Batum (Bulgakov)

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Mikhail Bulgakov around 1935

Batum ( Russian Батум ) is a play in four acts by the Soviet writer Mikhail Bulgakov , the writing of which began in 1936 and was completed on July 24, 1939. In 1939 the dictator had the play about the strikes organized by Stalin in Batumi in 1901 and 1902 forbidden. The original of the text was published in 1977 by Ardis Publishing in Ann Arbor / Michigan . In the Soviet Union , the play was published in 1988 in the Moscow literary magazine Sovremennaja dramaturgija . In 1991, Sergei Kurginjan brought Batum to the stage of the Moscow Art Theater .

overview

In July 1903, the Russian Justice Minister proposed Nicholas II as punishment for the farmer Josef Vissarionovich Jughashvili for three years' exile in Eastern Siberia . The state criminal, born in Gori / Tbilisi Governorate in 1878, incited the Batum workers to strike in March 1902. The ruler accepts the request.

In the winter of 1904 the exile managed to escape from the Irkutsk governorate . Stalin returns to Batumi.

content

The Russian bureaucracy of the time called Josef Wissarionowitsch Jughashvili, aka Stalin, a peasant. The cheeky delinquent, however, was expelled from the 6th grade of the clerical seminary in Tbilisi in 1898 as a 19-year-old “because of belonging to anti-government circles”. The seminarist who was excluded “because of unreliability” finds accommodation in the Tiflis observatory and organizes strikes among the Tiflis railway workers.

November 1901 in Batumi: Stalin, who is called Sosso by the workers or because of his training facility, the spiritual seminary, shepherd of souls , finds shelter in a Batumi workers' family. Sent by the Tbilisi Committee of SDAPR , Stalin organizes the Batum workers; formulates demands and trains the exploited to fight. For example, when a company in the Kaspi Black Sea oil industry burns, the plant manager demands a reward for extinguishing it.

At the beginning of March 1902, the military governor of Kutaisi was appalled. The police officer in Batum telegraphed after the works manager Wanscheidt, who the workers called "bloodsuckers", laid off 375 workers in the Rothschild factory, the devil is going on there. Colonel Wladimir Eduardowitsch Treinitz, deputy chief of the Kutaisi Gendarmerie Administration, knows. The agitator is called the shepherd . The workers are calling for the 16-hour working day to be reduced to the 10-hour working day, working hours to close at 4 p.m. on Sundays, the abolition of arbitrary fines, the reinstatement of all laid-off workers and the abolition of corporal punishment. The governor - always fearlessly present at hot spots - has three of the leaders arrested.

When the workers demonstrated for the release of the prisoners, shots were fired at the gate of the police barracks. There are dead among the workers. Stalin - not yet arrested - leads the demonstrators. One month later, in April 1903, Stalin was arrested in the apartment of the worker Darispan von Treinitz. When asked for his full name, Stalin had given Ilya Grigoryevich Nisheradze. The lie had done nothing. The gendarmes knew better.

In the summer of 1903, Stalin is still behind bars. He complains to the governor because a female inmate is being beaten.

Treinitz picks up Stalin. To “say goodbye”, the prisoner receives a blow with the saber scabbard from every prison guard he has to pass.

When Nicholas II approved the above-mentioned exile, the ruler commented: "Holy Russia has mild laws."

Stalin

Schröder wrote in June 1995:

  • When Stalin banned the play, the "justification" included the modest leader of the state. At that time he was not an exception. Quite a few young people - like him - would have rushed ahead at the time.
  • Bulgakov followed the official Stalin biographies. If he - for dramaturgical reasons - had deviated from this premise, for example when Nicholas II was personally concerned with the punishment of the revolutionary, who was still completely unknown at court in 1903, it should actually have flattered Stalin.
  • It could be possible that Stalin saw in the penal system of the last tsar an analogy to his Soviet penal system.
  • The ban on the play could be seen as one of the reasons that favored the outbreak of the disease that Bulgakov succumbed to in the late winter of 1940.

German-language editions

Output used:

  • Asked for. Piece in four acts. Translated from the Russian by Thomas Reschke . Pp. 135–208 in Ralf Schröder (ed.): Bulgakow. The hypocritical cabal. Alexander Pushkin. Asked for. Pieces. Volk & Welt, Berlin 1995, ISBN 3-353-00952-3 (= Vol. 11: Collected Works (13 Vols.))

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Edition used, p. 208
  2. ↑ eng. Ardis Publishing
  3. ↑ Russian modern dramaturgy
  4. ↑ Russian Kurginjan, Sergei Jerwandowitsch
  5. ↑ Edition used, p. 200 below to p. 203 above
  6. ↑ Edition used, p. 139, 6. Zvo
  7. ↑ Edition used, p. 198, 5th Zvu
  8. ↑ Edition used, p. 201, 6th Zvu
  9. ↑ Edition used, p. 260, 4th Zvu
  10. ↑ Edition used, p. 260, 1. Zvu
  11. ↑ Edition used, p. 261, 13. Zvo
  12. ↑ Edition used, p. 262, 15. Zvo