Kill the Snake Hatchling

“The Russians are not Romans; they don’t need bread and circuses. What they do need is a great goal—and we’ll give it. And where there is a goal, there is a chain… If everyone starts worrying about their own happiness, what will remain of Russia?”

The play “To Kill the Serpent Cub” closes the topic of the 17th century in Boris Akunin’s project “A History of the Russian State” and makes you think about the crossroads of Russian history—about how everything, always, could have turned out differently. The play became part of a new RАМТ stage production, a triptych called “The Last Days,” directed by Aleksey Borodin, where not only the characters converge, but also the authors who missed each other across centuries: Alexander Pushkin tells the story of “The Bronze Horseman” and himself comes into Mikhail Bulgakov’s field of view. And from the 21st century, Boris Akunin watches the young Tsarevich Peter: “...And nothing will happen. Nothing they dreamed of… No fleet. No victories. No window to Europe. No right capital on the sea shore. No empire. Russia will not be great…”