It was the spring of 1990. The previous November, the Berlin Wall had come down. We were still over a year from the formal dissolution of the Soviet Union and a few months ahead of Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait that led us into Operation Desert Storm. I was in my mid-20s, working as a cub reporter at The Knoxville Journal.

I don’t recall the exact date, but it was likely sometime late in the second week or early the third week of May. A friend of mine called me to say he and his band were going to be putting on a benefit show at Ella Guru’s down in the Old City for some stranded Russian circus, and he wanted me to drop a blurb in a Whispers column.

Huh? Not the drop the blurb part, the stranded Russian circus part. I hadn’t been paying attention to much of anything at the time. It was early May, and though I wasn’t a sports reporter, I was going to the Kentucky Derby, might as well have a press pass while I was there, and I did. So, the first week of May, my mind was on thoroughbreds and heading to Louisville, Kentucky for three days. I had totally missed out on the appearance of The Great Circus Bim Bom at the Knoxville Civic Coliseum the first two days of May.

As it turns out, a whole lot of other people missed out on it, too, because it was sparsely promoted: no paid advertisements that I could find and only a couple of event blurbs from the days of the shows, both of which encouraged local schools and youth organizations to call for free tickets. The sparse promotion turned into sparse attendance. Which turns into sparse receipts, and their next slate of dates in Johnson City being cancelled before they even had a chance to leave Knoxville.

So, the circus hung around Knoxville a few more days. Then Mayor Victor Ashe proclaimed that Friday, May 4, Peace and Good Will Day. Because that was what the whole tour was supposed to be about. A week later, the circus animals were impounded in New Jersey and the roughly 125 performers were being kicked out of hotels near Marietta, Georgia for unpaid bills. None of which was the fault of the performers, hailed as the finest collection of acrobats, illusionists, trapeze artists and animal tamers gathered from 60 circuses across the Soviet Union. The circus took its name from a pair of clowns who performed for the Czars of Russia. At least, prior to the October Revolution of 1917.

The circus had barely started touring before everything went sideways. They arrived in the U.S. in March for preparations somewhere in West Virginia. The first show was in Hershey, Pennsylvania. Knoxville was second on the list, and obviously the promotor wasn’t doing his job. By the time they made it to Georgia, the Kuwaiti investors had ghosted them and the bad checks left behind. Their animals and equipment in hock. A lioness gave birth to two cubs, named Marietta and Atlanta.

I went to the show at Ella’s, and we all had a good time, and I presume the money made into the hands of the stranded performers. Over the next several months, they survived on the kindness of churches, other circuses and people who just took them in and helped some find odd jobs to get the funds to make it back home. By August, the owner of the rival Moscow Circus, which was also touring the states, put up the money to get the remaining 35-40 back home for the last days of the U.S.S.R.

Which, speaking of, why didn’t the Soviet government lift a finger to get them back? A decade prior, there is no way in hell the K.G.B. (coincidentally, the name of my friend’s band) would have left any of their citizens stranded in the west.

“They were invited by American parties,” a Soviet press attaché told Variety magazine. “The Soviet government is not responsible for their troubles.”

Ah. Perestroika.

Sources: Knoxville Journal digital archives, The Washington Post digital archives, Variety magazine digital archives

Beth Kinnane writes a history feature for KnoxTNToday.com. It’s published each Tuesday and is one of our best-read features.

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