The First Circus Of The USSR: Baku (1967) The History Of the “Burning” Circus

The first stationary menagerie circus in the USSR was built in the capital of Azerbaijan, Baku city, in 1967. However, before the describing that occurrence, it is quite important to note the history of Baku Circus pending the entry of Azerbaijan into the USSR.

Majority of us hearing the word “circus” thinks of the first visit to it in childhood. When bright and striped marquee attracted our attention and we lost sense of time: we jumped into another, parallel, world. The world filled of magnificent tricks of aerial gymnasts under the dome of the circus, clown buffoonery and horse voltage which demonstrated the human’s skills to communicate with animals.

The brothers Nickitins – Akeem, Dmitri and Peter were the first who made the dream of a number of local people come true. The thing is that the citizens of Baku could enjoy only performances of the traveling circus and street magicians.

There was need for a real circus. After the arriving to Baku, three brothers decided to construct the Circus building in the city of Baku. The first Circus building in Baku was created in 1989, on Uzeir Hajibeyov Street. The material for it was wood – unfortunately, that became the reason of the later alterations.

In 1906, the building was on fire and collapsed. The Circus was reconstructed after the damages in the same year. For once, the brothers Nickitins chose the stone as the main material. It operated efficiently until 1916 when the brothers Efimovs destroyed the building of the brothers Nickitins. Unexpectedly, the brothers Efimovs made the same mistake: they decided to create the Circus from wood. Their decision came back to haunt them in December 1924 when the wooden circus was in flame and turned into ash.

It seems like the sequence of the burning circuses has been completed by that time. Nevertheless, strange plexus of circumstances repeated everything again: in 1928, Y.Kudryavtsev built the new Circus – and again for the third time the material was wood and the place was the same. As You can guess, the wooden Circus burnt miserably…

It all worked out in 1967, when two architectures, Anwar Ismayilov and Faina Leontyeva decided to make the plan of a new Baku Circus building. They had worked a lot and had changed many things before the workers began to build. Baku Circus was the only circus building with the number of 2400 spectator seats. Only in 1971, there was built The Big Moscow Circus on Vernadskiy Prospect with 3310 spectator seats.
As it can be seen, the history of the Baku Circus, literally, passed through the fire and was preserved until nowadays as the soviet building of 1967. Alas, since then, nothing changed and the Circus needs fixing.

Tags: baku , The first circus , Circus