Voice of Russian provinces: marking the 85th anniversary of the birth of Alexander Vampilov

The Presidential Library features a major collection of over 1,000 materials on the history of theater in Russia. Unique archive documents, visual and audiovisual materials tell about the formation of the traditions of the Russian theater, the fate of actors, directors and those whose fate was associated with the capital and provincial theaters in Russia. One of the most significant for the Soviet and Russian theater is the name of the playwright Alexander Vampilov - on August 19, 2022 he would have turned 85 years old.

The term "province" has long been rooted in our minds. Since the 18th century, Russian literature has been comprehending the concepts of “provincial life” and “provincial customs”. Two centuries later, thanks to Alexander Vampilov, the expression "provincial anecdote" came into use.

Vampilov’s whole life was associated with the “county towns”: he was born in the Siberian city of Cheremkhovo, spent his childhood and school years in the village of Kutulik: “Wooden, dusty, with vegetable gardens, a hotel, police and a stadium, Kutulik lagged behind the village and did not stick to the city. In a word, a regional center, from head to toe, similar to all the regional centers of Russia, but the only one in all of Russia”.

While studying at the Faculty of Philology of the Irkutsk University, Vampilov wrote his first stories "Persian Lilac" and "Coincidence".

“So, a voice from the province”, - Vampilov began his letters addressed to the literary director of the Yermolova Theatre Elena Yakushkina.

Vampilov's plays appeared in the metropolitan audience in the early 70s. Moscow was the first to know about him, and his name was revealed to Leningrad after the production of “The Elder Son” at the Liteiny Theater. At the same time, Vampilov met Georgy Tovstonogov, who immediately noted in him a “special” understanding of life and saw in his plays a real, great drama, in which there is neither a random replica nor an extra word.

In 1970, the play “Provincial Anecdotes” was released at the Bolshoi Theater. When the performance was being prepared, Vampilov often came to Leningrad from Irkutsk to attend the rehearsals. He was sensitive to the nature of the theater, he knew how to "see" the actor. Nothing escaped his sight and hearing - communicating with the artists, he noticed their remarks and immediately brought them into the play.

Vampilov's classmate and student friend Valentin Rasputin believed that together with Vampilov, sincerity and kindness came to the theater - feelings as old as bread, and necessary for art.

What is the dramatic skill of Vampilov? The fact that, continuing the "line of Dostoevsky", he puts his heroes in a situation of "threshold", internal conflict, the need to answer existential questions about the essence of life, death, freedom and responsibility. Unlike Dostoevsky, "I didn't kill any of my heroes", - Vampilov once declared.

Developing the "Chekhov line", Vampilov exposes impersonal contradictions, uses the genre technique of "bad anecdote" and "incredible incident". Every Vampilov’s play begins as a vaudeville, then reaches dramatic tension and resolves with an unexpected, unpredictable ending. “You need to write about what makes you sleepless at night”, - Vampilov said. Thanks to him, a company enters the stage - a new social group for the dramaturgy of those years, within which a restless, self-harming hero operates.

This is how Zilov appears in “Duck Hunt” - an incomprehensible, anomalous hero staging his own death, whose human nature for a long time could not be understood and explained by critics.

The heroes of Vampilov speak in a simple, everyday language, often using speech clichés. But the accuracy and conciseness of replicas and dialogues are such that, on the whole, such a voluminous text space is created, which is commonly called the “four-dimensional dimension”. Anna Ovsyannikova's abstract "The style-forming role of connotative phraseological units in the dramaturgy of A. Vampilov" (2012), which is available on the Presidential Library’s portal, is devoted to the mystery of the language of Alexander Vampilov's dramaturgy. For example, to show what position a person occupies in society, Vampilov uses set expressions: an important bird, a typographical mouse, a comrade sergeant, the beauty of his native village. In scientific work, the author uses the term "quantifier" - "calculus" - a word that has a "generalizing" meaning. The quantifiers in Vampilov's plays are the words: anyone, everyone, permafrost, in all cases of life, there is no time, to muddy the water, to perform in the same composition, all year round. So the "simple" speech of the heroes of Vampilov's plays creates an atmosphere of "general recognition", reveals the "typical Russian".

During the life of Vampilov, supporters of his dramaturgy complained that his plays had not yet been fully understood, because they were “not easy to see through” right away, and they hoped that there would be a director who would “discover” them.

Vampilov himself, shortly before his death, admitted that everything he had written before "was youth". But now he's thinking of a comedy about a barber turned playwright. In the finale, the main character of "The Incomparable Nakonechnikov" after all the ordeals that happened to him, rushes out of the theater, and the director runs after him, who nevertheless decided to stage his play.

Now it is difficult to imagine a theater without Vampilov. "The Elder Son", "Farewell in June", "Duck Hunt", "Provincial Anecdotes" and other plays by Vampilov are staged in almost all theaters of the country.

At the request of the actor and director Oleg Tabakov, a monument was erected in Moscow to three playwrights - Viktor Rozov, Alexander Volodin and Alexander Vampilov, who "contributed to the development of Soviet and Russian theater and to Russian literature of the 20th century". The Presidential Library’s collections contain a letter addressed to the artist Albert Charkin, the author of this sculptural group, with an invitation to the opening of the monument, which took place in 2007 at the Theater directed by Oleg Tabakov.

One of the asteroids is named after Alexander Vampilov. There is a museum in Kutulik, which showcases materials related to the life of the playwright in this village. The Irkutsk Theater for Young Spectators was named after Alexander Vampilov. Many films have been based on Vampilov's plays and stories. And in 2018, the first feature film “Sea Buckthorn Summer” was released about him. Thus, the "voice of the Russian provinces" became a national value - a close and recognizable "force field" that unites the reader, the author and "his" hero.