Classics of Russian Literature | The Revolution Makes a U-Turn (Lecture 28)

Lecture 28: As the 1920s went forward, it became clear that socialist dreams were not sufficiently powerful to deal with economic and political realities. Maiakovsky’s work began to take on a more defensive, less hopeful tone. He felt that he had to stave off attacks from his fellow socialists, as he shows in “At the Top of My Voice.” Then, in 1929, he completed a very ambivalent and moving play, The Bedbug. Woody Allen’s film Sleeper is, in many ways, derived from this play. The piece goes from an ironic derision of “bourgeoisius vulgaris” to a nostalgic fondness for the same and a hideous foretaste of Stalinist arrests and killings. One year later, Maiakovsky played Russian roulette with a loaded pistol and lost! His monument, not far from the center of Moscow, still preserves his defiant stance and the image of his expansive poetry.

Suggested Reading:
Vladimir Maiakovsky, Vladimir MajakovskijMemoirs and Essays (some in English, some in Russian), edited by Beng Jangfeldt and Nils Ake Nilsson.
Herbert Marshall, Mayakovsky.