LENIN

2017 / Verbrecher Verlag

By Milo Rau

In 1917, the October Revolution shook Russia. Only a few years later, socialism was established. Lenin, the leader of the revolution, fights against physical and mental decay in a country house near Moscow. The bitter struggles against political adversaries, the struggle with the reluctant Bolsheviks for revolutionary intervention, his tireless work for a new Marxist society, an assassination by anarchist Fanny Kaplan and several strokes have weakened the revolutionary, brilliant theorist and charismatic political leader. In the circle of a few confidants, he struggles, cut off from the Central Committee, for political influence. His companion Trotsky, the cultural politician Lunacharski and other people who audition in Lenin’s dacha evoke memories of the short moment when historically anything seemed possible. But Lenin’s decaying body and weakened mind throw the “greatest head of the 20th century” back on itself. And Stalin, who is speculating on his successor, is already waiting for his chance. In the drama “LENIN” Milo Rau looks through Lenin’s brain at what is probably the most momentous revolution in human history: a society between awakening and apathy, revolutionary longing and reactionary resistance – a labyrinth of hopes and fears, political ideals and collective experience of violence.