«Писать проще и популярнее»: журнал «Колхозный театр» как источник по истории театральной жизни 1930-х годов

The aim of the article is identify the informational potential of the journal Kolkhozny teatr as a source for reconstructing the main trends in theatrical life and cultural policy in the USSR during the 1930s, for which purpose the tasks of systematization and formal‑thematic analysis of the published content are addressed. The source base comprises the complete run of the journal over its entire publication period: 548 articles, including information bulletins and news on cultural life. A wide range of unpublished archival documents from the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art, the A. A. Bakhrushin State Central Theater Museum, the Moscow Art Theater Museum, and the Russian National Museum of Music is also utilized. The study draws on memoirs of participants in the kolkhoz‑sovkhoz theater movement, materials from all‑Union periodicals, thematic collections of newspaper clippings (regional press) held at the Central Scientific Theater Library of the Union of Theater Workers of Russia, as well as scholarly literature on the history of Soviet theater and journalism. The methodology is based on classical principles of working with periodicals as historical sources, supplemented by the author’s own development of formal‑thematic content analysis. The history of the journal’s creation is reconstructed within the context of the publishing program of Krest’ianskaia gazeta; its editorial policy, staff composition, and contributing authors are analyzed; the full corpus of publications is systematized, identifying seven content types with interpretation of the data; and little‑studied aspects of the history of the kolkhoz‑sovkhoz theater movement are detailed. The journal’s content model evolved from primarily instructional‑methodological (1934) to overview‑analytical (1935–1936). The key finding is the identification of a discrepancy between the official policy of professionalizing art in the countryside and the actual editorial policy: the largest share (35%) consisted of publications on kolkhoz amateur artistic activities, whereas only 13% of articles were devoted to the professional kolkhoz‑sovkhoz theaters themselves. The journal largely remained a vehicle for the concept of a “rural theater” as a form of social organization and political education of the peasantry, while professional theaters were viewed primarily through the lens of their mass‑agitation and propaganda work. However, the identified publications on 55 kolkhoz‑sovkhoz theaters have immense source value, making it possible to reconstruct the geographical network, the circumstances of creation, and the creative practices of many ensembles whose records have not survived in archives.