Vainonen's section was partly censored due to its use of western dance styles and the ballet was shelved after its initial run.
Of all the Vainonen works from this period, the one still performed is Flames of Paris (Russian: Пла́мя Пари́жа) from 1932 with music by Boris Asafyev partly incorporating the melodies of songs of the French Revolution.
It was premiered at the Kirov Theatre in Leningrad on 7 November 1932, with Natalia Dudinskaya as Mireille de Poitiers, Vakhtang Chabukiani as Jérôme, Olga Jordan as Jeanne, Nina Anisimova as Thérèse, and Konstantin Sergeyev as Mistral.
Other choreographers of the beloved Christmas ballet, such as Mikhail Baryshnikov and Yuri Grigorovich, have freely borrowed several ideas supposedly from the Vainonen Nutcracker for their own productions.
He also wrote the libretto (together with Pavel Malyarevsky) for Shchedrin's The Little Humpbacked Horse (1960, Bolshoi Theatre) and choreographed dances in operas and concert numbers.