Pseudo Pla for Today

Scan page 8

Party leader Santiago Carrillo in his book 'Euro Communism and The State' declares himself a supporter of Kruschev. The trend to Carrillo's chosen kind of 'Communism' , he says, was reversed at the point of Kruschev's downfall.

Such statements make it worth examining Kruschev Remembers. In particular Volume One of these reminiscences shows the early emergence of the long time Stalinist bureaucrat who was to step into Stalin's shoes after Slanders on left wing groups are two a penny slander to drama with Robin Chapman's play, "Come the Revolution' It was a tedious 'comedy' about a fringe left theatre group who get given the star treatment by a leading "Trotskyist' actress, Beth Bailey.

She changes their show into a reiteration of simplistic slogans and assures them that their performance at a union rally could spark the There is no doubt there are plays, even comedies, to be written about the left, but Come the Revolution was such crude right wing propaganda that it could only have been acceptable to TV because of its targets.

The 'left' theatre group has no politics. Its credentials are established solely. by the fact that its members draw the dole as well as working.

Beth Bailey, the actress, is such an obvious jibe at Vanessa Redgrave that the part had to be cast to look totally different.

She rides in a Rolls Royce and then changes to a bicycle for the last mile. She patron ises everyone in sight, concludes cut throat business deals on the side and produces her politics as the crudest series of clumsy propaganda points.

The programme ends with the moronic leader of the in their own countries to justice of the sentences.

We didn't want to discredit the fraternal Party representatives who had attended the open trials, so we indefinitely postponed the rehabilitation of Bukharin; Zinovier, Rykov and the rest Defends repression In the remaining sections of the book Kruschev works through an extended defence of Kremlin policy after Stalin's death.

He reveals, for instance, that he held back from releasing US spy-pilot Gary Powers in order to boost John Kennedy's chances of winning the presidential election.

And, of course, he defends the brutal repression of the 1956 Hungarian revolution. theatre group g/001 lily watching the miners dan ing with the women from the show.

'They don't need LIS they?' 'What do we do?' 'Go home. They've got their own bloody culture.' In that the play is a crude hatchet job on the left it is relatively unimportant. Its real slander is against the working class, portrayed in the shape of the miners as anti political, philistines.

Redgrave -slandered *Nothing like a good dose of propaganda to get you started on the second shift' says one of them watching the show.

The play draws on experience that suggests Robin Chapman has never stepped into the real world.

The patronising pseudo theatre comes not so much from the performance of his wet group of lefties as from his own pen.

Hungary 1956 importance to the account of Kruschev's early history as Stalin's trainee.

Prick any so-called 'Euro Communist' leader today and you will find a similar selfcentred thoroughly opportunist and bureaucratic creature of Stalinism.

As the crisis of capitalism forces the bourgeoisie in every country to intensify its attacks on the working class, these bureaucrats, schooled solely in 'peaceful coexistence' with capitalism, move in support of vicious austerity measures, and to suppress the slightest sign of independent working class action.

In this they find fitting father-figure in Nikita Kruschev.

----- pull-quotes -----

on the News. Last week's BBC television Play For Today' extended that