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FROM IDOL DESTRUCTION TO IDOLATRY
created in “the era known as the halting, the years of stagnation”, after the
1964 removal of Nikita Khrushchev, when “the not too forceful movement of
destalinization halted entirely” in the USSR, and it seemed that “conservative
forces will dominate permanently”.°®
DRAMATIC TEXT, DRAMATURGY
Chapters on Lenin was a phase in many years of preoccupation with the “Ur¬
father”,°°° and it was strongly connected to the popular genre of the sixties, the
documentary drama, diverging somewhat from its form known in Hungary.
While Gyurkó emphasized that his work was not “the type of documentary
little importance to all these things in his life; they were so burdensome to him. Think
about how poor our country is and how much more needs to be done. If you want to
honor Vladimir Ilyich’s name, build créches, kindergartens, apartment buildings, schools,
libraries, pharmacies, hospitals, children’s homes. And above all, follow the principles of
Ilyich with your own lives." (László Gyurkó: Fejezetek Leninről. Dokumentum-oratorium,
in László Gyurkó: Szerelmem, Elektra, Budapest, Magvető, 1984, 427.) So Nadezhda
Krupskaya’s warnings open Chapters on Lenin, around whom, a year and a half after Lenin’s
death, some politicians came together against Stalin. This “Leningrad opposition demanded
more democracy within the party, advocated freedom of speech and opinion, and believed
in the continuation of the Leninian traditions”. (Miklos Kun: Egy példázat és forrásai, in
Mihail Satrov: Tovább... Tovább... Tovább!, Budapest, Európa, 1988, 176.) Two decades after
Gyurkós documentary oratorio, the radical reassessment of the images of Lenin and Stalin
was also attempted by Mikhail Shatrov’s play, in the Hungarian edition of which Miklós
Kun’s essay was published as an afterword. At the end of this drama, Stalin wants to talk
to Lenin, but he rejects it, telling the audience that “we have to move on... Further on...
Further on!” According to the stage directions, “so they remain in a considerable distance
from each other. It would be nice if Stalin left... But for now, he’s still on stage...” (Mihail
Satrov: Tovabb... Tovabb... Tovabb!, Budapest, Euröpa, 1988, 163.) Shatrov’s play attracted
much attention in the period of glasnost, and its antecedent, his former play Blue Horses on
Red Grass was staged at Thälia Theatre (by Katalin Kővári, with Gyula Szabó as Lenin) when
the National Theatre revived Chapters on Lenin in 1980.
Kun: Egy példázat és forrásai, 167 and 166.
The 1963 Lenin essay was followed by the monograph (Lenin, October) four years later
and also the 1967 commemorative performance at the University Theatre (Chapters on
Lenin), which was the basis of the new version of Chapters on Lenin, written in 1969 and
staged at the National Theatre a year later. However, some reviewers noted that Chapters
was “nothing new” compared to the 1967 book (Ö.l.: Fejezetek Leninről. Gyurkó László
dokumentum oratóriuma, Délmagyarország, Vol. 60, No. 96, 24'* April, 1970, 5.), as if
the play were “a popular and illustrative theatrical addendum to that richly nuanced and
modernly rediscovered portrait of Lenin” (Létay: ,Ha tisztelni akarjätok...”, 13.), which
he had drawn in the monograph. Interestingly, a report published six months before the
National’s premiere had introduced Chapters as a lead to the playwright’s “forthcoming
second book on Lenin”, and Gyurkö had declared that he had typed “200 pages, but thrown
all away” to start work anew. (bernäth: Fejezetek Leninröl. Dokumentum-oratörium a
Nemzeti Színházban. Gyurkó László új színpadi művéről és könyvéről, Esti Hirlap, Vol. 14,
No. 260, 64 November, 1969, 5.). This book has never been produced, only a collection of
documents, In Private with the Revolution, published in the spring of 1970.
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606
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