Samizdat. John of Moscow ( V. Polyakov ). Yves Montand in Moscow.

Samizdat. John of Moscow ( V. Polyakov ). Yves Montand in Moscow.
A unique copy from the library of Nikita Bogoslovsky. 61 p. Hardcover, size 13.5 x 17 cm. Typewritten and handwritten sheets, pasted one photo, filled out a questionnaire. PP

"Montan arrived, but my wife and I were not invited to a concert, or a Banquet, or to the CDRI, or to the Hippodrome, or to Serebryany Bor, or to Cherkasov, or to Obraztsov, or to Ehrenburg - nowhere!!! I sat at home, sucked my finger and sucked the poem, took a little heart and settled my scores - with Raikin, with Obraztsov, with Utesov, with their wives (why do they work, scoundrels!), and by the way, with Soviet girls - spectators (tudyt them in God's soul... under Montana, without nylon!" 

At the end of 1956, the French chansonnier and film actor Yves Montand arrived in Moscow with his wife, the famous film actress Simone Signoret.

The most amazing dedication to the French artist was the anonymous poem "Yves Montand and others", distributed in reprints. The author, hiding behind the pseudonym "John of Moscow" (presumably the Moscow playwright Vladimir Polyakov), angrily and verbally criticized "representatives of the Soviet creative intelligentsia" for their servile attitude to the Western guest. Arkady Raikin, Sergey Obraztsov, and Leonid Utesov were particularly hard hit.

Soon a shorter but no less vulgar verse "Reply to John of Moscow from Gabriel of Leningrad" appeared, accusing Polyakov of "...with a mellifluous tongue/ Singing hymns, crawling on his belly, / At the feet of a Hungarian whore". But this is a different exhibit.

Here is what the composer Nikita Bogoslovsky recalled about this : 

 There was a talented playwright, the founder, among other things, of the Moscow theater of Miniatures, which was located in the Hermitage, where the Hermitage theater is now, he was the artistic Director, and his plays were performed there in large numbers...

         He, by the way, Polyakov, still distinguished himself for the whole of Moscow, when Yves Montand came to Moscow for the first and last time at the invitation of Sergei Obraztsov. And he, about how our artistic intelligentsia behaved, how it fawned over this artist, how it messed with him, he wrote a great poem. Where he very much offended Obraztsov himself, as well as a number of other famous people. In particular, Leonid Osipovich Utesov. Obraztsov immediately threw out of his repertoire both of Polyakov's plays that were there, and they remained enemies for life. I have this poem somewhere. I can't find her. Because one of the editors really wanted to publish it. Time has passed and now it would be read with a different, uh, emotional intensity than in those days.