In 1926, commemorating the centenary of the Decembrist revolt, the Moscow Art Theatre staged Kugel's play "Nicholas the First and the Decembrists", the dramatised take on Dmitry Merezhkovsky's novels, "Alexander the First" and "December 14". The production (a risky adventure, bearing in mind Merezhkovsky's strong anti-Bolshevist stance in France) marked a kind of 'peace treaty'. In 1927 Stanislavsky met Kugel in Kislovodsk. "Now he is old, very ill and apparently before his death wants to patch up things of the past. So the past was exactly what we've not spoken a word about," Stanislavsky wrote in his diary.