"Nikolai Erdman is best known in the West for his second full-length play, BThe Suicide/B, called `a work of genius' by Konstantin Stanislavsky and `empty and even harmful' by the self-proclaimed dilettante in theatrical matters, Joseph Stalin. As is well known now, it was the latter opinion which dictated that BThe Suicide/B, written in the late 1920s, would gather dust in archives and personal libraries for 40 years before it could be performed."