Legnica with a view to Russia

Photo courtesy of Modjeska Theatre in Legnica

Little Moscow

For 48 years, since the end of the Second World War in 1945 until September 1993, Legnica was called “Little Moscow”. It got this nickname due to the fact that the Soviet troops stationed in Poland at that time had their headquarters in Legnica. As a result, there were many Soviet elements to be found throughout the town. There was a Soviet airport as well as Soviet barracks (where every road leading out of town led to). There was a Soviet part of the railway station and special stores for Soviet soldiers. They also had their own hospitals, preschools, schools, sport facilities, cinemas and community centres. There was a Soviet military prosecutor, a court and even a prison.

The gigantic building which was the seat of the Red Army in Poland was located in a former German residential neighbourhood. It was well-protected and fenced with a wall whose remains can be found today. One could often hear Russian on the streets and the sight of Russian soldiers and vehicles marked with red stars was commonplace. The railway schedule included regular departures for trains heading to Moscow. And the residents of Legnica became used to Russian planes and helicopters flying overhead. The local bazaar, located near the old Polish castle of the Piast dynasty which saw the times of Henry II the Pious and the 1241 battle with the Mongols, was a place where black market transactions were taking place and gold was sold at the cheapest prices in Poland.

Legnica also filled a few pages in the history of the Cold War. It was here, in 1968, where the Soviet generals, together with their Polish allies, prepared and later led the invasion of the Warsaw Pact into Czechoslovakia, while the local airport was the first place where the leaders of the Prague Spring were imprisoned.

Demons

In 1994 when Jacek Głomb became the director of the theatre in Legnica, the Soviet soldiers had just left the city. Their traces remained, however, in both physical objects and the locals’ memory of the Soviet presence. This included symbolic and controversial ones such as the Monument of Gratitude to the Soldiers of the Red Army, which – at one point – was renamed as the Monument to the Brotherhood in Arms. It can still be seen on Legnica’s main square (even though its fate seems to have already been decided on) where it is located next to the city hall.

Coming from Tarnów, which is a small town in the Małopolska region, Głomb arrived to Legnica where everything was different – architecturally and historically. He began his work at the theatre which was located in a building built by the German bourgeois back in 1842 and which had operated and staged plays for over 100 years until the end of the Third Reich. For nearly fifty years, the theatre reflected Legnica’s name as “Little Moscow” – between 1946 and 1964 the building headquartered the Russian Drama Theatre of the Northern Troops Division. Finally in 1977 the theatre reopened as the Polish Drama Theatre and later evolved into today’s Modjeska Theatre. Głomb used this stormy, complicated and deeply broken history into a theatrical play that he has prepared for the commemoration of the 40 years of the Polish drama stage at Modjeska Theatre.

The play in question is an adaptation of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s psychological novel Demons. Its plot is set in a provincial town and presents the 20th century Russian revolutionaries with their attitudes and positions. Dostoyevsky’s work was an inspiration to the theatre artists in Legnica not only because of its brutal presentation of Russian politicians and social thinking of the time, but also – even more importantly – because of its timeless warning against evil charmed in the manipulations of querulous individuals and uncompromising carriers of the idea of happiness all as well as the prophetical announcement of 19th century nightmares.

“From Dostoyevsky’s polyphonic novel we have picked the part of the plot focused on Pyotr Verkhovensky (his character was inspired by the revolutionary Sergey Nechayev, the founder of a secret terrorist organisation called the People’s Reprisal Society, who purposefully arranged the killing of one of the organisation’s members only to reinforce it by blood). Here comes a man from the metropolis who drags naïve rural people into a conspiracy and whose consequences they will all have to face. The second motif, which attracted us to this novel, is the mechanism of gossip. But also the reality in which everyone listens to everyone. In our adaptation of Demons we present the plot without relation to a specific time. We do not want to have a performance with costumes, objects and traditions of 19th century Russia,” Głomb explains.

Photo courtesy of the Modjeska Theatre

Even though Demons is the first adaptation of a Dostoyevsky piece in the Legnica theatre, it is one of the many plays in which local artists find inspiration from Russian motifs or artists. This “eastern” direction was initiated in 2002 with the staging of Bulat Okudzhava’s The Extraordinary Adventures of Secret Agent Shipov. The play staged with 19th century costumes showed a police state where independently thinking people are constantly followed and evidence is forged against them. It allowed for a hilarious and grotesque, yet at the same time horrendous, analysis of a system that is based on reporting and corruption though here – as is often the case in the plays staged in Legnica – the focus is on the fate of the average person, an informer who spies on people not because he believes in it but in order to survive. This extraordinary performance was staged in three cities: in Legnica, Warsaw and Moscow. 

Twenty Years After

The 2009 staging of Krzysztof Kopka’s drama titled Siberian Drama, also directed by Jacek Głomb, was much different, yet also of great brilliance. This anti-martyrdom comedy depicts a little known story of a failed 19th century uprising of Polish Siberian exiles and confronts the audience with a more contemporary motif which is the search for truth when reconstructing the past. The play attempted to de-mask some stereotypes about the Polish-Russian relationship and which are reinforced by some historically-inflicted wounds, distrust and even hostility. By showing different models of historical policy, Głomb presented the problem of finding the truth. The play was staged also outside Poland. It was performed across Russia: in Tyumen, Tobolsk, Shadrinsk, Irbit, Ishim, Tomsk, Novosibirsk – the places where Polish exiles were sent – but also in Moscow and Vladimir, and later in Arkhangelsk.

The most recent production that also fits this category of Russian-inspired plays is Adolf Nowaczyński’s The False Tsar or the Polish Festivities in Moscow, which was adapted by Robert Urbański and directed by Jacek Głomb in 2015. This is a story of the first Dimitriad (the name used for the 1605-1618 Polish–Muscovite War), when Polish magnates took advantage of Russia’s internal chaos and weakness to militarily intervene, removing Boris Godunov as tsar and replacing him with a young man raised in the Polish court who claimed to be the son of Ivan the Terrible. This story was also staged without historical dress. The artists from Legnica wanted to show that politics can be ruthless, where everything is allowed. One move can bring a terrible result and wounds can take centuries to heal. In this theatrical play everyone receives the same harsh punishment – both the Polish occupiers of the Kremlin, who are driven by their greed for the spoils of war and who, with their superiority complex, show contempt towards the hosts, as well as the Russian magnates, who reject the chance for modernity, are servile and adopt the absolute rule getting caught up in murderous plots.

The list of plays inspired by Russia and Russians staged in Legnica goes on. Among them include Anton Chekhov’s Ivanov directed for the Modjeska Theatre in 2012 by Linas M. Zaikauskas. The Polish-Soviet experience of the city and the dramatic elements that relate to it can also be found in the Ballad of Zakaczawie (2000) and the Rise and Fall of the Town (2003). These two plays, directed by Głomb, were later filmed and shown on Polish television.

One last unique event worth mentioning is the three-day festival called “Twenty Years After” which was organised in September 2013 to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the withdrawal of the Soviet Army from Legnica. Its programme included theatrical proposals (for example from the Moscow “Teatr.doc” theatre company), films, sessions and panels as well as open-air concerts (the Russian rock band Leningrad came to play) and numerous re-enactments. Participants included locals as well as people (and their families) in Russia who had once lived in Legnica when they had served in the Soviet Army. Right before this event, during the summer, the first (and last) Polish-Russian Theatre School, under the aegis of Andrzej Wajda and Krystyna Zachwatowicz, was organised for young actors and directors of both countries.

Translated by Iwona Reichardt

Grzegorz Żurawiński is a contributor with the publication Akt – Legnicka Gazeta Teatralna.

Legnica, Modjeska theatre, Poland