Once again Russia's main theater is in the news, with the sacking of the general director, Vladimir Kokonin, following on the heels of the strike staged by the Bolshoi performers in support of the outgoing artistic director, Yury Grigorovich.


This is not really a creative conflict at all. It is a matter of the inheritance that post-Soviet Russia has received from Soviet times.


The Bolshoi Theater was a unique phenomenon of the Soviet empire, and one of the most favored children of the Soviet government. The Bolshoi personified the power and might of the state: The Soviet Union was foremost not only in space exploration, or in the creation of the world's largest military-industrial complex. It also held first place in the cultural field.


While film, the theater and literature were completely subjugated to Communist ideology and had to reflect that ideology to a greater or lesser degree, ballet and opera were almost free of an ideological component.


Attempts to create a "Soviet" opera or a "Soviet" ballet, that is an opera or a ballet that would show the strivings of the Soviet people to build communism, were unsuccessful, and the Soviet government in the 1960s and '70s gave the Bolshoi the right to stage the classical Russian and foreign repertoire in peace.


But the Bolshoi could only remain the one and only, the most prestigious and most important theater in the U.S.S.R while the empire existed.


After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the transformation of the Soviet political regime the Bolshoi immediately lost its allure, its uniqueness and its official character -- it became just one of many theaters in today's Moscow.


Without the Soviet Union, which made the Bolshoi Theater the symbol of the achievements of the Soviet people in the area of "pure" culture, the Bolshoi was dead. Only the Soviet government could provide it with everything it needed to survive.


The Bolshoi Theater had long since become "a state within a state." Spawned by the empire, it became a symbol of its power on a par with the Trans-Siberian railroad and the military parade on Nov. 7 -- the anniversary of the October revolution. But at the same time it was an independent state, living according to its own laws, and whose residents were allowed a bit more freedom than other Soviet citizens.


The artists of the Bolshoi Theater were always going abroad, they had a lot of contact with foreigners, and brought a lot of hard currency into the country. The Bolshoi Theater was just about the most prestigious place that Soviet people could go -- it was as much a landmark in Moscow as Red Square or the Tretyakov Gallery.


It was an imperial cultural court, the honor and glory of the empire, the recipient of the empire's constant attention, and, like any imperial creation, it was interesting mostly for its backstage gossip and intrigues.


The relationships between the prima donnas of opera -- Yelena Obraztsova and Galina Vishnevskaya, for example -- or between ballet soloists, were the outward signs expressing the struggle for the position of opera or ballet "favorite" with the Politburo. But all that is in the past.


Today, while the new regime in Russia has granted full freedom in the cultural sphere, and has sworn off trying to impose any ideological influence on the country, it has also given up any official participation in the cultural life of the country.


The scandal in the Bolshoi Theater is not particularly important for the authorities -- they can no longer serve as the arbiter and dividing wall between opposing creative forces in the Bolshoi.


The public attention the Bolshoi scandal will receive is minimal -- The affair holds no interest for the man in the street. The creative enthusiasm of Russians has fallen considerably because of the increasingly complex social and material side of life.


In addition, the average man is used to constant scandals in Moscow's theaters, and the mess at the Bolshoi is just another one. He is indifferent to the destruction of former cultural strongholds of the U.S.S.R. Ballet and opera are such an elite area of culture that for the average man there is simply no difference between the creativity of Grigorovich and any other director.


In addition, ballet has fallen in the estimation of most Russians since the August 1991 putsch, when on Aug. 19 the television stations showed "Swan Lake" all day. Since then ballet has become a symbol of solemn, cold, pompous state culture. It became the last bulwark of the Soviet empire.


There is nothing surprising in the current scandal at the Bolshoi. It is much more amazing that the Bolshoi managed to hang on for four years after the empire's collapse. The faithful son of that empire, it was alien in post-Soviet Russia. Today it is as much a reminder of the past as a red flag over city hall would be.


By all accounts, the Bolshoi is doomed as a theater. It should follow in the footsteps of the U.S.S.R. and collapse into a number of independent collectives. And the building itself, which would remain as a tourist site, should be given over to some large bank -- a fitting symbol of the situation in Russian culture as a whole.


The art of Russian masters of opera and ballet has long been properly appreciated abroad. In Russia the Bolshoi Theater will remain as a memorial to the Soviet era, as a hybrid of the former imperial might and the power of bureaucrats over performers.





Igor Yarkevich is a writer living in Moscow. He contributed this comment to The Moscow Times.