Leonid Lukov

Born Apr. 19 (May 2), 1909, in Mariupol’; died Apr. 24, 1963, in Leningrad. Soviet director. People’s Artist of the RSFSR (1957). Member of the CPSU (1941).

In 1928, Lukov graduated from a workers’ school (rabfak). For a brief time he worked as a journalist. He made his debut in motion pictures with the scenario of the film Van ’ka and the Avenger (1928). He worked as a director in the Kinokomsomol collective in Khar’kov, which produced the short documentary film-essays Komsomol Is My Homeland (1932). He directed a number of films about miners (one of the leading themes of his work): The Italian Woman (1931), I Love (1936; after A. Avdeenko), A Great Life (1940; part 1), and The Donetsk Miners (1951). The Civil War of 1918-20 was reflected in the films Aleksandr Parkhomenko (1942) and Oleko Dundić (1958, a Soviet-Yugoslav joint production); the Great Patriotic War of 1941-45 was the subject of the films Two Soldiers (1943, after L. Slavin), It Happened in the Donbas (1945), Private Aleksandr Matrosov (1948), and Toward New Shores (1955, after the novel of V. Lacis). Lukov made films of the Maly Theater plays The Barbarians and Vassa Zheleznova by Gorky (both in 1953). In the 1950’s and 1960’s, he directed the films This Must Not Be Forgotten (1954), Different Fates (1956), and Two Lives (1961). Lukin received the State Prize of the USSR (1941, 1952). He was awarded the Order of Lenin.