Given Circumstances
T IME T IME
OF
C OMPOSITION
Describe the Night was published in 2017. It was commissioned by The Alley Theatre in Houston, Texas where it also received its premiere production. The New York premiere was performed at and produced by the Atlantic Theatre Company in December of 2017. Various major world events from this period: September 11 terrorist attacks; 2008 Recession; The Smolensk Air Disaster (2010); Barack Obama elected and re-elected president (2008 and 2012); the foundation of Black Lives Matter (2013); Occupy Wall Street (2011); Donald Trump elected president (2016); Russian interference in a major American election (2016); the advent of “Fake News” in American culture and politics (2016); Putin elected president of Russia for third term (2012); Russia annexes Crimean peninsula (2014); Malaysian Airlines 370 lost (2014); Turkey and Russia interfere in the Syrian Civil War (2015); The Russian Ambassador to Turkey is assassinated (2016); Turkey experiences a military coup (2016); FIFA corruption case (2015); Benedict XVI resigns as Pope, Francis is elected first Pope from a Latin American country (2013).
T IME
OF
A CTION
1920 (T HE R USSIAN R EVOLUTION , R USSIAN C IVIL W AR , THE
AND THE
R ISE
OF
B OLSHEVIKS ) Russia existed as the monarchical Russian Empire from the early 1700s until its abrupt end
in 1917 with the removal of Czar Nicholas II. As the Czar stepped down, two factions rose up to fill the void of Russian leadership: the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies and the Provisional Government. The Provisional Government was representative of the upper class while
the Petrograd Soviet consisted mainly of the working class and the Bolsheviks. While the Provisional Government wrestled with WWI, the Bolsheviks gained popularity with the Russian people through Lenin’s calls for removal of the Provisional Government. By July of 1917, largescale rioting and protests lead the Provisional Government to launch a failed military campaign to quell the unrest and resulted in an assault on the capital: Although the Provisional Government survived the Kornilov revolt, popular support for the government faded rapidly as the national mood swung to the left in the fall of 1917. Workers took control of their factories through elected committees; peasants expropriated lands belonging to the state, church, nobility, and gentry; and armies melted away as peasant soldiers deserted to take part in the land seizures. The Bolsheviks, skillfully exploiting these popular trends in their propaganda, achieved domination of the Petrograd and Moscow soviets by September. Trotsky, freed from prison after the Kornilov revolt, was recruited as a Bolshevik and named chairman of the Petrograd Soviet (Revolutions and Civil War). Trotsky oversaw the reorganization of these guards into the Red Army to which the Bolsheviks assigned commissars to ensure party loyalty. “The new government created a secret police agency, the VChK (commonly known as the Cheka), to persecute enemies of the state (including bourgeois liberals and moderate socialists)” (Revolutions and Civil War). Later, the Bolsheviks would institute compulsory enlistment of the peasantry, often at gunpoint. The Bolshevik’s, now called the Communists, had taken power by 1918. “Beginning in April 1918, anticommunist forces, called the Whites and often led by former officers of the tsarist army, began to clash with the Red Army, which Trotsky, named commissar of war in the Soviet government, organized to defend the new state” (Revolutions and Civil War).Despite multiple armies forming in direct response to the Bolshevik rise to power, they had a firm grip on power by 1920.
Poland sought to expand its borders eastward to modern-day Ukraine during the Russian Civil War. It was met by the Russian Red Army, which pushed the Polish forces back to Warsaw where the Poles saw an unexpected victory and an eventual Soviet-lead cease-fire on October 18, 1920.
1937 - 1940 (T HE G REAT P URGE
AND THE BEGINNINGS OF
WWII)
Stalin had consolidated enough power by the end of the 1920s to give him total control of the Russian Government. Lenin died in 1924. Trotsky was forced into exile three years later in an attempt to remove those who would challenge the new leader. In 1928 Stalin began implementing his vision for economic growth. The plan focused heavily on industrialization. “To satisfy the state's need for increased food supplies, the First Five-Year Plan called for the organization of the peasantry into collective units that the authorities could easily control” (Transformation and Terror). Despite the famines following collectivization, the USSR built a sizable economy on the back of its industrial efforts after the implementation of two more Five-Year Plans. During the industrial expansion the USSR began cooperating with the West, taking part in the World Disarmament Conference, joining the League of Nations, and aiding the Allies against Fascism in the Spanish Civil War. Stalin had created a new superpower. Beginning in the early 1930s Stalin began a series of purges to root out any opposition to his rule from past rivals. The NKVD began eliminating Bolshevik icons and supporters, targeting their friends and families. At the request of Stalin, Trotsky’s family was almost completely wiped out before the NKVD hunted him down and assassinated him in Mexico. The Great Purge of 1934 was enacted in response to the assassination of a potential rival to Stalin. Nikolai Yezhov, by then an NKVD officer, was chosen to lead the Purge. In his time with the NKVD, he oversaw the execution
of nearly one-million people. His success lead him to be appointed to the head of the NKVD in September 1936. In 1936 the first of three Moscow Trials were held to make an example of supposed enemies of the state for attempting to overthrow and assassinate Stalin. This first trial saw the conviction and execution of sixteen members of the Trotskyite-Kamenevite-Zinovievite-LeftistCounter-Revolutionary Bloc, two of which were former party leaders. The second Moscow trial began in January of 1937 and ended with the conviction of seventeen party members. Thirteen were shot, the rest were sent to labor camps. Stalin ordered Yezhov to investigate the former head of the NKVD, Genrikh Yagoda, in 1936 after he was dismissed from his position. Yagoda was arrested in 1937 and charged with sabotage, espionage, Trotskyism, and conspiracy. He was tried as a part of the Third Moscow Trial in 1938 which included falsified evidence of a conspiracy to overthrow Stalin and assassinate Yezhov (Jansen ch 3). This trial was the last of the Moscow Trials, also known as the Trial of the Twenty-One, which featured similar accusations against similarly ranked officials and former officials, all of Bolshevik leanings.
1941 - 1991 (WWII,
THE
C OLD W AR ,
AND
T HE F ALL
OF
C OMMUNISM )
In April of 1941 the USSR and Japan signed a non-aggression pact just two years after signing a similar pact with Hitler. By the end of the year the Nazi army had invaded Soviet territory and needed to take Stalingrad. The Soviet army was able to push the Germans back as far as Berlin, eventually taking the city. At the end of the war, Russia lost twenty-seven million citizens. Nearly all of the Jewish population of German occupied Soviet territories were lost Nazi genocide. “During the postwar reconstruction period, Stalin tightened domestic controls, justifying the repression by playing up the threat of war with the West [and] Many repatriated Soviet citizens who had lived abroad during the war … were executed or sent to prison camps” (Reconstruction and Cold War).
After the war Stalin began forming his Iron Curtain, a buffer zone of Soviet-allied countries between the West and the USSR. Russia started spreading its communist ideals further into Western territory. The United States and Britain thwarted many of these attempts in an effort to contain the spread of communism across Europe and the Middle East. Russia continued agitating the Allied nations, sparking and supporting liberation movements in colonized Asian countries. Stalin encouraged Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) to attack South Korea, leading to the Korean War and forcing the United States to bolster its military strength to bring peace to the region (Reconstruction and Cold War). After the end of the Korean War, Stalin died which left the leadership role open to a power struggle with Khrushchev emerging as the new Soviet leader. He was removed from office in 1964 and replaced by a collective leadership that put a strong emphasis on industry and petroleum exports. It was during this period that the Soviet Space Program launched Sputnik into orbit as well as the first manned space flight. Before the dissolution of the USSR, the Soviet Space Program had launched exploratory unmanned missions to both Mars and Venus, established the first space station, and conducted the first automated rocket launch. A turbulent period of leadership vacancies and conflicts lead to the election of Mikhail Gorbachev. In the late 1980s, Gorbachev introduced various reforms to modernize the Soviet Union under the Perestroika movement. These various economic reforms attempted to improve the wellbeing of the Russian people. Changes were also made to the structure of the CPSU and government apparatuses. Glasnost, a policy of openness and information accessibility, was instituted in an attempt to move Soviet Russia into a more accessible sphere of operation and to reduce corruption in government. A series of political movements and revolutions beginning in Poland in the late 1980s spread across eastern Europe which threatened to dismantle the Iron Curtain that Stalin erected nearly forty years before. Mass demonstrations erupted across Europe culminating in the fall of the Berlin Wall
in 1989. In December of 1991 the USSR dissolved, creating new counties from those territories that had declared independence from Russia during the Fall of Communism.
PLACE G ENERAL L OCALE Russia — Russia is located in the north eastern hemisphere and spans the continents of Europe and Asia and is the largest country in the world by landmass. Most of the landmass of Russia is considered subarctic and is covered in coniferous forests with most of the population residing in the humid continental and semiarid regions in the western third of the country. The northern strip along the Arctic Ocean coastline is tundra.
S PECIFIC L OCALE Poland Paris Moscow Dresden Bureau 42 Smolensk
O CCUPATION F ACTORY W ORKER The general living conditions in Russia for factory workers was abysmal by modern standards. According to Getty and Naumov “[St. Petersburg] lacked any underground system of sewage disposal; cesspools in backyards were the norm, and rubbish was piled on the streets. Seven out of ten workers shared a room” (Getty 15). Yezhov reportedly worked at the Pulitov plant in St.
Petersburg when he was a child. Conditions inside the factories were dangerous and tumultuous. “[Workers were] provided little or nothing in the way of safety rules or equipment, and Pulitov averaged one accident resulting in a worker injury every two days” (Getty 16). Strikes were common in the plants given the conditions and animosity towards management.
R ED A RMY S OLDIER In the 1920s the Red army was predominantly comprised of working class and peasant soldiers. Because of the lack of education among the general ranks of the military, short term officer schools were set up to produce young, politically reliable officers that would work alongside party appointed commissars (The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica). Frontline soldiers in the Russian Civil War (1918-20) fought against fellow Russians who opposed the Bolshevik’s agenda. During the Russo-Polish War (1919-20) the same army, now split in two, fought in a foreign country against a foreign adversary. These soldiers slept in makeshift camps on the Polish countryside. Though Yezhov functioned primarily as a Political Commissar during the invasion according to his biography, but would have endured the same living conditions as his fellow soldiers.
NKVD C HIEF (P EOPLE ’ S C OMMISARIAT
FOR I NTERNAL
A FFAIRS )
The NKVD was the secret police apparatus of Stalin’s Soviet Union and a direct descendant of the Cheka and the OGPU, which served similar functions. The chief of the NKVD oversees all actions of the policing arm, which was charged with the security of the state and enforced that security by any means necessary. Assassinations, torture, kidnapping, executions, and imprisonment in the GULAG were all at the disposal of the NKVD, and authorized by the NKVD chief. The office also handled international espionage campaigns in other countries, all at the direction of Stalin
and supervised by the Chief. This internal branch personally saw to assassinations of foreign leaders that opposed Stalin, and interfered in foreign wars, offering covert aid to Soviet interests abroad. The Chief enjoyed the political benefits of being Stalin’s right hand and enforcer. Officially, he would have been recognized as a high-ranking person within the party and on par with most of the Ruling Elite (see Social Rank). The quality of life he enjoyed would have been much different than what he had grown up with as a factory worker and apprentice. The position, however, was a dangerous one. Genrikh Yagoda, Yezhov’s predecessor, was removed from his position and convicted of espionage, sabotage, and conspiracy before being put on trial and ultimately executed.
C HIEF D IRECTORATE , L EVEL D OUBLE A, C HAIRMAN
OF
B UREAU 42
The Chairman is directly responsible for collecting and categorizing the mass of information collected by various Russian organizations over the course of Soviet Rule. Yezhov is the only person to occupy this position. It was created after his supposed execution in an effort to keep meticulous records of the true history of the Soviet Union, which was shaped and distorted. Records are comprised of everything from photographs to personnel files to “every last note scribbled on a napkin” (Joseph 57). The Chairman has the authority to alter any record as he sees fit within the bounds of the Bureau. The Chairman also has the authority to approve transfers within the Russian government and assign certain officials to other departments. The position is highly classified and officially non-existent outside of the walls of the Kremlin. Admittance to the department is restricted to only those with the highest clearance levels.
S OCIAL R ANK The USSR under Stalin meticulously stratified its own society with major classes divided into manageable subclasses of peoples. The following breakdown is outlined by Alex Inkeles in the American Sociological Review.
Intelligentsia •
The Ruling Elite — a small group consisting of high Party, government, economic, and
•
military officials, prominent scientists, and selected artists and writers. The Superior Intelligentsia — the intermediary ranks of the categories of the Ruling Elite
•
and important technical specialists. The General Intelligentsia — consisted of most of the professional groups, the middle ranks of the bureaucracy, managers of small enterprises, junior military officers, technicians,
•
etc. The White Collar Group — synonymous with the Soviet term for employees, ranging from petty-bureaucrats through accountants and bookkeepers to ordinary clerks and office workers.
The Working Class • •
The Working Class Aristocracy — the most skilled and productive workers. The Rank and File Workers — those in one of the lesser skill grades earning slightly above
•
or below the average wage for all workers. The Disadvantaged Workers — includes as many as one-fourth of the labor force of Soviet Russia, whose low level of skill and lack of productivity or initiative kept them close to the minimum wage level.
The Peasantry •
The Well-To-Do Peasants — those particularly advantaged by virtue of the location, fertility, or crop raised by virtue of the location, fertility, or crop raised by their collective farms (millionaire farms) and those whose trade, skill, or productivity pushes them into the higher
•
income brackets even on the less prosperous farms. The Average Peasant — The least productive or poorest peasant groups.
The list in order of importance in society is as follows 1. 2. 3. 4.
Ruling Elite Superior Intelligentsia General Intelligentisia Working Class Aristocracy
5. 6. 7. 8.
White Collar/Well-To-Do Peasants Average Workers Average Peasants/Disadvantaged Workers Forced Labor
(Inkeles 486-487) There was little mobility between classes. Yezhov was one of the lucky few who successfully made the transition between classes, moving from being a Disadvantaged Worker to the Ruling Elite; it would have been a massive leap in responsibility and importance. Yevgenia would have made a similar transition through the class structure simply by virtue of being married to Yezhov, probably coming from one of the Peasant Classes. Babel comes from a similar situation as Yezhov, though not climbing the ranks like his NKVD friend, but nevertheless is taken along for (at least some of) the ride.
ECONOMICS T HE S OVIET U NION Communism is an ideology of politics and economics in which production and the means of production are owned by the people. In Soviet Russia the means of production were controlled by the government, and manifested itself in farm collectivization (the effective government seizure of all privately owned farms for governmental production of goods) and industrial growth. Agricultural production suffered dramatically leading to widespread famine, but industrial production absolutely thrived, rivaling the industrial economy of the United States. The focus on industry lead to a lack of consumer goods and a robust black market that sold everything from cigarettes to shampoo. These black markets also trafficked in western goods, most famously denim jeans. Soviet officials often benefited from black market sales as well, receiving bribes, making profit, and scapegoating the operations.
The USSR was a Centrally Planned Economy (CPE). Rather than the means of production being communally owned, it was state owned and controlled under Russia’s one-party system as is usually the case with CPEs like China, Vietnam, and Cuba. The communist implementation of Russia’s CPE was in direct opposition to the western capitalist economic structure. The Russian economy under this system eventually collapsed.
R USSIA After the dissolution of the USSR, Russia has been in a state of economic transition, aptly referred to as a transitional economy. What exactly it is transitioning into is debated. Some sources cite capitalism, some cite oligarchy, other cite a vaguely defined hybrid system. By and large the economy of Russia is controlled by a few large companies and oligarchs. These entities work together with the Russian government propping themselves up on Russia’s arm industry vast supply of natural resources. According to a working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, the level of income inequality in Russia is massive, more substantial than the US or China, though not much else is known (Novokmet).
POLITICS AND LAW Everything in a communist society is directly related to the wellbeing of the state. Generally speaking, communism works its way into every facet of life; in Soviet Russia, communism pervaded Russian existence. Laws enforced the collective good over the individual in nearly every case. The law was passed down from the governing class of the party, with rulings on political cases often being dictated to judges over the telephone while in deliberation. In Soviet propaganda, homosexuality was characterized as stemming from fascism. Homosexuality officially was punishable by imprisonment and forced labor under Article 121 of the criminal code. For someone in Yezhov’s position to be accused and found guilty of homosexuality
(or pedantry as he was formally convicted of) would mean imprisonment or execution and a disgraced exit from power. The official law against homosexuality was repealed in 1993, though homophobia is still rampant in Russia (INS Resource Information Center). Political mobility in the Soviet Union was based on a very formal type of dialogue between officials. Getty and Naumov provide some of Nikolai’s own letters. Hallmarks of the style rely on self-promotion through humility, deflecting blame from oneself to others (though not overtly), hyperbolizing one’s own successes without bragging, and emphasizing party virtues. Efficiency and commitment to the party were also factors in how far up the chain a party secretary could move.
LEARNING AND THE ARTS Russia was largely literate and nearly on its way to universal elementary education with universities in many of the larger Russian cities (Peters 421). It can be assumed that in the largely industrial society emerging in Russia by the time of the Russian revolution that many Russians did not pursue schooling beyond a basic elementary education. Yezhov himself left school early to work in the local factory and eventually caught an apprenticeship to move up the social hierarchy. Under Soviet rule a formalized, state-sponsored education system emerged to indoctrinate a new generation of loyal Russians. “Compulsory attendance was introduced in 1930 for the ages eight to twelve in rural areas and eight to fifteen in all industrial and urban districts” (Peters 422). Schooling was also available to those who were too old to attend the new schools in the new USSR. Yezhov attended fifteen months’ worth of schooling at the Communist University of Moscow to correct his lack of sophistication and gain formal knowledge of Soviet ideals (Getty 101). During Soviet rule in Russia art was expected to serve the ideology of the state. Anything inflammatory or explicitly anti-Soviet was censored. “During Stalin’s purges of the 1930’s many art historians were arrested, executed, or otherwise repressed” (Gervits 42). This is reflected in Nikolai’s
conversations with Isaac in the early parts of the play, warning him against writing anything subversive. These rules seem to be clearly defined within society as seen in Describe the Night: ISAAC. There is nothing subversive about a duck. NIKOLAI. Yes! Gangster ducks are subversive! ISAAC. But not baby ducks. Not baby ducks, Nikolai. For a moment NIKOLAI is silenced by this air-tight logic (Joseph 49). The official style of the USSR was Socialist realism, a romanticized version of realism that depicts socialist society in an overwhelming positive light. This romantic view of socialist society is present throughout all art forms from the period.
SPIRITUALITY A famous quote from Lenin carved in a city hall in Moscow reads “religion is the opium of the people” and in keeping with this maxim the Soviet state was officially atheistic. Before the revolution of 1917, the Eastern Orthodox Church held an important place in politics and life, just like the role of the church in the West. With the introduction of socialism and then communism the role of the church dwindled. “At the root of the Soviet anti-religious offensive is the atheism of Soviet leaders which they partly imported from abroad in the form of Marxism, partly found at home in Russian revolutionary tradition” (Freund 17). Printing bibles was outlawed within the USSR. Most church-owned property was seized and many priests bishops were executed at the beginning of the Soviet era. The restrictions on the church gradually relaxed during WWII and by the 1950s.
RAJIV JOSEPH Rajiv Joseph was born 16 June, 1974 in Cleveland, Ohio. He attended Miami University in Ohio and graduated in 1996 with a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing. In 2004 he received his MFA in Playwriting from NYU where he sometimes teaches writing. Between his post-secondary and graduate education Joseph joined the Peace Corps, living in Senegal for three years. During his time in Africa he kept a daily journal of his struggles and successes with the villagers with whom he was working. Joseph has credited his time in Senegal for his love for language and writing. Karen D’Souza characterizes the inevitable violence in Joseph’s plays as “brutal and perverse” (D’Souza). In the same article Joseph himself says of his own work: “I have a macabre sensibility, and I think violence impacts us much more deeply and viscerally in the theater than in movies or television, where we are desensitized by it” (D’Souza para. 12, 13). D’Souza showers more praise on him in the following paragraphs of her article. “Keeping the audience off-balance is a hallmark of his work. His elusive narratives segue from the blood-spattered and the hard-hitting to the absurd with characters as delicate and complex as pieces of origami” (D’Souza). Joseph has applied this style to the current political climate by drawing stark similarities between modern day America and its most dangerous geopolitical adversary. Speaking specifically about Describe the Night in an interview with Hampstead Theatre: Then, as I continued to develop it and the geopolitical landscape adjusted, suddenly the play took on a deeper relevance. The emergence of Donald Trump as the president [in America] and the accusations of Russia’s interference in our elections, this kind of conflict with the media, with fake news, with how we absorb information via social media. Suddenly this story about a journalist and fiction writer in 1920 felt very much part of the landscape here in this country and abroad just in terms of how we understand facts. (Joseph 01:15-2:03)
Works Cited “Communism.” Ideologies in the Age of Extremes: Liberalism, Conservatism, Communism, Fascism 1914-1991, by Willie Thompson, Pluto Press, London; New York, 2011, pp. 151– 168. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt183pcxs.14. Accessed 9 June 2020. Curtis, Glen E, editor. “Reconstruction and the Cold War.” Russia: A Country Study, by Library of Congress Federal Research Division, Library of Congress Federal Research Division, 1998. Area Handbook Series, countrystudies.us/russia. Curtis, Glen E, editor. “Revolution and Civil War.” Russia: A Country Study, by Library of Congress Federal Research Division, Library of Congress Federal Research Division, 1998. Area Handbook Series, countrystudies.us/russia. Curtis, Glen E, editor. “Transformation and Terror” Russia: A Country Study, by Library of Congress Federal Research Division, Library of Congress Federal Research Division, 1998. Area Handbook Series, countrystudies.us/Russia/10. D'Souza, Karen. “Rajiv Joseph: A Fresh and Compelling Voice in Theater.” The Mercury News, The Mercury News, 13 Aug. 2016, www.mercurynews.com/2011/03/02/rajiv-joseph-a-fresh-andcompelling-voice-in-theater/. Freund, H. A. “Church and Religion in Soviet Russia.” The Australian Quarterly, vol. 17, no. 4, 1945, pp. 14–26. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/20631310. Accessed 9 June 2020. Gervits, Maya. “Russian Art and Architecture: Fundamental Sources.” Art Documentation: Journal of the Art Libraries Society of North America, vol. 18, no. 2, 1999, pp. 40–46. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/27949029. Accessed 9 June 2020. Getty, J. Arch., et al. Yezhov: the Rise of Stalin's "Iron Fist". Yale University Press, 2008.
Inkeles, Alex. “Social Stratification and Mobility in the Soviet Union: 1940-1950.” American Sociological Review, vol. 15, no. 4, 1950, pp. 465–479. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2087305. Accessed 30 June 2020. INS Resource Information Center, Washington, DC. (2015, October 14). Resource Information Center: Russia. Retrieved July 02, 2020, from https://www.uscis.gov/archive/archivedresources/resource-information-center-russia-2 Jansen, Marc, and N. V. Petrov. Stalin's Loyal Executioner: People's Commissar Nikolai Ezhov, 18951940. Hoover Institution Press, 2002. Morson, Gary Saul. “Socialist Realism and Literary Theory.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 38, no. 2, 1979, pp. 121–133. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/430715. Accessed 1 July 2020. Novokmet, Filip, Thomas Piketty, and Gabriel Zucman. “From Soviets to Oligarchs: Inequality and Property in Russia, 1905-2016.” National Bureau of Economic Research, 2017, https://www.nber.org/papers/w23712.pdf. PDF download. Working Paper. Peters, Victor. “Education in the Soviet Union.” The Phi Delta Kappan, vol. 37, no. 9, 1956, pp. 421– 425. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/20341811. Accessed 1 July 2020. The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. (2020, May 21). Red Army. Retrieved from https://www.britannica.com/topic/Red-Army