The process of cultural renewal proved to be far more complex and contradictory than it might have appeared to be at first sight. The principal problem, however, from the very outset, lay not in the stubborn resistance of conservative forces (nothing else was to be expected) but in the weakness of the positive programme put forward by the liberals.
The chief banner of the ‘children of the Twentieth Party Congress’ remains the criticism of Stalin. Abuladze’s Repentance, which was shown in all the major cinemas in the capital, ought, so to speak, to have given the signal for a new wave of anti-Stalin publications in the press, compelling the public to face up to the problems which had concerned the generation of the sixties. Unfortunately Abuladze’s film, for all its good qualities, was poorly suited for this role. The director had created neither a denunciatory pamphlet nor a realistic narrative of the terror, but instead a film-parable about the heirs of the murderers. The main theme is not the story of Varlam (a double of Beria) but the fate of those whose prosperity was based on the results of the terror. Varlam and his circle are murderers and executioners. His son and the children of his associates are transformed into complacent and almost respectable bourgeois. His grandson revolts not so much against Varlam’s evil deeds as against the hypocrisy and dissimulation of his father, who has built his bourgeois prosperity upon contempt for the victims of the terror and defence of the practices established by Varlam. In short, what we see is the revolt of the young generation, directed against the present rather than the past.
Most of the critics concentrated solely on the image of Varlam, seeing in the film no more than an allegorical account of the terror of the thirties in Georgia. It became quite impossible to criticize Abuladze’s work, which was far from being irreproachable in all respects. Since any reference to its weaker parts was taken by Moscow’s liberal circles as an attempt to rehabilitate Stalin, there could be no discussion of the film from either the creative or the political angle. Abuladze had every reason to be proud of its success. But many liberals had hoped for more when they had sought to ensure that Repentance was seen by the largest possible number of people. The revolution in public consciousness failed to occur — nor could it have done so.
Liberalization of culture proves most effective when the public is presented with works on subjects which, generally speaking, have not been openly discussed before. Such works invariably arouse great interest, regardless of their degree of merit. In society everything is less and less subject to taboos. Previously, for example, it was unthinkable to write a satirical play about the morals of the ruling upper crust. In the late seventies, when Rozov tried to do something of this sort in A Nest of Woodgrouse, the result of censorship and self-censorship was a failure from which the public simply stayed away. However, in the 1986-87 season two plays on this subject were put on at the same time in Moscow. Zorin’s The Quotation was a frank imitation of Griboedov’s comedy Woe from Wit, which all of us remember by heart from our schooldays. In this play the places of the serf-owning landlords of old Moscow are taken by high-ranking officials. All the characters speak in verse, combining traditional high-flown style with bureaucratic jargon. At the end some images from the Bible suddenly appear. The high-ranking official Baltazarov is quite unable to grasp the meaning of a quotation which he has himself hung up in his office, and is still less able to discover who wrote it. At last light dawns: he has unintentionally put up a text from the Bible distorted by bureaucratic slang — ‘The dead seize hold of the living.’ The ancient saying proves to be absolutely to the point. The whole story of the quest for the author of the quotation assumes new meaning. The incomprehensible slogan on the wall is a reminder of the letters which appeared before King Belshazzar, presaging his doom.
Another play about bureaucratic morality was Radzinsky’s Sporting Scenes of 1981, which shows the corruption, alienation and lack of spirituality prevailing ‘among the elite’, the degeneration of the grandchildren of the powerful leading figures of Stalin’s time. In the form it takes, Sporting Scenes frankly recalls the plays of Edward Albee. Radzinsky does not hide this. Everything that happens in the play is quite absurd. Unfortunately, though, all the absurd situations are taken from life and the spectators recognize them. Many people are shocked by the cynical conversations about sex, the purchasing of articles in foreign-exchange shops and all sorts of intrigues. For the first time the unattractive aspects of the life led by the upper circles have been depicted on the stage, and this even in disgusting detail.
Both plays, The Quotation and Sporting Scenes, are brilliantly written, but neither opens up a new prospect. Instead, they sum up the lessons of the past, talking about things one wanted to discuss many years ago but was never allowed to. The appearance of several more works on the same theme might have undermined people’s interest in it. What is much more important for people today is how relations are developing between the opposing social forces in the process of change — the anatomy of new political conflicts, so strange after eighteen years of Brezhnevite stability. The political scientist Burlatsky has made an attempt to answer these questions, choosing, for the sake of clarity, the unexpected form of a dramatic dialogue. Burlatsky’s Two Views from One Office was first published in Literaturnaya Gazeta and then shown on television, the collocutors being played by the excellent actors Boltnev and Vel'yaminov. If we are to judge Burlatsky’s success by the number of people who watched his work, his triumph is beyond any doubt. The production aroused enormous interest. But has the author answered the questions he posed?
By resorting to the dialogue form, Burlatsky remained true to himself. Previously he had written a book about Macchiavelli in which the attentive reader could easily note the resemblance between hero and author. Now, imitating his hero, Burlatsky chose a typically Renaissance form to set out his views. The trouble is that by doing so he merely demonstrated the unsuitability of the tradition of the sixteenth-century ‘treatise in dialogue form’ for an exposition of present-day problems. In Burlatsky’s book the Florence of Macchiavelli bears a suspicious resemblance to Moscow in the early seventies, but one obviously needs to converse with today’s Soviet reader otherwise than with the readers to whom Macchiavelli, Bruno or Campanella addressed themselves.
The participants in Burlatsky’s dialogue are the progressive First Secretary of a regional Party committee and its conservative Second Secretary. The author obviously set out to refute the arguments used by opponents of change in their debate behind the scenes. In the upshot, however, it is Burlatsky’s positive hero who proves the clear loser in the contest. The conservative speaks frankly about the dangers to the system with which the changes are fraught, about the destruction of established and more or less viable bonds and ties on which a great deal depends, and about the contradiction between the new slogans and the old ideological dogmas with which the people’s heads have been stuffed for decades. In reply all the progressive can do is repeat general statements about the splendid future, the necessity of progress and the need for changes. Over many years most of our people have formed the habit of distrusting general talk and promises about the future.