Nikolai Robertovich Erdman (Russian: Николай Робертович Эрдман, IPA: [nʲɪkɐˈlaj ˈrobʲɪrtəvʲɪtɕ ˈɛrdmən] ⓘ; 16 November [O.S.

[1] His plays, notably The Suicide (1928), form a link in Russian literary history between the satirical drama of Nikolai Gogol and the post-World War II Theatre of the Absurd.

[2] Erdman's next collaboration with Meyerhold was The Suicide (1928), "a spectacular mixture of the ridiculous and the sublime", universally recognized as one of the finest plays written during the Soviet period.

[3][4] The play draws on the theme of the faked suicide, which had been introduced into Russian literature by Alexander Sukhovo-Kobylin in The Death of Tarelkin (1869) and was explored by Leo Tolstoy in The Living Corpse (1900).

At last Konstantin Stanislavsky sent a letter to Joseph Stalin, in which he compared Erdman to Gogol and cited Maxim Gorky's enthusiasm for the play.

A last-ditch effort to revive the production took place in mid-October when Lazar Kaganovich, at that time a 2nd Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, was invited by Meyerhold's team to see a partial dress rehearsal.

Writes Erdman biographer John Freedman, "The black mark of Stalin's right-hand men on The Suicide carried with it a solemn finality.

Instead, they had to travel by foot to Tolyatti, a distance of 600 kilometers, in order to enlist in a special unit open to disenfranchised persons and former priests.

[9] In 1942, through Lavrentiy Beria's patronage, Erdman obtained a transfer to Moscow for himself and Volpin, and they spent the remainder of the war writing material for the Song and Dance Ensemble at the Central Club of the NKVD.

They include Fedya Zaitsev (1948), The Lu Brothers (1953), Orange Throat (1954), The Island of Errors (1955), I Drew the Little Man (1960), The Traveling Frog (1965), The Cat that Walked by Itself (1968), and many more.

Erdman's perfection of dialogues and compositions was crucial in adapting Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale to the Soviet film screens.

[11] In 1964, Erdman's old friend Yuri Lyubimov from the NKVD Song and Dance Ensemble invited him to collaborate with the newly founded Taganka Theatre.