Clothing of a city woman in the USSR, 19030s.

Photo: Ekaterina BARANOVA

The play “Sailor’s Silence” based on the play by Alexander Galich is the history of our country in the complex and contradictory era of the 1930s–1940s.

“It reminds us that we live in the greatest country and, no matter what happens, we must be with our country, live here and die here,” said Vladimir Mashkov, artistic director of the Oleg Tabakov Theater, at the opening of the exhibition.

The exhibition includes exhibits from the museum’s funds, supplemented by props from the Oleg Tabakov Theater. These are photographs, documents, paintings, posters, costumes that reflect the life of people in the first half of the 20th century. You can “visit” Jewish shtetls, feel the spirit of the times of the New Economic Policy, the period of mass repressions, the era of industrialization and collectivization, and the Great Patriotic War. Poems by Vladimir Mayakovsky and Alexander Galich performed by artists of the Oleg Tabakov Theater will emotionally charge visitors and help them understand the era.

The panel with the coat of arms of the USSR is a gift from I.V. To Stalin on his 60th birthday from Vologda lacemakers

Photo: Ekaterina BARANOVA

Many exhibits are shown for the first time, for example, a panel with the coat of arms of the USSR – a gift to Stalin on his 60th birthday from Vologda lacemakers.

“Embroidery in general was very popular then, it was often present on the clothes of city residents, and it was handmade, because there were no embroidery machines yet,” Tamara Kazakova, deputy general director for exhibition work at the Museum of Contemporary History of Russia, told KP.

Homemade women’s belt made by a prisoner of Karlag. For embroidery, a woman exchanged a ration of bread for pieces of colored dough

From one country – enthusiasm and construction, and from the other – repression. Among the personal belongings of prisoners, victims of the repressions of the 30s, you can see a variety of things, for example, a beautiful homemade women’s belt made by a Karlag prisoner or a tuning fork. After all, the prisoners were people of various professions.

“People were imprisoned, but even there they participated in amateur orchestras, the prisoners believed that socialism was the right path, they were not embittered, they came out of prison and supported Stalin’s policies,” noted Tamara Kazakova.

But in Hitler’s concentration camps, where the main character of Sailor’s Silence, Abram Schwartz, was taken, all that was usually left of people was simple jewelry, items of clothing, or whole mountains of shoes.

The clothing of death camp prisoners became one of the important pieces of evidence at the Nuremberg trials. The crimes of the Nazis were captured by many artists, including Roman Efimenko, whose works are on display. In 1942, he was captured and spent almost three years in concentration camps in Wewelsburg and Buchenwald. Efimenko was a member of the underground international resistance committee, on whose instructions he created a whole series of drawings.

Gypsy beads found in the Oryol region during the exhumation of bodies shot by the Germans in 1942 of Gypsies in the village of Nekrasovo.

Photo: Ekaterina BARANOVA

The history of the creation of the play itself is illustrated with a manuscript of the play signed by Alexander Galich, as well as photographs, costume sketches, scenery models, posters…

The viewer first saw the performance in 1988, when Oleg Tabakov staged the graduation performance “My Great Land” in his course at the Moscow Art Theater School. Three years later, already under the name “Sailor’s Silence”, it appeared in the repertoire of the Tabakov Theater Studio and for many years remained one of the main productions of the theater. The role of Abram Schwartz occupied an important place in the acting biography of the current director of the theater, Vladimir Mashkov. The performance was already taken to many countries in the late 80s and was a huge success.

The exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary History of Russia (Tverskaya, 21) is available to visitors from September 16 to January 28, 2024.