The Passion of Josef D.

In this play, Paddy Chayefsky reveals the broad canvas of communism, beginning with the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 and ending with the death of Lenin in 1924, adopting along the way some of the very techniques that Brecht used for lesser purposes. Here is Stalin, the former seminarian, fanatically dedicated to the apothesis of a godless society, and to the canonization of Lenin as the object of its veneration. But he is more: "He is domatic of mind and demonic in behavior, a single-minded sloe-eyed beast battering his head against the cage of history and blooddying his keepers in the process." - N. Y. Herald-Tribune.