Briton Tom Stoppard managed to write about the intellectuals of the nineteenth century, who stood at the origins of free thought and revolution in Russia, so that he is being read and staged in Russia for the second decade.Stoppard has always been interested in a person's personal choice in the context of historical events. It is not surprising that Eastern Europe, and especially Russia, its cyclical history of reforms and repression and the fate of thinking people who tried to find a way out of this circle, became one of his favorite topics.The heroes of The Coast of Utopia, Alexander Herzen, Mikhail Bakunin, Vissarion Belinsky and others, whose names are named after streets and chapters in textbooks, appear as bright, complex and unexpectedly modern people. They fall in love, quarrel, make mistakes — and solve the eternal problem: is there a right to criticize your country and talk to it from the outside, “from the other shore”, or does only those who are inside have a voice, those whose life, freedom and the opportunity to be heard are under threat.