Kirshon, Vladimir Mikhailovich

Kirshon, Vladimir Mikhailovich (vlədyē`mĭr mēkhī`ləvĭch kērshôn`), 1902–38, Russian dramatist. He began his career with Red Dust (1927, tr. 1930), a play showing the degeneration of a revolutionist under the reconstruction program known as the New Economic Policy. His play Bread (1930, tr. 1934) deals with the struggle against private hoarding on collective farms. The majority of his plays concerned the social problems of the new order. Kirshon was expelled from the Communist party in 1937 because of his leading role in the suspect Russian Association of Proletarian Writers.