Ekaterina Korchagina-Aleksandrovskaia

(maiden name, Korchagina; married name, Aleksandrovskaia). Born Dec. 11 (23), 1874, in Kostroma; died Jan. 1, 1951, in Leningrad. Soviet Russian actress; People’s Artist of the USSR (1936). Korchagina-Aleksandrovskaia come from a provincial acting family (stage name, Ol’gin). She began to act as a child and struck out on her own in 1887. She worked in theaters in many cities, including Arkhangelsk, Mogilev, Elets, Tula, Tambov, and Ivanovo-Voznesensk. Later she moved to St. Petersburg, where she acted in the V. F. Komissarzhevskaia Theater (1904—07), the Theater of the Society of Arts and Letters (1908–15), and then, from 1915, the Aleksandrinskii Theater (present-day Leningrad A. S. Pushkin Theater).

On the provincial stage, Korchagina-Aleksandrovskaia played Lipochka, Varvara, and Lel’ in Ostrovskii’s We Are Friends’We’ll Come to Terms, The Storm, and The Snow Maiden and Liza in Griboedov’s Woe From Wit. She began playing older women early in her career. A brilliant character actress, she had a rare talent for realistic, authentic portrayals and created a gallery of Russian women. Her acting displayed a profound understanding of the character, an ability to combine drama with comedy, a tender and sincere portrayal of positive heroines, and an acute revelation of the socially determined traits of negative types.

Her best stage roles were Ulita, Efrosin’ia Potapovna, and Domna Pantelevna (The Forest, The Dowerless Girl, and Talents and Admirers by Ostrovskii); Dobzhina (Afinogenov’s The Eccentric)-, and Khristina Arkhipovna (Platon Krechet by Korneichuk). Her major film roles included the housekeeper Ulita in ludushka Golovlev (1934, based on M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin’s novel The Golovlevs). Korchagina-Aleksandrovskaia created a heroic character full of political passion’the old Bolshevik Klara (Fear by Afinogenov). She acted in more than 500 roles.

Korchagina-Aleksandrovskaia was a deputy to the first convocation of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. She received the State Prize of the USSR (1943) and was awarded two Orders of Lenin, the Order of the Red Banner of Labor, and medals.