Peter Weiss
TROTSKY IN EXILE
ACT ONE
The basic scene is a room that could be anywhere, with a wntmg
desk covered with papers and books, a camp bed, trunks and pack–
ing cases and a few widely spaced chairs.
TROTSKY
is
seated at the writing desk reading a manuscript, pen
in hand. This picture is repeated at various points during the play.
It corresponds to the final moments of the play.
Various stages of Trotskys life are depicted against this unchanging
scene: periods of exile, meetings and disputes with key figures in
the revolution. The beginning is explained by the end, which shows
Trotsky, in retirement and isolation, just before his death. The
actors' entrances are swift and sudden.
2. THE PENAL COLONY OF VERKHOLENSK
MRACHKOVSKY, DZERZHINSKY, MAKHAISKY, LUZIN, ALEXANDRA
SOK,OLOVSKAYA
and other nameless prisoners come in.
ALEXANDRA
proceeds to make up a bed of blankets and furs.
TROTSKY
is
at
the desk.
TROTSKY: My fellow prisoners. Sometimes Natasha. Sometimes Alexan–
dra. Exile. Banished by my own people. Banished by the Czar. Siberia.
Nearly thirty years ago. A new century was beginning.
(He brushes
a hand over an open book)
Cockroaches are reading Marx. Cock–
roaches eating
Das Kapital.
Alexandra, how are the children?
ALEXANDRA: Zina is asleep. Ninushka still feverish.
DZERZHINSKY: The new century. Signs of the coming storm. Awful por–
tents. Russia. What a huge factory of ideas. And what despotism.
Court, nobility, landowners, officers, overseers, foremen, police. Pa–
triarchs all. Absolute power in the family. Over children, grandchil–
dren. We must break it. But where are the free men to come from?
