The Russian premiere of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's "The Victors' Feast," originally slated for the end of December at the Maly Theater, has been delayed.


The new date has not yet been set, although it may fall on Army Day, Jan. 23, or Jan. 25, the date on which the play's action takes place.


"The Victor's Feast" tells the story of a Soviet intelligence unit celebrating the birthday of one of its members just as the Red Army is securing victory over the Nazis in Prussia.


When Solzhenitsyn recently visited the cast and director Boris Morozov, he explained that he based every character on real models. Solzhenitsyn said he composed the verse play in his head, while in the camps in 1951, so as to give himself something to think about and not lose his mind.


If the Russia fad is old hat in the United States, you wouldn't know it from a quick glance at what is on the stages of some notable American theaters.


In New York alone this season, there has already been an adaptation of Maxim Gorky's "Mother" at La MaMa Theater, and a tour of St. Petersburg's famed Maly Theater doing "Gaudeamus" at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.


Now running at the Jean Cocteau Theater is Anton Chekhov's classic, "The Cherry Orchard," while a rendition of Mikhail Bulgakov's "The Master and Margarita" is at the Joyce and Seward Johnson Theater through Jan. 22.


More Russian plays are in the works. Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya" and a musical of Boris Pasternak's "Dr. Zhivago" are planned for spring. Then there is the Dostoevsky boom. Over the last year stories and novels by Dostoevsky have been staged at the Milwaukee Rep, the Repertory Theater of St. Louis, New York University, and New York's Tiny Mythic and Perry Street theaters.