The Bedbug

The Bedbug (Russian: Клоп, romanized: Klop) is a play by Vladimir Mayakovsky written in 1928–1929 and published originally by Molodaya Gvardiya magazine (Nos. 3 and 4, 1929), then as a book, by Gosizdat, in 1929. "The faerie comedy in nine pictures", lampooning the type of philistine that emerged with the New Economic Policy in the Soviet Union, was premiered in February 1929 at the Meyerhold Theatre, with designs by Alexander Rodchenko. Received warmly by audiences, it caused controversy and received harsh treatment in the Soviet press. Unlike its follow-up, The Bathhouse (denounced as ideologically deficient), The Bedbug was criticised mostly for its alleged "aesthetic faults".

The play deals with the themes of suspended animation and being a proverbial fish out of water. In 1929, a young man is frozen in suspended animation during his wedding day. He is revived in the supposedly utopian world of 1979, where drunkenness, smoking, and swearing are long gone. Seen as a relic of the past, he ends up as a human exhibit at the local zoo.