“Uncle’s Dream” at the Leningrad Comedy Theatre (1956) as Reflected in Audience Conferences

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Author: Petr A. Druzhinin
Information about the author:
DSc in Philology, PhD in History, Senior Research Fellow, V.V. Vinogradov Institute of Russian Language of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Volkonka St., 18/2, 119019 Moscow, Russia.

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3097-3375

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For citation:
Druzhinin, P.A. “‘Uncle’s Dream’ at the Leningrad Comedy Theatre (1956) as Reflected in Audience Conferences.” Dostoevsky and World Culture. Philological journal, no. 1 (33), 2026, pp. 170–209. (In Russ.) https://doi.org/10.22455/2619-0311-2026-1-170-209
Received: 15 Nov. 2025
Approved after reviewing: 25 Jan. 2026
Published: 25 March 2026
Issue: 2026 no. 1 (33)
Department: ARCHIVE
Pages: 170–209
DOI: Visit Website
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https://elibrary.ru/STTQVQ
UDK: 821.161.1.0
BBK: 83.3(2Рос=Рус)+85.333
Publication Type: Research Article
Keywords: F.M. Dostoevsky, A.S. Dolinin, V.I. Sikevich-Vasilyev, N.P. Akimov, A.D. Beniaminov
Abstract: The article publishes previously unknown transcripts of audience conferences held at the Leningrad Comedy Theatre in early 1956 after performances of “Uncle’s Dream,” which became the first Leningrad premiere within the celebration of the 75th anniversary of the writer’s death. A unique set of circumstances explains why the stage director of this production, based on the novella by Fyodor Dostoevsky, was V.I. Vasilyev, a former actor of the Moscow Art Theatre who had left with the troupe of Vasily Kachalov, who did not return to the USSR, and lived abroad until the summer of 1955. It was precisely his directing experience—including several productions of “Uncle’s Dream” in Warsaw and Prague — that proved extremely necessary at a moment when Dostoevsky’s works were beginning to return to the Soviet stage. The article also examines the very phenomenon of audience conferences. Initially, in the 1920s, they served as a means of connecting the theater with the masses, but their true flourishing belongs to the era of the Thaw, when spectators could criticize what was happening on stage without particular fear. Thanks to the preserved transcripts, it becomes possible to compose a portrait of the audience and to see their attitude both toward the theater in general and toward specific productions, actors, and authors of literary works. Among the published transcripts is a speech by Professor A.S. Dolinin, in which he calls Dostoevsky—until recently a banned author—“an extraordinary phenomenon, perhaps a unique phenomenon in Russian and world literature.”

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