Stay in Your Own Sled

The main character, Rusakov, was the portrayal of a real person, merchant Kosheverov, actor Prov Sadovsky's relative who delighted Ostrovsky with his openness and easy ways with money.

Another amateur performance of such kind has been staged in Pavlovsky Posad, at the factory owned by Prince Yakov Gruzinsky, a man whose son, actor Ivan Nikulin, was a husband of actress Lyubov Nikulina-Kositskaya.

The latter had an influential detractor in Countess Rostopchina who hated Kositskaya's simple ways and described her as "the turnip-like creature, with a head looking like an ill-formed water-melon, or cabbage... And what a vile, sloven diction!"

[2] The play was premiered at the Moscow's Maly Theatre on January 14, 1853 and had great success, praised even by Ostrovsky's detractors like Vasily Botkin.

One of the shows in Alexandrinka was attended by Tsar Nikolai I himself who appeared to be greatly impressed, having construed the play's message to be that "children should follow their parents' advice, otherwise, everything gets ruined."

Several years later Nikolai Dobrolyubov wrote in "The Realm of Darkness" essay: "The main idea of the play is that samodurstvo [petty domestic tyranny], no matter how meek or even tender forms it might take, still greatly damages the person subjected to it, leading to the loss of the latter's individuality.