Leonid Antonovich Maliugin

Born Feb. 19 (Mar. 4), 1909, in St. Petersburg; died Jan. 20, 1968, in Moscow. Soviet Russian dramatist and critic.

In 1931, Maliugin graduated from the Institute for the History of Arts. His first work was published in 1925. He was the author of the romantic comedy Old Friends (1945; State Prize of the USSR, 1946). In the 1950’s and 1960’s he wrote a number of sentimental comedies about young people, including Native Haunts, New Toys, Voyage to Nearby Lands, Girls-Boys, and ASeven-Kilometer Detour. Maliugin also wrote historical and biographical plays devoted to the lives of N. G. Chernyshevskii, N. A. Nekrasov (Young Russia, 1950, produced in 1954), A. P. Chekhov (My Mocking Happiness, 1965), and the French author and aviator A. Saint-Exupery (The Life of Saint-Exupery, 1967). His plays are staged in Soviet theaters and abroad. Maliugin wrote the scenarios for the feature films The Train Goes East (1948) and Subject for a Short Story (1969). He is the author of the monograph Khmelev (1948) and the collection of articles Theater Begins With Literature (1967).