Meyerhold & Mayakovsky - Biomechanics & the Communist Utopia

Meyerhold's production of The Bathhouse by Mayakovsky, March 16 1930

"The methods of Taylorism may be applied to the work of the actor in the same way as they are to
any other form of work with the aim of maximum productivity."

Vsevolod Emilevich Meyerhold, 1922

Contents
1. Experimentation under the NEP
2. Mayakovsky’s The Bedbug
3. Taylor's Scientific Management
4. Lenin's Appropriation of Taylorism
5. Meyerhold's Machines
Notes

Vsevolod Meyerhold
1. Experimentation under the NEP
Vsevold Meyerhold, Russia’s number one enemy of realism and possibly the most experimental and
innovative theatre director to have graced this planet, had absolutely no compunction about
working for the Bolsheviks, reporting for duty within three weeks of their seizing power.
In 1917 immediately after the October Revolution, the responsibility for the theatre was
assigned to the Commissariat of Education and Enlightenment, headed by
Lunacharsky. In late 1917, he invited 120 leading artists to a conference devoted to
reorganizing the arts. There was a cautious reply by the artistic community and only five
showed up. These included Meyerhold, Alexander Blok (the symbolist poet, dramatist,
and critic) and Vladimir Mayakovsky, leader of the Russian Futurists. Lunacharsky was
forced to deal with those very members of the avant-garde that were against the views
that he and his government held towards conventional realism. [1]

From 1908 to 1917, Meyerhold had led a somewhat double life, working as the director of the
traditional, state-funded Imperial Theatre in St. Petersburg whilst simultaneously ‘moonlighting’ “as
director and teacher on a range of small-scale, innovative ventures, in conditions which could not
be more different from the Aleksandrinsky or Marinsky Theatres: cabaret venues, tiny stages, rooms
in his own flat and in others’ houses.” [2]Meyerhold seems to have thrived on playing these
contradictory roles: officially a servant of Empire, undercover an experimental pioneer.
However, Meyerhold’s decision to throw his lot in with the Bolsheviks does not appear to have been
in any way duplicitous, or to have been mere career opportunism. He saw the October Revolution
as part of a progressive change that would end aristocratic privilege and bring about a more
egalitarian society. He demonstrated his commitment to the Bolshevik cause in a few ways: by
taking the considerable risk of joining the Bolshevik Party in 1918, when the Party’s future was by no
means certain; by working within the Bolshevik administration in Petrograd, on the board of The
Theatre Department of the Commissariat of Enlightenment; and by staging the revolution’s first
official theatre production, Mayakovsky’s Mystery-Bouffe, in November 1918, for the first anniversary
of the revolution. His loyalties were also clear enough for him to be imprisoned by the Whites during
the Civil War. [3]
After the Civil War, as the Bolshevik Party struggled to impose its dictatorial will on the ravaged
country and its brutalized, half-starved populace, capitalism was allowed to creep back in the form
of the NEP (New Economic Policy). From 1921 to 1927, the NEP went hand in hand with
unprecedented artistic experimentation:
In 1921 the Civil War was drawing to a close and it was obvious that if the Bolsheviks
were to retain their power they had to begin creating the new society which they had
promised. But the state was on the verge of bankruptcy and financial collapse and
Lenin sought to encourage greater initiative through his New Economic Policy (NEP),
under which many earlier decrees were rescinded and limited private enterprise was
reinstated. Many theatres now reverted to private ownership and Western plays found
their way onto the boards. All theatres enjoyed considerable freedom of repertory and
production style from 1921 until Stalin began his process of assuming complete control
of all theatres in 1927. It was in this atmosphere that Meyerhold blossomed. [4]

Meyerhold’s relationship with the Bolsheviks during this period was anything but cosy, however. The
Party criticised his productions for their “lack of realistic clarity and political relevance,” and
Meyerhold may have actually been fired from the Russian Soviet Federal Socialist Republic (RSFSR)
Theatre No. 1, in 1921, as a result of criticisms from Lenin’s wife, Krupskaya. [5] For his part,
Meyerhold opposed the NEP (as did many hard left communists, who wanted socialism to be
implemented immediately and saw the policy as a retreat and a betrayal) and several of his
productions subjected ‘NEPmen’ to scathing satire (Lake Lyul (1923) and The Warrant (1925) . This
would suggest that official condemnation of his productions was more concerned with their
political content than their aesthetic qualities. Being contrary and combative by nature, Meyerhold
initially thrived on the antagonism, but he was actually acting against his own interests, by
attacking the very policy that enabled him to be so critical with such impunity.
But ironically the NEP created unforeseen problems for Meyerhold. He was fiercely
 against the crassness and ethics of NEPmen, those businessmen who ran small
businesses and flaunted their new wealth. Meyerhold made the habits and fashions of
the NEPmen the target of a series of satirical productions such as Lake Lyul (1923) and
The Warrant (1925) which lampooned a group of "internal émigrés" who still dream of
the restoration of the monarchy. In his harsh criticism of the NEP, he alienated the
government by not supporting their economic policy. He also unwittingly helped
strengthen the position of the bureaucrats who were rapidly taking over the
administration of the theatre as well as all other aspects of Russian commerce and life.
Ultimately this proved to be a fatal mistake. By the early thirties these bureaucrats were
to become his most dangerous enemies. [6]

The Bolshevik dictatorship from 1917 to 1927 was a ruthless regime that did not hesitate to imprison,
torture, execute, starve and wage war against those who were perceived to be political enemies.
But there was also much tolerance of criticism from famous intellectuals and artists who were either
‘on board’ or not allied to serious political rivals. Gorky was allowed to publicly criticize the regime
and Lenin. Also, as the Party fought for its life and then tried to find its feet it was also tolerant of
internal criticism (e.g. from Alexandra Kollontai) and, with more pressing matters to worry about,
had no coherent policy with regard to the arts. Lenin had conservative tastes in art, whereas Trotsky
was open to futuristic experimentation. So the artists that were ‘with’ the Party were allowed to
experiment in relative peace until the NEP was replaced by Stalin’s democidal five year plans and
the murderous orthodoxy of social realism.
The artists who produced the most experimental works under the aegis of the NEP belonged to a
small, interconnected circle of committed visionaries which encompassed the following
productions: Popova and Stepanova’s Constructivism, Meyerhold’s biomechanics, Mayakovsky’s
Futurism and Eisenstein’s montage. This period reached a peak with Meyerhold’s production of
Gogol’s The Government Inspector in 1926 and Eisenstein’s October (1927). After 1927, as Stalin
tightened his grip on the economy and the arts, experimentation began its retreat, making its
defiant last stand in Meyerhold’s production of Mayakovsky’s scathing, ominous The Bedbug
(1929).

Popova's Constructivist Set for Meyerhold's production of The Magnanimous Cuckold, 1922, from here
 Stepanova's Constructivist Set for Meyerhold's production of The Death of Tarelkin, 1922, from here

back to top

2. Mayakovsky’s The Bedbug

A lively summary of The Bedbug & Mayakovsky's biography

Shostakovich, Meyerhold, Mayakovsky & Rodchenko rehearsing Klop (The Bedbug), 1929

Written in 1928, the year Stalin buried the NEP and introduced the first of his five-year plans, The
Bedbug is a bold and deliciously ambiguous satire of Soviet society.
Tambov, 1929
The first four scenes appear to toe the party line, quite unambiguously. Ivan Prisypkin, the main
character, is set up as an immediately recognizable villain: a class traitor who is using his proletarian
roots to marry into the bourgeoisie (his fiancée’s mother, Rosalie Pavlovna Renaissance seems to
have agreed to the match in return for the union card and proletarian status that the marriage will
bring). He callously abandons his working class girlfriend, who is pregnant with his child. He
pretentiously changes his name to Pierre Skripkin (Pierre Violin). He claims to be above ‘petty
bourgeois’ consumerism while taking his future mother-in-law out on a shopping spree. He thinks his
deeds in the Civil War now entitle him to bourgeois domesticity:
 PRISYPKIN: What did I fight for? I fought for the good life, and now I’ve got it right here in
my hands – a wife, a home, and real etiquette. I’ll do my duty, if need be, but it’s only
we who held the bridgehead who have a right to rest by the river! So there! Mebbe I
can raise the standards of the whole proletariat by looking after my own comforts. So
there! [7]

Prisypkin is an example of the vulgar bourgeoisie or ‘NEPmen’ that were seen to have burgeoned
under the NEP and that were now being singled out for attack by Stalin’s centrally planned regime.

The actor Igor Ilinsky as Prisypkin, from here

Mayakovsky wrote The Bedbug specifically for Meyerhold, who had been requesting a
new play from him for years. During that period, Mayakovsky had closely associated
himself with Komsomolskaya Pravda, a government-funded communist newspaper.
There had been an increase of bourgeois tastes among the youth and Komsomolskaya
Pravda had begun a campaign against these resurgences of the past. This "Philistinism"
was blatantly attacked by the newspaper's writers and other journalists. [8]

All is not well in the U.S.S.R circa 1929. The herring sold at the Soviet State Co-op are shorter by a
‘whole tail’s length’ than those sold by private pedlars. The ideals of the revolution have been set
aside by a return to the dictates and pursuit of personal gain. In the mouth of Oleg Bayan, house
owner and main companion of Prisypkin, revolutionary slogans have become empty boasts to be
trotted out at any available opportunity…
He is the victorious class and he sweeps away everything in his path like lava. (Scene 1)

Not only do I understand, but by virtue of that power of imagination which, according
to Plekhanov, is granted to Marxists, I can already see as through a prism, so to speak,
the triumph of your class as symbolized by your sublime, ravishing, elegant, and class-
 conscious wedding! (Scene 1)

A man of such talents just doesn’t have elbow-room in Russia, what with capitalist
encirclement and the building of socialism in one country. (Scene 2)

We have succeeded in reconciling, in coordinating the couple’s class and other

contradictions. We who are armed with the Marxist vision cannot fail to see, as in a
drop of water, so to speak, the future happiness of humanity – or as it is called in
popular parlance: socialism… (Scene 3)

… there is a yawning gulf between Oleg Bayan’s words and the surrounding reality. The mechanic
suggests that the country has fallen asleep beside the unfinished bridge to socialism. The workers
are louse-infested and vodka-soaked. There are clearly those who have done well out of the
revolution and those who have lost. There is bitterness, jealousy and rancour. At the wedding, the
couple’s class contradictions are far from reconciled and coordinated. The drunken culmination of
Scene Three descends into surreal violence (What do you mean by sticking a fish into my wife’s
breast? This is a bosom, not a flower-bed, and that’s a fish, not a chrysanthemum!) before
everyone goes up in flames.
Fifty Years Later
Except not everyone did go up in flames. Prisypkin was frozen in the water the fire brigade pumped
into the house. He is discovered fifty years later and, after an international vote, is resurrected.

Prisypkin, still
wearing his 1920s tuxedo, being unfrozen. From here

The second half of the play, in which Prisypkin operates as an infectious agent in the socially
engineered socialist utopia of 1979, is where the twists and ambiguities really kick in.
In 1979 the Soviet Union is now part of a World Federation. Lice, dirty words, alcoholism,
sycophancy, obsequiousness, business, sentimental music, dancing and love are all things of the
past. People have become machinic cogs in a fully-rationalised, dehumanized collective.
The authorities soon realize that it was a mistake to bring Prisypkin back to life. He is the carrier that
triggers an epidemic: after contact with him dogs begin begging, and because he has to be fed a
‘toxic’ and ‘repulsive’ mixture called beer workers at the laboratory are debilitated and start
craving the substance. His ‘crooning’ and guitar playing also bring on acute attacks of ‘an ancient
disease called love’:
REPORTER: … This was a state in which a person’s sexual energy, instead of being
 rationally distributed over the whole of his life, was compressed into a single week and
concentrated in one hectic process. This made him commit the most absurd and
impossible acts… GIRL [covers her face with her hands]: I’d better not look. I can feel
these ‘love’ microbes infecting the air! REPORTER: She’s finished, too. The epidemic is
taking on oceanic proportions.

When compared to the re-engineered proletarians of utopia, Prisypkin can no longer be classified
as human. He and the bedbug that was frozen with him are put in a zoo and displayed in a special
cage that filters his foul breath and language. The director explains to visitors from the Union of
Centenarians:
Owing to certain mimetic characteristics, such as its callouses and clothing, our
respected professor mistakenly classified the resurrected mammal not only as a
representative of homo sapiens, but even as a member of the highest group of the
species – the working class… Of course, I immediately established from my knowledge
of comparative bestiology and by means of an interrogation that I was dealing with an
anthropoid simulator and that this was the most remarkable of parasites… There are
two of them: the famous bedbugus normalis and… er… bourgeoisius vulgaris. They are
different in size, but identical in essence. Both of them have their habitat in the musty
mattresses of time… but of the two, bourgeoisius vulgaris is the more frightening. With his
monstrous mimetic powers he lured his victims by posing as a twittering versifier or as a
drooling bird…

Prisypkin ignores the director’s taxonomy and assumes the aged audience are just like himself:
Citizens! Brothers! My own people! Darlings! How did you get here? So many of you!
When were you unfrozen? Why am I alone in the cage? Darlings, friends, come and join
me! Why am I suffering? Citizens! ...

The director ventilates the platform and dismisses Prisypkin’s outburst as a hallucination brought on
by exhaustion. The cage is covered.
Disperse quietly, citizens, until tomorrow. Music. Let’s have a march!

Bourgeois Parasite to Bourgeois Hero?

Given that The Bedbug was officially a satire of NEP-era philistinism, what did Mayakovsky achieve
by reawakening Prisypkin in 1979?
Meyerhold himself stated that 'The main purpose is to satirize the view of today.... Mayakovsky
forces us to examine not the transformation of the world, but that same sickness that we see in our
own day.' [9] This could well have been said to keep the censors happy. But it justifies the (Soviet
era) reading which suggests that the 1979 utopia is merely there “to highlight the vices of the
present by the alienating device of transposing them...to a purely rational world where empty
sentimentality is simply not comprehended.” Prisypkin is thrust into a perfect world to make his
deficiencies and vulgarity all the clearer.
An alternative reading is that Mayakovsky created a double-edged satire that unambiguously laid
into NEP-era philistinism and simultaneously provided cover for a visionary warning of the Stalinist
collective-engineering that lay ahead. Without changing his behaviour in the slightest, just by virtue
of the social contexts he inhabits, Prisypkin is transformed from an easy-to-despise villain to a hero
that audiences can and should sympathise with.
Obviously, as The Bedbug has been transmitted and adapted through time, it has gathered new
significance and meanings, particularly thanks to hindsight. While granting that the play is imbued
with meanings from different contexts, times and audiences, speculating as to Meyerhold and
Mayakovsky’s original intent is far from futile.
Meyerhold was of the school that saw the theatre as having a social function, as a tool for social
criticism. The Bedbug was unique among Meyerhold's productions because he abandoned his
usual dictatorial control to collaborate closely with Mayakovsky, who was his assistant director. Their
production of the play would have been packed with messages targetted at a very specific
audience.
Patricia Blake notes: “… Mayakovsky’s first audiences were not ready to recognize his warning.
Then, The Bedbug appeared to be dealing with periods in time which did not exist for the literal-
minded… the nature of the Stalinist utopia was as yet beyond the imagination of all but prophets,
madmen and poets.” [10]
If The Bedbug was indeed intended as a warning, and has not just come to be seen as a warning,
then it was well camouflaged from both its target audience and the censors. If it was a satire of the
collectivist utopia, then it amounted to a complete turnaround, as both Meyerhold and
Mayakovsky had both invested in the futuristic-Taylorist fantasies that Lenin and Trotsky indulged in.
To criticise, question or satirise the optimistic technological-utopia promised by Lenin’s
appropriation of Taylorism was simply not on. Zamyatin brilliantly envisioned a Taylorist dystopia in
We (1921) and, as a reward for his efforts and genius, his book was banned until 1988. The freedom
granted to Meyerhold in the early twenties has to be put down to his allegiance to the Party’s
experimental-conceptual program.
Lenin was very much influenced by F.W. Taylor’s theory of Scientific Management and Ivan
Pavlov’s investigations into the reflexes. Meyerhold did not just read and think about Taylor and
Pavlov: he applied the obligatory Leninist question to them – what is to be done? – and developed
an entirely new style of acting and performance based on their thinking – biomechanics. In
contrast to Zamyatin, Meyerhold was, as Slavoj Žižek would have it, 'ultraorthodox': his
biomechanics overidentifies with "the core of official ideology" to the point of being subversive.
The arguments put forward for resurrecting Prisypkin have strong Taylorist overtones: “The Institute
considers that the life of every worker must be utilized until the last second… For the sake of
research into the labour habits of the proletariat, for the sake of comparative studies in human life
and manners, we demand resurrection!” If The Bedbug was intended as a satire of Taylorism, then,
seeing as it was directed by Meyerhold “in his most controversial style,” [11] then Meyerhold was in
the process of using biomechanics to mock the dream of a streamlined biomechanical utopia.

Biomechanics in The Magnanimous Cuckold 1922

As for Mayakovsky, there is evidence that he strongly identified with the Prisypkin of the second part
of the play. Mayakovsky started writing the play in the autumn of 1928, just 18 months before his
suicide in April 1930. As a result of failures in his personal life and malicious criticism from RAPP
(Russian Association of Proletarian Writers) in his professional life, Mayakovsky was increasingly
isolated, disillusioned and depressed, very much like Prisypkin at the end of The Bedbug:
He is lost, frightened, utterly deprived of love: in short he is a caricature of his author. To
sharpen the resemblance on stage, Mayakovsky took pains to teach the actor who
played Prisypkin his own mannerisms. [12]
Oddly, if The Bedbug was intended as a satire of the communist utopia, then there is a potentially
optimistic message for those with of a humanistic bent: if even such an ignoble, louse-ridden
specimen as Prisypkin is capable of infecting the dehumanized collective with love, dance and
other joys of life then the message is that human nature is ultimately irrepressible, no matter what
lengths totalitarian visionaries go to turn people into regimented drones.
back to top

3. Taylor's Scientific Management

“Personal ambition always has been and will remain a more powerful incentive to exertion than a
desire for the general welfare.” F.W. Taylor

Self-evident facts
The central tenet of F. W. Taylor’s The Principles of Scientific Management (1911) was that if
industrial production were organised rationally and scientifically there would be no conflict of
interests between the workforce and management.
The worst type of ordinary management involves:
a) the management ‘exploiting’ the workforce by trying to get as much labour and time as
possible for as little money as possible.
b) the workforce ‘soldiering’ or loafing: doing the minimum of work for the maximum amount of
money.
According to Taylor, this setup is irrational and contrary to the interests of both parties involved in
the production. Common sense says that it is in their mutual interestsfor the other party to prosper
as much as possible:
It would seem to be so self-evident that maximum prosperity for the employer, coupled
with maximum prosperity for the employé, ought to be the two leading objects of
management, that even to state this fact should be unnecessary. And yet there is no
question that, throughout the industrial world, a large part of the organization of
employers, as well as employés, is for war rather than for peace, and that perhaps the
majority on either side do not believe that it is possible so to arrange their mutual
relations that their interests become identical. (C1 PSM)
Taylor’s argument is that:
1. Improvements in production result in cheaper goods
2. Cheaper goods result in increased demand
3. Increased demand requires greater productivity and thus more employment
To back this up, he provides a solid example (which is still used by bewildered pro-capitalists today)
Take the case of shoes, for instance. The introduction of machinery for doing every
element of the work which was formerly done by hand has resulted in making shoes at
a fraction of their former labor cost, and in selling them so cheap that now almost every
man, woman, and child in the working-classes buys one or two pairs of shoes per year,
and wears shoes all the time, whereas formerly each workman bought perhaps one
pair of shoes every five years, and went barefoot most of the time, wearing shoes only
as a luxury or as a matter of the sternest necessity. In spite of the enormously increased
output of shoes per workman, which has come with shoe machinery, the demand for
shoes has so increased that there are relatively more men working in the shoe industry
now than ever before. (C1 PSM)

So why have these ‘self-evident facts’ escaped both management and the workforce? Taylor’s
puts it down to double-sided ignorance:
The workers are “ignorant of the history of their own trade” and labour under the fallacious belief
“that it is against their best interests for each man to turn out each day as much work as possible.”
Whereas...
The management are ignorant “as to the proper time in which work of various kinds should be
done,” and consequently loafing becomes the rule.

Inefficiency

Even the finest type of ordinary management is woefully inefficient when compared to the
potentials of scientific management.

The finest type of ordinary management is the management of ‘initiative and incentive’: “workers
give their best initiative and in return receive some special incentive from their employers.” (Ch2
PSM). While more enlightened in terms of both parties cooperating through mutual interest, this kind
of management still relies on rule-of-thumb methods. According to Taylor, rule-of-thumb methods
are:

• traditional and numerous

• handed down by word of mouth or learned by personal observation

• not systematic, uniform or codified

• the possession of the tradesman

Rule-of-thumb methods keep the responsibility for production in the hands of the workers and
inhibits managerial interference:
This mass of rule-of-thumb or traditional knowledge may be said to be the principal
asset or possession of every tradesman. Now, in the best of the ordinary types of
management, the managers recognize frankly the fact that the 500 or 1000 workmen,
included in the twenty to thirty trades, who are under them, possess this mass of
traditional knowledge, a large part of which is not in the possession of the
management. The management, of course, includes foremen and superintendents,
who themselves have been in most cases first-class workers at their trades. And yet
these foremen and superintendents know, better than any one else, that their own
 knowledge and personal skill falls far short of the combined knowledge and dexterity of
all the workmen under them. The most experienced managers therefore frankly place
before their workmen the problem of doing the work in the best and most economical
way. (C2 PSM)

As long as the workmen have the initiative, production will be inefficient because, as another key
principle of scientific management states, workmen are incapable of understanding the science
behind their trade and thus cannot decide what is the most economical way of doing the job.

Scientific Management
In Scientific Management, the initiative is taken from the workforce and given to the management.
Workers are free to comment and make suggestions, of course, it goes without saying, but the
whole process is initiated and managed by the employer.
Taylor applied scientific management to such delights as the handling of pig iron, bricklaying, the
inspection of ball bearings for bicycles and metal cutting, but claimed that it could be applied to
‘absolutely all classes of work’. He boasted huge increases in productivity, much lower costs and
better paid, happier workers.

1. Developing the science

The first stage (and the most relevant to Meyerhold) is to analyse the work and determine the most
efficient and economical way of doing it.
The analysis involves breaking the work down into tasks and planning all stages in terms
of efficiency. For example:

An analysis of the expedients used by Mr. Gilbreth in reducing the motions of his
bricklayers from eighteen to five shows that this improvement has been made in three
different ways:

First. He has entirely dispensed with certain movements which the bricklayers in the past
believed were necessary; but which a careful study and trial on his part have shown to
be useless.

Second. He has introduced simple apparatus, such as his adjustable scaffold and his
packets for holding the bricks, by means of which, with a very small amount of
cooperation from a cheap laborer, he entirely eliminates a lot of tiresome and time-
consuming motions which are necessary for the bricklayer who lacks the scaffold and
the packet.

Third. He teaches his bricklayers to make simple motions with both hands at the same
time, where before they completed a motion with the right hand and followed it later
with one from the left hand.

For example, Mr. Gilbreth teaches his bricklayer to pick up a brick in the left hand at the
same instant that he takes a trowelful of mortar with the right hand. This work with two
hands at the same time is, of course, made possible by substituting a deep mortar box
for the old mortar board (on which the mortar spread out so thin that a step or two had
to be taken to reach it) and then placing the mortar box and the brick pile close
together, and at the proper height on his new scaffold. (Ch2 PSM)

This application of scientific management to bricklaying increased the average number of bricks
laid per hour from 120 to 350.
The analysis also attempts to calculate mathematical laws which will establish, for example optimal
ratio of work to rest periods.
For example, when pig iron is being handled (each pig weighing 92 pounds), a first-
class workman can only be under load 43 per cent. of the day. He must be entirely free
from load during 57 per cent. of the day. And as the load becomes lighter, the
percentage of the day under which the man can remain under load increases. So that,
if the workman is handling a half-pig, weighing 46 pounds, he can then be under load
58 per cent. of the day, and only has to rest during 42 per cent. As the weight grows
lighter the man can remain under load during a larger and larger percentage of the
day, until finally a load is reached which he can carry in his hands all day long without
being tired out. (Ch2 PSM)

Here scientific management increased the average load of pig iron per man per day from 12 ½
tons to 47 tons.
Scientific Management established what a good day’s work was by experimenting with good
workers and paying them double wages while the experiments were conducted.
Another component of the analysis involves testing and identifying the best tools and machinery
(and machinery settings) for the specific work at hand. This may range from the fairly
straightforward designation of the best size and material for a shovel to be used for handling pig
iron, to the extremely complex, such as calculating 11 variables that have an effect on the
efficiency of metal cutting. It took Taylor’s team 26 years to come up with formulae like this:
P = 45,000D14/15F3/4

V = 90
____
T1/8

V = 11.9
________________________________
F0.665((48 / 3) * D )0.2373 + (2.4 / (18 + 24D))

2. Selecting and Training the Worker

Taylor expressed an obvious truth - that different people are suited to different types of work - in a
very brutal way:
Now one of the very first requirements for a man who is fit to handle pig iron as a regular
occupation is that he shall be so stupid and so phlegmatic that he more nearly
resembles in his mental make-up the ox than any other type. The man who is mentally
alert and intelligent is for this very reason entirely unsuited to what would, for him, be the
grinding monotony of work of this character. Therefore the workman who is best suited
to handling pig iron is unable to understand the real science of doing this class of work.
He is so stupid that the word "percentage" has no meaning to him, and he must
consequently be trained by a man more intelligent than himself into the habit of
working in accordance with the laws of this science before he can be successful. (Ch2
PSM)

Scientific Management requires the employer to assess an employee or potential employee’s

suitability for the job very carefully and to be utterly ruthless with those not suited. For example,
scientific management identified that the best people for inspecting ball bearings are those with a
low ‘personal coefficient’, meaning ‘quick powers of perception followed by quick responsive
action’. Taylor makes no bones about it:
For the ultimate good of the girls as well as the company, however, it became
necessary to exclude all girls who lacked a low "personal coefficient." And
unfortunately this involved laying off many of the most intelligent, hardest working, and
most trustworthy girls merely because they did not possess the quality of quick
perception followed by quick action. (Ch2 PSM)

For Taylor, this necessary ruthlessness proves that leaving the initiative with the workers is inefficient.
Workers would be unlikely to admit they were unsuited for the job and leave voluntarily.
What likelihood would there be, then, under the old type of management, of these
men properly selecting themselves for pig-iron handling? Would they be likely to get rid
of seven men out of eight from their own gang and retain only the eighth man?(Ch2
PSM)

But we need not worry about those who are laid off:
With most readers great sympathy will be aroused because seven out of eight of these
pig-iron handlers were thrown out of a job. This sympathy is entirely wasted, because
almost all of them were immediately given other jobs with the Bethlehem Steel
Company. And indeed it should be understood that the removal of these men from
pig-iron handling, for which they were unfit, was really a kindness to themselves,
because it was the first step toward finding them work for which they were peculiarly
fitted, and at which, after receiving proper training, they could permanently and
legitimately earn higher wages.(Ch2 PSM)

A crucial part of this selection and training process is to offer incentives for the increased
production, which will only be paid when the quota is met. Taylor recommends 60% pay increases.
So the pig iron handlers were paid $1.85 a day instead of $1.15. Taylor warns against paying more
than 60% because the workers become ‘dissipated’.
3. Supervision and Cooperation
Scientific Management attempts to treat every worker on an individual basis. The main reason for
this is that scientific study has shown that workers are far less efficient when they work in gangs or
groups:
A careful analysis had demonstrated the fact that when workmen are herded together
in gangs, each man in the gang becomes far less efficient than when his personal
ambition is stimulated; that when men work in gangs, their individual efficiency falls
almost invariably down to or below the level of the worst man in the gang; and that
they are all pulled down instead of being elevated by being herded together. (Ch2
PSM)

Taylor took a very dim view of trade unions, as they lower productivity by empowering the ‘herd’
and ultimately operate against the interests of the workers, the management and the consumers
who “ultimately pay both the wages of the workmen and the profits of the employers.”
Individual treatment for each worker entails an massive increase in management personnel. Each
individual’s work is planned in advance, supervised and timed as it is done, then assessed once it is
finished, and different managers are involved in different stages of the supervision. The more
complex and skilled the work, the more complex and skilled the supervision needs to be.
Under functional management, the old-fashioned single foreman is superseded by
eight different men, each one of whom has his own special duties, and these men,
acting as the agents for the planning department are the expert teachers, who are at
all times in the shop, helping and directing the workmen.

One of these teachers (called the inspector) sees to it that he understands the drawings
and instructions for doing the work. He teaches him how to do work of the right quality;
how to make it fine and exact where it should be fine, and rough and quick where
accuracy is not required, the one being just as important for success as the other. The
second teacher (the gang boss) shows him how to set up the job in his machine, and
teaches him to make all of his personal motions in the quickest and best way. The third
(the speed boss) sees that the machine is run at the best speed and that the proper
tool is used in the particular way which will enable the machine to finish its product in
the shortest possible time. In addition to the assistance given by these teachers, the
workman receives orders and help from four other men; from the "repair boss" as to the
adjustment, cleanliness, and general care of his machine, belting, etc.; from the "time
clerk," as to everything relating to his pay and to proper written reports and returns; from
the "route clerk," as to the order in which he does his work and as to the movement of
the work from one part of the shop to another; and, in case a workman gets into any
trouble with any of his various bosses, the "disciplinarian" interviews him.(Ch2 PSM)
The management structure for a workplace run on Taylorist principles is an upside down pyramid.
Taylor denies this structure is top heavy because it is not too heavy: the huge increase in
productivity more than pays for the predominance of men with stopwatches and clipboards.
Taylor’s account of his successes in implementing Scientific Management paints a very rosy picture.
The workers are happy because they earn more while working less hours, and they are continually
helped by a supportive, hard-working management has taken full responsibility for production.
These men constituted the finest body of picked laborers that the writer has ever seen
together, and they looked upon the men who were over them, their bosses and their
teachers, as their very best friends; not as nigger drivers, forcing them to work extra hard
for ordinary wages, but as friends who were teaching them and helping them to earn
much higher wages than they had ever earned before. It would have been absolutely
impossible for any one to have stirred up strife between these men and their employers.
And this presents a very simple though effective illustration of what is meant by the
words "prosperity for the employé, coupled with prosperity for the employer…(Ch2 PSM)

Taylorism in the office, from here

back to top

4. Lenin's Appropriation of Taylorism

March 13, 1914
Lenin set his stall out with regard to Taylorism as early as 1914, in The Taylor System—Man’s
Enslavement by the Machine
The text expresses a section of code at the core of the Marxist-communist genome: the assertion
that capitalism exploits the proletariat, through necessity, because capitalism is exploitation;
exploitation is what defines capitalism.
The moral subtext underpinning this is, of course, that the proletariat should not be exploited,
because exploitation is unjust, wrong, evil...
However, capitalism does not just stand accused of exploiting the proletariat; it is also charged with
exploiting the Taylor system as well:
Competition, which is keenest in a period of crisis like the present, calls for the invention
of an increasing number of new devices to reduce the cost of production. But the
domination of capital converts all these devices into instruments for the further
exploitation of the workers.

The Taylor system is one of these devices.

After describing the Taylor system in action and the gains in productivity that result from it, Lenin
expresses the usual outrage:
What an enormous gain in labour productivity! ... But the worker’s pay is not increased
fourfold, but only half as much again, at the very most, and only for a short period at
that. As soon as the workers get used to the new system their pay is cut to the former
level. The capitalist obtains an enormous profit, but the workers toil four times as hard as
before and wear down their nerves and muscles four times as fast as before.

If this were true, and Lenin provides no proof that it is, then it would be an example of an abuse of
the Taylor system, the very kind of abuse that Taylor specifically warned against.
Taylor stressed that his scientific management had to be introduced with caution, one step at a
time. He cites examples of a rival company that tried to rush his system in but did not put the
required effort into supervision, and so which failed miserably.
Increasing the workers pay, permanently, is the key to continued productivity: without this the
workers have no incentive to keep them from slipping back into their default loafing. If an employer
cut pay back to the former level the workplace would no longer be run according to the principles
of scientific management.
Lenin basically misrepresents the Taylor system, not even bothering to deal with Taylor’s attempts to
foster cooperation as an alternative to the lose-lose situation of employee-employer conflict. The
retort would no doubt be that capitalism is bound to return to its essential motor of exploitation,
that capitalism cannot but exploit everything in its path, including the Taylor system itself.
Lenin’s next criticism is that “this rational and efficient distribution of labour is confined to each
factory.”
The point here being that capitalism as a whole is inefficient. It is a mode of production that wastes
time and energy, particularly on the dreaded ‘middle men’. Eradicating a worker’s superfluous
movements only scratches the surface of the problem: the mode of production runs on superfluous
movements and purchases.
The conclusion is that the proletariat needs to appropriate the Taylor system and put it in the
service of a new organization of social production:
The Taylor system—without its initiators knowing or wishing it—is preparing the time when
the proletariat will take over all social production and appoint its own workers’
committees for the purpose of properly distributing and rationalizing all social labour.
Large-scale production, machinery, railways, telephone—all provide thousands of
 opportunities to cut by three-fourths the working time of the organised workers and
make them four times better off than they are today.

Lenin’s mistake here was to assume that the Taylor system could be unplugged from one system
(capitalism) and plugged into another (communism). The assumption ignored the fact that key
components of the Taylor system were essentially capitalist and incompatible with true
communism.
For example, Scientific Management:
1. appealed to personal ambition and offered incentive to individuals
2. mistrusted and dismantled the workers as a collective workforce
3. recognized that workers are not equal in terms of skill, intelligence and suitability for certain
types of work, divisions of labour
4. enshrined as a principle that, for the sake of efficiency and productivity, management has
to dictate, not the workers
5. submitted itself to market forces rather than advocating centralised implementation
The consequences of Lenin jettisoning some of these aspects of Scientific Management, while
keeping others, had very far-reaching consequences, entailing that the Taylor system as applied in
Soviet Russia was ultimately doomed to inefficiency and that his ‘communist’ society would retain
many distinctly capitalist components.
The Soviet Union was founded on the eternally deferred promise of proletarian control of the means
of production, but with the country run on Taylorist lines the 'Dictatorship of the Proletariat' never
had a chance of emerging. Instead, above each worker and soldier was the vast (and frequently
incompetent) Dictatorship of the Party Management.
Once appropriated and adapted to the demands of the Soviet Union's supposedly socialist
economy, the Taylor system under the 'iron grip' of the Party's central control was impervious to the
demands of evolving markets. This failure to adapt was a chief factor contributing to the Soviet
Union's eventual collapse:
...beginning in the 1950s the Weber-Taylor paradigm began to unravel in the United
States. Markets became saturated with uniform products designed to satisfy the “lowest
common denominator.” To increase production further it was necessary to divide or
segment the market into smaller parts. Instead of producing uniform products for the
greatest number of undifferentiated consumers, the American economy increasingly
produced different products for limited segments of the population which were
distinguished by their unique consumer desires. Market segmentation allowed the
American economy to continue growing while the Soviet economy never progressed
beyond the level reached by the United States in the 1950s. The Soviet Union
successfully mastered the techniques of production. But it failed to manage
consumption in the way the infotainment telesector would come to do in the United
States. While the American economy developed into postmodern consumer capitalism,
the Soviet Union remained at the stage of industrial capitalism. [13]
March-April 1918

As Russia continued its inevitable slide into full blown civil war (a war which Lenin had described as
inevitable and desirable in 1917 and now blamed on the Mensheviks, Kerensky, the imperialist
forces… on anyone and everyone but the Bolshevik party), Lenin wrote The Immediate Tasks of the
Soviet Government.
There are some pressing problems. The basic aim of the text is to inform the Party that it is time to
put an end to the chaos and disorganisation that prevail throughout Russia, and to outline the
means for doing this.
The easy part of the revolution has been achieved: the bourgeoisie has been ‘conquered’. The
‘expropriation of the expropriators’ has been successfully carried out. But the bourgeoisie has not
been ‘utterly broken’: it could rise again. Now it is time to get to grips with the most difficult task: the
‘creative work’ of constructing a new society and constructing it in such a way that the bourgeoisie
never rise again. It is time for the peasants and semi-proletariat to start behaving themselves, time
for a bit of discipline and organisation.
Keep regular and honest accounts of money, manage economically, do not be lazy,
do not steal, observe the strictest labour discipline... The decisive thing is the
organisation of the strictest and country-wide accounting and control of production
and distribution of goods. And yet, we have not yet introduced accounting and control
in those enterprises and in those branches and fields of economy which we have taken
away from the bourgeoisie; and without this there can be no thought of achieving the
second and equally essential material condition for introducing socialism, namely,
raising the productivity of labour on a national scale.

Unfortunately, it is the bourgeoisie who have all the expertise. The help of the bourgeoisie will be
necessary to make the transition from capitalism to socialism, and since the bourgeoisie work on a
voluntary basis the proletarian state will have to buy their knowledge:
Without the guidance of experts in the various fields of knowledge, technology and
experience, the transition to socialism will be impossible, because socialism calls for a
conscious mass advance to greater productivity of labour compared with capitalism,
and on the basis achieved by capitalism…

... Now we have to resort to the old bourgeois method and to agree to pay a very high
price for the “services” of the top bourgeois experts. All those who are familiar with the
subject appreciate this, but not all ponder over the significance of this measure being
 adopted by the proletarian state. Clearly, this measure is a compromise, a departure
from the principles of the Paris Commune and of every proletarian power, which call for
the reduction of all salaries to the level of the wages of the average worker, which urge
that careerism be fought not merely in words, but in deeds.

Moreover, it is clear that this measure not only implies the cessation—in a certain field
and to a certain degree—of the offensive against capital (for capital is not a sum of
money, but a definite social relation); it is also a step backward on the part of our
socialist Soviet state power, which from the very outset proclaimed and pursued the
policy of reducing high salaries to the level of the wages of the average worker.

In this text it becomes apparent just how important the Taylor system is to Lenin's revolutionary
project. Taylorism is the answer to the problem of labour discipline:
The Russian is a bad worker compared with people in advanced countries. It could not
be otherwise under the tsarist regime and in view of the persistence of the hangover
from serfdom. The task that the Soviet government must set the people in all its scope is
—learn to work. The Taylor system, the last word of capitalism in this respect, like all
capitalist progress, is a combination of the refined brutality of bourgeois exploitation
and a number of the greatest scientific achievements in the field of analysing
mechanical motions during work, the elimination of superfluous and awkward motions,
the elaboration of correct methods of work, the introduction of the best system of
accounting and control, etc. The Soviet Republic must at all costs adopt all that is
valuable in the achievements of science and technology in this field. The possibility of
building socialism depends exactly upon our success in combining the Soviet power
and the Soviet organization of administration with the up-to-date achievements of
capitalism. We must organise in Russia the study and teaching of the Taylor system and
systematically try it out and adapt it to our own ends. At the same time, in working to
raise the productivity of labour, we must take into account the specific features of the
transition period from capitalism to socialism, which, on the one hand, require that the
foundations be laid of the socialist organization of competition, and, on the other hand,
require the use of compulsion, so that the slogan of the dictatorship of the proletariat
shall not be desecrated by the practice of a lily-livered proletarian government.

One of the key features of the communist adaptation of the Taylor system is made clear here: ‘the
use of compulsion’. People will be compelled to work in The Soviet Republic.
Another crucial difference lies in The Organization of Competition. Rather than appeal to personal
ambition, people will be influenced by ‘force of example’:
Model communes must and will serve as educators, teachers, helping to raise the
backward communes. The press must serve as an instrument of socialist construction,
give publicity to the successes achieved by the model communes in all their details,
must study the causes of these successes, the methods of management these
communes employ, and, on the other hand, must put on the “black list” those
communes which persist in the “traditions of capitalism”, i.e., anarchy, laziness, disorder
and profiteering. In capitalist society, statistics were entirely a matter for “government
servants”, or for narrow specialists; we must carry statistics to the people and make
them popular so that the working people themselves may gradually learn to
understand and see how long and in what way it is necessary to work, how much time
and in what way one may rest, so that the comparison of the business results of the
various communes may become a matter of general interest and study, and that the
most outstanding communes may be rewarded immediately (by reducing the working
day, raising remuneration, placing a larger amount of cultural or aesthetic facilities or
values at their disposal, etc.).

While explaining the need to buy the bourgeoisie’s organizational skills, Lenin makes it clear that the
bourgeoisie actually thrives on anarchy and disorder:
... The chief organizing force of anarchically built capitalist society is the spontaneously
 growing and expanding national and international market.

...All the habits and traditions of the bourgeoisie and of the petty bourgeoisie in
particular, also oppose state control, and uphold the inviolability of “sacred private
property”, of “sacred” private enterprise. It is now particularly clear to us how correct is
the Marxist thesis that anarchism and anarcho-syndicalism are bourgeois trends, how
irreconcilably opposed they are to socialism, proletarian dictatorship and communism.

So another crucial difference between capitalist and communist Taylorism is the role of the state. In
capitalism, the workplace is a thoroughly planned and highly organised structure adrift in the sea of
anarchic, self-organizing markets; in The Soviet Republic, the spontaneous national and
international markets will be replaced by the central planning of a coercive dictatorship:
... It would be extremely stupid and absurdly utopian to assume that the transition from
capitalism to socialism is possible without coercion and without dictatorship.

... large-scale machine industry—which is precisely the material source, the productive
source, the foundation of socialism—calls for absolute and strict unity of will, which
directs the joint labours of hundreds, thousands and tens of thousands of people. The
technical, economic and historical necessity of this is obvious, and all those who have
thought about socialism have always regarded it as one of the conditions of socialism.
But how cans strict unity of will be ensured? By thousands subordinating their will to the
will of one.

Given ideal class-consciousness and discipline on the part of those participating in the
common work, this subordination would be something like the mild leadership of a
conductor of an orchestra. It may assume the sharp forms of a dictatorship if ideal
discipline and class-consciousness are lacking. But be that as it may, unquestioning
subordination to a single will is absolutely necessary for the success of processes
organised on the pattern of large-scale machine industry.

... We must learn to combine the “public meeting” democracy of the working people—
turbulent, surging, overflowing its banks like a spring flood—with iron discipline while at
work, with unquestioning obedience to the will of a single person, the Soviet leader,
 while at work.

Having, in 1914, criticized capitalist uses of the Taylor system for not increasing wages along with
productivity, Lenin now reveals the sacrifice he expects workers to make in The Soviet Republic:
Our aim is to ensure that every toiler, having finished his eight hours’ “task” in productive
labour, shall perform state duties without pay; the transition to this is particularly difficult,
but this transition alone can guarantee the final consolidation of socialism.

The proletariat have become slaves of the state, labour-soldiers to be conscripted and exploited
without recompense. In A Great Beginning, written in June 1919, Lenin expressed his delight that,
during the civil war, some railway workers of the Moscow-Kazan railway ‘spontaneously’ resolved to
work one hour extra every day and six hours on Saturday, for no pay. He took this to be a
momentous event, the proletariat working in a revolutionary way, the beginning of the higher
productivity that would replace capitalism:
Communism is the higher productivity of labour—compared with that existing under
capitalism—of voluntary, class-conscious and united workers employing advanced
techniques. Communist subbotniks are extraordinarily valuable as the actual beginning
of communism; and this is a very rare thing, because we are in a stage when "only the
first steps in the transition from capitalism to communism are being taken” (as our Party
Programme quite rightly says).

Communism begins when the rank-and-file workers display an enthusiastic concern that
is undaunted by arduous toil to increase the productivity of labour, husband every
pood of grain, coal, iron and other products, which do not accrue to the workers
personally or to their "close” kith and kin, but to their "distant” kith and kin, i.e., to society
as a whole, to tens and hundreds of millions of people united first in one socialist state,
and then in a union of Soviet republics.

Taylorism is frequently (and fairly) criticised for not appreciating the complexities of motivation, for
reducing motivation to a purely monetary incentive. However, whilst lacking psychological subtlety,
Taylorism is impeccably realistic. Whereas motivation in the Soviet Union was thoroughly utopian
and based on the belief that it is possible to rewire the human being to be more altruistic and
generous with its labour. The selfishness and petty-mindedness demonstrated by Mayakovsky's
Prisypkin was seen as the result of bourgeois-capitalist conditioning rather than intransigent features
of human nature. Lenin thought it possible to remove these features through coercion and appeals
to collective altruism.
The enslavement of Russia and the failure of the Soviet Union did not begin with Stalin: the roots of it
already lay in Lenin’s coercive, massively centralized dictatorship. In fact, Stalin fully approved of
Lenin’s synthesis of ‘American efficiency’ with ‘Russian revolutionary sweep’: Style at Work, from The
Foundations of Leninism

[For an alternative take on Lenin's Taylorism, look at this excellent post at The Measures Taken: Art is
a branch of Mathematics: Zamyatin and Soviet Socio-Fantasy]

back to top

5. Meyerhold's Machines

The Director as Dictator

Meyerhold was a dictator in his theatre – quite literally. His revolutionary theatre overthrew the rule
of the playwright:
After all, naming Meyerhold as the ‘author’ of the production constitutes a massive
challenge to the hegemony of the playwright. It is a categorical statement in favour of
the ‘theatre theatrical’ as opposed to the literary theatre and it marks in general terms
the ascendancy of the director in the twentieth century. [14]

Meyerhold liberated theatre from its slavish reverence to the playwright’s text and instructions;
adapting plays to his own visions, changing the structure, genre, settings and characters as he saw
fit.
To tighten his dictatorial grip, Meyerhold had unprecedented control over the movements of his
actors, thanks to their rigorous training in his technique of biomechanics, which he developed
through synthesizing Taylor’s time and motion studies with Pavlov’s ‘objective’ psychology.

Pavlov

Pavlov’s ‘objective psychology’ was in fact physiology, or the explanation of behaviour through
strict reference to observable physiological phenomena. The phenomena which explain behaviour
are the reflexes.
Pavlov defines the reflexes as “the inevitable responses of the organism to internal and external
stimuli.” Organisms are machines that are constructed to respond to stimuli, and their survival
depends on their responses. All behaviour, even seemingly active behaviour, such as pursuing
food, is a response to stimuli inside the organism’s body or in the environment it inhabits.
An external or internal stimulus falls on some one or other nervous receptor and gives
rise to a nervous impulse; this nervous impulse is transmitted along nerve fibres to the
central nervous system, and here, on account of existing nervous connections, it gives
rise to a fresh impulse which passes along outgoing nerve fibres to the active organ,
where it excites a special activity of the cellular structures. Thus a stimulus appears to be
connected of necessity with a definite response, as cause with effect. It seems obvious
that the whole activity of the organism should conform to definite laws. If the animal
were not in exact correspondence with its environment it would, sooner or later, cease
to exist. To give a biological example: if, instead of being attracted to food, the animal
were repelled by it, or if instead of running from fire the animal threw itself into the fire,
then it would quickly perish. The animal must respond to changes in the environment in
such a manner that its responsive activity is directed towards the preservation of its
existence…. Being a definite circumscribed material system, it can only continue to exist
so long as it is in continuous equilibrium with the forces external to it: so soon as this
equilibrium is seriously disturbed the organism will cease to exist as the entity it was.
Reflexes are the elemental units in the mechanism of perpetual equilibration.
Conditioned Reflexes, Lecture I

Pavlov extended his concept of the reflexes to include ‘instincts’. For Pavlov, there is no essential
difference between phenomena such as vomiting, which is considered a reflex, and the instinct for
self preservation: both are responses to stimuli.
Reflexes can differ in their complexity and type. A reflex can be part of a complex chain of reflexes
which constitute a coordinated response to a stimulus. A reflex can be excitatory or inhibitory,
inborn or learned.
If behaviour can be explained as the result of complex chain reflexes, then physiology has done
the job of psychology: it is a form of ‘objective psychology’.
Pavlov rejected psychology in favour of physiology because he did not consider psychology to be
an exact science: it was not based on observable and verifiable data. He thought that a true
psychology would become possible in the future, once physiology had laid ‘a solid foundation’,
but until then he would concentrate on what was possible.
Pavlov was extremely popular in Lenin’s Russia. There was obviously a certain amount of pride
taken in the fact that the scientist at the cutting edge of research into the brain and nervous
system was actually Russian. More importantly though, his theory also emphasises “the external,
material aspects of life. These were the things which could be consciously manipulated, unlike the
unknown forces of the ‘unconscious’.” [15]
Pavlov’s placing ‘subjective psychology’ temporarily off-bounds seems to have encouraged
various Bolsheviks and behaviourists to assume it did not exist. If the human being was just an
organism with a set of inborn and learned responses, then the organism could easily be taught new
responses. The organism could also be conveniently treated as raw material without too many
pangs of conscience.
Unlike the arrogant pseudo-science of Marxism, Pavlov’s scientific research was motivated by an
acute awareness of human ignorance and the limits of scientific knowledge:
Although the investigation of these reflexes by physiologists has been going on now for
a long time, it is as yet not nearly finished. Fresh reflexes are continually being
discovered. We are ignorant of the properties of those receptor organs for which the
effective stimulus arises inside the organism, and the internal reflexes themselves remain
a field unexplored. The paths by which nervous impulses are conducted in the central
nervous system are for the most part little known, or not ascertained at all. The
mechanism of inhibitions confined within the central nervous system remains quite
obscure: we know something only of those inhibitory reflexes which manifest themselves
along the inhibitory efferent nerves. Furthermore, the combination and interaction of
different reflexes are as yet insufficiently understood.

Pavlov did not approve of the huge social engineering experiment that Russian society had
embarked on after the revolution and, fortunately for him, he was one of the public figures who
could get away with criticizing the Bolshevik regime:
Although he was never a politician, he spoke fearlessly for what he considered the
truth. In 1922, during the distressing conditions in the aftermath of the Revolution, he
requested permission from Vladimir Lenin to transfer his laboratory abroad. Lenin denied
this request, saying that Russia needed scientists such as Pavlov and that Pavlov should
have the same food rations as an honoured Communist. Although it was a period of
famine, Pavlov refused: "I will not accept these privileges unless you give them to every
one of my collaborators!" In spite of many honours granted him by Soviet officials, he
upbraided them openly.

After returning from his first visit to the United States in 1923 (the second was in 1929), he
publicly denounced Communism, stated that the basis for international Marxism was
false, and said that "For the kind of social experiment that you are making, I would not
sacrifice a frog's hind legs!" Crystallinks
The Actor of the Future
Meyerhold:
An actor must possess the capacity for Reflex Excitability. Nobody can become an
actor without it… From a sequence of physical positions and situations there arise points
of excitation which are informed with some physical emotion. [16]

Biomechanics establishes the principles of precise analytical execution of each motion,

establishes the differentiation of each motion for purposes of maximum precision,
demonstrativeness -- visual Taylorism of motion (Sign of refusal -- the establishing of the
start and end points of motion, a pause after each accomplished motion, the
geometrization of movement in planes.) We must be able to show the modern actor on
stage as a complete automation.

The actor's art is the creation of plastic forms in space. Therefore, the actor's art is the
ability to utilize the expressive potential of his body correctly. This means that the route
to image and feeling must begin not with experience, not with seeking to plumb the
meaning of the role, not with an attempt to assimilate the psychological essence of the
phenomenon, in sum, not "from within" but from without; it must begin with motion. This
means the motion of an actor excellently trained, possessing musical rhythm and easy,
reflectory excitability; an actor whose natural abilities have been developed by
systematic training. [17]BioMechanics
Meyerhold’s theatre rejected Stanislavski’s emphasis on the actor’s subjective psychology; their
private inner emotions and experience. Instead of connecting with their role and internalizing it on
a psychological level, Meyerhold’s actors were expected to externalize their role through
rhythmical movements that were planned and drilled until they became second nature. These
uniform movements excite emotions, i.e. physical responses triggered by biomechanical chain
reflexes. The actor was required to be hyper-sensitive to cues, “reacting almost instantaneously to a
given stimulus, as if shocked by an electric charge’[18], and the theatre became a social (and
obviously non-bourgeois) space traversed by the collective circuitry of flowing stimuli.
In the early 1920s, Meyerhold's theatre was modelled on industrial lines. Under strict supervision, the
actors had no room for initiative because every movement was carefully controlled and supervised
by the Managing Director. And while the actors were cogs in the machine managed by the
dictatorial Director, the theatre functioned as a cultural machine in the assembly line of imminent
socialist hyperproductivity, managed by the Party (on behalf of the proletariat). Though
increasingly eclipsed by film, theatre still had a crucial part to play in the construction of "a new
industrial man, one who was no longer the old man of sentimental passions and traditions but the
new man who gladly accepts his role as a bolt or screw in the gigantic coordinated industrial
machine."[19]
back to top

[1] Meyerhold and Stanislavsky: Art and Politics in the Russian Theatre (1898 -1940) by G.G. for
Russian Theater Website
[2] p22-3 Vsevolod Meyerhold, Jonathan Pitches, Routledge Performance Practioners, 2003
[3] Meyerhold.org Meyerhold and Stanislavsky: Art and Politics in the Russian Theatre (1898
-1940) by G.G. for Russian Theater Website;
[4] Meyerhold in the 1920s
[5] Meyerhold.org, but not mentioned by Jonathan Pitches
[6] Meyerhold in the 1920s
[7] The Bedbug, translated by Max Hayward, The Golden Age of Soviet Theatre, Penguin 1966
[8] newmedia
[9] ibid
[10] Patricia Blake, Introduction to The Bedbug, The Golden Age of Soviet Theatre
[11] ibid.
[12] ibid.
[13] Markets, Bureaucracies and New Economy Management Theory
[14] p90 Vsevolod Meyerhold, Jonathan Pitches, Routledge Performance Practioners, 2003
[15] p72 ibid.
[16] p72 ibid.
[17] BioMechanics
[18] p116 Vsevolod Meyerhold, Jonathan Pitches, Routledge Performance Practioners, 2003
[19] Slavoj Žižek A Plea for Leninist Intolerance. Critical Inquiry, Winter 2002.
This crafty text, which attempts to rehabilitate Lenin, or certain components of Lenin, hits the nail
firmly on the head as far as Meyerhold is concerned:
Russian avant-garde art of the early twenties (futurism, constructivism) not only zealously endorsed
industrialization, it even endeavored to reinvent a new industrial man, one who was no longer the old man
of sentimental passions and traditions but the new man who gladly accepts his role as a bolt or screw in
the gigantic coordinated industrial machine. As such, it was subversive in its very ultraorthodoxy, that is,
in its overidentification with the core of the official ideology: the human image that we get in Eisenstein,
Meyerhold, constructivist paintings, and so on emphasizes the beauty of his or her mechanical
movements, his or her thorough depsychologization. What was perceived in the West as the ultimate
nightmare of liberal individualism, as the ideological counterpoint to Taylorization, to Fordist
ribbonwork, was in Russia hailed as the utopian prospect of liberation. Recall how Meyerhold violently
asserted the "behaviorist" approach to acting, no longer advocating emphatic familiarization with the
person the actor is playing but ruthless bodily training aimed at cold physical discipline, at the ability of
the actor to perform the series of mechanized movements. This is what was unbearable to and in the
official Stalinist ideology, so that Stalinist socialist realism effectively was an attempt to reassert a
"socialism with a human face," that is, to reinscribe the process of industrialization into the constraints of
the traditional psychological individual. In socialist realist texts, paintings, and films, individuals are no
longer rendered as parts of the global machine, but as warm, passionate persons.

back to top