History of the Vyoshensky kolkhoz and sovkhoz theaters in the context of cultural policy of the 1930s

The history of the Vyoshensky Kolkhoz and Sovkhoz Theaters (1936-1941) is considered in the context of the dominant trends in cultural policy of the 1930s. The sources of the research were materials from the collections of the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art, periodicals, memories of the first theater actors, public speeches, and letters of Mikhail A. Sholokhov. It has been established that the creation of a professional theater in a remote Don village was the result of the implementation of two parallel cultural policy projects of the period under study: the development of the Kolkhoz and Sovkhoz theatrical movement and the project “Soviet Cossacks”. The author has identified the circumstances of the emergence of the theater, identified the main stages of its activity, for the first time carried out an analysis of the artistic program and repertoire policy of the theater, and emphasized the cultural role of Mikhail A. Sholokhov in the sociocultural life of the local community and the formation of local identity. For the first time, a historical and artistic reconstruction of the performance based on the novel “The Raised Virgin Land” (1936) was carried out in an unpreserved dramatization by Boris N. Barabanov.