'He was killed first': the producer of the play about Solomon Mikhoels - about anti-Semitism and the tragedy of the great actor

February 29 spectators in New Jersey see for the first time the play “The Last Role of Solomon Mikhoels” is the story of a triumphant creative life, passionate love and the tragic death of the great Jewish actor Solomon Mikhoels. On the eve of the ForumDaily performance, I had the opportunity to talk with the producer of the performance Leonid Kopeikin.

Photo provided by the organizers

— You are not a theatrical person. As far as we know, you received a technical education in the Soviet Union and worked in your specialty for many years.

- Absolutely right. I graduated from the second faculty of the Kuibyshev Aviation Institute. It was one of the top five aviation universities in the country. Oleg Sysuev studied in the same stream as me, but at a different faculty. And a few years later, at KuaI - that’s what our institute was called then, another very famous person in the modern world, Mark Solonin, entered and successfully graduated from it.

- Wonderful company. And after graduation...

— I worked in my specialty at the beginning in Kuibyshev, at the engine-building plant named after. Frunze. My parents worked there too. Then he went to work at the Moscow Znamya plant. And in the early 90s, when the defense industry collapsed, I had to first go to work in private business and then move to America.

- Is it that simple?

- Of course not. I am simply outlining the most consistent line that will lead us to the answer to the question: where did theater come from?

- So where did the theater come from?

— I think about 30 years ago. I was in Moscow on a business trip, and during one of the transitions I bought the Weiner brothers’ novel “The Gospel of the Executioner” at a bookstore. I have a flair for books. Of course, the author's last name means a lot. But we know that even by a famous author, not every book is a masterpiece. And here the most powerful energy surged through the binding. And I was not mistaken. And my business trip is over. The book took up all the space, the rest was done on autopilot.

After the premiere. Photo provided by the organizers

- Well...

- Wait, you’ll understand now. Already at the first reading I saw the faces of fictional characters. I more or less knew what real historical characters looked like. And when I began to re-read the novel, each time I saw more and more clearly how this all happened. In my opinion, “The Gospel According to the Executioner” is an almost ready-made script.

— So this book gave impetus to your creative imagination?

- I think yes. Everything else grew like a snowball from a mountain. I read another Weiner novel from this duology, “The Noose and the Stone in the Green Grass.” And after that I plunged into accessible historical non-fiction. Details unknown to me began to emerge, and there was a feeling that the logic of events had become clear. And a clear historical period arose where events worked in such a way that they should have led to a very definite result, which in my first public speech I called the Stalin Five-Year Plan for the final solution to the Jewish question in the USSR.

— What historical period are you talking about now?

— I'm talking about the period from January 1948 to March 1953. Although the anti-Semitic overture began in 1947.

— What does all this have to do with you?

- The most direct. I was born into a Jewish family. Although assimilated, it is Jewish. The language in the house was Yiddish, which was spoken by many of my close relatives. My parents spoke pure and correct Russian, so all my life strangers asked both them and me the question: are you from Moscow or Leningrad?

— Then it’s even more unclear what turned you towards your ethnic origin?

“That’s exactly what turned it around.” The world around me turned around. Efraim Sevela has a work called “Parrot Speaking Yiddish.” And I was a Jew who spoke Russian. It’s almost like Zhvanetsky: “Yes, famous, but still....” MM has a pause here, but everyone knows what word to fill it with. My history. That is, since childhood I knew who I was. And I learned about the doctors’ case quite early. And I was born in January 53, when the hysteria of anti-Semitism was in full swing. If the stars had fallen differently, and if deportation had begun, this conversation would not have happened. Nothing would happen in my life.

— So you want to say that you had a personal motive for turning to the theater?

- Exactly. But maybe everything would have remained inside if not for what is happening in the world now in relation to the Jews. You know, over the past year and a half in various places I have said and written what I later read from Mark Solonin, and from Leonid Mlechin, and from Nikolai Svanidze. And I'm glad about it. The main thing here is not the palm, but the fact that people of different ages, positions, education and nationalities see the situation and evaluate it almost identically.

- How is this expressed?

— The fact is that the effect of the vaccine against anti-Semitism, which humanity introduced to itself 75 years ago, has ended. Everyone thought that the blood and ashes of six million innocent souls would forever protect humanity from the most terrible virus of hatred. It turned out that this was one of many illusions. If we don’t take action everywhere, openly, using all available and legal means, we will get a new Holocaust. It's not a matter of what form. It's a matter of scale.

- Aren't you exaggerating the threat?

“I don’t want to belittle it.” And then, this is never limited to just Jews. Read the speeches of Lord Jonathan Sacks. It doesn't matter where the epidemic starts. If you don't fight it, it will sweep the whole world. It can proceed as it did in pre-war Germany, or post-war Russia, or as in Poland, where there are practically no Jews left, and anti-Semitism still exists.

— And that’s why you turned to the theater, to Mikhoels?

- Yes. Mikhoels is a huge personality. This largely led to him being killed first. And you will pay attention to the uniqueness of this crime: the customer is known - Stalin, the perpetrators are known - Abakumov and his subordinates, the method, time, place of the murder - everything is known. But the criminal case was not brought to court and no one was tried for this murder. They took away orders and titles (not all), imprisoned (not all), shot (not all), but not specifically for this crime, but in aggregate. And mainly for work under the leadership of Beria. And at the very time when I turned to the Russian community of New York with a proposal to talk about what happened during the last Stalinist five years in the USSR, director Arnold Shvetsov called me and offered to stage the play of our contemporary, playwright Zinoviy Sagalov, “The Last Role of Solomon Mikhoels” . In 2019, we showed the play three times in the format of stage readings and all the shows were a great success. Our actors Alexey Trubetskoy and Valeria Korennaya showed excellent work. Next up is the performance at the end of February in the format of a play with all the scenery that the wonderful person Natalya Vikhlyaeva designed for us, music, light and a cozy chamber hall, which we received thanks to the help of Dmitry Mikhailov, the head of the Russian center in Firelawn, New Jersey. By the way, we invite everyone to visit the Community Center on February 29 at 7 pm and watch the performance.

Solomon Mikhoels, still from the film “Circus”, 1936. Photo: Wikipedia, public domain

- And it's all?

- Of course not. Sagalov's play is a work of the Broadway format. Mikhoels is timeless, anti-Semitism is an eternal topic. The performance can be played for years. In addition, we are already working on another play by Sagalov, “Don’t Believe Mr. Kafka,” and in the project there is a third play about the events of early 1953.

— Judging by the way you talk about your work, your rate of progress is not too high.

- This is true. I wish I could move faster. But there are objective circumstances. Almost just this year we opened the company ARLO Art Productions, which will handle our projects. Well, the most painful place of all undertakings is financing. We certainly need sponsors, both organizations and simply caring people. We are a non-profit organization. For now, we can only count on like-minded people, on those who know us personally and believe in us. And we believe that we are doing a good and just thing.

- Thank you, Leonid. We wish you success.

— Thank you for your interest in our activities.

You can learn more and buy a ticket for a performance about Solomon Mikhoels at ForumDaily Poster Page.

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