Nikolai Erdman (1900 – 1970) was a Soviet playwright and screenwriter primarily remembered for his work with the director Vsevolod Meyerhold in the 1920s. His plays, notably THE SUICIDE (1928) form a literary link between the satirical work of the great Russian writer Nikolai Gogol, and the post-WWII sensibility of the Theatre of the Absurd. Erdman’s masterpiece had a tortuous production history. Meyerhold’s attempts to stage the play were thwarted by Soviet authorities. The Vakhtangov Theatre also failed to overcome censorship difficulties. At last Konstantin Stanislavsky sent a letter to Joseph Stalin, in which he compared Erdman to Gogol and cited Maxim Gorky’s enthusiasm for the play. The permission to stage the play was granted, only to be revoked on the very eve of the premiere. Erdman was arrested in 1933 on political grounds, exiled to Siberia, and spent the rest of his years outside theatrical circles, writing slight screenplays for children’s films. It was not until 1990, twenty years after Erdman’s death, that THE SUICIDE was finally produced in Moscow at Yuri Lyubimov’s famed Taganka Theatre