At our events you can find a real mixture of people from the very young to the very old. The veterans like it when the young people perform, unfortunately the younger generations are less interested in watching the older ones,” she laughed. Older artists who take on students are also fond of the club, both as a centrally-located and comfortable place to work and for the eclectic program of events and attendees.
Looking Back
Olga Lepeshinskaya, a “People’s Artist of the Soviet Union” and a recipient of four Stalin prizes, was closely involved in Tsedri throughout her career. Lepeshinskaya died in Moscow in 2008, but she prepared a short article about the place for its 75th anniversary before her death. In it she gave her version of the role she played, as a young girl, in Soviet People’s Commissar of Enlightenment Responsible for Culture and Education Anatoly Lunacharsky’s decision to found the club. “I was friends with his wife Natalya Rosenel’s daughter. We were allowed to play in their large apartment with stairs onto a mezzanine. We gladly put on small performances there, singing, dancing, acting and drawing. Lunacharsky once sneaked up on us and watched us, and that day he came up with the idea of creating a house where people from all branches of the arts could come together to mix and share their achievements.”
The project took off under two successful actresses, Valeria Barsova from the Bolshoi, and Ekaterina Elanskaya from the Moscow Art Theater. In February 1930 the house was inaugurated at its first address on Staropimenovsky Street with Anton Chekov’s widow Olga Knipper-Chekhova in attendance. Poet Vladimir Mayakovsky read a new poem “In Full Voice” to mark the occasion. Pogorelova explained how the project grew to include representatives of all artistic disciplines: “First came the actors, they decided to make their own club. Then the artists came, followed by the writers and poets, and gradually everyone joined.”
In 1939 a government decree granted Tsedri a building on Pushechnaya street, where it still stands today. “Tsedri settled on Pushechnaya Street when Barsova and Elanskaya were still in charge,” reminisced Lepeshinskaya. “They were so happy and proud that Tsedri was housed in the same building as the Society of Art and Literature, led by Konstantin Stanislavsky. That is where the prototype for the Moscow Art Theater was formed.”
Funds from trade unions flooded in and the building was renovated, and quickly deemed a success. “Tsedri gathered the most famous creative people, not only from our country, but from across the world. It was like that until World War II,” added Lepeshinskaya.
The Art of War
Tsedri rose to the challenge of the Second World War with energy, sending brigades of artists to entertain troops at the front. Tragically, the first group all died at the front, but that didn’t stop more groups from embarking on grueling tours. “In the very first days of the war Tsedri created a center in charge of organizing cultural groups to go to the front. They went to the front and to hospitals and put on more than 17,000 concerts during the war,” said Pogorelova.
During the war Lepeshinskaya was one of many performers who entertained the troops. “I went in a concert brigade with opera singers Maria Litvinenko-Volgemut, Ivan Patorzhinsky and Irina Maslennikova. I danced on mud, sand and grass. My pink ballet pumps turned a dirty grey. I travelled across Europe like that, through Romania, Hungary, Austria and Czechoslovakia,” she said.
“We met so many known and unknown artists on the roads of war, and all those who had come from Moscow, as a rule, were linked to Tsedri,” added Lepeshinskaya, “After the victory we all met again in our own Tsedri, then we had the feeling of fraternity from the front.” Since this time veterans have had a special place at Tsedri, and the club organizes celebrations for them throughout the year.
Tsedri has also welcomed many foreign artists in its time, including Paul Robeson, who is still remembered at the club with affection today. Robeson had a troubled life, on the one hand blazing a trail for black Americans in the arts with his high quality singing and acting, and on the other facing stiff opposition from U. S. authorities for his activism and links to countries such as the Soviet Union. Lepeshinskaya said Robeson had a catchphrase during his time there: ‘Tsedri—it’s a miracle!’”
Tsedri was awarded the “Order of People’s Friendship” in the Soviet era and continues to maintain links with artists from the CIS and further afield to this day.
Holding Out
Pogorelova said that the 1970s and 1980s were Tsedri’s heyday, before the trade unions pulled their funding in 1990 and the club began a struggle for survival, which continues today. “We are trying to keep the traditions going, but financially it is much harder now.”
“Now is a strange time,” Lepeshinskaya wrote in 2005. “The power of business is alienating people. Tsedri was close friends with all the creative houses in earlier years, and not just in Moscow. Now everybody is out for themselves. It’s cause for alarm for the fate of culture. But until now Tsedri has managed to hold out.”
Tickets are now available for sale at the Tsedri ticket desk. In the Soviet-era they were distributed to organizations which belonged to the trade unions and were handed out to workers free of charge. Today tickets cost 300 rubles ($ 10), and during the season the club puts on about 60 events a week. “Unfortunately, everyone got used to the free invitations,” said Pogorelova wryly. “Of course it’s difficult to survive on such money. It costs 500,000 rubles ($17,000) per month for lighting alone.” And this year the season closed a month early.
Tsedri employs about 72 people overall, including ten full time employees dealing with administrative work, nine cleaners, four light technicians and four sound technicians. The staff are paid 15,000 ($ 500) to 17,000 ($ 570) rubles per month.
For a moment Pogorelova seems tired when she contemplates the struggle to keep the place going, and confesses she has considered leaving. But minutes later her enthusiasm is back. “You cannot work here, you have to live here. If people ask me when they can call me I say that I get up at eight a.m. to walk my dog, then I go to work and leave when the work is done.” She is a formidable opponent for anyone trying to close the club down.
Other means available to the club include revenues from loaning space to television and film crews, as well as long-term leases with eight private companies, including a café-bar within Tsedri and dive-bar chain Kruzhka. The latter replaced the world famous Hungry Duck club, a symbol of Moscow’s excess in the 1990s full of prostitutes and foreign expats. Women were plied with free drink before the men arrived, and there was a policy of “just about anything goes.”
These places are a far cry from the new occupants of some of the other cultural houses, which have undergone more dramatic transformations since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The House of Journalists (Dom Zhur) retains some elements of its former role, but it now shows art-house films in a cozy cinema, and its tenants are more upmarket than Tsedri’s—Bon Tempi on the basement level of the building is a ubiquitous Moscow restaurant serving basil and ginger cocktails. Tsedri’s café serves traditional Russian fare, such as pelmeni and open sandwiches with red caviar, and customers launching into impromptu performances are likely to receive an enthusiastic welcome.
Meanwhile the House of Cinematography (Dom Kino) is still going strong and the House of Composers is enjoying something of a revival. The House of Actors, which used to stand on the corner of Tverskaya and Strastnoy Boulevard, burned down, and the actors are now housed in the old Soviet Culture Ministry on Old Arbat street.
The Central House of Artists also continues to host events, such as ArtMoskva—Europe’s largest contemporary art market. It benefits from the pull of its neighbor in the building—a branch of the State Tretyakov Gallery, which is one of Moscow’s most popular museums and last year attracted a record-breaking 300,000 visitors to an exhibition of 19th century Russian artist Isaac Levitan’s work.
