The arts have played a significant role in this last year of such astonishing, historic change in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.
Quite fittingly, Czechoslovakia has elected Vaclav Havel, a playwright, as its president. Valiant little Lithuania has a professor of music, Vytautas Landsbergis, standing up to the Soviet giant. East Germany's new prime minister is Lothar de Maiziere, another man from the world of music.
Artists--men and women of creativity, ideas, and culture--are able to draw on the imagination, to make dreams and yearning alive for millions of people stifled in a totalitarian straitjacket for nearly half a century and more. Poets, writers, painters, composers, and filmmakers have somehow managed to keep a tiny flame of individuality flickering through the long dark years.
In this month's special section dedicated to their achievement we pay them tribute. John Elsom notes the challenges and complexities of theater in a united Germany as evidenced by a recent theater festival bringing together participants from East and West Germany. Nicholas Rudall testifies as to the courage and vigor of the Lithuanian National Theatre exemplified by two magical productions of life under a communist regime. Claudia Woolgar reviews a brand new play in London about the rise and possible fall of Mikhail Gorbachev.
Anna Lawton analyzes and Soviet documentary that has all the USSR agog, This Is No Way to Live, detailing graphically what life has been like for the entire existence of the average Soviet citizen. Cathy Young, who was born and grew
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