Nikolai Lebedev

Born Oct. 12 (24), 1897, in Popasnaia, Artemovsk Raion, Voroshilovgrad Oblast. Soviet Russian cinema scholar and educator; Honored Worker of the Arts of the RSFSR (1968); doctor of art history (1963). Member of the CPSU from 1918.

Lebedev graduated from the Institute of the Red Professoriat in 1933. He became a journalist in 1917 and began working in film in 1921. He helped found the magazine Proletkino and the newspaper Kino. From 1925 to 1930 he worked as a screenwriter and director at the Kul’turfil’m Studio. In 1931, Lebedev began teaching at the All-Union State Institute of Cinematography (professor in 1940) and headed the institute from 1934 to 1936 and from 1955 to 1956; he also taught at the State Institute of Theater Arts (director, 1937–39) and worked at the Institute of Art History (1947–55).

Lebedev wrote several chapters in the three-volume Outlines of the History of the Soviet Cinema. His major work is The Outline of the History of the Cinema of the USSR (vol. 1: Silent Cinema, 1947; 2nd ed., 1965). He was awarded three orders and medals.