TROUBLE OVER KRONSTADT PLAY based on Times report
Pravda on July 12th criticised a young playwright's new play for "major ideoclogieal shortcomings", and hinted that it would have to be rewritten before being put before Soviet audiences. The Communist Party newspaper made its criticism in a long review of Between Cloudbursts by Alexander Stein. The play, which had been published in a theatrical maga= zine but not yet performed, is about the Kronstadt mutiny of 1921, in which sailors of the Baltic Fleet mutinied against the Soviet Government.
The paper said that Stein failed to live up to his responsibility as an author writing on great subjects, because he failed to unmask the origins of the mutiny and did not show that foreign imperialists, anarchists and white guards were behind the uprising. The party organ also charged that — Stein did not do justice to the personality of Lenin, It said the Bolshevik leader appeared twice in the play and both times he was shown alone in his Kremlin apartment, without his followers and removed from the toiling masses,
The paper also said that references to Trotsky were inaccurate if not to say ambiguous" so that the reader did not get the "correct impression" of the role which this "sworn enemy of Lenin" has played in the period described by the play. This is believed to be the first time that Stein has been the object of such criticism. He is a Stalin Prize winner, The playwright, who specialises in naval themes, is also a film writer.