Abstract
After the 1968 Soviet invasion, the people of Czechoslovakia could not avoid the presence of Soviet culture which was a symbolic manifestation of subordination to the Soviet hegemony. When researching the theatre culture of this era, one comes across a very specific tension between the states cultural politics, the principles of theatres' repertoire-making and the audience perception.
As the new Soviet musicals began to appear on Czechoslovak stages in the early 1970s, serving as obligatory Soviet titles, the audience was not very approving of them, even though the official discourse was creating a completely different image. In this paper, I will focus on the (im)mobility of Soviet musicals from their place of origin into Czechoslovakia.
Did Soviet musicals prove mobile across various cultural and political contexts? How did the cultural transfer influence the pieces and their perception? How were the official discourse and the productions flexible when fulfilling political demands? I will analyse performances of A. Petrov's We Want to Dance or A.
Eshpai's Nobody is Happier than Me and their perception. The research of this previously untouched area can shed some light on the cultural mechanisms of late communism in Czechoslovakia, the nature of popular culture in communist states and, finally, the relationship between the Soviet Union and its satellites