Review: Beljakovin talvi

THE IDEOLOGICAL DAWN OF THE EAST EXTOLLED THE YOUTH

Kekkonen, a crystal chandelier and underwear. Once again, we return to the reign of the longest-serving ruler of independent Finland.
The president agonizes in fury over the weakness of his vassals, the turmoil of the common people and the intrigues of an enemy threatening the fatherland like the ruler of Shakespeare’s royal dramas.

Antti Litja’s incarnation of Kekkos, built intelligently, with delicious and abundant details, staggers indignantly in his long underwear to be worn by Vuorineuvos (Aarno Sulkanen), who symbolizes his inner circle: the suit and tie are his armor, in which he again faces… Russkies.
In addition to labour market policy, there is concern about the rebellious youth, who are turning from fierce opposition to the Soviet tanks in Prague into so-called Taisto members. For them, the ideological dawn of the East dawned in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
Alexei Belyakov, the Soviet Union’s ambassador to Finland in 1970-71, also comes from there. His mission was to inspire young people to revolution.

Ilpo Tuomarila has built the play on the basis of historian Kimmo Rentola’s The Ghost of the Revolution . It examines the Taisto attitude of the youth of 1968-72.

Uncle Lenin’s fan base

The ruler’s court is carnalized in the form of Väinö Leskinen . The sweaty foreign minister, who is busy tipping Pertti Koivula’s vodka, grows from a comical snitch to a secretively self-confident politician who is no longer threatened to be swallowed by Pekka Laiho’s pompous but sentimental wolf-hulking Belyakov.
40 years ago, the youth who used mass power had a huge amount to oppose, such as the ideas of the previous generation, state-monopoly capitalism, negative attitudes towards sex, the military, the church, imperialism, Iran and the Vietnam War.
Now, young people without crowd power probably don’t have as much choice. Quarterly capitalism, the Iraq war?
In the play, young people’s idealistic and pure passion for making the world a better place intensifies into an ideological-religious dogmatics of the party and revolution.
But there will be no revolution. What is left? The Tsar of Tamminiemi is certainly surging from the crisis to the next.
Irony, satire and parody are created, which is both a disadvantage and an advantage.
The strange era is reduced to tableau-like samples of phraseology, in which the characters are made to act.
In the heat of red flags and revolutionary songs, at least there is no faint historical statue. The direction and role work keep the dialogue that plays with facts alive.
In the auditorium, those who remember themselves begin to reminisce, and perhaps astonish those to whom only historical research can explain those times.