Shore of Utopia

The Briton Tom Stoppard managed to write about the intellectuals of the nineteenth century who stood at the origins of free thought and revolution in Russia, so that it has been read and staged in Russia for the second decade. Stoppard has always been interested in a person's personal choices in the context of historical events. It is not surprising that Eastern Europe, and especially Russia, its cyclical history of reform and repression and the fate of thoughtful people trying to find a way out of this cycle, became one of his favorite topics. The heroes of “The Shores of Utopia” Alexander Herzen, Mikhail Bakunin, Vissarion Belinsky and others, after whom streets and chapters in textbooks are named, appear as bright, complex and unexpectedly modern people. They fall in love, quarrel, make mistakes - and solve the eternal problem: is there a right to criticize their country and speak to it from the outside, “from the other shore,” or only those who are inside, those whose life, freedom and opportunity have a voice? to be heard under threat.