A rich aristocrat who often travelled, Sukhovo-Kobylin was arrested, prosecuted and tried for seven years in Russia for the murder of his French mistress Louise-Simone Dimanche, a crime of which he is nowadays generally believed to have been innocent.

He only managed to achieve acquittal by means of giving enormous bribes to court officials and by using all of his contacts in the Russian elite.

According to his own version as well as the generally accepted view today, he was targeted precisely because he had the financial capabilities to give such bribes.

Based on his personal experiences, Sukhovo-Kobylin wrote a trilogy of satirical plays Scenes from the Past (1854–1869) about the prevalence of bribery and other corrupt practices in the absurd bureaucratical system of Russian Empire.

Russian literary critic Varvara Babitskaya thinks that Tarelkin's Death anticipates Franz Kafka's works and the Theatre of the Absurd.