Nikolai Pokrovskii

Born Dec. 17 (29), 1896, in Kaluga; died Feb. 23, 1961, in Volgograd. Soviet Russian stage actor and director. People’s Artist of the USSR (1959).

Pokrovskii began acting in 1919 in theaters in Kaluga, Kiev, and Sverdlovsk. He became a stage director in 1935, was artistic director of the Smolensk and Gorky theaters, and from 1957 to 1961 was principal director of the Volgograd Theater. His best roles included Gai in Pogodin’s My Friend, the title role in Korneichuk’s Platon Krechet, Neznamov in Ostrovskii’s Guilty Though Guiltless, Chatskii in Griboedov’s Woe From Wit, the title role in A. N. Tolstoy’s Ivan the Terrible, and Protasov in L. N. Tolstoy’s The Living Corpse. His most important stagings included Gorky’s The Barbarians (1943), The Summer People (1946), Egor Bulychov and the Others (1951), Dostigaev and the Others (1951), and Somov and the Others (1957); Pogodin’s The Kremlin Chimes (1957) and Third Pathétique (1959); and Bulgakov’s The Running Away (1958). Pokrovskii was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor and several medals.