Comrade Windermere's Fan

SOVIET SCENE: Six PLAYS OF RUSSIAN LIFE (348 pp.)--translated by Alexander Bakshy--Yale ($4.50).

Translator Bakshy, onetime film critic of the Nation, chose his six plays as a cross section of Soviet dramatic tastes from the 1917 Revolution to World War II. As a cross section, U.S. readers may find them interesting. But as drama they are flat, stale and unprofitable. All but one are marked by an ironbound propriety of theme that is fatal to both their humor and their excitement.

Konstantin Trenyov's Lyubov Yaro-vaya, produced in 1926, gives a clear idea of the then-basic requirements of Soviet dramatic ideology. Its characters, all involved in the Civil War, include: the inevitable, honest man-of-the-people (in the role of hero-commissar), a few doddering defenders of private-property rights, a devoted girl who rates the state above the heart, less devoted girls who do not. Bourgeois sentimentalism is barred: e.g., when the commissar catches his bosom friend stealing jewelry, he rises from his desk, shoots his pal dead, quietly goes on with his dictation. Playwright Trenyov achieves comic relief with such lines as "What's the idea of [wearing] counter-revolutionary pants?"

GPU Gags. Nikolay Pogodin's The Chimes of the Kremlin is about the reconstruction period following the Revolution. Its theme is Lenin's famous definition: "Soviets plus electrification equals socialism." The cast includes Lenin, Stalin, GPU Chief Dzerzhinsky, and a world-famous but childish English author who tries to persuade Lenin (as H. G. Wells once did) into feeding the people before electrifying them ("Have you ever seen such a ... petty, hopeless Philistine?" chuckles Lenin). Chimes's comic relief, of an unusual sort, comes when an old watchmaker is whisked away by the GPU. His unhappy family is sure that he is going to be shot, but it turns out that amiable Lenin merely wants him to fix the Kremlin chimes.

What Chimes does for electric turbines, Alexander Afinogenov's* Far Taiga, (1935) does for the Trans-Siberian Railway. Mechanical trouble causes the Moscow express to drop off one of its special cars at a lonely siding--and out steps the Corps Commander of the Far-Eastern Soviet Army. Soon Commander Malko convinces the bored, lonely stationmaster, switchman, and their families that they also serve who only stand and shunt.

Vassily Shkvarkin's Father Unknown (1933) marks a turning point in Soviet propaganda-drama history--the official switch from contempt for "bourgeois prejudices" to respect for marriage and family unity. It belabors a young, unmarried actress who is so "modern" that she feels desperately that she has to pretend to be pregnant so that she can interpret the reactionary role of a seduced girl.

Vassily Ilyenkov's The Square of Flowers marks the completion of this counterrevolution. Written during the German invasion in 1941, it is an attempt to stimulate Russian resistance by unashamed appeals to "old" values.

"Our great-grandmother pounded rusks in it," a woman says of a kitchen mortar, "it's something sacred to me. How can I leave it behind?" A soldier is asked: "What are you fighting for?" and replies: "So that after the war I can have a house of my own, a family--kids ... a pretty house, with shrubs and flowers. . . ."

Samuel Marshak's Twelve Months is the only surprise package in the book--and the best. Author Marshak is a translator of Wordsworth, Blake, Keats, Shakespeare, Burns, and his new play is a lyrical fantasy on the old Christmas pantomime model, complete with the wicked old woman, Cinderella-girl, a young queen, talking animals and magic wands. Twelve Months does nothing to establish a new tradition, but it does add charm and poetry to a very old one.

Dated Hopes. Honest Translator Bakshy makes no attempt to gild the mediocrity of his choices, but he holds out some hope for the future of Soviet drama. Says he:

". . . The still young but rapidly growing class of educated people ... is showing definite signs of nearing the end of its present stage of intellectual adolescence."

Unfortunately for his thesis, his most hopeful words for the future have already been somewhat dated by the recent culture purge. Translator Bakshy writes "of a changing attitude in official circles. . . . Playwrights . . . and some theater directors . . . who only a few years ago were constantly badgered ... for either libeling Soviet life or indulging in hothouse estheticism, have lately been awarded the highest honors." On this encouraging (but no longer valid) premise, he concludes: "Perhaps some day the present zeal for using the theater as a means for visual demonstration of copybook maxims (Soviet version) will pass too. . . ."

*Playwright Afinogenov was in disgrace in 1937, but returned to favor two years later. He was killed in the defense of Moscow in November 1941.

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