Photo Flash: 14 LITTLE RED HUTS Begins American Debut At The Medicine Show Theatre

14 Little Red Huts, a dramatic look at Soviet policy in the early 20th century that led to the deaths of nearly 15 million people, just finished successful previews of its American debut at the Medicine Show Theatre. This important work highlights a neglected chapter of world history, and is running through November 18. Ioan Ardelean, a Romanian actor and professor who grew up under the old regime, directs.

The story examines the human toll of Stalin's treatment of the peasantry after the Bolshevik Revolution. The misguided policy of "collectivization" forced individual peasant households into communal farms called "kolkhozes" during the late 1920s and early 1930s. By the 1930s it was clear the government's attempt to feed a growing industrial-worker class was failing. The policies set farming quotas far too high, did not account for poor or average crop yields, and prohibited peasants from saving some of their crops for their own use. Relatively wealthy peasants who owned livestock or smaller plots of land were declared enemies of the state and killed or exiled to Siberia. The result was famine.