Dostoevsky and World Culture Dostoevsky and World Culture 2619-0311 2712-8512 IWL RAS https://doi.org/10.22455/2619-0311-2026-1-170-209 Research Article Articles “Uncle’s Dream” at the Leningrad Comedy Theatre (1956) as Reflected in Audience Conferences Druzhinin Petr A. fedor@dostmirkult.ru 25 03 2026 1 1 170 209 F.M. Dostoevsky A.S. Dolinin V.I. Sikevich-Vasilyev N.P. Akimov A.D. Beniaminov Copyright © 2026, IWL RAS 2026 The article publishes previously unknown transcripts of audience conferences held at the Leningrad Comedy Theatre in early 1956 after performances of “Uncle’s Dream,” which became the first Leningrad premiere within the celebration of the 75th anniversary of the writer’s death. A unique set of circumstances explains why the stage director of this production, based on the novella by Fyodor Dostoevsky, was V.I. Vasilyev, a former actor of the Moscow Art Theatre who had left with the troupe of Vasily Kachalov, who did not return to the USSR, and lived abroad until the summer of 1955. It was precisely his directing experience—including several productions of “Uncle’s Dream” in Warsaw and Prague — that proved extremely necessary at a moment when Dostoevsky’s works were beginning to return to the Soviet stage. The article also examines the very phenomenon of audience conferences. Initially, in the 1920s, they served as a means of connecting the theater with the masses, but their true flourishing belongs to the era of the Thaw, when spectators could criticize what was happening on stage without particular fear. Thanks to the preserved transcripts, it becomes possible to compose a portrait of the audience and to see their attitude both toward the theater in general and toward specific productions, actors, and authors of literary works. Among the published transcripts is a speech by Professor A.S. Dolinin, in which he calls Dostoevsky—until recently a banned author—“an extraordinary phenomenon, perhaps a unique phenomenon in Russian and world literature.”