[1] Katayev started working upon the novel in December 1925, although a 1925 short story titled "Grim Accident" (Мрачный случай), published in the No.26 issue of Smekhach magazine, is considered to be its direct precursor, containing the embryo of a storyline.

[1] The accountant Filipp Stepanovich, cashier Vanechka and courier Nikita fall victim to the latest embezzlement 'epidemic' that had swept 90 per cent of the Moscow commercial institutions.

They steal 12 thousand rubles which they'd been supposed to deliver from the bank to their firm, and embark upon a massive spree which takes them first to Leningrad, then to the Russian South and finally, penniless, back to Moscow, straight to jail.

I received a phone call from the Stanislavski quarters and was asked to write a play based upon the Embezzlers...", Katayev remembered in 1948.

Among the actors engaged in it were the theatre's rising young stars: Mikhail Tarkhanov as the accountant Prokhorov, Vasily Toporkov as the cashier Vanechka and Nikolai Batalov as Nikita the courier.