Nostalgia, part II
Greetings all. I am writing to you from my bed, because my telephone cord won't reach the desk. This situation, does not, however, help my back at all. Oh well.
The other night, I was able to witness a fascinating event which cast further insight on Russia and the crazy Russian culture we all know and love. Thursday nigth was Marina's birthday. So to celebrate she bought theater tickets for a group of her family and friends and I was also invited. The play we saw was called "Never have I seen such a country...Or a short histor of the VKP-b in 2 parts" The first part is a really bad translation on my part of the Russian title, which is actually the first line in a famous Soviet song from the movie "Circus," sung by Liubov Orlova. The second part of the title refers to the book, " Short history of the Communist Party (Bolshevik)" allegedly written by none other than Joseph Stalin himself (VKP-b is the Russian abbreviation).
Yes, we went to see a musical about the history of the Soviet Union. And the musical used popular songs that everyone knows to tell its story.
It was fascinating. It started with Old Russia, and a group of characters representing the old aristocracy and then the Whites in the Civil War. And in come your enthusiastic young communists with new ideals, etc. A young girl though, falls in love with a bad NEP-man who gets arrested and she falls in love instead with an upright young communist. But this is the Soviet Union, so he is arrested during the Terror and sent off to a camp. The war comes and they free him to fight on the front but arrest him again when its over. (Incidentally there is no way I can do this play justice, I'm just trying to summarize a little.) The really interesting part was the 2nd act, when we get to the 1950s and Khrushchev's secret speech denouncing the cult of personality of Stalin. The performers starting singing a parody of some song and they start singing about Trotskii and Bukharin. At which point, and old man (and I mean old - WW2 veteran) in the row in front of us starts yelling at the stage, accusing them of anti-Soviet slander and sabotage. I mean, this guy is really upset. His wife keeps trying to cover his mouth to get him to be quiet and other audience members are getting out of their chairs, threatening to beat the crap out of him if he doesn't shut up. (Russians have this amazingly expressive way of shaking their fists at someone!) Well, this guy won't have it, so he gets up, plow out of his row and leaves, with his wife trailing behind.
Wow.
The play continues. The guy who was arrested comes back and is reunited with his wife, but you can see the gap between the people who were freed from the camps and the rest of Soviet society. So he immigrates. It was hilarious when the 1980s and Gorbachev arrives because these happy communists (the chorus would change its outfits to reflect the passage of time, and the outfits were hilariously stereotypical) are singing a song about Brezhnev when a bunch of punks rush out onto to the stage. A very interesting part came when the main woman starts to sing the Komsomol (Communist Youth League) anthem and is singing right to the audience. Many, many people were singing along and many people stood up, and not all elderly people, but people in their 40s who were already adults before the Soviet Union collapsed.
And it all ends up with the Russians selling out to Hollywood. :-)
The play was hilarious, even though I didn't get all of the nuances, I know the context. Marina and her friends (who are in their late 30s and early 40s) loved it. Many times Marina has said to me "how did we live then? Why did we live like that?" But they did and it was their lives. And those were their songs and their stories.
