May and June History

May

1 Day of Spring Labor

5 Today is the 120th anniversary of the birth of Russian dancer and ballet-master Mikhail Fokin (1880-1942). Fokin staged such ballets as Atsis and Galatee (1905) and A Midsummer’s Night Dream, set to the music of Mendelssohn (1906). Two years later he staged more ballets at the Mariinsky Theater—the most successful were Egyptian Nights and Shopeniane. Theater artist and decorator Alexander Benoit recommended Fokin to Sergei Dyagilev as choreographer for his Russian Ballet Seasons in Paris. As a result, from 1909-1912 Fokin was art director, ballet-master and leading dancer for Russian Seasons. His Polovtsian Dances from Borodin’s opera Prince Igor was a source of great renown. Fokin returned to St. Petersburg in 1912 and was made ballet-master at Mariinsky. In 1918, he left Russia for Sweden and then, in 1919, the US.

7 Today marks 160 years from the birth of Pyotr Tchaikovsky (1840-1893), the world-famous composer, professional pianist and conductor. A graduate of the St. Petersburg Conservatory, Tchaikovsky focused most of his musical energies on Moscow, where, at the age of 26, he became a professor at the Moscow Conservatory. His musical legacy is immense: from vocal, orchestral and chamber music to ballet and operatic works. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine a world of music without Tchaikovsky. There are the operas Yevgeny Onegin, The Queen of Spades, Iolanta, the ballets Sleeping Beauty, The Nutcracker, and Swan Lake, to say nothing of the six symphonies, the choral masterpieces or the orchestral scores. In the mid-1880s Tchaikovsky toured Russia and Western Europe with concerts; in 1891 he traveled to the US, by which time his renown was truly international. Yet his mysterious death in 1893, at the age of 53 (and just after the first performance of his sixth symphony), brought a sudden and tragic end to his prolific career. This rare genius, who earned great acclaim in his lifetime, had a very complicated life, one which will bethe focus of an article in the coming issue of Russian Life.

9 Today is the 55th anniversary of the Allied victory over Nazi Germany in WWII. For Russians, this is a very significant anniversary, a chance to remember those who died on the battlefield, in concentration camps and during deportation to Germany. Russia lost 27 mn persons and 30% of its national wealth in the war. Hitler’s plan for the invasion of Russia, Barbarossa, foresaw a five-month war. But what worked in Poland, Norway, Denmark or France didn’t work against Russia. The war lasted for nearly four years and ended in Soviet troops raising their flag over the Reichstag in May 1945.

10 Today is the 70th birthday of Ilya Glazunov, one of  the most famous and most controversial contemporary Russian artists. Born in Leningrad, Glazunov  lived through that city’s 900 day blockade in WWII, though his parents and most of his relatives did not. He graduated from Leningrad’s Institute of Painting, Sculpture  and Architecture. In 1957, he rose to fame after his first exhibition at the Moscow Central House of Artists. Glazunov founded  the Academy of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in Moscow 10 years ago and was appointed director of the Academy for life. His credo is: “If art is not understandable, then no one needs it.” He said he wants his art “to talk about realism in the highest sense—as understood by Dostoevsky ... as an expression of the fight of good vs. evil on the battlefield of men’s hearts.” Conservatives criticize Glazunov for his “abuse” of biblical themes, while liberals criticize him for his “simplistic” realism, his allegedly reactionary views on Russian history, and his portraiture of Western and Russian leaders. In January, Glazunov unveiled a retrospective exhibition at Moscow’s Manezh with over 1500 works on the four main themes of his art: the lyrical city cycle, Russian history, illustrations of classic Russian literature (mostly Dostoevsky), and portraits of contemporaries. Two significant new works on display were “God Bless Russia” and a four-by-eight meter canvas “Devastation of an Orthodox Church on Easter Night,” showing a group of Bolsheviks invading a church.

15 This is the 75th birthday of the actress Lyudmila Kasatkina (born 1925). She broke onto the world stage in 1962 when she received the Golden Nymph for Best Female Role in the film The Taming of the Shrew, based on Shakespeare’s play of the same name. Kasatkina displayed a very broad range in her long career, starring in serious war films such as Operation “Trust”, and Calling Fire On Us, as well as remaining active (still!) in the Moscow Army Theater, which she joined in 1947.

17 Today is the 180th anniversary of the birth of historian Sergei Soloviev (1820-1879). Soloviev is known in Russia as the “chronicler of the Fatherland.” He was a tireless researcher with incredible self-discipline and a fantastic work capacity, producing the most comprehensive work on Russian history (29 volumes). Speaking at Soloviev’s funeral, the historian Konstantin Bestuzhev-Ryumin said: “We complain of not having enough persons of character, but here was a man of a very firm character who not so long ago lived among us; we complain of not having enough scientists, but we have just buried a man who belongs in the ranks of the greatest scientists of the 19th century.”

18 200 years ago Russia lost her greatest military commander, General Alexander Suvorov (1729-1800), who lost not a single battle. Our story on Suvorov’s life and achievements begins on page 40.

24 Today, the great Russian poet Iosif Brodsky (1940-1996) would have been 60 years old. Born in St. Petersburg, Brodsky was gifted with a unique poetic talent—Anna Akhmatova predicted Brodsky’s poetic stardom. Brodsky lived in Russia for the first 32 years of his life, juggling many jobs, including work at the Arsenal factory, as a pathologist and as a geologist, before embracing his true vocation as a poetry during the Khruschev Thaw. The Thaw was short-lived, however, and Brodsky was persecuted by Soviet authorities for “parasitism.” Reading the once-secret archives of Brodsky’s trial, one cannot help laughing at its ludicrous accusations. The trial ended in his exile to the North of Russia. In 1965 he was released, before the expiration of his term. In 1972, he emigrated from Russia and settled in the US, where he taught Russian literature and poetry. In 1987, Brodsky received the Nobel Prize for Literature. Brodsky deeply felt his separation from his homeland, from being taken “out of Russian literature.” He prophetically predicted his early death: “The century will end, but I will end earlier.” Upon learning the news of his death in America in 1996, many Russians noted that the poet died in his sleep. Russians believe only good people–the blessed ones–die this way.

30 Today marks the 780th birthday of Alexander Nevsky (1220-1263). Nevsky became a prince at the age of 16 and, notwithstanding his young age, was a very talented and wise military and political leader. He held difficult negotiations with the Mongol khans, sparing his lands from many incursions. By eliminating the Mongol threat, Nevsky was able to devote more energy to defense against the Swedes, who menaced Northern Rus’. In 1240, the 20-year old prince won a victory over the Swedes on the Neva river, earning him the nickname “Nevsky.” Two years later, he led his forces to victory over the Teutonic Knights on Chudskoye lake. After his death, he was canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church and, in 1724, on orders from Peter the Great, his ashes were moved to St. Petersburg, where they were laid to rest in the Alexander-Nevsky Lavra. In 1725, an Order of St. Alexander Nevsky was established; in Soviet Times—in 1942—a similarly named military award was created. Immediately before the outbreak of WWII, Sergei Prokofiev wrote the cantata “Alexander Nevsky,” which originally was the music soundtrack to Sergei Eisenstein’s masterful biography of the great military leader.

June

1 International Day of the Protection of the Children. Today is also the 80th birthday of the poet David Samoylov (Kaufman) (1920-1990). In a short postscript to one of his last collections of verse, Samoylov called himself a poet of the 1940s generation. A graduate of the Moscow Institute of History, Philosophy and Literature, he left for the war front in 1941; the theme of war later dominated his art. Samoylov always kept a low profile in the world of Soviet poetry, avoiding self-promotion and shunning meetings of the literary nomenklatura. Instead, he was a regular of the famous poetic soirées from the 1960s through the early 1980s, when poetry was immensely popular with the Russian intelligentsia (some of these soirées were so larger that they had to be held at Moscow’s huge indoor Luzhniki stadium). Every Russian has heard at least once Samoylov’s famous “Sorokovye-rokovye” (“Those Fatal Forties”), which ends with a poignant bit of boyish daring: “ÇÓÈ̇ „ÛÎflÂÚ ÔÓ êÓÒÒËË, ‡ Ï˚ Ú‡ÍË ÏÓÎÓ‰˚” (“We were so young when war was walking by Russia”). In his later years, Samoylov moved to the countryside in the Moscow region, then later settled the tiny town of Pyarnu (Estonia), where he died in 1990.

3 Today would have been the 75th birthday of the eminent theater director Anatoly Efros (1925-1987). Efros made his fame in the 1960s, staging Viktor Rozov’s plays “Quest for Joy” and “Her Friends.” In 1969, Efros became chief director of the Theater on Malaya Bronnaya (a Moscow street), leading this hitherto low-profile theater to fame. Efros’ repertoire included Shakespeare and Moliere, Gogol and Chekhov. His incessant creative quest and passion for novelty united around him Russian actors like Olga Yakovleva (his wife and muse), Leonid Bronevoy, Lev Durov, Mikhail Kozakov and Olga Ostroumova. Not surprisingly, with Efros’ departure from the Theater on Malaya Bronnaya, its popularity faded. Efros moved to the famous Moscow Taganka Theater in 1984, but his short tenure there was tragic and difficult. The theater’s actors were used to the style of the temporarily absent director Yuri Lyubimov, and did not embrace Efros, seeing him instead as an outsider. Three years after his arrival at Taganka, Efros died.

8 Ascension of the Christ, which falls on the 40th day after Easter. Today is also the 80th birthday of legendary aviator Ivan Kozhedub, one of the rare Soviets to be honored three times as Hero of the Soviet Union. During WWII, Kozhedub made 330 sorties, participated in 120 air battles and shot down 62 enemy planes, returning safe and sound from all his flights. After the war, Kozhedub graduated from the Air Force Academy, then the Military Academy of the Soviet General Staff, and worked in the Air Force Command until his retirement in 1971.

18 St. Trinity Day—celebrated 10 days after the Ascension and 50 days after Easter.

21 Today is the 90th birthday of Alexander Tvardovsky (1910-1971). His war poem Vasily Tyorkin, dedicated to a simple Soviet soldier, made him famous overnight. Nobel laureate and Russian émigré writer Ivan Bunin called Vasily Tyorkin “a truly rare book.” “What freedom, what miraculous boldness, what precision and accuracy in everything, and what unbelievable soldiers’ language. One doesn’t stumble over a single word, not a word sounds false!” Tvardovsky also wrote many other profound verses about the war. In one, he wrote: “I know I am not to blame for those who didn’t come back from the war, but still, but still, but still.” From 1958-1970, Tvardovsky held the post of editor-in-chief at Novy Mir literary magazine, sacrificing his own art to civic duty. Under his direction, Novy Mir became the center of the literary Thaw, publishing such daring works as Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. In 1970, he was removed from his post at Novy Mir, which for him was tantamount to being removed from life. One year later Tvardovsky died. Today, at Moscow’s Novodevichy cemetery, it is difficult to find a more humble grave than Tvardovsky’s—merely his surname and the dates of his birth and death on a simple gray stone.

22 This is the 50th birthday of Svetlana Kryuchkova, one the strongest and most original Russian actresses. Kryuchkova made her debut in 1975, on the stage of the famous Leningrad Bolshoy Dramatichesky Theater. She soon became a favorite actress of many Russian film directors, including Nikita Mikhalkov, who invited her to star in his film Rodnya (Relatives, 1982), a daring look at family crises in the USSR. In the movie, Svetlana shines as a recalcitrant daughter going through a midlife crisis and meeting with her mother after many years of separation. Critics and fans acclaimed the strength of Kryuchkova’s character. She likes to note in her interviews that her main principle in life is “I want, so I can” (“Khotet—zhachit moch”). Not surprisingly, one of Kryuchkova’s recent successes was in the role of the strong-willed Empress Catherine the Great, in The Tsar’s Hunt. In 1990, Kryuchkova earned a Nika (the newly-established Russian film award, called the “Russian Oscar”) for best supporting actress in two films, Sleeping Car and Ono (“It”).

24 Today marks the 55th anniversary of the WWII Victory Parade on Red Square. The parade ended with Soviet soldiers and officers casting down the flags of the vanquished Germans in front of Lenin’s Mausoleum. Soviet Marshal Georgy Zhukov reviewed the parade and saluted the troops from atop his white horse. Zhukov had led Russian troops in the most decisive battles of the war, from the Battle for Moscow in 1941 to Stalingrad, Kursk and the storming of Berlin. Today, a massive statue of Zhukov astride a horse stands just outside Red Square (see photo on page 2).

— Valentina Kolesnikova