Viktor Grishin's 1975 visit to the play “Fasten Your Seat Belts!” at the Taganka Theatre

The story of Viktor Grishin, for many years the master of Moscow, visiting the Taganka Theatre in 1975 has long since been overgrown with conjecture and turned into legend. The play itself, “Fasten Your Seat Belts!”, which openly mocked the failings of the Soviet system, stayed in the theatre's repertoire only briefly. Little information about the production has survived, which may testify to its artistic merit. Reviews and photographs are likewise few. Perhaps the only thing of real interest is the true tale of the performance attended by Grishin, First Secretary of the Moscow City Party Committee. I suggest we hear it from the participants themselves.

The author of the play, the writer Grigory Baklanov:

“From noon onwards comrades in plain clothes had arrived at the theatre; they looked everything over, inspected everything, and when I came to Lyubimov's office at half past six, two of them were keeping watch by the telephone, and Taganskaya Square was completely empty, the traffic stopped. Grishin and his wife arrived in an enormous ZIL, were met downstairs by the theatre's management, and went up to the office…
And whether because the visit itself and everything that preceded it had put the fear of God into people, or perhaps from excess of zeal (the theatre's director Dupak kept reporting future plans to the distinguished guest, showing him a model of the future building, thanking him, while the red lamp above the office door flashed once – the first bell! – flashed again – the third bell!), a complete fiasco ensued: the performance began without the distinguished guest. When at last they set off, the foyer was empty, and only by the nearest doors were the actors crowding – they were about to go on! These actors were precisely the ones playing the high commission that was flying to a building site to make trouble… …the actors entered the auditorium, a spotlight caught them and followed them to their seats in the aeroplane, where stewardesses at once began to flutter above them.
And so, out of sheer fright, no doubt, the actors were pushed aside and Grishin and his wife were let through in front, and he himself, without wishing it, headed that commission, as it were. And the spotlight seized them and led them all along.…”

Grishin's former first deputy writes of this episode as follows: “Grishin and his wife were ruthlessly insulted, as only actors know how.”

Grishin himself also recalls the incident in his memoirs:

“We arrived at the performance half an hour before it began. Yu. Lyubimov invited us into his office… We talked about the work of the theatre. At ten minutes to seven I said it was time for us to go to the auditorium, to which he replied that there was still time, that we would be called. Five minutes later I reminded him that we ought to be in the auditorium. Again Yu. Lyubimov asked us to wait, saying that someone would come for us. At seven o'clock I rose and said that we were going to the performance. Our hosts led us not through the door nearer the stage but through a door in the middle of the auditorium, so that we should pass along the rows of seats where the audience sat. The performance began like this: the open stage represented the cabin of an aeroplane. The passengers sit in their seats. The flight is delayed because some ‘big shot’ is late, and at that very moment we are led into the auditorium and find ourselves cast as those very ‘bureaucrats’ through whose fault the flight is held up. The house laughs loudly, applause breaks out. We naturally feel awkward. I think all this was prepared and organised with the aim of putting me in a ridiculous position. We watched the performance to the end. Afterwards we went once more to Yu. Lyubimov's office. He apologised for what had happened, said that he had been ‘let down’, and so on. I voiced no complaints to the theatre's management, showed no displeasure, still less rancour. No attempts to ‘close’ the theatre, as A. Voznesensky wrote in Izvestia, were of course ever made.”

You may draw your own conclusions; for the sake of a fuller picture it is worth knowing that this historical anecdote was dragged out of the dusty wings in 1989, when Andrey Voznesensky suddenly wrote about it in his article. At that very time a campaign against Grishin was in full swing in wide public and cultural circles, connected with his support for the creation of the Victory memorial complex on Poklonnaya Hill, which had provoked vigorous resistance among the townspeople. But that is another story altogether.

For my part I will say just one thing: never get entangled with the “intelligentsia”.