Historical Events in September and October

September

1 Day of Knowledge (School Day). Today is the first day of school all across Russia. Students arrive at school with flowers for their teachers - usually  gladiolus  are de rigueur - dying to tell each other about their summer adventures. Traditionally the graduate students take by the hand the pervoklassniki (beginners), one of whom is always ringing the symbolic school bell. Sept. 1 is supposed to be a joyful day for students and teachers alike as there isn’t much teaching going on anyway, yet whenever  it falls on a weekend (like this year) everybody awaits  a postponement of the beginning of school with baited breath.

2 Today is the 75th anniversary of the birth of actor Yevgeny Leonov (1926-1994). Leonov’s first successful theatrical role was as Lariosik in Bulgakov’s Days of the Turbins at the Stanislavsky theater, yet he acted most of his life on the stage of Moscow’s popular Lenkom theater (since 1972). Leonov is best known for his films, such as the comedy Striped Cruise (1961), in which he played the role of a hapless lion tamer, and in one scene ran away half-naked, covered in soap suds, when a tiger interrupted his bath. “I was the first actor who showed his butt to the Soviet people,” Leonov later recalled. He appeared the common simpleton with a sparkling sense of humor and was beloved in comedies like Gentlemen of Fortune (1971), Big Break (1973), and in the films directed by Georgy Daneliya, especially Afonya (1975) and Autumn Marathon (1978). The latter earned him the award for Best Male Role at the San Sebastian Film Festival. In 1969 Leonov became the voice of Winnie the Pooh in Soviet cartoons featuring the famous bear. His serious roles, such as the war veteran in Belorussky Railway Station, were equally successful. Leonov suffered from heart problems in his later years and, in 1994, he unexpectedly died from a thrombosis on the day he was scheduled to perform at Lenkom in “Memorial Prayer,” based on Sholom Aleichem’s famous work, "Tevye the Milkman." Although the performance was cancelled, no refunds were demanded, and the crowd of theater lovers gathered before Lenkom with candles to weep over the death of a favorite actor.

3 60 years ago today the writer Sergei Dovlatov (1941-1990) was born. He once said of himself: “I am a storyteller. A writer has a philosophy, he teaches something. I am just telling entertaining stories.” The story of his life was often a tragic one. He spend his military service in labor camps in the Northern Republic of Komi, later recalled in his novel Zona (1982). After demobilization in 1965, he graduated from the faculty of journalism and worked in various periodical publications, while beginning to write stories. He later joined the “City Dwellers,” a Leningrad group of writers who had a negative attitude towards the Soviet regime. In the late 1960s, his work began being published in samizdat publications, and in 1976 some of his stories were published in the West, in the literary journals Kontinent and Vremya I My. Dovlatov emigrated to the USA in 1978, settled in New York and published the emigre newspaper New America (1980-1983). His best known works were The Invisible Book (1978), Solo on the Underwood (1980), Compromise (1981), Reserve (1983), Ours (1983) and The Suitcase (1986).

7 Ten years ago today, Leningrad regained its historical name “St. Petersburg,” following a referendum held on the initiative of the city’s mayor, the late Anatoly Sobchak.

8 Day of Military Glory, commemorating the Battle of Borodino in 1812. On this day sixty years ago, the 900-day German Seige of Leningrad began. This horrendous tragedy will be the subject of a later story in Russian Life.

14 Today is the 65th birthday of poet Alexander Kushner (1936), one of Russia’s best contemporary poets. Nobel Laureate Josef Brodsky called Kushner “one of the lyrical poets of the 20th century” and said his name “is destined to join the list of names dear to the heart of all those whose native language is Russian ... Kushner’s verses are reserved in tone, free of hysterics, empty statements or nervous gestures.” Kushner has authored eleven collections of poems, including Night Patrol (1966), Letter (1974), Tauride Garden (1984) and Night Music (1991). Many of his verses have been translated into foreign languages.

14 Today is the 90th anniversary of the birth of sculptor Sergei Orlov (1911-1971). His most famous works are the monument to Yuri Dolgoruky on Moscow’s Tverskaya street (1954), and the statue of traveler Afanasiy Nikitin in Tver (1955). Starting in 1929, Orlov worked at the workshop of the Moscow Museum of Ceramics where he developed a passion for small sculptural forms, namely fairy tale subjects. He became internationally known in the 1940s when Averill Harriman, then US ambassador to the USSR (1943-1946) acquired Orlov’s sculpture “Skazka” (Fairy Tale) for this collection. Visitors can see two of his works at Moscow’s Tretryakov gallery: “The Fairy Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish” and “Alexander Nevsky” (both 1944). His scuplture “Mother” (1943) is at the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg.

19 Two-hundred and thirty years ago, Count Mikhail Miloradovich (1771-1825) was born. An infantry general since 1813, he was a hero of the War of 1812, as commander of the vanguard of the Main Russian Army. At the end of the French campaign in 1814, when Russian troops arrived in Paris with their allies, Miloradovich was appointed Governor General of St. Petersburg. During the Decembrists revolt of 1825 he was mortally wounded by Decembrist Pyotr Kakhovsky while Miloradovich  tried to convince the mutineers into vacating Senate Square and taking an oath of loyalty to emperor Nicholas I.

21 Nativity of the Virgin (Orthodox Holiday). Ninety years ago today, actor and singer Mark Bernes (1911-1969) was born. At 26, Bernes became widely popular for his performance of the song “Clouds Are Hanging Over the City” (1938), in Sergei Yutkevich’s film, Man with a Rifle. One of Bernes’ first albums, Beloved City, featuring the music of Nikita Bogoslovsky, propelled his popularity even higher. In prewar and war films, when Soviet cinema sought a courageous, strong-willed hero, Bernes fit the bill. He was particularly memorable with his friend and partner Boris Andreyev in the film Two Fighters (1943). His singing on the soundtrack for Dark Night is a lyrical masterpiece, even now included in the repertoire of contemporary singers like Boris Grebenschikov. Amazingly, Bernes did not have a Golden Voice, and admitted it himself: “I have no voice, but I do have brains.” In the 1960s, Bernes added to his list of Soviet hits such songs as I Love You Life, Do Russians Want War? and What the Homeland Begins With? But it is his poignant recording of “The Cranes” – written specially for him by Ian Frenkel, with lyrics by Rasul Gamzatov – that became legendary, especially since he recorded the song when he was already gravely ill. The sad lyrics coupled with Bernes’ softly nostalgic voice still make listeners cry: “Âì Õá ¬⁄“fl ‘”ð”˛, ò⁄” “”Œâá⁄˚, “ Õð”ÇáÇ˚ı ì ‘ðÀجâØÀ¬ ‘”Œ¬», ì Ç ¡¬œŒ˛ Ãáؤ ‘”Œ¬ÑŒÀ Õ”Ñá-⁄” á ‘ð¬Çðá⁄ÀŒÀ“∏ Ç ∑¬Œ˚ı  ¤ðáÇŒ¬»î. (ìIt seems to me sometimes that the soldiers who didn’t return from the bloody battle fields, don’t lay under the earth, but rather have turned into white cranes.”)

23 Today is the 65th birthday of writer and playwright Edvard Radzinsky (1936). Radzinsky skyrocketed to fame in the 1960s after theater director Anatoly Efros staged his play “104 Pages About Love” (1964). The play later was the basis for a no less successful film, “Once Again About Love” (1968), starring Oleg Yefremov, Tatyana Doronina and Alexander Lazarev. Radzinsky’s later plays “Lunin,” “Talks with Socrates,” “Theater of the Times of Nero and Seneca” were a success both in Russia and abroad. He also penned many film scripts, such as Each Night at 11 (1969), and Moscow My Love (1974). In the 1990s Radzinsky turned his attention to history, hosting a series of television programs, titled Puzzles of History, which received very high ratings. In the West, Radzinsky is mainly famous as the author of The Last Tsar (1993), Stalin (1996), and The Rasputin File (2000).

24 Today is the bicentennial of the birth of Russian mathematician Mikhail Ostrogradsky (1801-1862), founder of the St. Petersburg School of Mathematics. Awarded the title of Academician at just 30, Ostrogradsky was an expert in mathematical analysis, theoretical mechanics, mathematical physics, the theory of numbers and the theory of probability. His name is attached to a fundamental formula in calculus that is commonly known as “Green’s Theorem” in the West and “Ostragradsky’s Theorem” in Russia, because the two scientists arrived at the same solution independently. Ostrogradsky taught in a number of St. Petersburg schools, and was renowned for making math a science pursued passionately, rather than the dry and dull subject it often becomes.

25 Today is the 95th anniversary of the birth of Dmitry Shostakovich (1906-1975) one of the greatest composers of the 20th century. Shostakovich is the subject of a biographical piece by Dmitry Feofanov on page XX of this issue.

27 Elevation of the Cross (Orthodox Holiday)

29 Alla Demidova turns 65 today. One of the actresses who made the Taganka famous, Demidova joined that theater in 1964. There she shone in “Fedra” (written by Marina Tsvetaeva), as Gertrude in “Hamlet” (alongside Vladimir Vysotsky), as Ranevskaya in Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard,” and as Marina Mnishek in Pushkin’s “Boris Godunov,” among others. Her career in cinema began even earlier, in 1957. She subsequently starred in dozens of film, most notably in July 6 (1968), as Socialist Revolutionary Maria Spiridonova, in the war film Shield and Sword (1968), Father Sergius (1978), The Kreutzer Sonata (1986), and The Possessed (1992). In 1993, Demidova founded her own theater, “A,” where she staged the plays “Medea,” “Fedra,” and “Elektra.” Demidova is particularly renowned for her recitations of poetry, especially her signature performance of Anna Akhmatova’s “Requiem.”

On this day 60 years ago, the horrendous two-day Babiy Yar (Babyn Iar) massacre began. Over 33,000 Jews were ruthlessly murdered by Nazi executioners in this town outside Kiev. Within months of their invasion of the Soviet Union, the Germans executed over 850,000 Jews living in Ukraine—just one of the inhumane aspects of their genocidal policies toward this Slavic nation effected under the leadership of the maniacal Reichskommisar Erich Koch. Over 180 Jewish concentration camps were erected in Ukraine; over one million Soviet prisoners of war were willfully murdered in prisoner of war camps on Ukrainian soil; whole cities were depopulated and over 2 million Ukrainians were sent to Germany as ostarbeiters, while Ukrainian collective farms were enslaved and forced to ship all of their output West. In 1961, the poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko’s poem Babiy Yar was published  in Literaturnaya Gazeta. Hailed as a condemnation of antisemitism by the intelligentsia, it reportedly led to reprimands from the Kremlin.

October

4 One hundred and thirty years ago, the publisher Mikhail Sabashnikov (1871-1943) was born. The writer Leonid Leonov (1899-1994) whose first books were published by Sabashnikov, wrote that Sabashnikov “was a true Russian intelligent, unselfishly devoted to publishing, who preserved through all his life an immaculate soul and a faith in his ideals.” Sabashnikov was justly called “the knight of the book.” Together with his brother Sergei, he published his first book when he was just 20--a treatise on botany. There followed works on zoology, physiology, chemistry and the other sciences. Sabashnikov also published a superb historical series: Monument of World Literature (1913-1925), Countries, Centuries and Peoples (1913-1915), and Pushkin’s Library (1917-1922).

8 Seventy years ago Yulian Semyonov (1931-1996), the renowned detective writer, was born. He authored over 30 books and 20 film scripts. His novel Seventeen Moments of Spring (1969) later became a successful TV series. Over a dozen of his works were turned into films, including TASS is Authorized to Declare, Mystery of Kutuzovsky Avenue, Ogareva 6, and Petrovka 38. Semyonov was the founder and first editor-in-chief of the newspaper Sovershenno Sekretno (“Top Secret”) which he established with  younger partner Artyom Borovik (who died last year in a plane crash).

Actor Leonid Kuravlyov (1936) turns 65 today. A graduate of VGIK, Kuravlyov is a prolific actor who has starred in over 150 films. His first major role was in the film Lives Such A Lad (1964). A gifted comedian, he excelled in the Ilf & Petrov-inspired film The Golden Calf (1968), in Leonid Gayday’s Ivan Vasilievich Changes His Profession (1973), and in Georgy Daneliya’s Afonya (1975). Yet, even though  Kuravlyov is mostly loved for his comic roles, he can also be lyrical (like in Gleb Panfilov’s Nachalo-- “Beginning”). Nor has he been shy to play in serious films (namely in Seventeen Moments of Spring).

9 Actor Yevgeny Yevstigneev (1926-1992) would have been 75 today. His colleague Valentin Gaft wrote in his memoirs that “Zhenya was a genius. When he was on stage, his eyes took up half of his face. There was the beautiful shape of his balding yet very charming head. Depending on whom he played, Zhenya could be anything: handsome, courageous and the other way around.” Yevstigneev began acting at the immensely popular Sovremennik in 1956. There he played Education Minister Anatoly Lunacharsky  in what was then considered a liberal play “The Bolsheviks,” by Mikhail Shatrov. In 1971, he moved to MKhAT, where he starred in Chekhov’s best plays: “Three Sisters,” “Ivanov,” and “Uncle Vanya.” But it is in cinema that Yevstigneev truly made his mark, playing a wide variety of roles with mastery: as the hilarious Soviet bureaucrat and Pioneer Camp director (Welcome Or Entrance Forbidden, 1965), as Koreyko, the secret Soviet millionaire in The Golden Calf (1968), as the repulsive Paramon Korzukhin in Beg (“On the Run”) based on a play by Mikhail Bulgakov (1970), as the hapless Doctor Pleyshner in 17 Moments of Spring, as the step dancer in Winter Night in Gagry (1985). The seeming culmination of his talents came together in the film version of Bulgakov’s Heart of a Dog, where he was the very epitome of the Russian intelligent as Professor Preobrazhensky, making it almost inconceivable that any other actor could ever try to fill this role.

14 Intercession of the Virgin (Orthodox Holiday). Today is also the 55th birthday of film director Pavel Chukhrai (1946). Son of famous Soviet director Grigory Chukhrai (see Russian Life, February 1986), Pavel made his debut in 1977, with the film Just Remember Sometimes. Other successful films followed: People in the Ocean (1980) A Cage for a Canary (1983), and Zina-Zinulya (1986). His most successful film to date has been The Thief (1997), which was nominated for an Oscar and which won numerous Russian prizes as well the UNICEF prize and the 1997 prize of the Youth Jury in Venice. Cinema critic Lev Anninsky defined Chukhrai’s credo thus: “Pavel Chukhrai resolutely breaks with the heritage of the 1960s generation. There are no internal monologues when the camera would live inside the hero and ‘bellow and sigh’ together with the character. Finally, there is no ‘black stuff,’ characteristic of the disarray reigning in the glasnost era cinema.”

15 Savva Mamontov (1841-1918), industrialist and patron of the arts, was born on this day, 160 years ago. Mamontov made an enormous contribution to the development of music, theater and Russian art. He created the memorial Abramtsevo estate, where, for many years, artists and sculptors like Mikhail Antokolsky, Ilya Repin, Viktor and Apollinary Vasnetsov, Mikhail Vrubel, Vasily and Yelena Polenov, Konstantin Korovin, Mikhail Nesterov and Valentin Serov worked. Mamontov also created a private opera in Moscow, which became the center of Russian musical culture and aided in the flowering of many talents.

17 Writer Anatoly Pristavkin turns 70 today. While he began publishing his works as early as 1954, he rose to prominence in 1987 when the magazine Znamya published his hitherto forbidden book Nochevala Tuchka Zolotaya, (“A Golden Cloud Passed By”, also the first line of a poem by Lermontov), shelved by the critics back in 1981. In it Pristavkin revisits his childhood spent in a orphanage during the war, where “it was easier to die than to survive, to become a beast was easier than to remain a man.” This book, along with the Anatoly Rybakov’s Children of the Arbat and Vassily Grossman’s Life and Fate became one of the symbols of the glasnost era. Pristavkin’s next novel, Little Cuckoo Chicks was named best novel for youth in Russia. Since 1992, Pristavkin has often been in international headlines as head of the State Pardons Commission under the President of Russia. He is a vocal opponent of the death penalty and he is also actively involved in freedom of the media issues.

17 Today is the birthday of film director Savva Kulish, who died this summer just a few weeks short of turning 65 (1936-2001). Kulish apprenticed himself to the famous Soviet director Mikhail Romm, working on Romm’s film Ordinary Fascism. Kulish himself burst into Russian cinema like a comet with the suspense movie Dead Season, a film based on the true story of Soviet intelligence officer Rudolf Abel. All of his subsequent films were compared with this first film, usually to the disfavor of his later films. Yet, all of his movies were original and raised new themes. For example, there was his 1979 film Take Off, about the father of Russian aerospace Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, which starred the poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko in the main role. In 1982, he received much acclaim for his touching film Fairy Tales of the Old Arbat, based on a play by 1960s playwright Alexei Arbuzov.

18 Today is the centenary of composer Vladimir Zakharov (1901-1956). Zakharov adapted the traditions of Russian folk songs and established his own bright individual style. His songs range from dramatic and heroic (Oh, Fogs, My Fogs and Wherever I Go) to the tender and lyrical (The Russian Beauty, and How Good you are, July Nights) and humorous songs like Who Knows Why he Winks. Zakharov wrote many of his songs in collaboration with poet Mikhail Isakovsky. From 1932 and until the end of his life Zakharov was the head of the world-famous Pyatnitsky Choir. But he was also a “musical conservative” and  one of the leading denouncers of Dmitry Shostakovich, (see September 25) Prokofiev and others during the notorious Zhdanovshchina. "They say that people in the West call [Shostakovich’s] symphonies the work of a genius!" thundered Zakharov at a denunciation meeting in the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory. "But who exactly are these people? Besides the reactionaries, bandits and imperialists, there are many ordinary people living abroad. Do you think they like these symphonies? Of course they don't; You can take my word for that!"

19 On this day 60 years ago, a state of seige was declared in Moscow. German troops  were pressing closer to Moscow. Various ministries and the diplomatic corps had been evacuated from the capital to Kuybyshev and there was palpable panic in the city among the population (population 4 million at the start of the war). In response, a state of emergency was declared in the capital, which restored order.

24 Today is the 140th anniversary of the birth of Russian commander Alexei Kaledin (1861-1918). In May 1917, the Don Cossacks declared themselves autonomous and elected Kaledin their first ataman (chief). Kaledin had been a senior commander in the Russian Army during the war. After the unsuccessful July army mutiny led by General Kornilov, the Russian government demanded Kaledin’s arrest, but the Don Government refused. On October 25, 1917, after the Bolsheviks had seized power, Kaledin made an address in which he called the seizure criminal. On November 20, 1917, the Don Republic declared itself independent of Soviet Russia. But the new republic was short of both soldiers and money and few soldiers returning from the front would fight. When the Red Army launched its offensive to retake the region in 1918, Kaledin relinquished the title of ataman at a session of the Government of the Don region and committed suicide the same day.

24 Today is the 90th anniversary of the birth of legendary comedian Arkady Raykin (1911-1987). After the BBC made a film on Raykin in 1964, he was known in the UK as the “Russian Chaplin.” Raykin made a career of poking fun at the shortcomings of the Soviet regime (such as rampant deficits) as well as human vices. For many years he worked with writer Mikhail Zhvanetsky. He also created the Theater of Miniatures, first in Leningrad, later moving it to Moscow, to the former Tadzhikistan cinema (the theater is now named after him and headed by his son, Konstantin Raykin).

25 Today is the 75th birthday of singer Galina Vishnevskaya (1926), Bolshoi soloist from 1952-1974. The virtuosity and lightness of her soprano voice added special charm to her performances, and belie a childhood and youth that was extremely difficult and tragic (her incredible autobiography, Galina: A Russian Story, was published in 1984). A longtime friend of the composer Shostakovich, Vishnevskaya sang many leading operatic roles, in operas from Snow Maiden to Tosca to Troubadour. An active champion  of human rights, she and her husband, cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, were stripped of their Soviet citizenship and expelled from the USSR in 1978. In 1990, when perestroika rehabilitated many former dissidents, Vishnevskaya and Rostropovich regained their citizenship. After returning to Russia, Vishnevskaya tried her hand at acting, starred as the aging Catherine the Great in a 1994 play at Moscow’s MKhAT. Vishnevskaya is also known for her generous charitable and social activities, such as spearheading the construction of a singing school on Moscow’s Ostozhenka street.

26 Icon of the Iverskaya Virgin (Orthodox Holiday)

30 On this day 60 years ago the heroic defense of Sevastopol began. It is one of the most dramatic pages in the history of the Great Patriotic War. This embattled Russian city (currently located in Ukraine) repeatedly fell prey to invaders throughout its history, and in WWII the Nazis had a two-fold superiority in personnel, a three-fold superiority in artillery, and a ten-fold edge in tanks and aircraft. Yet the city held out for nearly a year--until July 4, 1942. On December 1942 the Soviet government coined the medal “For the Defense of Sevastopol.” The city was later awarded the title of Hero City.

31 This is the 190th anniversary of the founding of the Tsarkoye Selo Lyceum (1811), an institution inseparable from the name of poet Alexander Pushkin, its most famous graduate, and a student there for six years (1811-1817). Our fatherland is Tsarskoye Selo ( È⁄¬ò¬“⁄Ç” Ãᜠ- Òáð“Õ”¬ άŒ”) Pushkin later wrote in a poem. The lyceum was created on the initiative of Tsar Alexander I, and was the first such school in Russia. Tsar Alexander defined its goals as “the education of the youth destined for important public service, and composed of the best representatives of the noble families.” In fact, there were many more children of not so famous families. Over the course of 107 years (until 1917, when the lyceum was closed), 74 classes graduated from Tsarskoye Selo, counting amongst their numbers many a famous poet, writer and diplomat. For decades, Tsarkoye Selo evoked only one name: Pushkin. But times are changing rapidly in the New Russia. This past summer Elton John performed a concert sponsored by Alfa Bank near Tsarskoye Selo which was supposedly meant to underscore the exclusive character of the concert.