Nikolai Gorchakov

Born Aug. 7 (19). 1898, in St. Petersburg; died Aug. 28, 1958, in Dzhubga. Soviet director and teacher, theater historian. Honored Art Worker of the RSFSR (1943); Doctor of Art Studies (1948).

Gorchakov began his career in 1922 at the Third Studio of the Moscow Art Theater; he was a pupil of E. B. Vakhtan-gov. From 1924 he was (intermittently) a director at the Moscow Art Theater, where his productions included Kataev’s Squaring the Circle (1928), Bulgakov’s Moliere (1936), Vir-ta’s Land (1937, with L. M. Leonidov), Sheridan’s School for Scandal (1940), Kron’s Officer of the Fleet (1945, with I. M. Raevskii), Hellman’s Autumn Garden (1956, with G. G. Konskii), and Rakhmtanov’s Restless Old Age (1956). At the same time, in the periods 1933—41 and 1943–48 he was art director of the Moscow Theater of Satire and during 1941–43 of the Moscow Theater of Drama. At these theaters he directed Shkvarkin’s Another’s Child (1933. with R. G. Korf), Dykhovichnyi’s Fakir for an Hour (1946, with V. Ia. Khenkin), Kataev’s Time, Forward! (1947), Petrov’s Island of Peace (1947, with E. B. Krasnianskii), Simonov’s The Russian People (1942), and Korneichuk’s The Front (1942). He was awarded the State Prize of the USSR (1946 and 1952), three orders, and medals.