To ‘Mother Russia,’ With Love : Soviet Writer Revisits Epic Events of Century in HBO Miniseries

Last year, during the first free election in the Soviet Union since the Bolshevik Revolution, American TV producers were waiting in a Moscow hotel room for their consultant, Alexander (Sasha) Isaakovich Gelman, who was running for the Soviet Parliament. Finally, Gelman walked in and announced, “I’ve been elected. Let’s get to work (on the script).”

In July, President Mikhail Gorbachev nominated Gelman to the Central Committee of the Communist Party. Gelman was elected in absentia, all the while working in Los Angeles finishing the script. Gelman, who has been referred to as “the poet of perestroika “ for his plays and articles on the phenomenon, is project consultant and writer (in Russian, then translated into English) of the final episodes of “Mother Russia,” a prodigious, 10-hour miniseries. The drama will relive epic events of the century by following the life of a peasant born on New Year’s Eve 1899 to his old age in modern day.

“It will be most interesting for the Western viewer,” said Gelman, “because for the first time, (he) will see the very specific sufferings of the people.” He was referring to how “the best of intentions” of the October Revolution transformed into “the worst sinister evil.”

The miniseries already is three years in preparation, with at least two to go. If all continues well with the script (about 700 pages) and the multitudinous financial negotiations with HBO and European interests (costs are preliminarily estimated at $23 million), shooting would start next May for airing in October, 1992, on the 75th anniversary of the Communist victory.

This is a joint effort of Hollywood producers Derek Hart, president of Armand Hammer Productions, and Michael Campus, president of Journey Entertainment. The imprimatur of Hammer, the industrialist and art collector whose ties with the Soviet Union go back to the 1920s, gives authority to the undertaking, especially at the highest Soviet levels.

Gelman had been in Los Angeles since mid-May and was still revising his last chapter as he left for home the other day. Hart returned from Russia last week from location hunting, including the family home in old St. Petersburg (now Leningrad), and, Campus related, “Derek found a field of World War II tanks and planes, so we have enough to make the war.”

Campus is near final selection of a director to devote the next two years to the project. He then has to find a central actor of world reputation to spend six months in production.

Hart, who speaks fluent Russian and is married to former Kirov prima ballerina Ludmila Lapukhova, now with the San Francisco Ballet, suggested the idea: a tale of Russian history told through the experiences of a single family.

As the producers took their first development dollars from HBO and assembled a research team, Campus recalled, he suddenly realized they had to dramatize 90 years. “My god,” he moaned, “what have we done?”

“Obviously,” said Hart, “the first thing we did was look for a great Russian novel that we could adapt that covered this territory. But there wasn’t anything.”

Censorship and repression, of course, were hallmarks of the Soviet regimes. “I don’t think the Russians themselves are necessarily ready to take such an all-inclusive look at what Sasha talks of as ‘the great experiment,’ ” said Hart.

The producers created their fictional family in 75 pages of plot, then hired two English screenwriters, Ronald Harwood (nominated for a screenplay Oscar for “The Dresser”) and John Hopkins (“Thunderball,” “The Offence”) for the first seven episodes.

The producers saw one of Gelman’s celebrated plays in London, “A Man With Connections,” with a lot of tricky metaphors about the Soviet bureaucracy and lifestyle, and, “were knocked out by it,” Campus said. Gelman, 57, was hired as consultant on “Mother Russia” and, as the project inched along, it became obvious that he was the one to write the last 45 years of history himself.

Gelman has an air of Old Russia about him, something like a full night of Chekhov. He looks weary but he pays sharp attention and, when he hears the producers talk about the complications of this project, his eyes smile.

“As one of the screenplay writers, in front of my audience, I’m going to be responsible quite directly,” he said. “I don’t want to be ashamed of my work.”

He acknowledged that “Mother Russia” is being made primarily for Western audiences. So if Soviet audiences find it foolish, might he be moved to defect? He broke into a hearty laugh.

“He hopes not,” the interpreter paraphrased.

Gelman, still chortling, acknowledged that it was “a very serious question” for him. “In the parts that the other, non-Russian writers are writing,” he said, “there’s a slight feeling that these are people who don’t completely know to the nth degree the Russian character. . . . This is a Russian family saga (and) since Western actors are involved, there may be some problems.”

But since the series will be shot in the Soviet Union, with a lot of Soviet cameramen and Soviet crew members, the production is likely to achieve the Russian nuances, he said.

Gelman’s life is an epic in itself. He survived a Nazi concentration camp where his family perished. He was sent to an orphanage, did metal work in a factory, was drafted and rose to captain in the Red Army, graduated in engineering from Kishinev University, joined the Communist Party in 1956, worked as a machine operator, then journalist, screenwriter, playwright, head of the Theatre Union, politician.

“He lived through what the characters have lived through,” said Hart.

A pivotal subject in “Mother Russia” will be Stalin and his place in the Russian consciousness, even today.

“Everybody can remember what they were doing when they heard that Stalin died,” Hart said, “like we remember what we were doing when Kennedy was assassinated. Actually, Stalin’s death was a bigger event in Russia. It brought the whole country to a complete standstill.”

Gelman called it “the death of the tyrant. . . . It was pretty horrible to look back in our time (today), but at the time, people cried. Of course, people knew that he was cruel. . . . Eight million people were lost just because of his carelessness when the war started--and yet, after the war, the entire victory and glory was his. He took credit. And so as a result of this victory, the Germans became more free than the Russians!”

Hart interjected that his own mother-in-law in Leningrad still weeps over Stalin’s death.

Gelman referred to the “mystification” of Stalin.

“This can’t repeat itself, what happened under Stalin, that kind of ecstasy of trust that Stalin inspired. People don’t feel that about Gorbachev.”

The miniseries isn’t likely to sugar-coat history, and “there’s not going to be a complete resolution to the story,” he said, because the latest revolution in his country, of democracy, is still unfolding.

In preliminary notes on “Mother Russia,” Gelman wrote about the fratricide that may occur if his country doesn’t learn from its history. “Today Russia is at a crossroads of choice: democracy and humanity, or a regime of cruel dictatorship which divides society into ours and theirs, friends and enemies.”