Lenin Komsomol Moscow Theater

a theater created in 1927 on the initiative of the Central Committee of the All-Union Lenin Communist Youth League. Until 1938 it was called the Central Theater of Working Youth.

The theater’s opening production was Green Lights, a play written and acted by workers who were members of Komsomol. From 1933 to 1937, 1. Ia. Sudakov, a director of the Moscow Art Theater, headed the theater; he staged the first performance of N. A. Ostrovskii’s novel How the Steel Was Tempered (1937). From 1938 to 1951, the theater’s art director was I. N. Bersenev; the company included S. V. Giatsintova, S. G. Birman, and A. G. Vovsi. The theater attracted young playwrights, including K. M. Simonov, B. L. Gorbatov, and A. N. Arbuzov.

One of the theater’s outstanding productions of the 1940’s was Simonov’s A Fellow From Our Town (1941; with V. R. Solov’ev in the role of Sergei Lukonin). Other important productions were Gergei and Litovskii’s My Son (1939), Isben’s A Doll House (1939), Tolstoy’s The Living Corpse (1942), Gorbatov’s The Youth of Our Fathers (1943), Simonov’s So Will It Be (1944), and Popov’s The Family (1949; with S. V. Giatsintova in the role of Maria Aleksandrovna Ul’ianova). The theater was headed at different times by S. V. Giatsintova, S. A. Maiorov, B. N. Tolmazov, A. V. Efros, and V. B. Monakhov.

The best productions from the 1950’s to the early 1970’s were Arbuzov’s Years of Wandering (1954), Rozov’s On the Wedding Day (1964), Nagibin and Solodar’s The Madonnas of Sudzha (1967), and Gorin’s Till (1974; after C. De Coster). In 1974, the theater company included People’s Artist of the USSR S. V. Giatsintova, People’s Artist of the RSFSR E. A. Fadeeva, People’s Artist of the Georgian SSR A. M. Gomiashvili, Honored Art Worker of the RSFSR S. L. Shtein, and Honored Artists of te RSFSR T. P. Al’tseva, V. I. Koretskii, Z. A. Kuznetsova, V. D. Larionov, M. U. Lifanova, L. N. Riumina, V. V. Sergeev, and M. I. Strunova-Shuvalova. Since 1973, M. A. Zakharov has been the theater’s chief stage director. In 1948, the theater was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor.