The horizon of our knowledge is getting slowly wider by each year. We have read Solzhenitsyn and Orwell, József Lengyel and Béla Szász. We can thank also for their works, that after a while, we can think that we have known “almost everything” about the tragedies of the yesterday. At that time, the humorous “riddle” could be connected to the documentary program of the Hungarian Radio: Who knows more about the Soviet Union? And the tricky answer was evident too: “Of course the CIA does.”

During one of the general meeting of the Hungarian Writers’ Association, which was followed by great interest of the country and tried to widen the walls and the borders of the dictatorship, Erzsébet Karr Kádár, a short story writer and journalist, who had good pen and eyes, asked a question: “How could it happen, that I was always and also this year put during the education of the party into the short course of the history of the Bolshevik Party of Soviet Union? When could I finally take part in the long course of the history of the party?”

We have not known enough then and even later about Erzsébet Karr Kádár. We have not known that even during her years in the secondary school, she was one of the organising members of the Marx Circle, during the time of the Soviet Republic, she worked on the People Commissariat of general education and in 1922 she found to be wiser to emigrate first to Paris and later to London. We only knew that sometimes in 1948, she returned to Hungary. As young titans, who we were, while sitting in the lines of the viewers, we laughed a lot on this unknown question. How can exist more variations with different lengths of our same compulsory readings? Our imagined advantage came from the fact, that the history of the party, which was covered with white clothes, could be found in many of the home libraries at that time, after it had been published in more hundred thousand copies by the Szikra Publisher. I, for example, got from the fifth edition, which had about 260-560 copies, but probably, many of those, who were sitting around me, would not have thought that the writer, who pushed into the edge of the history of literature, could be so much cleverer and more informed than we were...

The story that had calmed down to be an anecdote happened 60 years ago. During this period together with the country, we have also learnt many things. The books and the topics have changed. However, the dogmas have lived for a long time. Today we have already known that in Hungary besides the science, also the literature and theatre have had the experience, that we have started, maybe not so clearly, but at least more clearly to see the history of the labour movement and even of the soviet empire – the horrible dict. – too. We have also learnt, which the half world knew, that the mentioned book is not only short, but embarrassingly incomplete too. The political targeting of the philippics, which dealt with the lawsuits of the twentieth and thirtieth era was about to help us learn from them, and it was evident. Because of our naivety, we were not so shocked by the fact, that the victims of the show trials, the captives of Gulag were not mentioned – especially with their names – in those manuals, which were written to serve the power.

It was the surprise of this year that our well-known novel and drama writer, György Spiró knows much more, not even than we do, but even than the desperate writer of the biographies. His novel of the Diavolina, which happens in Gorky’s surrounding, with the use of authentic documents, authentic sources of the archives. It is not accidental, that Spiró’s book has become success of literature and bestseller during some weeks. There have not been any crime stories, which we would read with greater excitement, than the testimony of the writer’s servant, later his doctor’s and last lover’s. In the tiny book, there is much information about the everyday lives of the chased ones and of the privileged ones, about the thinking of the society of artists, and about the fate of the cadres, who disappear daily or weekly.

And besides each person’s fate, sufferings, the operation and mechanism of the dictatorship is slowly getting drown. The chasers and the chased ones appear by their names. However, we cannot forget even for a minute, that Diavolina is a novel, where the artistic tools, which the writer has used and chosen, have to certify the facts. But we could feel and experience that the writer, Gorky by the time, had become a double-souled one, he screened his surrounding, he talked on behalf of his heroes, and he let us know the half-hidden or half-known secrets of the history. Now we could learn the past together with Spiró with excitement and pleasure.

But this course is a long one, and we have become its volunteer students, and it has not finished with it yet. After the novel, in the November of this year, the theatre became its place. It could happen on behalf of the independent troupe of Maladype, which has captivated us with brave proposals for years. After Gorky and Diavolina, they presented Victor Kravchenko’s autobiography, who was said to be traitor for decades in the countries of ‘existing Socialism”. The manifesto – “I Chose Freedom” –of more hundred pages, which has raised big storm and argument even in the western world, is the authentic chronicle of the writer’s life, who became engineer from the worker, than stigmatized and disillusioned cadre from the enthusiastic young official.

To be able to understand his fate and book, we have to know that ordeal that he had to go on, if he tried to force open his real and virtual shackles, who after his painful trials dared to and could choose freedom. The successful dissident wrote his book in emigration, in the USA, and he disturbed the public opinion of his time. Only my undying interest as a journalist, could make me learn more about him. Victor Kravchenko’s name, who had a serious career in the party, could not be found in the index of the history of the Bolshevik party. So it is understandable, that we, the fans, who are sitting on the tiny auditorium of the Maladype Theatre, can know hardly anything about the writer of this autobiography; about the only hero of this monologue on stage, about the carefully hidden matter of Kravchenko, since the appearance of the book.

It is Zoltán Balázs’, the leader of the troupe, merit to find, to get translated by Péter Konok, then with the publishing of Maladype can make Kravchenko’s book appear, which has had a worldwide success. With his venture he must have opened another gate of secrets for many of us. But he has done much more since then, when he condensed the large book into a text – monologue – that can be presented during an evening.

According to the tiny promotion by Balázs’ group, this venture is mentioned as a reading theatre, but it is not the truth. Anyway, on the modest pulpit, which is in front of the actor, there is the folder, which kept the 65 pages long text, but we can see and follow that Zoltán Balázs resigns of the given helper and he hardly looks into it. According to my theatrical experiences I can tell, that performing with so much passion and empathy – especially without any partners – can be made only if the performer can become Kravchenko during the time of the performance in reality. If he can present his historical and political experiences and adventures of his individuality, while he is in the skin of the hero. The viewers can also feel it, when they get into almost intimate, personal contact with that dramatic hero, who could choose freedom by forcing open the bars of the dictatorship.

In spite of its success, I do not think, that from now on crowds of people will bombard the cash desk of Maladype. But I hope, that there will be always those young ones and not so young ones, who are ready and sensitive to the mental challenge, which is demanded by political theatre and who are ready to study consistently from the past and the past itself. We should do it...

Anna Földes, Népszava/Szép Szó, 2015

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)