The disappearance of Meyerhold into the Soviet prison system in 1939 fostered legends, which contributed to his rehabilitation as a martyr. A primary contribution to this process was a fictional account of his defiant speech at the All-Soviet Directors' Conference a few days before his arrest. The speech, made up out of whole cloth by the émigré musician Yury Elagin in 1951, gained considerable currency and was circulated as Cold War propaganda. It was not wholly discredited until the 1990s, when the publication of the stenographic transcript of the Conference proceedings revealed Meyerhold's actual capitulation to Stalinist artistic policy and his poor showing on the podium.

As I was going up the stair

I met a man who wasn't there.

He wasn't there again today.

I wish, I wish he'd stay away.

Hughes Mearns