Beaumont on the Edge of Empire: State and Stage in Soviet Ukraine | Maygill Fowler

Beau Monde on the Edge of Empire: State and Stage in Soviet Ukraine is an important monograph by theatre historian Meigil Fawler, published in 2017 (now in a brilliant Ukrainian translation by Yaroslava Strykha). In this book, the author explores the complex relationship between art and state in Soviet Ukraine in the 1920s and 1930s.

Through collective biographies of artists and officials who shaped culture in contemporary Kharkiv, Fawler reveals the paradoxes of Soviet artistic culture. She shows the transformation: from unique artistic centers on the periphery of the former empire (in particular in Kharkiv) to the centralization of culture in Moscow. The book tells how the joint development of a new Ukrainian culture by artists and officials led to the "unification of the world of bureaucracy and the world of art." This process erased the line between civil servants and artists, giving rise to the types of official artists and officials from art in the Stalinist 1930s.

The system where "artists gained power through their relations with the state, and the state gained power by supporting culture" is the beau monde, the unique combination of art and state apparatus for the Soviet Union. In this world, artists could receive both the highest honors and prison terms or a bullet in the head.