Aleksei Arbuzov

Aleksei Arbuzov was a Soviet playwright who wrote in Russian. He was born in 1908 and died in 1986. His plays, written under Soviet rule, were among the most performed of their day and give a window onto everyday life in that period.

He was born in Moscow, but his family moved to Petrograd in 1914. His father was Russian and his mother was Greek. Orphaned at eleven, he turned to the theatre for refuge, and at fourteen he started working at the Mariinsky Theatre. In 1928 he joined a group of young actors in the Guild of Experimental Drama. When that group broke up, he joined a travelling agitprop company, for which he began writing plays. He settled in Moscow in 1930.

His two most successful plays came in the mid-1930s and late 1930s: A Long Road (1935) and Tanya (1939). Many of his dramas deal with personal change and redemption within a Soviet setting. In Tanya, a woman whose life falls apart after her husband dies finds purpose caring for the sick in a Siberian village. In An Irkutsk Story (1960), the shallow pleasures of 25-year-old Valya give way to love for Sergei, the foreman of a crew building a dam in Siberia. After Sergei drowns, she finds a new sense of purpose in joining the construction crew and raising her children.

Arbuzov regarded his characters with warmth rather than doctrine. That closeness drew rebukes from some Soviet literary critics, who felt the plays neglected the great collective goal. Still, audiences warmed to them. Avril Pyman praised the charm of his work, noting his indulgent view of human weakness and his sense that people basically want to lead good and useful lives.

His legacy lies in a Soviet theatre that, without abandoning the idea of collective commitment, put private lives at the centre of the stage.