Frontline Theaters

professional theater groups that performed during the Great Patriotic War (1941–45) for units of the Soviet Army and Navy at the front and in frontline regions, as well as at paramilitary establishments in the rear, such as evacuation points and hospitals.

The first frontline theaters included the Theater of the Kiev Military District, the Smolensk Drama Theater, the Theater of the Red Banner Baltic Fleet, the Kalinin Drama Theater, and the Theater of the People’s Militia (later the agitational platoon of the Leningrad House of the Red Army). Approximately 30 frontline theaters were organized, including five theaters of the All-Russian Theatrical Society and branches of the Evg. Vakhtangov Theater, the Malyi Theater, the Leningrad A. S. Pushkin Theater of Drama, and the Leningrad M. Gorky Bolshoi Drama Theater. In 1946 certain frontline theaters became touring and resident theaters of the Soviet Army and Navy. In 1943 a group of frontline theaters presented excerpts of their productions at a performance in Moscow.