The Inheritors

Warnings from a stage Lenin

As the play opens, a balding man walks pensively to a desk in a dimly lit study. He has come to retrieve a red folder containing his will. But as Muscovites who have been flocking to the new production soon discover, Thus We Will Win is no routine story of squabbling heirs. The character at center stage is Vladimir Lenin, founder of the Soviet state; the document he seeks is a political testament in which he warns his colleagues of future perils to the Communist Party.

Written by Dramatist. Mikhail Shatrov, Thus We Will Win uses Lenin's surreptitious visit to his Kremlin office several months before his death in January 1924 as the starting point for a three-hour flashback through the early years of the Bolshevik regime. Soviet audiences sit rapt as Actor Alexander Kalyagin, a startling Lenin lookalike, voices concern that Joseph Stalin, who succeeded him and later presided over the deaths of millions of suspected opponents, has "concentrated enormous power in his hands." The stage Lenin calls for more openness and democracy in the party. "There are three things I cherish most: peace, bread and freedom," he says. "And freedom cannot come without the first two."

In a nation where audiences assiduously hunt for modern meaning in productions of Shakespeare, the parallels with Soviet Leader Leonid Brezhnev and the impending struggle to succeed him are obvious. Says one Moscow viewer: "Not everything today is the way Lenin is saying it should be." Indeed, during a recent performance there was a brief tremor of applause in the balcony when Kalyagin suggested that the post of general secretary should be subject to greater party control.

Yet the real drama may be more offstage than on. Rumors have been circulating that Thus We Will Win was the object of an ideological tug-of-war in the Politburo. Party Theoretician Mikhail Suslov, a hard-liner who died last January, is believed to have done his best to block the production, while Brezhnev Protege Konstantin Chernenko apparently intervened to save the play. As if to dispel any notion that the leadership was divided in its feelings, virtually the entire top rung of the Politburo, including Brezhnev, showed up for a performance early last month. In what may be the start of a period of transition, Shatrov's courageous play is a sign that some voices are speaking out for a re-examination of the traditions and practices of the Soviet state.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.