FESTIVAL OF UKRAINIAN ARTS

Minister of Culture, Ukrainian Republic

A FESTIVAL of Ukrainian arts—literature, music, drama, ballet, painting, sculpture and folk arts and crafts—took place in Moscow last November. Nine of the republic's best opera, dance and theater companies brought their productions to the capital for the event. Large Moscow concert audiences applauded the Ukrainian State Symphony Orchestra, the Ukrainian Dance Company, the Dumka Academic Chorus, the Bandura Players, the Ukrainian Folk Chorus, the Transcarpathian Folk Chorus and stars of the republic's variety stage. Artists and folk craftsmen displayed their work at a large exhibition of fine arts that ran under the title "Soviet Ukraine."

This whole magnificent display of talent had one characteristic in common—its emphasis on the contemporary scene. Last year the Ukrainian theaters produced ninety plays on current themes. Many of them have become so popular that they are running simultaneously at dozens of houses. Moscow audiences had the opportunity to see many of them at the festival—Alexander Korneichuk's Over the Dnieper, Vadim Sobko's Song Under the Stars, Mikhail Andrievich's Lenya, Nikolai Zarudny's A Dead God and Nikolai Pechenzhsky's The Birthday.

Ukrainian musical productions are also inspired by contemporary events. The characters in Grigori Zhukovsky's opera First Spring, which is enjoying a long run at the Kiev Opera and Ballet Theater, are young settlers on the virgin farm lands. The life of the Donbas miners is mirrored in Vasili Gomoliak's new ballet Black Gold. The same theater also produced the very successful opera Arsenal by Grigori Maiboroda, a musical dramatization of the part played by the Ukrainian people in the Socialist Revolution.

Professional theater is not the beginning and end of the republic's lively activity in the performing arts. Factory and office workers, farmers and students spend their leisure time at the 117,000 amateur dramatic, music and dance groups in the republic. Many of these groups perform like professionals. More than 80 of them have been honored with the title "People's Art Companies" in recognition of their very high artistic standards.

These amateur ensembles have shown that they can cope not only with straight drama but with such very demanding art forms as opera and ballet as well. To date they have staged ten operas, seven ballets and seventeen musical comedies.

The production of Glinka's opera Ivan Susanin, by the Lugansk People's Theater has won critical acclaim. Mikhail Kotov, a fitter at the Oktyabrskaya Revolutsia Plant, sings the leading role. Not long ago he sang with other amateurs for audiences in Japan. One Japanese newspaper wrote of his performance, "Most extraordinary; a worker who is also an artist."

Our audiences see nothing extraordinary in the fact; it seems very much the natural order of things in the Soviet Union, where art is within the reach of everyone. A person who wants to try his hand at acting, painting, writing or singing does not have to go far to find facilities and teachers. As for likeminded people, there are already two million in the Ukraine alone.

These amateur groups have developed many talented actors, directors and composers. Eight years ago Yevgenia Miroshnichenko, a student at a trade school, was singing with an amateur ensemble. Professional musicians who heard her suggested she enroll at the conservatory, and now she is a soloist with the Shevchenko Opera in Kiev and has been awarded the title People's Artist of the USSR.

Dmitri Gnatyuk had much the same history. He spent his childhood herding sheep for the local landlord. The first chance he had to go to school came when Soviet power was established in Bukovina. He sang his way from an amateur school group to the stage of the Kiev Opera.

Professional artists work closely with these amateur groups in various capacities. Professional performers have set up committees to assist amateur dramatic companies, choruses, ensembles and orchestras. They help with the staging and take roles in amateur productions. Not infrequently the best of the amateurs are invited to act with professional companies.

The Ukraine's artistic progress, demonstrated so brilliantly at the festival, is part and parcel of the republic's over-all cultural progress during the Soviet period. Literacy is now one hundred per cent. Enrolled at the republic's 36,000 schools are six million students. Its 140 higher schools and 600 specialized secondary schools are attended by 700,000 young men and women, as many as in England, France, Spain, Sweden and Austria taken together. Almost every fourth person in the Ukraine, 9.5 million people all told, are engaged in some kind of studying.

There are 310 music, art and dance schools, four music conservatories, three art institutes, two dramatic schools and 57 secondary theater schools that train for professional careers.

The Festival of Ukrainian Arts was an important landmark in the history of the republic's national culture. It was another manifestation of the triumph of the Leninist national policy and the friendship of the Soviet people, which have helped the Ukrainian people regenerate their national culture. The festival will also prove a great stimulus to the further development of people's art and inspire Ukrainian intellectuals to create new cultural works of lasting value.