Throw Off Cultural Bureaucrats, Soviet Theater Union Told

Soviet actors, playwrights and theater directors were told Friday to break away from control by cultural bureaucrats and help Kremlin leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev reform Soviet society.

The call was issued in Gorbachev’s presence at the inaugural congress of a new Union of Theatrical Societies, formed last month on a mounting wave of liberalization in the Soviet theater and other areas of cultural life.

Actor Kirill Lavrov, expected to be elected head of the union, told delegates in the Grand Kremlin Palace that the period since the late 1960s had been marked by stagnation and bureaucratic censorship in the theater.

The new union, he said, had been formed to help the theater establish its independence from the Culture Ministry and create works that would play a vital role in “the process of renewal and change” promoted by Gorbachev.

Formation of the union comes as theaters across the country are being freed from control by officials of the Ministry of Culture and being made responsible for their own repertoires as well as their own finances.

At the same time, new experimental studio theaters are being opened--seven are to be inaugurated in Moscow alone early next year--and others which have existed in semi-secrecy are being formally recognized.