Klinchin, Aleksandr Pavlovich

Born Oct. 29 (Nov. 11), 1917, in Petrograd; died Dec. 1, 1968, in Moscow. Soviet theater historian and critic; doctor of art history (1968).

Klinchin graduated from the department of literature of the division of theater studies of the Moscow Institute of History, Philosophy, and Literature in 1940. His works first appeared in print in 1939. In 1961 he became a senior research staff member of the Institute for the History of the Arts in Moscow. His principal works were devoted to the Malyi Theater and the Russian provincial stage: Iakov Emel’ianovich Shusherin (1947), Nikolai Khrisanfovich Rybakov (1952), “P. S. Mochalov and the Provincial Theater of His Time” (in P. S. Mochalov’s Notes on the Theater, Letters, Verses, and Plays, 1953), The Great Russian Actor M. S. Shchepkin (1954), Elena Mitrofanovna Shatrova (1958; jointly with S. N. Durylin), A Director’s Path: A. I. Kanin (1962; jointly with L. S. Khodorkovskaia), Mikhail Semenovich Shchepkin (1964), and The Story of a Forgotten Actress (1968; about L. I. Mlotkovskaia).