Tony Kushner’s 1994 play Slavs! paints a darkly comical picture of the USSR as it crumbles in the mid-1980s through its later rebirth as a collection of independent states. Aleksii Antedilluvianovich Prelapsarianov, the world’s oldest living Bolshevik, addresses the Hall of the Soviets in 1985 on the dangers of entering a new era without first devising a system of order, or “great theory”, to guide the nation through the ensuing chaos. Along with his elderly comrades, they discuss how to rebuild life within a system, which once based on ideals, has now collapsed. The play then moves to focus on the victims of this collapse, led by a young, alcoholic lesbian, Katherina, and her lover Bonfila, a pediatrician exiled to Siberia after their relationship is discovered. There, Bonfila hopelessly struggles to treat the huge numbers of children made mute and zombie-like by the poisoning from nuclear waste. Metaphysical, personal, and political, Kushner’s follow up to Angels in America, Slavs! remains faithful to its subtitle: "Thinking About the Longstanding Problems of Virtue and Happiness".
Slavs! guide sections
