Ivan Vasilievich (play)

Ivan Vasilievich is a play by Mikhail Bulgakov, written in the Soviet Union from 1934 until 1936. Performance of the play was forbidden upon its completion, and it was not published until 1965, after Bulgakov's death.

Ivan Vasilievich
Written byMikhail Bulgakov
Characters
Original languageRussian
GenreFarce
SettingMoscow

The action takes place in Moscow, where a malfunctioning time machine sends apartment building superintendent Ivan Vasilievich Bunsha-Koretskiy to the 15th century and brings Ivan the Terrible into the 20th century. The title is a reference to the fact that Ivan the Terrible shares the patronymic Vasilievich with the superintendent. In comparing the tsar's authority with that of a Soviet official, the play satirizes similarities between the Soviet Union and Tsarist Russia, as well as Joseph Stalin's rehabilitation of Ivan the Terrible.[1]

The play was adapted into the 1973 film Ivan Vasilievich: Back to the Future by Soviet director Leonid Gaidai, starring Yuri Yakovlev as both the superintendent and the tsar. Aleksandr Demyanenko played the scientist responsible for the time machine, linking the adaptation to Gaidai's other movies starring Demyanenko as the character Shurik.[1]

  1. Gelfenboym, Inessa (Fall 2018). "Iosif Vissarionovich Changes Profession: Time Travel Contra Teleology in Late Soviet Film". Slavic and East European Journal. 62: 523–548.


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