Who will head the Union of Theater Workers: Mashkov, Bezrukov or Lazarev

On Monday, the IX Congress of the Union of Theater Workers will take place at the Theater Center on Strastnoy. Extraordinary, which everyone is waiting for with tension and mixed feelings – it definitely brings changes in personnel and organizational properties in the oldest creative organization. It will elect a new chairman of the Union and a new Secretariat. Voting, of course, will be secret. Theater Moscow (and not only) has been wondering who will take the helm of the STD and replace Alexander Kalyagin, who has held the post of chairman since 2006, for a month now since the convening of an extraordinary Congress was announced, and that San Sanych is leaving. The bets revolve around a narrow circle of names.

On the eve of the congress, conferences were urgently held in the capital and regions to select delegates for the congress. The most representative is Moscow: 53 people, and a total of 211 are expected. These are mainly artistic directors, theater directors, famous actors – Mashkov, Domogarov, Bezrukov, Khabensky. Three of them are also artistic directors. After the chairman’s report, the election of the chairman will begin, and this is the main intrigue. But first, it’s worth recalling the history of the oldest organization itself.

The current STD was born 147 years ago and had a very broad name – “Society for Mutual Assistance of Russian Artists for “providing Russian artists with greater convenience for distributing their works to the public and improving their talents.” Among the founders then were I. S. Turgenev, A. N. Pleshcheev, D. V. Grigorovich, A. A. Potekhin, A. A. Kraevsky, V. V. Vereshchagin, and its first chairman was the actor, director and playwright A. F. Fedotov. Members of the Society could be artists and directors, poets and composers, writers and critics, painters, sculptors and architects. In 1883, the word “help” was replaced by “benefits” for needy stage performers, but no matter what the Society was called, its key meaning was reduced to mutual assistance, material and professional.

Over the 147 years of its existence, it has undergone several reorganizations with adjustments to its main activities and name. So, in 1894, the Society was renamed the Russian Theater (RTO) (chairman was playwright A. A. Potekhin, and among the leaders were actors M. G. Savina, V. N. Davydov, N. F. Sazonov, E. N. Zhulev, D. M. Leonova, writer D. V. Grigorovich, publisher A. A. Kraevsky, publisher and writer V. S. Krivenko). A theatrical statistical bureau was opened at the RTO, as well as a theatrical labor exchange. No matter how unimportant, not a single artist could receive a contract to work without the sanction of the Society. From 1904 to 1919, the RTO was called the Imperial Russian Theater Society (IRTO).

By the way, on the initiative of Maria Gavrilovna Savina, whose name is now the House of Stage Veterans in St. Petersburg, the Society for Benefits to Stage Activities appeared, and for two years, from 1913 to 1915, the actress headed it. By this time, the Society already had all the rights and opportunities to protect its members. However, after the October Revolution, when the Theater Department (TEO) was created under the People’s Commissariat for Education, a significant part of the Society’s rights was transferred to the state, and the rights and functions of the trade union were finally taken away.

In 1932, the Society was renamed the All-Russian Theater Society (VTO) and it received the status of a creative association, and independent theater societies arose in the republics. Finally, in 1986, the WTO was reformatted into the Union of Theater Workers, which it is to this day. It has more than 27,000 members in its ranks.

The WTO has always been headed by big-name actors. Under Soviet rule – A. A. Yablochkina (1917-1964), M. I. Tsarev (1964-1986), M. A. Ulyanov (1986-1996). In 1996, Alexander Kalyagin was elected chairman, who has been considered the seventh chairman since 1876. It must be said that the Theater Union, unlike other professional associations (filmmakers, composers, artists), still remains, thanks in part to its chairman, the most prosperous, strong, with a solid property complex.

Who will now take the helm of such a powerful organization and what will be the election procedure? According to the procedure at the extraordinary congress, after the Chairman’s speech, delegates can propose their candidacies, and based on these proposals, a list of real candidates will be formed. However, self-nominated candidates and a candidate proposed by the Chairman, that is, Alexander Kalyagin, can be added to it. This list is approved by a general vote (only delegates vote), after which the delegates receive ballots and, after marking their candidate, place the ballots in the ballot box. Then the counting commission gets involved in the work. This is according to the procedure, but no one knows how it will go on Monday. It is possible that delegates will be asked to vote on an uncontested basis, which, as the last congress of the STD, held in 2021, shows, is also acceptable.

Already, several candidates are named among the contenders for the post of Chairman of the STD – Vladimir Mashkov, Sergey Bezrukov, Evgeny Gerasimov (popular actors and artistic directors), director of the Vakhtangov Theater Kirill Krok, Lenkomov member Alexander Lazarev, as well as his theater colleague and State Duma deputy Dmitry Pevtsov. However, the latter is not a delegate or even a member of the STD, and therefore his figure as a contender for the chairmanship cannot be considered.