Review: Beljakovin talvi

YOUNG PEOPLE REBEL – AND A LITTLE OLDER ONES TOO

When it was the end of the 60s, and especially the year 1970, described by Belyakov’s winter , we were sitting reading an exam and did not understand that we were living in the Great Historical Age. The ossified society was irritated in many directions. Finnish radical students who had previously opposed the occupation of Czechoslovakia turned to the Soviet Union, and Ambassador Alexei Belyakov engineered a revolution in the country.


However, in Ilpo Tuomarila’s play, which is based on Kimmo Rentola’s research, young people are flimsy and harmless. The reasons for the rebellion are personal for many. The defiance of the young people’s memorized phrases makes me smile, but the old workers’ songs still bring back memories and make my foot tap to the beat.

It will probably take a few more years before this more thorough worldview of the Stalinist youth can be brought to the stage. It would be necessary, because the French youth, for example, did not go along with the Soviet Union – and not all Finns either.

There are no experienced communists in the play, but all the young people experience their political awakening, some to rebel against their father and relatives, some because of the relationships offered by the group.

At the end, young people who have lost their illusions appeal on stage to how the world’s distress and the sincere hope of a better society were the noble driving force behind everything. The disappointment is understandable, but I guess the revolution was really serious?


The most sympathetic characters in the play, directed by Milko Lehto, are Kekkonen (Antti Litja), who was squeezed by the political situation in 1970, and the almost demonically fascinating Beljakov (Pekka Laiho). Pertti Koivula’s Foreign Minister Leskinen with his liquor problems makes us laugh, but he leaves the president very alone and is easily managed by Beljakov.


Belyakov’s Winter fulfills its function perfectly if it makes the viewer examine their own memories of this period. However, today’s young people can ask unpleasant questions.