Ivan Vasilievich

$22


When a time-travel experiment goes awry in 1930s Moscow, Ivan the Terrible, the grand and tyrannical 16th-century Russian Tsar, bursts in on the time-machine’s inventor. Simultaneously, another Ivan, a blustery building superintendent who has been browbeating the inventor, finds himself on the Tsar’s throne. A cowardly and petty opportunist, he soon shows his own hunger for power. Ivan Vasilievich is a daring and entertaining comedy. Mikhail Bulgakov, a towering figure of 20th-century Russian literature, wrote this play just as Stalin was unleashing the Great Terror. Using his characteristic blend of wild fantasy and mordant satire, Bulgakov dissects the psychology of tyranny and the cyclical nature of history. His insights were so provocative for his own time and country that the Soviet government censored the majority of his works, including Ivan Vasilievich. Its vision of and commentary on Russia is as valuable today as it was in the 1930s.

Melkon Charchoglyan’s translation is the first to appear in English in over 40 years.