information:extraction, quality:correction, structural:reformatting
1929–1930

In 1929, the publishing house Goslitizdat released The Works by V. V. Mayakovsky in 4 volumes. In September 1929 the first assembly of the newly formed REF group gathered with Mayakovsky in the chair. But behind this façade the poet's relationship with the Soviet literary establishment was quickly deteriorating. Both the REF-organized exhibition of Mayakovsky's work, celebrating the 20th anniversary of his literary career and the parallel event in the Writers' Club, "20 Years of Work" in February 1930, were ignored by the RAPP members and, more importantly, the Party leadership, particularly Stalin whose attendance he was greatly anticipating. It was becoming evident that such experimental art was no longer welcomed by the regime, and that the country's most famous poet was increasingly losing favor with the higher echelons of the Party.

Two of Mayakovsky's satirical plays, written specifically for Meyerkhold Theatre, The Bedbug (1929) and (in particular) The Bathhouse (1930) evoked stormy criticism from the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers. In February 1930 Mayakovsky joined RAPP, but in Pravda on 9 March, a leading member of RAPP, Vladimir Yermilov, writing "with all the authority of a 23 year old who had not seen the play but had read part of the script" categorised Mayakovsky as one of the 'petit bourgeois revolutionary intelligentsia', adding that "we hear a false 'leftist' note in Mayakovsky, a note which we know not only from literature....". This was a potentially deadly political accusation, in that it implied an intellectual link between Mayakovsky and the Left Opposition, led by Leon Trotsky, whose supporters were in exile or prison. (Trotsky was known to admire Mayakovsky's poetry). Mayakovsky retaliated by creating a huge poster mocking Yermilov, but was ordered by RAPP to take it down. In his suicide note Mayakovsky wrote "Tell Yermilov we should have completed the argument."

The smear campaign continued in the Soviet press, sporting slogans like "Down with Mayakovshchina!" On 9 April 1930 Mayakovsky, reading his new poem "At the Top of My Voice", was shouted down by the student audience, for being 'too obscure'.