Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
gypsies. Vrubel was much influenced by the
theme of unfathomable despair in
LERMONTOV
'
S
“Demon,” and painted a sequence of works that
respond to that theme, including
Demon: Demon
Seated
(1890),
Tamara's Dance
(1890),
Lilac
(1900),
Swan Princess
(1900), and
Demon Cast Down
(1902). He also painted the portraits of the
wealthy art patron Savva Mamontov (1897) and
the poet Valeri Briusov (1906). In 1905, Vrubel
went mad and spent the last years of his life in an
asylum. Vrubel forms an essential bridge between
late-19th-century realism and the work of early-
20th-century masters like
KANDINSKY
,
MALEVICH
,
and
CHAGALL
.
officials and Old Bolsheviks such as Nikolai
BUKHARIN
, Grigory
ZINOVIEV
, and Lev
KAMANEV
that took place from 1936 to 1938. In 1939 he
became deputy chairman of the Council of Peo-
ple's Commissar and the following year became
deputy foreign minister to Vyacheslav
MOLOTOV
.
After the annexation of the three Baltic republics
in 1940, Vyshinsky was given responsibility for
the “sovietization” of Latvia. After 1945, he also
served as the Soviet delegate to the United
Nations, where he contributed to the climate of
conflict of the early cold war, with frequent con-
demnations of the United States and its Western
allies. In 1949, with Molotov in temporary disfa-
vor with
STALIN
, Vyshinsky was appointed foreign
minister, a position he held until 1953, when
Molotov regained his post following Stalin's
death. He died in New York on November 22,
1954, while posted to the Soviet UN delegation.
Vyshinsky, Andrei Yanuaryevich
(1883-1954)
Soviet official
A midlevel Soviet politician who gained interna-
tional notoriety for his role as chief prosecutor
during the show trials of the 1930s, Vyshinsky
was born in
ODESSA
to a family of Polish descent.
He trained as a lawyer and joined the Russian
Social Democratic Labor Party in 1902. When the
party split into two factions—Bolshevik and
Menshevik—in 1903, Vyshinsky sided with the
latter. He played an active role in the 1905 Revo-
lution. Vyshinsky spent the first years of the rev-
olution as an official in the Commissariat of Food
Supply and did not join the
COMMUNIST PARTY
until 1920. During the 1920s he joined the fac-
ulty of Moscow University as a lecturer and pro-
fessor, before being appointed rector. From 1928
to 1931, he served as head of the department of
higher education in the Commissariat of Enlight-
enment, as the entity overseeing education was
known in the early decades of Soviet rule. In
1931, Vyshinsky was appointed procurator of the
Russian Federal Republic of the Soviet Union,
and made a name for himself as a shrill and vin-
dictive prosecutor, most notably in the Metro-
Vickers trial of alleged industrial saboteurs that
took place in 1933. In 1935, he was appointed
procurator of the USSR and served as prosecutor
for the highly publicized trials of leading Soviet
Vysotsky, Vladimir Semeyonovich
(1938-1980)
musician and actor
Now widely recognized as the voice of protest of
the
BREZHNEV
era, Vysotsky was one of the first
Soviet performers to develop a widespread
underground cult following. He was born in
Moscow of a father who was a military officer
briefly posted to East Germany, where Vysotsky
spent some of his youth. He first pursued two
careers, graduating from the Moscow Construc-
tion Engineering Institute and the Moscow Arts
Theater (MkhAT) as an actor. In 1964 he joined
Yuri
LIUBIMOV
's newly formed Taganka Theater,
which became his artistic home as he pursued
other creative interests in music and film. But he
always returned to the theater. As an actor he
was best known for his role as Hamlet. He also
acted in numerous films of varying quality,
sometimes with his wife, the French actress
Marina Vlady. But it was as a singer that Vysot-
sky made his biggest contribution, becoming
perhaps the greatest balladeer of his generation.
Beginning in the 1960s, he began writing lyrics,
which he performed to his own guitar accompa-
Search WWH ::
Custom Search