What’s Left?
(1991) 30-minute documentary/drama about leftist politics in a post-Soviet world. Broadcast nationally by Consider the Alternatives.
Claire Schoen: Producer, sound editor
Alan Snitow: Writer, Director
Fine Line Productions: Executive Producer
Award: NFCB Silver Reel.
Program Summary: As the Soviet Union collapsed in 1990-1, Alan Snitow wrote and directed and Claire Schoen produced a radio play called “What’s Left?” based on interviews Snitow did with dissidents, democrats, and left-wing activists during three trips to the USSR from 1988-90. The play is in the form of an debate between the Angel and the Devil sitting on the shoulders of a progressive American journalist who is happy about the collapse of totalitarian communism and raises questions about whether left-wing politics can now be freed from the slaughter, the terror, the anti-Semitism and the tyranny of the Stalinist epoch. They debate amid the sights and sounds of Moscow, Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), and Riga. Interspersed throughout are excerpts from the interviews with Soviet thinkers, who challenge American ideas of Right and Left.
