“It’s a Family Affair”: Publication in 1850 and the First Productions

Alexander Ostrovsky’s comedy ‘It’s a Family Affair — We’ll Settle It Ourselves!’ was published in full in Moskvityanin in 1850. The Irkutsk theatre staged it in 1857, while the ban was still in force; the Imperial Theatres received permission to stage an abridged version only in 1860 and presented it in 1861. The original version returned to the Moscow stage with official approval in 1881. The years of publication, the first public performance and the premieres in the two capitals refer to different events.

What happened in 1850: publication or premiere?

In March 1850, Mikhail Pogodin’s journal Moskvityanin printed the full text of ‘It’s a Family Affair — We’ll Settle It Ourselves!’. This is the date when the complete work was published, rather than that of its first theatrical performance. The Presidential Library catalogue identifies issue 6 and lists Ostrovsky’s four-act comedy among its contents.

The manuscript was already known in literary circles before the journal appeared. The Alexandrinsky Theatre’s historical record dates the public reading at Pogodin’s house to 3 December 1849 and notes that Nikolai Gogol was present. The distinction matters: reading a dramatic text to an audience is also different from performing it on a theatre stage. Actors and the author himself continued to read the play in Moscow homes after the ban.

‘The Bankrupt’ was one of Ostrovsky’s working titles for the comedy; another was ‘The Insolvent Debtor’. The textual commentary explains that before publication Ostrovsky settled on the title ‘It’s a Family Affair — We’ll Settle It Ourselves!’. It suggests a promise to settle accounts among those close to one another; in the plot, trust within the family makes business fraud possible.

An earlier version of the idea had already appeared in print: in 1847, Moskovsky Gorodskoy Listok published a sketch of the future comedy under the title ‘The Insolvent Debtor’. By the end of 1849, Ostrovsky had completed the play; in 1850, it appeared in Moskvityanin as ‘It’s a Family Affair — We’ll Settle It Ourselves!’. This sequence is given in The Presidential Library. The 1847 sketch should not be confused with the complete four-act text.

Alongside the journal publication, a separate Moscow edition of the comedy appeared in 1850, as noted in the publication history. Both printed versions brought the play to readers; permission to stage it required a separate decision.

Literary responses were sharply divided. The theatre archive quotes Ivan Goncharov’s praise for the language and dramatic tension, along with Leo Tolstoy’s high opinion of the play. It also includes a strongly negative assessment by the censor Mikhail Gedeonov. Read together, these accounts reveal the point of disagreement: the merits recognised by the writers did not allay the official’s concerns about how merchants and their family relationships would appear on stage. The Alexandrinsky Theatre’s record.

The published comedy attracted considerable attention even without a theatrical production. The textual commentary to the complete works includes Pogodin’s diary entry about the sensation ‘The Bankrupt’ caused in Moscow and a letter dated 20 July 1850 in which Vladimir Odoyevsky praises the play. The first account reflects the publisher’s impression of the journal’s reception; the second gives a reader’s personal judgement. Neither proves that a performance had already taken place.

Yet the press long refrained from reviewing the comedy. The commentary weighs Fyodor Burdin’s later recollections of a ban on writing about the play against the absence of any confirmed separate order prohibiting reviews. By 1859, Nikolai Dobrolyubov was able to discuss both versions and specifically noted that, in the new one, Podkhalyuzin is led away by a police officer. His observation shows that readers were debating the ending before the premieres in the two capitals, and that the silence of the early journals should not be taken as a lack of interest in the play.

Why did Bolshov’s story prove problematic for the stage?

Ostrovsky built the comedy around the sham bankruptcy of the merchant Samson Silych Bolshov. Bolshov transfers his goods and money to his trusted clerk, Lazar Podkhalyuzin, hoping to defraud his creditors. After marrying Bolshov’s daughter Lipochka, the new owner keeps the property he has received and leaves his benefactor without the promised help. The Bakhrushin Theatre Museum links Ostrovsky’s knowledge of this milieu to his work in the courts between 1843 and 1851 and describes the plot as a story of deception within a merchant family.

In the original version, the ending did not bring the customary theatrical retribution for the cunning clerk. Bolshov had initiated the fraud himself and became its victim; the triumphant Podkhalyuzin did not end up as a punished villain. A literary-historical study in the Fundamental Electronic Library explains that the censorship authorities demanded a change to this very point of meaning, with the ending showing the authorities administering punishment. The ban concerned the picture of society and justice that audiences would see on stage, rather than whether the text could be printed.

This disapproval is also documented in the theatre archive. The Alexandrinsky Theatre’s record quotes the censor M. A. Gedeonov’s assessment: he found the characters and their conversations offensive to the merchant class. It also reproduces Nicholas I’s decision to ban performances of the play. The Presidential Library holds a description of a separate file from 1850 concerning the decision to place Ostrovsky under surveillance because of this comedy. The catalogue entry confirms that the archival material exists and identifies its subject; without reading the documents, we cannot attribute details to it that the entry does not provide.

The nature of the restrictions therefore needs to be specified. Publication in the journal went ahead; the ban applied to theatrical performances of the play. By the Presidential Library’s biographical chronology, the author was placed under police surveillance. The history of the printed text and that of permission to stage it then diverged for more than a decade.

What made the fraud a family affair

Bolshov expects that by transferring his goods and money to his clerk, he will protect his fortune from creditors and later recover it through this trusted intermediary. But the merchant himself has created a weakness in the scheme: once Podkhalyuzin gains control of the property, he is no longer bound to act as he promised his former master. The dramatic reversal grows out of relationships of dependence and trust, rather than the sudden intervention of an outside villain. An analysis of the comedy’s action.

Podkhalyuzin’s marriage to Olimpiada, known at home as Lipochka, secures his position within Bolshov’s family. Yet the daughter provides no moral counterweight to her husband: in the Bakhrushin Museum’s account, the couple jointly refuse to help her father when he ends up in a debtors’ prison. The title’s ‘we’ll settle it ourselves’ thus carries two meanings: a promise to settle accounts in confidence among family, and an ironic expression of that promise’s failure. The page about the playwright’s house.

Ostrovsky shows the same logic at work among those around the main characters. The study in the Fundamental Electronic Library highlights the matchmaker Ustinya Naumovna, the lawyer Rispolozhensky and the boy Tishka: each depends on Bolshov’s household and tries to secure a share of the gains. The researcher sees Tishka as a future apprentice in this system of relationships. This is not a separate subplot, but a way of showing how the masters’ habits are passed on to the young and to their subordinates. A study of the characters.

In the full text of ‘It’s a Family Affair — We’ll Settle It Ourselves!’, even the scenes before the transfer of property lay the groundwork for the fraud: Lipochka argues with her mother about a prospective husband, Podkhalyuzin orders Tishka about, and the matchmaker strikes a deal with the clerk. These conversations reveal who in Bolshov’s household is willing to give way and who is already seeking an advantage. Cutting dialogue could therefore change both the length of the performance and the audience’s impression of the characters’ relationships. This conclusion is drawn from the text of the play, rather than a claim about a specific cut made in 1861.

How did the play survive without permission for an official production?

Readers and listeners became familiar with the comedy long before its premieres in the capitals in 1861. Publication gave it a life in print, while readings hosted by writers and actors sustained interest in the dramatic text. The Maly Theatre newspaper recalls that Ostrovsky and Prov Sadovsky read ‘The Bankrupt’ in Moscow homes and salons. These readings explain how the text became well known, but they cannot serve as the date of its first public performance.

The history of this particular play was distinct from the playwright’s overall stage debut. The Maly Theatre newspaper dates the first performance of another Ostrovsky comedy, ‘Stay in Your Own Sledge’, on Moscow’s imperial stage to 14 January 1853. By 1861, the author’s plays had already been staged in the capital. The phrase ‘Ostrovsky’s first performance in 1861’ is incorrect even without taking Irkutsk into account.

Readings, private performances and public theatre

The play was performed in several forms, which official stage chronologies treat differently. According to memoirs quoted by the Maly Theatre newspaper, Prov Sadovsky and Ostrovsky read the comedy many times in Moscow homes. In an amateur performance at the home of the landowner S. A. Panova, the actor played Bolshov and the playwright himself played Podkhalyuzin. The newspaper gives no exact date for this private performance, so it cannot be placed in the chronology before any specific month of 1857. The Maly Theatre newspaper.

The amateur performance shows that the ban did not prevent actors from performing the play, but it does not disprove Irkutsk’s claim to the first public theatre production. A reading involves listeners and readers; a private performance involves people playing roles in a private home; a repertory production involves an audience coming to a theatre. These forms must be distinguished, otherwise the first reading in 1849, the private performance and the Irkutsk production become a single, indistinguishable ‘debut’.

Ostrovsky’s own attitude towards his 1850 comedy also changed. In a letter to Pogodin dated 30 September 1853, the playwright wrote that he did not wish to seek permission for it at that time: he feared further clashes and considered his early view of life too harsh. The published letter does not imply that the author agreed with the original ban. It shows why the history of this text cannot be reduced to an unbroken struggle for the original version.

While his first major comedy remained banned from the stage, Ostrovsky wrote other plays that the Maly Theatre performed. After ‘Stay in Your Own Sledge’, ‘Poverty Is No Disgrace’ entered its repertoire: the official chronicle dates the premiere to 25 January 1854. This comedy had a different stage history.

What is known about the Irkutsk performance of 1857?

The first known public production of ‘It’s a Family Affair — We’ll Settle It Ourselves!’ took place at the Irkutsk Theatre in 1857, while the ban was still in force. The official history of the Irkutsk Academic Drama Theatre calls this the first performance in Russia and reports that, after the production, further performances of the comedy were banned and it was removed from the repertoire. Accordingly, 1861 should not be regarded as the year of its debut before an audience.

By 1857, Irkutsk had a professional theatre: it dates the start of its troupe’s regular work to 1850, and its first building was constructed in 1851. These details from the theatre’s official history explain why the production of ‘It’s a Family Affair’ entered the theatrical chronology despite lacking permission.

Another article published by the theatre itself specifies that the Irkutsk company performed the play in its ‘pre-censorship’ version and quotes an assessment from the Irkutsk Provincial Gazette of 1857. The source describes the nature of the text and the response in the local press, but provides no documentary account of exactly how the manuscript was obtained or what circumstances allowed the performance to take place despite the ban. Filling this gap with a dramatic tale of secretly evading censorship would be speculation.

The Irkutsk Theatre’s permanent troupe formed around the impresario Iosif Markevich. In 1852, it performed Griboyedov’s ‘Woe from Wit’; by 1857, the actors already had experience of major Russian comedy. Both dates are given in the theatre’s history.

The review in the Irkutsk Provincial Gazette, preserved in a later account, primarily assesses the quality of the acting: the newspaper’s writer compared the production with other local performances and considered it one of the more satisfactorily acted. This response confirms that contemporaries saw and discussed the performance. It provides neither a full cast list nor details of the directorial approach or how the text was obtained. Source of the review.

The Irkutsk Theatre’s theatrical archive lists ‘It’s a Family Affair — We’ll Settle It Ourselves!’ under 1857: the governor-general’s enquiry to the Ministry of Internal Affairs was sent after the performance, and the response was a ban. The same entry notes that the ban applied both to the capital and to the provinces. The chronicle does not specify the calendar date on which the actors took to the stage. It establishes the sequence of the authorities’ actions, but provides no grounds for giving an exact premiere date or claiming that the restriction had been lifted in advance for a single evening.

The scholarly commentary of 1973, citing a journal publication from 1956, explains that the departure of Governor-General N. N. Muravyov made the performance possible, and reports that the Third Section later refused to grant it official approval. The documents from this correspondence are not reproduced in the available theatre materials. This is therefore an important account of the circumstances, but one conveyed through secondary sources; the theatre itself confirms that the performance took place and was subsequently withdrawn.

What was authorised in 1860, and what changed in the text?

In December 1860, the theatre censors authorised a production of an abridged version of the comedy. This is how the event is described by the Alexandrinsky Theatre. Permission applied to the text prepared after revisions had been demanded, so any reference to a ‘premiere’ in 1861 must specify which version was performed.

The change is particularly apparent in the ending. In the early text, Podkhalyuzin keeps his gains and confidently carries on his business. In the version prepared for the stage, a district police officer appears and demands that the clerk be taken to the investigating officer. An article on the play’s textual history reproduces the added sixth scene of the final act; a study in the Fundamental Digital Library explains it as a response to the censors’ demand that punishment be shown. The very appearance of a representative of the authorities changes the meaning of the ending: the audience is shown official intervention to put a stop to the deceit, something the first version did not promise.

Yet the stage version cannot be described solely in terms of one added line. The theatrical archive refers to an abridged version, while the textual history describes revisions prepared to secure approval. Without comparing copies line by line, it is impossible to claim that all the changes were confined to the ending. The conclusion supported by the evidence is already significant: audiences in the capitals in 1861 saw the play under different conditions from those in which its first readers encountered it.

The date of approval must also be distinguished from the date of performance. December 1860 marked the end of the long effort to obtain permission to stage the comedy; January 1861 brought the performances. Conflating these two events sometimes creates the impression that the ban simply disappeared on the day of the premiere.

What Ostrovsky himself said about the revisions

Ostrovsky’s letter to P. S. Fyodorov of 27 July 1858 shows that the stage version existed before permission was granted in 1860. The author sent the revised play to someone who could help secure its approval, describing it as dear to him, though damaged by the revisions. He reported that he had changed the title and addressed the censors’ comments. This personal account of the process, recorded in the published correspondence, is more precise than the general statement that ‘the play was cut’. Letter of 1858.

In an attachment to his submission, Ostrovsky set out the changes even more clearly: many passages had been altered, harsh expressions softened or removed, a closing scene added in which Podkhalyuzin was punished, and the title replaced. The author himself listed several types of revision, so it would be inaccurate to explain the differences between the versions solely through the police officer’s appearance at the end. Nor does this list provide a complete inventory of every deleted line; that would require a comparison of the texts. Memorandum to the Censorship Committee.

The playwright’s argument responded to an earlier objection: the comedy left a sombre impression and allowed vice to go unpunished. Ostrovsky hoped that the added ending would remove this objection. The evidence cited makes the authorities’ position understandable, even if one disagrees with their aesthetic criterion: officials wanted an explicit resolution in which a representative of the law put a stop to fraud. The play’s original structure left the audience with Podkhalyuzin triumphant and Bolshov ruined. Document of 1858; analysis of the early ending.

The attempt in 1858 did not secure immediate permission to stage the play. The commentary accompanying the published letter dates the renewed ban to 20 January 1859. That same year, the revised version appeared in Ostrovsky’s collected works, published by G. A. Kushelev-Bezborodko. Once again, the two decisions diverged: the revised play could be printed in a book, but remained barred from the stage. Letters and commentary; publication history.

According to the Alexandrinsky Theatre, surveillance of Ostrovsky ended in 1855. The ban on staging the play nevertheless outlasted police surveillance: the Irkutsk performance of 1857 was still considered a breach, and the revised version received approval only in December 1860. These events belonged to separate procedures. The lifting of surveillance on the author cannot automatically be taken as permission to add his first major comedy to the repertoire. Historical production record.

Ostrovsky’s letters reveal two different attitudes towards his early work. In 1853, he was unwilling to seek approval for it and had misgivings about the harshness of what he had written; in 1858, he submitted a revision to obtain permission for performances. These documents do not allow the changes to be attributed to a single cause. By the late 1850s, a new text existed, but approval for the stage still required a separate decision.

The history of the second title shows how the revision was considered for approval. While preparing the version of the late 1850s, Ostrovsky proposed calling the play ‘What You Seek Is What You Find’. The textual commentary reports that the Main Directorate of Censorship considered the new ending insufficiently clear-cut and did not support the change of title, as it might reveal the censors’ intervention. The revised text therefore appeared under its original title. Thus, matching titles on the covers of the 1850 and 1859 editions do not in themselves prove that the endings were the same.

Which premieres took place in St Petersburg and Moscow in 1861?

The abridged version had its first performance in either capital at the Alexandrinsky Theatre on 16 January 1861, Old Style (28 January, New Style). Moscow’s Maly Theatre presented it on the 31st of the same month, at a benefit performance for Prov Sadovsky. In St Petersburg, according to the production record, the beneficiary was Yu. N. Linskaya; F. A. Burdin played Bolshov, and P. V. Vasilyev played Podkhalyuzin. The Moscow date and Sadovsky’s role are confirmed by the Maly Theatre newspaper.

Ostrovsky travelled to attend the first performance in the capital, a fact noted in the play’s production history. At the Moscow premiere at the Maly Theatre, Podkhalyuzin was played by Prov Sadovsky, the actor who had read the comedy with the playwright in Moscow homes before it was approved for the stage. He was now performing the role before an audience at an official theatre in the capital.

The St Petersburg reviews allow us to distinguish the comedy’s success from assessments of the particular production. The commentary in the complete works quotes press reviews from 1861: audiences welcomed the play warmly, but the reviewer for Otechestvennye Zapiski found Burdin’s Bolshov too colourless for such an energetic character. Opinions on Vasilyev’s Podkhalyuzin differed; Sankt-Peterburgskie Vedomosti praised particular scenes with the merchant and Lipochka. These differences concern the acting; they do not alter the question of censorship approval.

The Moscow reviews draw an even finer distinction between the text and the performance. The textual commentary records an observation by contemporaries: at the end of the approved version, Podkhalyuzin is supposed to leave with the district police officer ‘to see the authorities’, but Sadovsky would draw the officer into his study. In 1863, Apollon Grigoryev noted that the actor’s closing gestures weakened the imposed resolution. The stage action changed the impression made by the ending, although the approved text remained the same. This does not justify claiming that the actor secretly restored the original version: the evidence concerns his interpretation of the final scene, rather than the replacement of its text.

At the Moscow premiere, Mikhail Shchepkin played Bolshov and Prov Sadovsky played Podkhalyuzin. The cast is listed in the play’s production history And commentary in the complete works. The St Petersburg and Moscow theatres used the same approved version, but with different companies.

The Alexandrinsky Theatre’s production record quotes an extract from A. I. Wolf’s ‘Chronicle’: this contemporary observer singled out Vasilyev’s portrayal of Podkhalyuzin and the success of Burdin, Zubrov and Linskaya. This is evidence of audience reception, rather than proof of precisely how every scene was performed or what every spectator felt. The theatre’s archive also records 12 performances in the 1860/1861 season and five in the following season, showing that the play had a sustained life in the repertoire beyond a single evening. Production record and performance history.

On the date when Prov Sadovsky changed roles, the sources differ. The Maly Theatre newspaper dates his move from Podkhalyuzin to Bolshov to 1863; the commentary to the complete collected works links the change to the revival on 17 October 1869 and states that Podkhalyuzin was then played by the actor’s son Mikhail. Both publications confirm a change in the cast, but without checking the playbills for 1863 and 1869, it is impossible to establish the first evening on which it took effect. The cast of the 1861 production is known: Sadovsky played Podkhalyuzin, and Shchepkin played Bolshov.

When comparing the premieres, it is important to use the same calendar. the Alexandrinsky Theatre gives 16 January Old Style and 28 January New Style; Maly Theatre newspaper gives the historical date of 31 January for the Moscow benefit performance. The interval between the two dates is fifteen days.

When was an authorised production of the early version staged?

The authorised Moscow production of the original version is dated to 30 April 1881: it was staged by Anna Brenko’s private theatre, ‘Near the Pushkin Monument’. This is the date given by the Alexandrinsky Theatre And the commentary to the complete collected works. The word ‘authorised’ is crucial here: the Irkutsk theatre had publicly performed the version predating censorship as early as 1857, but this did not give it permission to repeat the performance. The date of 1881 marks a new status for the early version on stage, rather than its first performance before an audience.

The play’s production history links the authorisation in 1881 to a petition by Mikhail Ostrovsky, the playwright’s brother and Minister of State Property. According to this source, the early text was approved with a restriction: popular theatres remained excluded. Anna Brenko’s Pushkin Theatre staged the original version on 30 April, but permission to perform it was not extended to all theatres.

Between the premieres in the two capitals in 1861 and the return of the early text in 1881, there was another planned production for which no performance has been confirmed. The textual commentary cites correspondence from 1869: an amateur company in Warsaw asked Ostrovsky to send the original ending without the police officer, and the author sent the early version. Researchers have found no evidence that the planned performance took place. The letters demonstrate interest in the original ending twelve years before the Moscow performance of 1881, but do not add another confirmed premiere to the chronology.

Ostrovsky took part in preparations at Brenko’s theatre: the commentary to the complete collected works states that the playwright worked through the roles with the actors and attended rehearsals. Mikhail Pisarev played Bolshov, and Vasily Andreyev-Burlak played Podkhalyuzin. These were different actors performing a different stage version, so the audience’s reaction in 1881 cannot be applied without qualification to Sadovsky’s benefit performance in 1861. Now the absence of the police officer changed the dramatic resolution itself; in 1861, the actor could change only his interpretation of the approved ending.

The publication history follows its own rhythm: the original was printed in 1850, the revised version appeared in the collected works of 1859, and the early version reappeared in the collected works edited by N. G. Martynov in 1885. The return of the original version to the stage in 1881 should therefore not be mistaken for its first publication. Readers of different generations encountered different endings. Bibliographical information.

Even the ‘return’ of the printed text does not mean that every letter of the journal’s typesetting was reproduced exactly. The textual scholars working on the complete collected works compared the 1850 text in Moskvityanin with Nikolai Martynov’s 1885 edition and found 21 textual variants. In their assessment, these involve proofreading and typesetting corrections that do not change the play’s meaning; the provenance of the copy Ostrovsky gave the publisher nevertheless remains somewhat unclear. To analyse the crucial ending, it is more reliable to consult the early journal text, which the researchers used as the basis for the scholarly edition, than to treat any later edition as an exact facsimile of the 1850 issue.

Provincial criticism reveals how perceptions changed between the authorisation of performances in the capitals and the return of the original version. The study by I. V. Panamaryov examines a review of an 1877 performance in Kazan. Twenty-seven years had passed since the comedy’s publication; the reviewer found its merchant characters recognisable even after the social reforms. This material does not tell us which version was performed at Brenko’s theatre in 1881, but it documents the play’s life after the two benefit performances of 1861.

In the history of the comedy ‘It’s a Family Affair — We’ll Settle It Ourselves!’, it is important to distinguish four dates: 1850 — the complete text in Moskvityanin; 1857 — a performance by the Irkutsk theatre while the ban was in force; 1861 — the abridged version on the imperial stages; and 1881 — an authorised performance of the original version at a private theatre in Moscow. The public debut preceded the premieres in the capitals; responses can be compared only with due regard to the version performed.

The Ostrovsky House Museum building on Malaya Ordynka is included in the tour of Zamoskvorechye from Ordynka to Pyatnitskaya. The Bakhrushin Museum states that, as of 2 November 2026, the branch is closed for reconstruction. For a walk at your own pace, the bureau offers individual excursions in Moscow.

Sources

1. Presidential Library: a timeline of the early draft and publication of Ostrovsky’s play
2. Moskvityanin. 1850, Book 2, No. 6, March — Presidential Library catalogue
3. Presidential Library: Alexander Ostrovsky, a biographical timeline
4. Presidential Library: biographical materials, archival file from 1850
5. Alexandrinsky Theatre: catalogue entry for the performance on 16 January 1861
6. Irkutsk Drama Theatre: history of the theatre
7. Irkutsk Drama Theatre: theatre archives for 1857
8. Irkutsk Drama Theatre: An Evening of Ostrovsky
9. Maly Theatre Newspaper, No. 11 (163), 2018
10. Bakhrushin Theatre Museum: Ostrovsky Museum
11. FEB: a historical and literary study of Ostrovsky’s work
12. It’s a Family Affair: the history of the text and its stage productions
13. The bureau’s ‘Zamoskvorechye’ tour
14. The bureau’s homepage
15. A. N. Ostrovsky. Complete Works, Volume 11: Letters, 1848–1880
16. I. V. Panamaryov. ‘It’s a Family Affair!’ in Kazan theatre criticism of 1877
17. A. N. Ostrovsky. Complete Works in 12 Volumes, Volume 1: Textual Commentary (1973)
18. Maly Theatre: production of ‘Poverty Is No Disgrace’ on 25 January 1854