Historical Events in March and April

March

1 One-hundred and twenty years ago on this day (1881), Tsar Alexander II died at the hands of the terrorist organization, The People’s Will. Alexander had survived six previous assassination attempts and actually survived a first bomb thrown at his carriage by Nikolai Ryasakov. When the tsar stepped out of his carriage after the bomb blast, Ignaty Grinevetsky threw another bomb at Alexander, this one fatally wounding him. St. Petersburg’s Savior on the Blood Cathedral was subsequently built on the site of Alexander’s assassination.

2 Today is the 70th birthday (1931) of Mikhail Gorbachev, the first and last president of the USSR, and father of glasnost and perestroika. Gorbachev’s achievements in the transformation of Russian society are immense: legalization of private property, recreation of private enterprises, freeing up the press, introducing democratic elections and freeing political prisoners. Internationally, he helped bring an end to the Cold War as well as the Afghan war, initiated real progress in arms control and allowed the Berlin Wall to come down. Despite all of this, the former president is little liked in Russia. This is largely due to ill-conceived social policies (like the anti-alcohol campaign), and an inability to control the negative effects of the positive changes he set in motion, resulting in economic collapse and political fractionalism. An abortive coup in August 1991, followed by a de facto coup when the leaders of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus signed the Belovezh Agreements, brought his nearly seven-year presidency to an end (and the USSR with it) on December 25, 1991. Today, Gorbachev heads the foundation named for him, sits on the social council of NTV media company and has acquired a radio station. He has also on occasion advised the current president of Russia, Vladimir Putin. Interestingly, Gorbachev’s longtime nemesis, Boris Yeltsin, himself in retirement, recently admitted that, even though he “didn’t like Gorbachev,” he had to admit that “he is an epoch and one should not forget it.”

Today is also the 65th birthday of MKhAT actress Iya Savina (1936). A graduate of Moscow State University’s faculty of journalism, Savina chose a life in the theater over journalism. In 1960, at just 24, she starred in the film Lady With a Dog, inspired by Chekhov’s short story of the same name. She became famous overnight and since has acted in numerous films (while also acting at MKhAT), including Someone Rings, So Open the Door! (1966), Anna Karenina (1968), Garage (1980), Private Life (1983), and Trotsky (1993), among others.

5 290 years ago, the Senate was created in Russia (1711) by Peter I. It was Peter’s attempt to replace hereditary power (the boyar Duma) with a meritocracy. The Senate became the highest administrative, judicial and appellate power in the Russian empire, second only to the tsar. In the first part of the 19th century, it also assumed controlling authority over the activities of public agencies and state functionaries. The Senate was liquidated shortly after the Bolshevik Revolution, by a Sovnarkom (Council of People’s Commissars – the new “controlling authority”) decree on November 22, 1917.

The actress Yelena Yakovleva also turns 40 on this day. Yakovleva rocketed to national fame after her film debut in Valery Todorovsky’s Interdevochka (1988), in which she played the tragic role of a “girl of easy behavior.” The film was the first to shed light on the problem of prostitution, which was allegedly non-existent in the Soviet Union. In the movie, Tanya (Yakovleva) marries a former client from Sweden so as to emigrate to the West in search of better life. But she never reconciles herself with the calm (boring) and ordered (alien) life she finds in Sweden and dies in a car accident while driving back to Russia to visit her mother. Yakovleva subsequently starred in Encore, Once More, Encore and many other movies. Recently, she played the role of a female investigator in the NTV series “Kamenskaya.” She is also a leading star at Moscow’s Sovremennik theater, a favorite actress of director Galina Volchek.

8 International Women’s Day. Today would have been the 60th birthday of Andrei Mironov (1941-1987), one of the most beloved Russian actors. Mironov had it all: charm, soft irony, a grotesque buoyance, elegance and grace, plus he could sing and dance. Believed by most to be a very joyful and merry person, he actually said of himself: “I mostly laugh on stage, but I cry in life.” The son of actors Alexander Menaker and Maria Mironova (see last issue’s calendar), he graduated from the Shchukin Theater School in 1962, and soon began playing leading stage roles at Moscow’s Theater of Satire. But it was his role as an unwitting smuggler in the comedy film Diamond Arm which propelled him to fame. It would be next to impossible to find a Russian who has not seen this important film, and hard not find one who has not seen it many times. Mironov’s other cinema successes include Watch Out for the Automobile, The Twelve Chairs, The Heritage of the Republic, An Ordinary Miracle, Little Straw Hat, and A Man from the Boulevard of Capucines, to name but a few. A gallant man of refined manners, Mironov liked to afford himself a little comfort amidst the famine of Soviet deficits. In his final years, he overcame unimaginable bureaucratic hurdles and purchased a BMW, explaining to friends “Who knows how much longer we have to live? I just feel like driving a good car.” His words were prophetic, for he died on a Riga stage at the young age of 46, while playing one of his best theatrical roles: Figaro. Tragically, his daughter Masha (see pp. 24) was in the audience at the time.

12 Today is the 200th anniversary of the assassination of Tsar Paul I (1754-1801) who fell prey to a dvortsovy perevorot (palace coup) to which his son, crowned Alexander I, gave his consent. Russian Life will feature an article on this controversial tsar in a forthcoming issue of the magazine.

Today is also the 60th birthday of film director Andrei Smirnov (1941), who calls himself a representative of the younger 60’s generation, which “helped communism to disintegrate.” His Belorussian Railway Station (1971) is properly considered one of the finest modern Russian films—requisite viewing for understanding the Russian soul and character. It is the poignant story of war veterans who get together for a day after attending the funeral of their comrade in arms. Strangely, Smirnov recently said in an interview with Art of Cinema magazine that his professional life was a failure. Indeed, relentless film bureaucrats stifled his creativity and shortened his directing career. His short film Angel (1967) was “shelved” by party censors, to be shown only 20 years later. His lyrical film Autumn (1974) the simple story of two lovers, was shown only “low-profile.” And, in 1979, after Smirnov was not allowed to shoot his new film Faithfully and Truthfully the way he wanted to, he opted to quit directing and take up a career as an actor, starring in such films as Red Arrow (1986), Chernov (1990), Casanova’s Raincoat (1993), Dreams of an Idiot (1991) — based on Ilf and Petrov’s novel, The Golden Calf, Giselle’s Mania (1995) and His Wife’s Diary (2000). Interestingly, the scripts for the latter two films were written by Smirnov’s daughter Dunya, who relentlessly pursued a career in the film industry despite her father barring her from entering the VGIK Institute.

17 110 years ago sculptor Matvei Manizer (1891-1966) was born. Manizer was an artist of sober realism whose monuments and sculptures were always distinguished by a their austere composition. His most famous creations include monuments to poet Taras Shevchenko in Kharkov (1935) and to Vladimir Lenin in Ulyanovsk (1940). But millions of Moscow visitors know at least one of Manizer’s creations—the group of sculptures at Moscow’s Ploschad Revolutsii metro station. A second well-known sculpture is his monument to painter Ilya Repin (1958) on Moscow’s Bolotnaya square (below).

22 Writer Alexei Pisemsky (1821-1881) was born 180 years ago on this day. Known as the enemy of lies and hypocrisy, Pisemsky first became widely known in the late 1840s. His first story “Nina,” was published in 1848, when, as a graduate of Moscow State University’s mathematics faculty, he was working as a public servant. His 1850 novel Tyufyak (Mellow Man) brought him fame, and his 1852 play “Bitter Fate” earned him the prize of St. Petersburg’s Academy of Sciences. Chekhov called Pisemsky “a big, big talent.” Pisemsky himself summarized his career as follows: “at first I stigmatized stupidity and ignorance, cracked down on serfdom, exposed the abuses of bureaucracy, but then I ended up fighting with seemingly the strongest enemy of humanity: the idolatry of the golden calf” [i.e. money].

24 Today is the 80th birthday of chess champion Vasily Smyslov (1921). Smyslov attained Grandmaster status in 1941, was named an Emeritus Master of Sports  in 1948 and International Grandmaster in 1950. He won the Soviet National Championships in 1949 and 1955 and held the world crown from 1957-1958.

25 Artist and art scholar Igor Grabar (1871-1960) was born 130 years ago. Upon graduating from the legal and historical-philological faculty of St. Petersburg University in 1893, Grabar went on to the Academy of Arts and then to studies in Munich. He returned to Russia in 1901 and soon distinguished himself as a talented painter of landscapes (“A Ray of Light,” “St. Petersburg Snow,” “February’s Azure,” etc.) But he also wrote about art, and he is owed a great debt for his in-depth works on the painters Isaac Levitan, Vasily Serov, Ilya Repin, and for his voluminous History of Russian Art (1909-1916). In 1913 Grabar became director of the Tretyakov Gallery, and later headed the Central State Restoration Workshop. He is responsible for the restoration of many monuments of ancient Russian art, including icons and frescoes of Novgorod, Pskov and Vladimir. In 1944, Grabar founded the Institute of History of the Arts at the Academy of Sciences of the USSR.

26 Today actor Alexei Buldakov (born 1951) celebrates his 50th birthday. A graduate of the Theater studio at the Pavlodar Drama Theater in the Altai, Buldakov has acted in more than 60 films, but his role in the megahit Specifics of Russian National Hunting (1997) made him one of the most famous film actors of the 1990s. A phrase he utters in the movie, emerging from a lake with a cigar in his mouth – “Nu vy, blin, dayote” (“Oh, you guys, I’ll tell ya”) – has become his calling card. The colorful and bright Buldakov was a perfect choice to illustrate the “specifics” of Russian hunting, which goes hand in hand with drinking vodka, and which was so popular it led director Alexander Rogozhkin to create several sequels on the same theme.

27 Today is the 120th anniversary of the birth of satirist Arkady Averchenko (1881-1925). For Averchenko, everything was fair game: a tyoshcha (mother-in-law) or a member of the party of Oktyabrists, the telephone or the State Duma, a tramway and a toothache, a gramophone or a reinforced guard, holiday visits and capital punishment. Nothing was spared, even the Bolshevik coup, which was the focus of a collection of short stories called A Dozen Knives in the Back of the Revolution, published in France in 1921. The book drew a noteworthy personal critique by Vladimir Lenin, who called him a “bitter White Guard officer” and offered the back-handed praise: “It is interesting to watch how extreme hatred prompted both amazingly strong and amazingly weak passages of this highly talented book ... The buoyant hatred makes the stories of Averchenko — for the most part — extremely bright.” Awarded the epithet “King of Laughter,” Averchenko worked as an editor of leading satire magazines of his time: The Bayonet and the Sword, Satiricon and New Satiricon. He published over 40 collections of humorous stories between 1908 and 1918. In 1920, after many trials and tribulations on the roads of the Civil War, he ended up in Prague, where he died on March 12, 1925.

28 On this day 225 years ago, Empress Catherine the Great signed a special Privilege to Prince Pyotr Urusov to “create in Moscow a permanent troupe with a commitment to build a theater which would decorate the city.” That theater would become the Bolshoi Theater. The first building was built in 1780, but later burned down. The second building, designed by Osip Bovet, opened on January 6, 1825. The famous sculpture by Pyotr Klodt atop the theater’s entrance shows Apollo on a chariot.

In its long history, the Bolshoi has presented the best world’s operas and ballets, including those by Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Modest Mussorgsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Sergei Rakhmaninov, Dmitry Shostakovich, Giuseppe Verdi, Charle Gunot, Richard Wagner and others. It was here that Antonina Nezhdanova, Leonid Sobinov and Fyodor Shalyapin all sang, and that Maria Kshesinkaya, Anna Pavlova, Mikhail Fokin, Galina Ulanova, Maya Plisetskaya, Maris Liepa and Natalia Bessmertnova danced.

31 Today is the 30th birthday of “The Russian Rocket” —- hockey star Pavel Bure (1971). Son of a well-known Soviet swimmer (Vladimir Bure), Pavel made his debut at the famous Central Red Army Club (CSKA). In late 1980s he led his team to the national title, then went on to win the world championship with the USSR team. His fame spread in 1991 when he left Russia to play in the NHL, with the Vancouver Canucks. At press time, he was the highest-paid hockey player in the world (and the NHL’s leading scorer), playing for the Florida Panthers.

April

Easter falls on the same day this year for Orthodox and non-Orthodox Christians: April 15. Orthodox Annunciation is on April 7, Palm Sunday on the 8th.

12 Forty years ago today, Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space. It is hard to overestimate the impact of this event. Gagarin’s face is recognized around the world and many traditions he began are still followed by Russian cosmonauts. After the break-up of the USSR, old Soviet values and icons were often groundlessly bashed or denigrated, but Gagarin’s name remained untouchable. As the rock group Lyube (see Russian Life, Feb. 1997) sang in their late 1990s hit: “Ä Â˘fi fl ÒÛ‰¸·Â ·Î‡„Ó‰‡∂ÂÌ Á‡ éÚ˜ËÁÌÛ, ˜ÚÓ ‚Òfi    Ë‚fiÚ, Ë Á‡ ÚÓ, ˜ÚÓ ‚ ‡ÔÂΠɇ„‡ËÌ ÒÓ‚Â¯ËÎ Ò‚ÓÈ ‚˚ÒÓÍËÈ ÔÓÎfiÚ.” (”And I am grateful to fate for the country which still lives somehow, and that in April Gagarin carried out his high flight.”) Today, this date is marked in Russia as the Day of Cosmonauts.

16 This is the 120th anniversary of the birth of Sergei Kamenev (1881-1936), called the “Russian Bonaparte” by Officers of the White Army. An extremely talented commander and strategic visionary, Kamenev indeed played a major role in the victory of the Red Army in Russia’s Civil War. Born into the family of an artillery officer who served in the Kiev Arsenal, Kamenev graduated from a cadet school, then from a junker’s school and the Academy of the General Staff. He was one of the first White Officers to go over to the Red Army after the 1917 October Revolution. In September 1918, he was appointed commander of the Eastern Front. Later, as commander of the Armed Forces (1919-1924), he was instrumental in defeating the armies of Kolchak, Denikin, Vrangel and Yudenich. In 1927-1934 he held the post of Deputy People’s Commissar on Military and Maritime Affairs and Deputy Chairman of the Revolutionary Council of the USSR. Yet, as would be the case for so many, the revolution devoured this faithful and talented child: after a framed-up case and a court trial, Sergei Kamenev was shot during the dark year of 1936.

Today is also the 60th birthday of actor, script writer and film director Sergei Nikonenko (1941). A graduate of the class of Sergei Gerasimov, Nikonenko made his cinema debut while still a student at the cinematography institute, in the movies Life from Scratch and The Heart Doesn’t Forgive (both in 1961). He became immensely popular after his role as the soldier Sashka in the film series Liberation, about the WWII battle of Kursk, by Yuri Ozerov. Nikonenko starred in over 100 films, including Don’t Part with Your Loved Ones, Forgive Me if You Can, The Parade of Planets, and A Winter Night in Gagry Town. He also directed 14 films, namely Not Scared to Die (1991) and I Want to Go to America (1993).