About the work
Batum is a four-act drama by Mikhail Bulgakov about the young Joseph Stalin as a strike leader among the oil workers of Batumi in 1901–02. Bulgakov wrote it between 1936 and 24 July 1939 on commission from the Moscow Art Theatre, apparently as a gift for Stalin's sixtieth birthday; Stalin himself had the production banned in August 1939, shortly before rehearsals were to begin. Never performed in the author's lifetime, the play did not premiere until 1991, at the Moscow Art Theatre, directed by Sergei Kurginyan.
Plot
The play shows the young Dzhugashvili (Stalin) in 1901–02 in the Georgian town of Batumi, organising strikes among oil workers and political exiles against tsarist rule. Bulgakov portrays him as an energetic, principled leader; historical accusations such as extortion or violence play no part in the piece.
Cultural significance
The ban hit Bulgakov hard: a delegation from the Art Theatre had only just set out for Batumi to research the production. He fell seriously ill soon afterwards and died in March 1940 without seeing any of his late works staged. The text was first published in 1977 by the émigré press Ardis (Ann Arbor), and only in 1988 in the Soviet Union, in the journal "Sovremennaya dramaturgiya". The only production to date, in 1991 at the Art Theatre, was staged under the title "The Shepherd" and in a deliberately grotesque style.