Chirkov, Boris Petrovich

Born July 31 (Aug. 13), 1901, in the village of Lozovaia-Pavlovka, in what is now Dnepropetrovsk Oblast. Soviet Russian actor. People’s Artist of the USSR (1950); Hero of Socialist Labor (1975). Member of the CPSU since 1945.

Chirkov, after graduating from the Leningrad Institute of Stage Arts in 1926, performed with the Leningrad Theater for Young Audiences and the New Theater for Young Audiences. He later appeared in several Moscow theaters: the Central Film Actors’ Theater Studio, the Pushkin Theater (1950–65), and the Gogol Theater (since 1966).

Chirkov has appeared in motion pictures since 1928. He became especially well known as the title character in the Maksim trilogy: The Youth of Maksim (1935), The Return of Maksim (1937), and The Vyborg Side (1939). In these films he created a romantic and yet deeply realistic portrait of a hero of the revolutionary era, the young worker Maksim, who learns profound lessons from his experiences in the class struggle and becomes a prominent Bolshevik revolutionary.

Chirkov’s other motion-picture roles include Stepan Lautin in The Teacher (1939), Makhno in Aleksandr Parkhomenko (1942), the title role in Glinka (1947), and Chizhov in True Friends (1954). In the theater he has played the roles of Kuzovkin in Turgenev’s The Boarder, Lebedev in Chekhov’s Ivanov, and Rasputin in The Empress’s Plot by Shchegolev and A. N. Tolstoy.

Chirkov was a deputy to the third convocation of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. A recipient of the State Prize of the USSR in 1941,1947,1949, and 1952, Chirkov has been awarded three Orders of Lenin, two other orders, and several medals.