About the work
Drama by Maxim Gorky, written during the summer of 1906 while he was in exile in the United States and published as a book that same year in St Petersburg and Stuttgart. It premiered on 24 November 1906 at the Kleines Theater in Berlin, directed by Victor Barnowsky; Berlin police banned further performances as early as 7 December 1906. In Russia itself, tsarist censorship kept the play off the stage until its Russian premiere on 25 September 1933 at the Leningrad State Theatre.
Plot
During a labour dispute at a Russian textile mill, factory director Mikhail Skrobotov is shot dead. Factory owner Zakhar Bardin, who treats his workers paternalistically, clashes with the socialist organiser Sintsov over blame and responsibility. Over the course of the play, the young noblewoman Nadya increasingly sides with the workers and openly declares herself a revolutionary by the end.
Cultural significance
A Russian censor rejected the play in 1907 for showing an irreconcilable enmity between workers and employers, with the workers portrayed as resolute fighters consciously struggling against capital. Because of that ban, the 1906 Berlin premiere remained, for decades, the play's only stage version anywhere in the world. The play also influenced later political theatre, including Erwin Piscator's 1920 production.