The formation of a relationship between early Soviet writers and the young Soviet state was conditioned by a pre-Revolutionary culture of patronage and clientelism among Russian literati. This culture enabled them to exert considerable influence over the state as they pushed it, via numerous state-based literary patrons, to provide them with a growing system of welfare and privilege in return for political support. In the literary battles of the late 1920s and early 1930s, Stalin took control over all patronage chains and established himself as the single de facto patron of the literary world. His personality cult emerged from this process.

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If the Phaedra is Seneca's best-known play, it has suffered more than any other from inadequate or misdirected critical attention. Most accounts have been preoccupied with its similarity or dissimilarity to the Hippolytus of Euripides, or else with its rhetorical luxuriance. The first group has spoken of it as a not very meritorious rewrite of Euripides' play (Version I, II, or mixed). Méridier, for example, in his Hippolyte d'Euripide devotes a chapter to the Phaedra, giving a résumé of the plot, listing parallels and discrepancies with the Hippolytus, and providing by way of conclusion an ‘étude littéraire’. In this he treats the play as mere adaptation, remarking ‘on voit ce que l'œuvre de Sénèque a perdu au changement’. Where Seneca has introduced originalities, ‘ces scenes nouvelles ne témoignent pas toujours … d'un art très heureux’.