Some of the major Petersburg neoclassicists emigrated and lived in Paris in the early twenties. The leader of
The émigré ballet critic and translator Andre Levinson, who in Petersburg had won a reputation as a fierce defender of the heritage of Marius Petipa, became in Paris an influential interpreter of the aesthetics of classicism in dance. The former Petersburger D. S. Mirsky, a critic of postsymbolist poetry, leading specialist in modern Russian literature, and author of still the best history of Russian literature (first published in English in 1926-1927), often visited Paris from England, where he had settled. Stravinsky later made special notice of his friendship with Mirsky, who returned to Soviet Russia from emigration only to be arrested and die in the camps.
Bolshevik Russia watched the successes of emigres with poorly disguised hostility. Mayakovsky’s articles published in Moscow in 1923 on the subject of his visit to western Europe were filled with scorn for “Parisian” Russians. Mayakovsky was angered even by the fact that a portrait by Yakovlev, exhibited at the Autumn Salon in Paris, depicted a woman holding a book of Akhmatova’s poetry. The predictable but even then dubious conclusion Mayakovsky reached was: “We, workers in the arts of Soviet Russia, are the leaders of world art, the bearers of avant-garde ideas.”130
Prokofiev, who while living in Paris continued nevertheless to flirt with the Bolsheviks, described in a letter to Moscow in 1928 the production of Stravinsky’s
I saw and heard that thing in Diaghilev’s production and am completely disappointed in it. The material is absolutely pathetic and stolen out of the most shameful sources: Gounod, and Delibes, and Wagner, and even Minkus. It’s all served up with extreme cleverness and mastery, which would be all right if it were not for the fact that Stravinsky missed the most important thing: it’s terribly boring 131
(Prokofiev, of course, knew Mayakovsky’s reaction to Stravinsky’s music, after Stravinsky had shown his works to the poet in 1922: “It makes no impression on me. He is considered an innovator and a reviver of the baroque at the same time! Prokofiev is more what I like.”)
The Russian pro-Bolshevik “left” readily equated neoclassicism with counterrevolution. For them the “restoration” of classical forms evidenced the desire to restore old Russia, so the neoclassicists were perceived as enemies. Gumilyov was shot on charges of counterrevolutionary conspiracy. Akhmatova and Mandelstam were under suspicion as being “internal émigrés.” The Bolsheviks and their fellow travelers tried to persuade themselves and others that the neo-classicists were aesthetic and political corpses.
Now it is hard to determine the actual political views (or lack thereof) of young Balanchine in Russia. There is evidence that allows us to assume he was very devout, even though his enthusiasm for Mayakovsky’s often sacrilegious poetry seems paradoxical in that light. The politics of Diaghilev and Stravinsky before the revolution could be described as rather liberal. But the hostile attitude of the Bolsheviks toward émigrés in general and their political attacks on neoclassicism in particular inevitably pushed Diaghilev, Stravinsky, and Balanchine into the conservative camp.
The three shared a cult of Pushkin, Glinka, Tchaikovsky, classical ballet, and its genius, Petipa. Diaghilev began propagandizing Tchaikovsky in Europe in 1921, presenting his
