STAGE

A political-artistic debate has broken out in the letters column of Pravda, the Soviet Union’s Communist Party daily. The fracas began last month with a letter from three history professors criticizing a new play that, they said, unfavorably compares Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin with Josef Stalin and portrays Soviet history in a negative way. This week, eight leading theatrical artists answered the charge. Political denunciations of artists could lead to a return of old-style censorship, they wrote in a letter published Monday. The artists accused the historians of trying to dissuade theaters from booking Mikhail Shatrov’s play “Onward--Onward--Onward” by “pinning political labels” on it. In a seven-paragraph comment on the letter, Pravda said it would not take sides.