COMING ATTRACTIONS

Glasnost in the Soviet Union is getting a test of sorts in a newly published play that features fictional encounters between Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin. January editions of the journal Znamya that include “Onward, Ever Onward” by dramatist Mikhail Shatrov sold out quickly, reported Reuters, and sparked a controversy over how far writers should go in interpreting history. The play, to be staged this summer at the Leningrad Drama Theater and the Moscow Arts Theater, shows Lenin denouncing Stalin’s commitment to the ideals of Communism as well as Trotsky accusing Stalin of having ordered his 1940 assassination in Mexico. “You killed me without even the appearance of a trial,” Trotsky tells Stalin in the play, believed to be the first suggestion that Stalin ordered Trotsky’s death to appear in print in the Soviet Union.