First complete translation of one of the most fascinating accounts of the leading poet of the Russian Revolutionary period; Touring the United States, by way of an enforced sojourn in Mexico, Russian poet and indefatigable traveller, Vladimir Mayakovsky was able to observe first hand what he considered to be the model for Soviet development. Although ideologically at odds with much of American culture, and taking every opportunity to propound his own political beliefs en route, he delighted in the creativity and advancement he saw, believing it to be the future for mankind. His impressions, presented in full here for the first time in the English language, form an inspired series of sketches, thoughts, jottings and poems.

One of Russia's greatest twentieth-century poets, Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893-1930) was a Futurist, early Bolshevik, and champion of the avant garde. An early revolutionary, he became increasingly disillusioned with Soviet society, and three of his plays — all of which were banned until after Stalin's death — reflect his changing assessments of the Revolution. They are collected here with his first, more personal work, Vladimir Mayakovsky: A Tragedy. This volume includes Mystery Bouffe, a mock medieval mystery play written in 1918 to celebrate the first anniversary of the Revolution; The Bathhouse, a sharp attack on Soviet bureaucracy subtitled a drama of circus and fireworks; and The Bedbug, in which a worker with bourgeois pretensions is frozen and resurrected fifty years later, when the world has been transformed into a material paradise. Mayakovsky's first play, Vladimir Mayakovsky: A Tragedy, reveals the poet's propensity for painful self-dramatization and his flair for grotesque imagery. Fresh, inventive, and shot through with zany humor, Mayakovsky's plays represent a radically new kind of theater.