As with Ostrovsky's other plays, The Storm is a work of social criticism, which is directed particularly towards the Russian merchant class.

Katerina there was played by young and elegant Fanny Snetkova who gave lyrical overtones to the character.

In both cities the play angered most of the theatre critics but appealed to audiences and was a tremendous box office success.

While Vasily Botkin was raving about "the elemental poetic force emerging from secret depths of a human soul... for Katerina's love is a woman's nature thing exactly in the way that any of climatic cataclysm is a thing of physical nature", critic Nikolai Filippov lambasted the play as an "example of vulgar primitivism", calling Katerina "shameless" and the scene of rendezvous in Act III "scabrous".

Stepan Shevyryov wrote about the decline of a Russian comedy and drama, which was "sliding down the ranking stairs" to the bottom of social hierarchy.