Staging the Gulag: Professional Theater in Stalin’s Forced-Labor Empire

At the height of the Second World War, during the deadliest period in its history, Stalin’s Gulag experienced a theatrical “golden age.” As thousands of prisoners perished in the mines, quarries and lumber mills, forced-labor capitals like subarctic Vorkuta and Siberian Magadan appropriated tremendous resources and personnel to construct massive theaters behind the barbed wire, where paragons of the Soviet stage performed sophisticated Italian operas, jaunty Viennese operettas and complex classical plays to adoring crowds of hundreds of thousands. Behind the “golden age” of Gulag theater was a world of powerful patron-bosses, Soviet cultural colonization, and remarkable artistic achievement as human creativity and human brutality collided on the edge of Stalin’s Empire.  

Dr. Jake Robertson (they/he) is a Soviet cultural historian, teacher and storyteller. They received their  BA in Slavic Languages & Literature from Princeton, an MA in Acting from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, and a PhD from Oxford. Jake has taught Russian language, history and theater at NYU, Princeton, Oxford, Warwick University and beyond. Their research broadly examines the relationship between art and authoritarianism, creative expression and repression, culture and colonization in Soviet, Russian and global history. Jake’s career as a theatermaker has taken them from Off-Broadway theaters to queer pubs to Shakespeare’s Globe and they remain committed to building bridges between academia and the arts. Current creative projects include: The Love Show with Saundra Lezzenbaum, a one-woman variety extravaganza where cabaret meets couples therapy; and Songbird, a new play in development that weaves together the life and music of queer Soviet cabaret icon and Gulag theater star Vadim Kozin with the story of a drag artist facing imprisonment in Russia today.