"Cinderella," which for years has delighted children all over the world, has now been included in the Bolshevist index of proscribed "'counter-revolutionary" works. Writing after a performance of a stage version of "Cinderella," produced at the Children's Theatre in Petrograd, the dramatic critic of the '"Arasnaya Gata' was scarcely able to "control his indignation."
"Would you believe it! (he wrote). What kind, good kings and generous princes, and how just and fair they are to all poor and humble citizens! And what good times there must have been when the world was governed by Tsars, Kings, and Prince Charmings! This is the impression left by the performance of 'Cinderella' at the Children's Theatre. What a fine Communist and Socialist lesson our children in our proletarian State will derive from watching a performance of 'Cindqrella."... One dan only express unlimited surprise at our theatrical censorship in~ Petrograd, which, having prohibited long ago all performances of Glinka's opera 'Life for the Tsar' for adults, now, for some reasons unknown, is constantly overlooking the productions in the Children's Theatres of our city, where kind, good kings* and noble Prince Charmings' are being boomed to the skies. We are told that there are no appropriate plays for children's theatres at present, but would it not have been possible to tone down 'Cinderella' and adapt it to meet the requirements of our present-day proletarian principles and culture, just as plays by Shakespeare and other writers with bourgeois ideology have frequently been adoped and revised?'
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.