Nikolai Fyodorovich Pogodin () (pseudonym of Nikolai F. Stukalov) ( – 19 September 1962) was a Soviet playwright. His plays were recognized in Soviet Union theater for their realistic portrayals of common life combined with socialist and communist themes. He is most widely known as the author of a trilogy about Lenin, the first time Lenin was used as a character in any theatrical works. Early life and pre-theater career Pogodin was born Nikolai Stukalov in modern-day Donetsk Oblast on 16 November [O.S. 3 November] 1900. Both parents were peasants. His educational career lasted through the elementary level. Between 14 and 20, Pogodin worked a variety of low-level jobs: selling newspapers, distributing supplies for typewriters and dental equipment, working in a machine shop, bookbinding and carpentry. During the Russian Civil War he served as a volunteer with the Red Army. In 1920 he worked as a reporter for the Rostov-on-Don newspaper Trudovaya zhizn, and was a traveling correspondent for Pravda from 1922 to 1932. From 1925 he lived in Moscow. Pogodin died in Moscow on 19 September 1962. He was 61 years old. Career Pogodin's series of three plays featuring Lenin as a character was part of a Soviet movement referred to as Leniniana, which sought to control the way Lenin was portrayed in artistic works. In 1936, the government commissioned, under the People's Commissariat of Education, a collection of writers and directors to make films depicting Lenin and also the revolution in an approved format and presentation style. Among those invited to the initial commission were Alexander Korneichuk, Alexander Afinogenov, Vladimir Kirshon, and the novelist Alexei Tolstoi. Despite his historical significance of presenting Lenin in this approved style, Pogodin was not invited at first. Instead, he volunteered to join the commission and was accepted. Pogodin did not limit his writing to mainstream theater. He also lent his screenplay skills to the State Leningrad Puppet Theater of Fairy Tales with a play titled The Tale of the Beast Called Indrik. Pogodin also provided a report on children's literature at the Tenth Plenary Meeting of the Union of Soviet Writers in 1946. Despite working under restrictive creative conditions, Pogodin did support the primary journal for "permitted, formal" dissent at the time, Novyi Mir. In 1929, Pogodin's first play, Tempo (Temp, 1929) was published after a visit to the Stalingrad Tractor Plant, where the play was later set. The play's major theme