Stepan Mikhailovich Muratov

Born 1885; died 1957. Soviet Russian actor and stage director; People’s Artist of the RSFSR (1946). Became member of the CPSU in 1944.

After making his acting debut in 1907, Muratov appeared in various cities including Perm’, Odessa, and Irkutsk. From Penza, where he was working in 1917, Muratov made trips to the countryside, where he organized clubs and peasant theaters. In 1930, he joined the troupe of the K. Marx Saratov Theater.

Gorky’s works especially appealed to Muratov, whose roles included Satin, Levshin, Egor Bulychov and Pavel in The Lower Depths, Enemies, and Egor Bulychov and the Others and in the dramatization of the novel The Mother; Muratov’s outstanding achievement was as Teterev in Smug Citizens.

Muratov was particularly well suited to play such courageous and emotionally complex characters as Godun in Lavrenev’s The Break, Gaidai in Korneichuk’s The Destruction of a Squadron, Nagul’nov in an adaptation of Sholokhov’s Virgin Soil Upturned, and Chugai in A. N. Tolstoy’s Road to Calvary. A recipient of the State Prize of the USSR (1946), Muratov was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor.