The play Maria, a portrait of the sordid underbelly of Soviet society during the Russian Civil War, was written by Isaac Babel during the mid-1930s.
The plot focuses on the aristocratic Mukovnin family and their attempts to adapt to the hardships of war communism and chaos.
The elderly General Mukovnin is writing books about Russia's military history, where he criticizes the harsh treatment of common soldiers under the Imperial Russian Army.
His daughter, the ditzy and superficial Ludmila, is hoping for an advantageous marriage with Isaac Dimshits, the Jewish mob boss who dominates the city's black market food supply.
The General's eldest daughter, Maria, is an idealistic Communist and a political officer assigned to the Soviet Army.
Ultimately, Dimshits makes sexual advances to Ludmila, who repels them by claiming to have toothache, to his great discontent and humiliation.
In the adjacent apartment, Captain Viskovsky, a White Army officer turned jewel thief who works for Dimshits and whose advances were rejected by Maria.
While she protests her innocence and begs for a doctor, the interrogator demands to know how many times she has been arrested, and then shouts in anger that he has not slept in five days.
After Sushkin leaves in a huff, the two workers comment on the forewoman's conduct and observe that she wasn't so daring during the old general's time.
Maria is rooted in Babel's work as an investigative reporter for Maxim Gorky's Menshevik newspaper, Novaya zhizn (Новая жизнь).
Later, when I began writing fiction, I found myself always returning to these 'subjects', which were so close to me, in order to put character types, situations, and everyday life into perspective.
Noting the play's implicit rejection of socialist realism, Gorky accused Babel of having a "Baudelairian predilection for rotting meat."
[It] shows the stories of both sides clashing with each other during the Russian Civil War — the Bolsheviks and the old society members — without making a judgment one way or another.
Babel’s opinion on either side is very ambiguous, but he does make the statement that what happened after the Bolshevik Revolution may not have been the best thing for Russia.