“The Tragedy of a Russian Woman”: Anna Karenina in the Moscow Art Theater, 1937

Staged at a peak of Stalinist terror and aggressively promoted by the state, Anna Karenina in the Moscow Art Theater is an unusual cultural and ideological event of the late 1930s. In its disturbing lack of obvious political or emotional relevance to the socialist experience, the grand spectacle of adultery and suicide on the country's main dramatic stage prompted a conflicted critical construction of the play's Soviet meaning and resonance. Situating Anna Karenina in contemporary political and cultural landscapes, this essay exposes and interprets the rupture between the production's mediated publicized image and immediate theatrical actuality, and brings to light the play's inherent logic and implications created through a uniquely theatrical exchange among the Stalinist state, stage, and audience.