Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
the general cultural revival that characterized
the
GORBACHEV
era in the late 1980s. Likhachev
was born to a prominent intelligentsia family in
St. Petersburg and graduated from Leningrad
University in 1928. Soon after graduation he
was arrested and exiled to the Solovki concen-
tration camp, which the
BOLSHEVIKS
had estab-
lished on the grounds of the ancient
SOLOVETSKII
MONASTERY
. He spent three years in the camp
before being released in August 1932. In good
graces with the Soviet government, Likhachev
began working at the Institute of Russian Litera-
ture (Pushkinskii Dom) from 1938. In 1946, he
was appointed to the faculty of Leningrad Uni-
versity, and in 1954 he returned to the Pushkin-
skii Dom as head of section and specialist in
ancient Russian literature. In 1970, he was
elected to the
ACADEMY OF SCIENCES
and began to
speak out in favor of the protection of ancient
monuments. His refusal to condemn his fellow
academician Andrei
SAKHAROV
brought him a
beating from government thugs and general
political trouble. Unable to publish as a historian,
he retreated from public life. In 1985, he became
Mikhail Gorbachev's adviser on cultural and his-
torical matters and joined the editorial board of
the journal
Nashe nasledie
(
Our Heritage
). In 1987
Gorbachev's wife Raisa, a longtime admirer,
appointed Likhachev director of the Soviet Cul-
tural Fund, and she became his deputy. Likha-
chev worked in favor of historical preservation
and called for the return of artifacts and archives
taken out of Russia after the 1917 Revolution.
International recognition soon followed in the
form of honorary doctorates from Oxford and
Cambridge and other foreign universities. Likha-
chev was elected to the Congress of People's
Deputies in 1989.
Yaroslavl, to the northeast of Moscow. Liubimov
studied in Moscow and graduated in 1939 from
the Shchukin School of Theatre at the prestigious
Vakhtangov Theatre. He served in the Red Army
during World War II and was discharged in 1946.
In 1946 he joined the Vakhtangov Theatre com-
pany as an actor, where he stayed until 1964. A
COMMUNIST PARTY
member since 1952, Liubimov
was appointed director of the Taganka Drama
and Comedy Theater in Moscow in 1964 at the
dawn of the
BREZHNEV
era. In the next few
decades, under his direction the Taganka Theater
gradually became known for imaginative, often
experimental productions that tested the limits of
Brezhnev-era Soviet orthodoxy. The Taganka
also became known as the artistic home of the ill-
fated actor and bard Vladimir
VYSOTSKY
, whose
early death in 1980 drew a spontaneous out-
pouring of emotion from Moscow residents.
Early on, Liubimov found an unlikely defender
in Yuri
ANDROPOV
, head of the KGB (secret
police) and future general secretary of the Com-
munist Party, whose daughter had married an
actor in the Taganka troupe. Andropov protected
Liubimov from some but not all of the frequent
harassment of cultural officials who disapproved
of the Taganka's unorthodox productions. In the
early 1980s, with several of his productions can-
celed by the Ministry of Culture—most notably a
production of
Boris Godunov
—Liubimov grew
increasingly frustrated with Soviet censorship. In
1983, while traveling in Great Britain he issued a
series of public declarations to which the Soviet
government responded by revoking his citizen-
ship, in effect condemning him to exile. While in
exile, Liubimov was in great demand as a director
throughout Europe. His productions won several
prizes in Austria, Great Britain, Italy, and the
United States. He returned to Moscow in 1988 to
a different political climate and was able to stage
the previously suppressed
Boris Godunov.
He also
staged a spectacle in memory of his friend
Vladimir Vysotsky. In 1989 both his citizenship
and his directorship of the Taganka Theater were
restored. Throughout the 1990s Liubimov and
the Taganka Theater maintained their leading
Liubimov, Yuri Petrovich
(1917-
)
theater director
One of the leading theater directors of the late
Soviet period, Liubimov gained recognition
beyond the borders of Russia in the post-Soviet
period. He was born in the Volga River town of
Search WWH ::
Custom Search