Moscow Is Burning

Extract

In January, 1930, the Soviet Central Agency of State Circuses asked the poet Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky to write the text for a circus pantomime to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the 1905 Revolution. Natalya Briukhanenko, a friend of Mayakovsky and a secretary in the “Klubnyi Repertuar” publishing house that contracted to publish Moscow Is Burning three weeks before the poet's death, left the following recollection: “All the possibilities of the circus were to be exploited: trapezes, water, etc…. Mayakovsky liked the idea. The circus technique, stadium, mass show, all this encouraged him to work….” [Wiktor Woroszylski, The Life of Mayakovsky, The Orion Press, New York, 1970, p. 512.]

“1905 or Moscow Is Burning was an entirely new phenomenon in the field of circus pantomime. It was a sharp political satire developed in motion-picture style in separate sequences.