The Revolution’s Bloody Hands: Macbeth in Bolshevik Russia

Abstract

ABSTRACT Western studies of the Russian response to Shakespeare’s political tragedy after the October Revolution of 1917 have traditionally focused on Hamlet and paid little attention to the fortunes of Macbeth. This article argues that early Soviet Russia saw Macbeth as a play that sent a revolutionary message to its audiences and offered an ideologically useful vision of the world re-made by political violence. It explores the competition for control over the readings of Macbeth in early Soviet Russia by analysing the allusions to Macbeth in texts produced by those troubled by the violence of the October Revolution and the responses to these allusions from the supporters of the Bolshevik regime. Examining the two stage interpretations of Macbeth produced in the first post-revolutionary years, this article suggests that the ideologically minded directors and critics ultimately lost that competition and were forced to abandon the project of locating the October Revolution in the play as unprofitable. I propose that the absence of this tragedy from the central Soviet stages from the mid-1920s and throughout the intensely ideological Stalinist era can then be read not as neutral disinterest but as an active apprehension of its potential for subversive political messaging.