Balanchine loved
In the twentieth century the figure of the Russian artist seeking creative freedom in the West is well known. When people speak of such exiles, the first that come to mind are refugees from the Soviet regime. But the first cultural émigrés from twentieth-century Russia appeared in the West before the Communist revolution of 1917. Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes was in fact an émigré organization which began its Russian seasons in Paris back in 1907.
Diaghilev became an émigré not of his own volition; the logic of events led him to it. In the beginning, his greatest ambition was to take over the position of director of the Russian imperial theaters. He had all the necessary qualifications: refined taste, impressive erudition, an acute feeling for the new, and effective organizational skills. But handicapped by his lack of bureaucratic tenacity and ties to the court and his too-bold aesthetics, as well as his own open homosexuality, he couldn’t achieve his goal either through frontal attacks or complicated backstage maneuvering. As a result, in 1901 he was fired as director of special assignments for the imperial theaters and banned from any state jobs.
From that moment, Diaghilev concentrated on proselytizing Russian culture abroad, far away from court and bureaucracy. In 1906 Diaghilev organized L’Exposition de l’Art Russe at the Salon d’Automne in Paris, and in 1907, at the same place, the Historical Russian Concerts with the participation of Rimsky-Korsakov, Glazunov, Rachmaninoff, and Chaliapin. In 1908 the Grand Opera ran
At first, through some clever maneuvering, Diaghilev managed to obtain the tsar’s support for his enterprise. He had to beg, intrigue, and explain the “state importance” of the export of Russian culture to Europe. In 1907 Diaghilev complained in desperation to Rimsky-Korsakov, “I must convince Grand Duke Vladimir that our enterprise is beneficial from a national point of view; the minister of finances that it is beneficial economically, and even the director of theaters that it could be useful for the imperial stage! And so much more!!!”27
A typical reaction of the Russian bureaucracy to Diaghilev’s cultural initiatives was the highly irritated note in the diary of the director of the imperial theaters, Telyakovsky: “Basically this infamous spreading of Russian culture has brought the imperial theaters quite a bit of harm, for I still see little benefit from it.”28 By 1910 the Russian embassies in Europe were forbidden by a special circular from Petersburg to give any aid to Diaghilev’s enterprise. This meant not only a break in the ties between the court and Diaghilev but an open declaration of war. From then on, the Russian ambassadors in Paris, London, and other European capitals sabotaged Diaghilev’s work as much as they could.29 The confrontation between the tsarist bureaucracy and Diaghilev prefigured a much fiercer war against exiles waged by the Soviet government. A Russian tradition is, in fact, at work here. With the probable exception of Catherine the Great, Russian rulers were not terribly interested in exporting the country’s culture. For them, army bayonets were much more effective implements of Russian influence and prestige. Cultural exchange was one-sided—from the West to Russia, and even that was limited and strictly controlled from above. In essence, entertainment from the West was always suspected of being too decadent. Italian singers or French actors were fine for the cultivated elite, but the masses were to have the simpler, healthier native fare.
