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Classic Soviet Plays
Classic Soviet Plays...
Hardcover
Published January 1, 1979
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April 26, 2026Maxim Gorky's Yegor Bulychov and Others: This play centers around Yegor Bulychov's slow death by disease. One central element of this is a cynicism about pre-revolutionary Russian society, both in terms of Bulychov's cynicism about the systems of capitalism, religion, and monarchical authority, and in how most of the characters around Bulychov seem primarily concerned with getting money out of him. In the latter sense, the play follows earlier models in which an aging person tests those around him (or sometimes her) to see who genuinely cares about them, as opposed to their money. But Bulychov doesn't seem to have this plan--he seems to genuinely think he'll recover for most of the play, and as it becomes increasingly more apparent that many of his circle are only concerned about cash he becomes more cynical about all the institutions of tzarist Russian life.
https://youtu.be/LCcHmFZSpkQ
Vladimir Mayakovsky's Mystery-Bouffe: This satiric play follows some traditions of the carnivalesque, including the construction of a world where authority is disrupted or inverted, where food and drink are prized, and where radical liberty is possible through collaborative community. It also follows a journey/quest pattern, moving through different levels of existence (kind of on a Divine Comedy model). At the beginning of the play, the world is disrupted/destroyed by some kind of non-clearly defined flood--with there being some suggestion that it's the global revolution dreamt of by the Soviet revolutionaries. This deluge spares fourteen "clean ones" and fourteen "unclean ones." This is not an ethical assessment--or if it is, it's an inversion of typical ethical views of cleanliness and uncleanliness--but a practical one. The "clean ones" are the wealthy, aristocrats, rulers, and the powerful. The "unclean ones" are workers, farmers, laborers, etc. In response to the flood, the survivors decide to build an ark, and on that ark the "clean ones" initially decide to recreate a tzardom to get the food from the "unclean ones," but when the new tzar eats all the food himself, they throw him overboard and proclaim a republic. However, when the "clean ones" take over as administrators and eat all the remaining food themselves, the "unclean ones" proclaim a proletarian revolution and throw them overboard as well. The "unclean ones" then go on a quest for a kind of utopia (or at least someplace livable). They travel through hell, where they scare the devils with tales of earthly suffering, and they travel through heaven, where they find no food or anything worth having. Finally, they arrive back at an earthly city, where they are greeted by the "things," tools, machinery, and equipment that--freed from the exploitative shackles of capital--enthusiastically propose working together with the "unclean ones" in a communist utopia unburdened by exploitation or ownership.
https://youtu.be/u_qGJ5OyyVM
Vsevolod Vishnevsky's An Optimistic Tragedy: This is definitely a propaganda pieces, which perhaps shouldn't be super surprising considering that Vishnevsky served in the Russian navy, participated in the revolutionary mutinies, and then served enthusiastically in the Red Navy, fighting in both the Civil War and the Great Patriotic War. In this play, a group of sailors has to negotiate their duty to the revolution, which is complicated by their anarchist sympathies. However, through a combination of elements--including persuasion, violence, and martial unity--most of the anarchists are brought around to the Communist cause, joining together to fight the enemies of the Soviet state. One of the key players in this transformation is a commissar, who bravely faces down a threat of gang rape, several political and interpersonal conflicts, class tensions, etc. to forge the former anarchist detachment into a proper regiment.
https://youtu.be/8lTzJMEEVQ8
Mikhail Bulgakov's The Day of the Turbins: This is an interesting Soviet play because it's really not what one would expect in a regime that would (or maybe had, I'm not sure in 1925) impose the requirement for socialist realism on art. Bulgakov's play is realist, but not socialist realist. The big difference is that socialist realism requires a focus on the working class/peasants and to tell heroic tales of their struggles within a "realist" style, whereas realism more broadly just needs to depict the lives of the characters in a way that could be taken as a genuine experience. Bulgakov tells the story of the Turbin family and their friends, who are high ranking officers in the military or government of the Hetman of Ukraine--a short lived Ukrainian government that was vaguely loyal to the White Russian cause, but also vaguely devoted to Ukrainian independence in 1918. This Ukrainian government/army fights both local left-wing partisans and the Russian Bolsheviks, but when their German allies (remember, this is during WWI) pull out, the Hetman and much of his government abandons the country for Berlin, leaving the army to its fate. This abandonment largely destroys the illusions of the aristocratic Turbins and their circle, and though some want to flee to rejoin the White cause and keep fighting the Bolsheviks, Alexie Turbin (the head of the family and an honorable guy) basically acknowledges that they have always been exploited by monarchies who do not care about them, while Myshlayevsky (another officer, though less noble than Alexie) declares that he's going to join the Bolsheviks to help build a new and better Russia (though this seems a somewhat cynical decision, not made out of a genuine conversion to communism).
https://youtu.be/XzpdX2uOd5w
Nikolai Pogodin's Kremlin Chimes: This is definitely another propaganda piece utilizing socialist realism to promote the idea of Soviet progress and success. Pogodin tells the story of Lenin's campaign to provide electricity throughout the Soviet Union--which is definitely one of the successes of the Soviet state in contrast to old Russia, where the majority lived without modern conveniences. While there is a realistic depiction of the poverty and deprivations of the immediate post-civil war period, these conditions are largely (and not entirely unfairly) put down to the civil war and the problems created under the tzarist regime, whereas Lenin inspires the majority of the people who come into contact with him to believe in the glorious future of the Soviet Union. Even Zabelin, an engineer who begins the play in staunch opposition to the Soviets, is quickly inspired by Lenin's vision to join the electrification efforts--though not out of a conversion to communism, just because he is convinced that Lenin and the Russian people can bring the dream into reality.
https://youtu.be/souj_MEOABY
Alexei Arbuzov's Tanya: This play picks up one on Arbuzov's common themes (according to the intro to this collection), which is the importance of work for self-definition. But, this is definitely a communist conceptualization of the importance of work, rather than a capitalist one. The play is stridently anti-individualist and roots the heroine Tanya's journey of self-discovery and growth in her movement from individualism to finding fulfillment in working for others. She begins the play dedicated to her husband Herman, having given up her studies as a doctor to devote herself entirely to him. But when he falls in love with another woman, Tanya cannot bear to have him lie to her, so she leaves and has his baby without him ever knowing. The baby, Yuri, then becomes the focus of Tanya's world, but when he gets sick she is so individualistic that she insists she can treat him and sends the doctor away. Obviously, we don't know whether Yuri would have survived with the other doctor's care, but he dies and Tanya throws herself into working as a doctor in the mining districts of Siberia. But she is not working FOR others, she is working to escape herself, and so she is not genuinely happy but--in the words of Pink Floyd--comfortably numb. It is only when she is called to a mining camp to treat a sick child that she learns the importance of working for others. She braves a blizzard on skis, injuring her leg in the process, only to learn that the baby she is there to treat is the son of Herman and the woman he fell in love with--also named Yuri. Tanya treats their Yuri, saving his life, and makes her peace with Herman and the individualist ideology he had represented for her.
https://youtu.be/qJTxFz6ZK34
Leonid Leonov's Invasion: This play is a romance on the model of A Tale of Two Cities, filtered through Soviet socialist realism and anti-Nazi propaganda. The play is set during the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, which was on-going when the play was written and premiered in 1942, and it focuses on a family whose town is taken over by the Germans. Their estranged son Fyodor--who has recently been released from prison for some unspecified crime, and who suffers from TB--is essentially persona non grata to them because he egotistically focuses on himself rather than caring about the struggles and suffering of others. By contrast, his sister Olga and her fiance, Andrei Kolesnikov, become partisans killing German soldiers and creating terror. Fyodor does try to join them, but they don't regard him as trustworthy. But when Fyodor's father shows him the suffering of Aniska--a fifteen year old girl who has been raped and tortured by the Nazis--Fyodor realizes he must put aside his own experiences to serve others. When Fyodor is caught after assassinating the German commandant of the town, he tells the Nazi police that he is Andrei Kolesnikov, the very man they've been hunting more than any other. He does this not for personal glory, since he knows it will mean torture and execution, but to spare the real Kolesnikov to keep up the fight (and for Olga's sake). In this sense, there's a distinct echo of A Tale of Two Cities, in which the dissolute Sydney Carton takes the place of his doppleganger Charles Darnay, sacrificing himself in the one noble and selfless gesture of his life to allow Darnay to live with their beloved Lucie. Essentially, Fyodor sacrifies himself so that Kolesnikov can live for both Olga and the Soviet Union. This is essentially a romantic story because it presents a character with a tragic flaw/hubris--Fyodor's egoism--which threatens to destroy him, but he overcomes this flaw and learns the error of his ways in time to correct them.
https://youtu.be/3kNSoMEQpEg
Evgeny Schwartz' The Dragon: This is an anti-fascist fairy tale, allegorically having Lancelot (a descendant of the famous Arthurian hero and distant relative of St. George) slay a fearsome Dragon that has been controlling a town for four hundred years. The dragon's tactics sounds exactly like blitzkrieg, and his influence is deeply corrupting--clear echoes and critiques of fascism. The Dragon tells Lancelot that it won't matter if he wins the fight because the Dragon has so damaged the souls of the townsfolk that they will continue to do evil even without him in place. And when Lancelot does win, the town is taken over by the corrupt Burgomaster and his son, who had been the puppets and henchmen of the Dragon. They impose a police state, which the people reluctantly go along with in the hopes that Lancelot will, somehow, save them again.
https://youtu.be/fi3V9iFk9vg
Victor Rozov's In Search of Happiness: This is probably my least favorite of the plays in this collection. It's not bad, it just didn't do that much for me. It's a very domestic play, in which a lot of the drama focuses around people getting in one another's way, not having their own space, and competing objectives in terms of what different family members want out of life and out of one another. In particular, one climax (which ends the first act) is when Lenochka gets mad at Oleg for accidentally spilling ink on the new desk, and she literally murders his pet fish by throwing them out a window. Oleg then takes revenge by getting his father's old saber and hacking up some of the furniture. And everyone gets mad a Oleg. But Lenochka killed his fish. The fish had fuck all to do with the ink or the desk, and she killed two living creatures for no good reason. And as someone particularly bothered by cruelty to animals, I am not a fan of that.
https://youtu.be/MAK3Zo9Vbyk
https://youtu.be/LCcHmFZSpkQ
Vladimir Mayakovsky's Mystery-Bouffe: This satiric play follows some traditions of the carnivalesque, including the construction of a world where authority is disrupted or inverted, where food and drink are prized, and where radical liberty is possible through collaborative community. It also follows a journey/quest pattern, moving through different levels of existence (kind of on a Divine Comedy model). At the beginning of the play, the world is disrupted/destroyed by some kind of non-clearly defined flood--with there being some suggestion that it's the global revolution dreamt of by the Soviet revolutionaries. This deluge spares fourteen "clean ones" and fourteen "unclean ones." This is not an ethical assessment--or if it is, it's an inversion of typical ethical views of cleanliness and uncleanliness--but a practical one. The "clean ones" are the wealthy, aristocrats, rulers, and the powerful. The "unclean ones" are workers, farmers, laborers, etc. In response to the flood, the survivors decide to build an ark, and on that ark the "clean ones" initially decide to recreate a tzardom to get the food from the "unclean ones," but when the new tzar eats all the food himself, they throw him overboard and proclaim a republic. However, when the "clean ones" take over as administrators and eat all the remaining food themselves, the "unclean ones" proclaim a proletarian revolution and throw them overboard as well. The "unclean ones" then go on a quest for a kind of utopia (or at least someplace livable). They travel through hell, where they scare the devils with tales of earthly suffering, and they travel through heaven, where they find no food or anything worth having. Finally, they arrive back at an earthly city, where they are greeted by the "things," tools, machinery, and equipment that--freed from the exploitative shackles of capital--enthusiastically propose working together with the "unclean ones" in a communist utopia unburdened by exploitation or ownership.
https://youtu.be/u_qGJ5OyyVM
Vsevolod Vishnevsky's An Optimistic Tragedy: This is definitely a propaganda pieces, which perhaps shouldn't be super surprising considering that Vishnevsky served in the Russian navy, participated in the revolutionary mutinies, and then served enthusiastically in the Red Navy, fighting in both the Civil War and the Great Patriotic War. In this play, a group of sailors has to negotiate their duty to the revolution, which is complicated by their anarchist sympathies. However, through a combination of elements--including persuasion, violence, and martial unity--most of the anarchists are brought around to the Communist cause, joining together to fight the enemies of the Soviet state. One of the key players in this transformation is a commissar, who bravely faces down a threat of gang rape, several political and interpersonal conflicts, class tensions, etc. to forge the former anarchist detachment into a proper regiment.
https://youtu.be/8lTzJMEEVQ8
Mikhail Bulgakov's The Day of the Turbins: This is an interesting Soviet play because it's really not what one would expect in a regime that would (or maybe had, I'm not sure in 1925) impose the requirement for socialist realism on art. Bulgakov's play is realist, but not socialist realist. The big difference is that socialist realism requires a focus on the working class/peasants and to tell heroic tales of their struggles within a "realist" style, whereas realism more broadly just needs to depict the lives of the characters in a way that could be taken as a genuine experience. Bulgakov tells the story of the Turbin family and their friends, who are high ranking officers in the military or government of the Hetman of Ukraine--a short lived Ukrainian government that was vaguely loyal to the White Russian cause, but also vaguely devoted to Ukrainian independence in 1918. This Ukrainian government/army fights both local left-wing partisans and the Russian Bolsheviks, but when their German allies (remember, this is during WWI) pull out, the Hetman and much of his government abandons the country for Berlin, leaving the army to its fate. This abandonment largely destroys the illusions of the aristocratic Turbins and their circle, and though some want to flee to rejoin the White cause and keep fighting the Bolsheviks, Alexie Turbin (the head of the family and an honorable guy) basically acknowledges that they have always been exploited by monarchies who do not care about them, while Myshlayevsky (another officer, though less noble than Alexie) declares that he's going to join the Bolsheviks to help build a new and better Russia (though this seems a somewhat cynical decision, not made out of a genuine conversion to communism).
https://youtu.be/XzpdX2uOd5w
Nikolai Pogodin's Kremlin Chimes: This is definitely another propaganda piece utilizing socialist realism to promote the idea of Soviet progress and success. Pogodin tells the story of Lenin's campaign to provide electricity throughout the Soviet Union--which is definitely one of the successes of the Soviet state in contrast to old Russia, where the majority lived without modern conveniences. While there is a realistic depiction of the poverty and deprivations of the immediate post-civil war period, these conditions are largely (and not entirely unfairly) put down to the civil war and the problems created under the tzarist regime, whereas Lenin inspires the majority of the people who come into contact with him to believe in the glorious future of the Soviet Union. Even Zabelin, an engineer who begins the play in staunch opposition to the Soviets, is quickly inspired by Lenin's vision to join the electrification efforts--though not out of a conversion to communism, just because he is convinced that Lenin and the Russian people can bring the dream into reality.
https://youtu.be/souj_MEOABY
Alexei Arbuzov's Tanya: This play picks up one on Arbuzov's common themes (according to the intro to this collection), which is the importance of work for self-definition. But, this is definitely a communist conceptualization of the importance of work, rather than a capitalist one. The play is stridently anti-individualist and roots the heroine Tanya's journey of self-discovery and growth in her movement from individualism to finding fulfillment in working for others. She begins the play dedicated to her husband Herman, having given up her studies as a doctor to devote herself entirely to him. But when he falls in love with another woman, Tanya cannot bear to have him lie to her, so she leaves and has his baby without him ever knowing. The baby, Yuri, then becomes the focus of Tanya's world, but when he gets sick she is so individualistic that she insists she can treat him and sends the doctor away. Obviously, we don't know whether Yuri would have survived with the other doctor's care, but he dies and Tanya throws herself into working as a doctor in the mining districts of Siberia. But she is not working FOR others, she is working to escape herself, and so she is not genuinely happy but--in the words of Pink Floyd--comfortably numb. It is only when she is called to a mining camp to treat a sick child that she learns the importance of working for others. She braves a blizzard on skis, injuring her leg in the process, only to learn that the baby she is there to treat is the son of Herman and the woman he fell in love with--also named Yuri. Tanya treats their Yuri, saving his life, and makes her peace with Herman and the individualist ideology he had represented for her.
https://youtu.be/qJTxFz6ZK34
Leonid Leonov's Invasion: This play is a romance on the model of A Tale of Two Cities, filtered through Soviet socialist realism and anti-Nazi propaganda. The play is set during the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, which was on-going when the play was written and premiered in 1942, and it focuses on a family whose town is taken over by the Germans. Their estranged son Fyodor--who has recently been released from prison for some unspecified crime, and who suffers from TB--is essentially persona non grata to them because he egotistically focuses on himself rather than caring about the struggles and suffering of others. By contrast, his sister Olga and her fiance, Andrei Kolesnikov, become partisans killing German soldiers and creating terror. Fyodor does try to join them, but they don't regard him as trustworthy. But when Fyodor's father shows him the suffering of Aniska--a fifteen year old girl who has been raped and tortured by the Nazis--Fyodor realizes he must put aside his own experiences to serve others. When Fyodor is caught after assassinating the German commandant of the town, he tells the Nazi police that he is Andrei Kolesnikov, the very man they've been hunting more than any other. He does this not for personal glory, since he knows it will mean torture and execution, but to spare the real Kolesnikov to keep up the fight (and for Olga's sake). In this sense, there's a distinct echo of A Tale of Two Cities, in which the dissolute Sydney Carton takes the place of his doppleganger Charles Darnay, sacrificing himself in the one noble and selfless gesture of his life to allow Darnay to live with their beloved Lucie. Essentially, Fyodor sacrifies himself so that Kolesnikov can live for both Olga and the Soviet Union. This is essentially a romantic story because it presents a character with a tragic flaw/hubris--Fyodor's egoism--which threatens to destroy him, but he overcomes this flaw and learns the error of his ways in time to correct them.
https://youtu.be/3kNSoMEQpEg
Evgeny Schwartz' The Dragon: This is an anti-fascist fairy tale, allegorically having Lancelot (a descendant of the famous Arthurian hero and distant relative of St. George) slay a fearsome Dragon that has been controlling a town for four hundred years. The dragon's tactics sounds exactly like blitzkrieg, and his influence is deeply corrupting--clear echoes and critiques of fascism. The Dragon tells Lancelot that it won't matter if he wins the fight because the Dragon has so damaged the souls of the townsfolk that they will continue to do evil even without him in place. And when Lancelot does win, the town is taken over by the corrupt Burgomaster and his son, who had been the puppets and henchmen of the Dragon. They impose a police state, which the people reluctantly go along with in the hopes that Lancelot will, somehow, save them again.
https://youtu.be/fi3V9iFk9vg
Victor Rozov's In Search of Happiness: This is probably my least favorite of the plays in this collection. It's not bad, it just didn't do that much for me. It's a very domestic play, in which a lot of the drama focuses around people getting in one another's way, not having their own space, and competing objectives in terms of what different family members want out of life and out of one another. In particular, one climax (which ends the first act) is when Lenochka gets mad at Oleg for accidentally spilling ink on the new desk, and she literally murders his pet fish by throwing them out a window. Oleg then takes revenge by getting his father's old saber and hacking up some of the furniture. And everyone gets mad a Oleg. But Lenochka killed his fish. The fish had fuck all to do with the ink or the desk, and she killed two living creatures for no good reason. And as someone particularly bothered by cruelty to animals, I am not a fan of that.
https://youtu.be/MAK3Zo9Vbyk
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