MOSCOW’S RICHEST MAN

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXIX, Issue 20073, 2 April 1935, Page 12

MOSCOW’S RICHEST MAN

AUTHOR’S SUDDEN WEALTH Vassily Vassilovitch Shovarkin is reputed to be the richest man in Moscow to-day, and he is neither a banker nor an industrialist. He is a dramatist who until recently was relatively unknown. So popular has his rollicking farce, “Another Man’s Child,” become that he is reputed to have earned approximately one million roubles in less than a year. The play, which deals neither with the -Five-year Plan nor with agricultural collectivisation and is generally without any serious moment, has been produced in nearly 100 theatres, clubs and dramatic circles throughout Russia. In . Moscow alone it has been Staged by four large theatres, and in nearly 50 clubs. Authors of plays are, by law, entitled to 6 per cent, of the box office receipts from each presentation of four-act plays. With the Government tax on such incomes amounting to only 6 per cent., there are now a number of playwrights in Russia who are relatively wealthy. That they constitute no menace as the nucleus of a new capitalist class in the making is explained by the fact that they cannot set their accumulated capital at work to create more capital for them. They may, of course, spend their money on whatever purchases are available, or invest it in Government bonds, on which they receive 6 per cent, interest. They are, however, precluded from engaging in any enterprise which would involve their employing other people. Although Inventors are barred from collecting more than 100,000 roubles for any one of their Inventions, no such limitation is set upon authors and scenario writers. The generous attitude toward literary people is attributed to the desire of the Government to stimulate artistic creativeness of the type acceptable to the Bolshevik mode of thought. Nor is the practice of paying royalties limited to Soviet dramatists only. Foreigners, too, have been known to collect handsome sums of paper roubles on plays produced in Russia. These payments, however, are in roubles which cannot be exported and are only available for the author’s use when he is in the country. “The Devil's Disciple,” by Bernard Shaw, and his “Caesar and Cleopatra,” which has been fused with Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” and Pushkin’s “Egyptian Nights” into one play, were lately being played in Moscow. Should Mr Shaw go to Russia on another visit, he will probably And quite a sum of roubles waiting for him in the Gossbank in Moscow.