About the work
Zoyka's Apartment is a play in three acts that Mikhail Bulgakov wrote on commission from the Vakhtangov Theatre, Moscow. It premiered on 28 October 1926, directed by Alexei Popov, and is set in Moscow during the New Economic Policy (NEP) era of the mid-1920s.
Plot
To keep her large apartment from being confiscated by the state, the once-wealthy Zoyka Pelts officially registers a dressmaking workshop – in reality a disreputable establishment catering to NEP profiteers, officials and foreign guests. When a client is murdered, the fragile business collapses and Zoyka is arrested.
Cultural significance
Bulgakov himself called the play a "tragic buffoonery"; contemporaries praised its realistic style sharpened into the grotesque. The production was a major success, but as the NEP ended it was withdrawn from the repertoire in August 1928 for distorting Soviet reality. During Bulgakov's lifetime the text appeared only in German translation (1929); in the Soviet Union it was not published until 1982.