Victor Kravchenko admired his dad as a child, who stood as a leader of strikes at the head of the workers during the revolution of 1905. He himself, became a worker of metal factory, he was lifted from there, after the Revolution of October by a still honestly enthusiastic communist veteran. He studied to become an engineer, he became a leader, the proletarian existence was changed by the luxury of the five room of the upper-middle-class, with the always full fridge. During the famine in Ukraine, he got away the farmers’ grains till the last seed as a worker of the party, he could see the children, who are skin and bones, but his ideological belief made him blind. He saw the people’s poverty, which is deeper than in the times of tsars was, the unrestrained dictatorship of chinovniks and cadres, but the success of his work could make him forget about everything.

From Kravchenko’s 807 pages long autobiography Zoltán Balázs chose the most characteristic parts, he pushed into our face with wild passion the shocking facts. He speaks fast, he is almost blown up by anger and bitterness. Because, under the self-deluded sentences the doubt can also be found, we cannot brush aside the old real Bolsheviks’, so his father’s warning words. The show trials have begun, they execute one by one the leaders of the revolution, Stalin builds his horrific empire on the newest young cadres. Everybody is informer, because of the wish of career or of force, it turns out to be true about his lover, and all the second people are in his surroundings. His great ideal, Bukharin, who has a human face, also admits, that he is the agent of the imperialists, he is a spy and traitor. It is Kravchenko’s turn, during eighteen months /!!!/ he is interrogated every day, he is tortured, tormented, he survives it with some kind of success from above, but his blind belief has been shaken.

The horrible flow of dreadful things Zoltán Balázs’ direct comments, sudden stops can ease, he looks at us, he asks, some parts he sums up in a shorter version, he does not lose neither for a moment the live connection with the viewers. It is necessary very much: the lights of interrogation of NKVD and ÁVH can break our arrogant resistance, we are almost broken by the frightening atmosphere of vulnerable fears. It is similar to which we could feel during the reading of the book, of the Darkness at noon, but here and now we face up with the confession of a “free” elite man, who works as an industrial leader. The conspiration with Hitler, the Finnish war, the final strike is the annexation of the half of Poland and the Baltics, our hero does not fight any more for the Soviet System, he protects his home land, his nation. When he is sent to a further training, so to spy on to the USA, he states that he chooses freedom.

His book was published in America in 1946. Then we still loved the Soviet Union that could defeat the Nazis, it could not appear then, it was put on index, so we can know it now, seventy years later. It must be read, the Maladype has published it, unfortunately it is an actual warning too: some phenomenon is similar to the formatting system of our present.

Zoltán Balázs’ heroic trial to find the book, to put it on stage, his enchantingly suggestive performance is one of the most important theatrical-social events of the season.

White Elephant, Kulturális Ajánló, 2015

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)