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How to explain the history of communism to mental patients, and other plays. How to explain the history of communism to mental patients
Author
Title
How to explain the history of communism to mental patients, and other plays. How to explain the history of communism to mental patients / Matei Vișniec ; translated by Jeremy Lawrence and Catherine Popescu.
Publication
[London, England] : Seagull Books London, 2015.
Physical Description
1 online resource (pages 131-190)
Local Notes
Access is available to the Yale community.
Notes
Title from title page (viewed August 27, 2021).
Characters: Yuri Petrovski, Grigori Dekanozov, Stepan Rozanov, Katia Ezova, Timofei, Patients (Piotr, Ivan, Sasha, Emelian, Boris, Slivinski, Solomon), Patient who bets on Stalin, Crouper, Young woman, Old woman, Third woman, Fourth woman, Fifth woman, Professor, Patient who knew Stalin, Second patient who knew Stalin, Foreigner, Kukin, Ivan Mikadoi Gamarovski, Stalin, Other medical staff and patients.
In English, translated from the original French.
Access and use
Access restricted by licensing agreement.
Summary
"A hundred million lives: that is the price that mankind was forced to pay to carry out a single experiment: the attempt to build a communist utopia. One wonders that this horrifying statistic and the dramatic collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, Africa, and around the world didn't put communism on trial as Nazism was after the Second World War ... The trial of communism has yet to start and the proponents of the Left have yet to recite their mea culpa. The most idiotic argument sustained by the defenders of the communist utopia is that the theory itself was right but that it was carried out incorrectly. In other words, people like Stalin, Mao, Castro, or Ceauşescu have misused a piece of machinery that, in theory, was impeccably built. How many more dead would it take for mankind to comprehend at last that, intrinsically, the concept of utopia nurtures totalitarianism? A utopia that aims to solve ALL the problems of humanity can only be one of a totalitarian nature. On the other hand, man, by his very nature, feels suffocated if he doesn't aspire to create a utopia. But in practice, the ideals lead to disaster. Is there, perhaps, a medium to be found between the two extremes? These are some of the ideas that inspired me to write How to Explain the History of Communism to Mental Patients. I wanted to stress the fact that if we take a close look at the essence of the ideological discourse, we will discover that it completely ignores the fine nuances of human nature."--Playwright's note, page 127.
Variant and related titles
Contemporary world drama. OCLC KB.
Format
Books / Online
Language
English
Added to Catalog
March 28, 2022
Subjects
Genre/Form
Electronic books.
Drama.
Théâtre.
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Citation
