In the twentieth century, Russia has produced more notable drama than at any other time in its history; yet the results of this period of burgeoning creativity have been only sporadically available, and many plays have never been translated at all. In Eight Twentieth-Century Russian Plays, Timothy Langen and Justin Weir present the first collection of translated plays from this period. This volume introduces the classics of twentieth-century Russian drama and fills a gap for both students and general readers.

The volume includes three prerevolutionary plays, three from the 1920s, one socialist realist play, and one from the end of Stalinism, reflecting the varied cultural and political history of Russia in the twentieth century. Four plays appear here for the first time in English, and all eight translations are new. Langen and Weir also provide an insightful introduction to the literary and political contexts in which the plays first appeared, considering the influence that various literary movements had on the development of Russian drama and exploring the effect of the increasingly politicized climate of the new Soviet state.