A Hundred Years of Dead Ends

A Hundred Years of Dead Ends spans a century of Russian and Soviet history, featuring a Bolshevik revolutionary, a Leningrad librarian, and a modern young Moscow couple as they grapple with the same questions: What do we inherit from our ancestors? What do we choose to forget? And what happens when the truth about the past threatens to destroy the present? Blending documentary fragments, archival photographs, and intimate family scenes, the play explores identity, betrayal, and the cost of survival in a country where names, nationalities, and even lives could be rewritten at any moment. Inspired by the family saga World History of a Jewish Family by Yakub Zair-Bek, the play was written during the drama workshop "Jews in the USSR: Family in Great History" and first shown on December 1, 2018 at the Museum of GULAG History in Moscow.