Reception (play)

Reception
Written by	Maxim Gorky
Original language	Russian
Genre	Comedy
Setting	A railway station five verstas away from the small town of Verkhneye Myamlino

Reception (Russian: Встреча, romanized: Vstrecha) is a one-act comedy by Maxim Gorky.^[1] It was first published in 1910, in Sovremenny Mir under its original title. Simultaneously it came out as a separate edition under the title Children (Russian: Дети, romanized: Deti), via the Berlin-based Ladyzhnikov Publishers.^[1]

Gorky mentioned it in his 20 November 1910 letter to Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky: "I send you my Reception, perhaps it will make you smile," he wrote from Capri.^[2]

• Prince Svir-Mokshanski, of uncertain age, balding and frail^[3]
• Bubenhof, solid and behaves like a conqueror
• Mokey Zobnin, of around fifty, shifty, perky and prone to fantasizing
• Ivan Kichkin, old, fat and unhealthy
• Pyotr Tipunov, soft-spoken and peace-loving
• Kostya Zryakhov, a plump young man, speaks condescendingly and with unexpectedly long vowels
• Yevstigneyka, a disheveled character with eyes of a lunatic
• Tatyana Zobnina, a widow, stout and moving lazily
• Marya Viktorovna, a perky and lively girl
• Drunken passenger, Old woman with a petition, the Station master, Bykov the janitor, the Gendarme, the Telegraph man

Two rival families of the local merchants grudgingly unite to buy a huge plot of land from a local aristocrat, with a view to build a timber factory. The reception at the railway station astounds the Prince (who arrives with a German companion). He is delighted with the way how the people here admire him and are such pure and nice creatures, 'like children'. Some other locals (including a perpetuum mobile inventor) join the party with their pleas and complaints. The celebration turns sour when it transpires that the land has just been sold, to the German man.

• Дети. The original Russian text