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Epilogue Attempt at Revival (1950-51) After the closure of BirGOSET in November 1949, some of the actors, mainly members of the Russian troupe, formed an amateur theatrical collective under the management of an inexperienced director, Golovatskii. This troupe fell apart at the beginning of May 1950. The Birobidzhan political leadership, discovering that the region was now left with no theater at all, tried to get Moscow to change its decision to close BirGOSET and raised the question of reestablishing the theater. On May 23, 1950 First Secretary of the Party Regional Committee Pavel Simonov sent an official letter to Boris Chernousov, Chairman of the RSFSR Council of Ministers. Simonov argued as follows: Taking into consideration the fact that there are no other theaters in the JAR, and that the theaters of the Khabarovsk Territory do not serve the needs of the region's workers, the CPSU(B) Regional Committee considers it appropriate to maintain the self-supporting theatrical collective that has been created on the basis of the liquidated L. M. Kaganovich State Theater, and requests that instructions be given to the Committee on the Affairs of the Arts at the RSFSR Council of Ministers to register the self-supporting theatrical collective in Birobidzhan city. The absence of legal registration hampers the financial and organizational activity of the collective and places its continued existence under threatl Simonov was quite serious in his intentions. That same day he also addressed a similar, but more audacious request to Central Committee Secretary Malenkov, stating: The Birobidzhan theater was liquidated at the instructions of the RSFSR Council of Ministers. Efforts to meet the needs of the region's workers by means of the Khabarovsk Territory theaters are hampered because the expenses of transportation greatly exceed the income from the performances. Since the liquidation of the L. M. Kaganovich 1 GAEAO f. I-P, op. 4, d. 27, l. 11. 242 IN SEARCH OF MILK AND H ONEY Theater, not one theater has come on road tour either to Birobidzhan city or to the region's district centers. The aims of improving ideological work and serving the interests of the cultural development of the Jewish Autonomous Region give rise to the necessity of creating a state theater that will be able to perform plays in Russian and Yiddish. Such a theater could exist as a high quality artistic collective if a state subsidy in the amount of 600,000 rubles per year were forthcoming in the immediate future. Taking into consideration the necessity for the existence of a state theater of the Jewish Autonomous Region, and also the fact that the leading creative staff members and the stage and scenery equipment of the former L. M. Kaganovich Theater remain in the region, the CPSU(B) Regional Committee requests the CPSU(B) Central Committee to adopt a resolution providing for the creation of a state theater in the Jewish Autonomous Region and the allocation to it of a state subsidy2 This document is unique. Less than a year after the destruction of Jewish culture in the JAR, the regional leadership was again raising the question of "the interests of the cultural development of the Jewish Autonomous Region ." Furthermore, if the letter to the RSFSR Council of Ministers spoke about giving approval to a self-supporting theatrical collective, the letter to the Central Committee made clear the intention to revive specifically the State Theater, which would also present plays in Yiddish! At this very time the intensive investigations into the so-called "Birobidzhan case" of "criminal" activities were winding down in Khabarovsk and Moscow. Simonov's letters almost coincided with the sentencing of the alleged criminals. On May 31, 1950 decades-long prison sentences were handed out by the Khabarovsk Office of the MGB to the Birobidzhan actor Faivish Arones and the Birobidzhan writers Buzi Miller, Dov-Ber Slutski, Lyuba Vasserman , Heshl Rabinkov, and Isroel Emiot, for the"crimes" of Zionism, bourgeois nationalism, and anti-Sovietism3 Other representatives of the Jewish creative intelligentsia of Birobidzhan were also arrested and condemned, including BirGOSET veteran Moishe Zhelkover. In this atmosphere of reprisals against Jewish culture in Birobidzan, on June 26, 1950, Malenkov asked Deputy Head of the Propaganda and Agitation Department of the Central Committee Kruzhkov to examine the issue of a Birobidzhan State Yiddish Theater personally.4 Kruzhkov had already ob2 Ibid., 1. 12. 3 Investigation case No. 68, MGB Board in Khabarovsk Territory. See also Vaiserman, Birobidzhan, 383, F. Arones, Va'yehi - UI1 geven iz... (Bnei...

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