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Fearful Eye on the West: A Russian Views the McCarthy Years
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10990 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
Date : |
11 / 1993 |
2,175 Words |
| Author
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Herb Greer
Herb Greer is an American writer and playwright who lives in
Britain and on the Continent. |
The advance publicity for Mikhail Shatrov's Maybe promised an interesting evening. Shatrov, it was said, understands fear. He was born in 1932 and grew up under Stalin. During the purges some thirty of his family were wiped out, and his mother was in the camps until 1954. According to the PR handout, the main theme of Shatrov's work is "the struggle against the Stalinist interpretation of the Russian Revolution."
These facts in his abbreviated bio make this Russian playwright sound almost like a dissident. One imagines him published in Samizdat, surviving under the toughest of conditions in a tyrannical state. But then other facts begin to emerge: Actually, his writings were not circulated in Samizdat. We are told that the majority of his works were subjected to "censorship," but they seem to have survived the ordeal very well. His plays were published and performed in the bad old days, pre-glasnost, all over the Soviet Union, in China, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Bulgaria.
Perhaps this had something to do with the fact that Shatrov was, from 1958 on, a member of the USSR Union of Writers. From 1960 to 1986 he was deputy chairman, then first deputy chairman, then chairman of the Moscow Playwrights Guild. In 1981 he became secretary of the board of directors of the USSR Union of Writers. He holds the Order of the Red Labor Banner and a state prize for one of his plays. Some dissident. But this did not prevent Waterford, Connecticut, from giving him the title Most Honored Citizen for his work on the American-Soviet "Theater Initiative."
Fear Understood
Still, Shatrov understands fear. We have his word for it. It may have been this understanding that inspired his friend Vanessa Redgrave to commission a play from him. She had the brilliant idea of wrapping this play around--wait for it--the McCarthyite period in the United States. According to the Royal Exchange Theatre, this project relates to a deep understanding of fear because it deals with, and I quote, "a period of blatant political repression scarcely imagined in the modern Western World." When you consider that the modern Western world has included figures like Hitler and Mussolini (not to mention Vanessa's other friend, Fidel Castro), it becomes obvious that Shatrov, Vanessa, and the Royal Exchange must possess a very special insight into America's McCarthy years.
Shatrov's new play for Vanessa was called Maybe, and Manchester's Royal Exchange director, Braham
...
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