Boris Dauguvietis

Born Mar. 26, 1885, in Dauguviečiai, present-day Birzhai Raion, Lithuanian SSR; died July 13, 1949, in Vilnius. Soviet Lithuanian director, actor, and playwright. People’s Artist of the USSR (1948).

Dauguvietis graduated from the St. Petersburg Theater School in 1909, and until 1921 he worked in theaters in Petrograd and the provinces. In 1923 he became a director at the Kaunas Theater, where he staged both Russian and foreign theater classics, including Shakespeare’s Othello (1924) and Macbeth (1939), Schiller’s The Robbers (1928) and Maria Stuart (1937), Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard (1937), Sophocles’ Oedipus Coloneus (1939), and Gorky’s The Petite Bourgeosie (1940).

After the rise of Soviet power in Lithuania in 1940, Dauguvietis became the chief director at the Kaunas Theater, as well as one of the founders of a new Lithuanian national theatrical art. Between 1944 and 1949 he was the chief director at the Drama Theater of the Lithuanian SSR in Vilnius, where he staged Gorky’s Enemies (1947) and Egor Bulychov and the Others (1948) and Pogodin’s The Kremlin Chimes (1947). Dauguvietis was the author of the plays The New Furrow (1945), which described the class struggle in the Lithuanian countryside, and The Problem (1946), which dealt with the partisans’ struggle against Hitler’s occupation. He also wrote Zaldoky’s Country Estate (1948), which was based on the postwar life of Lithuanian peasants. Under Dauguvietis’ influence a generation of outstanding Lithuanian actors and directors was formed. In 1947 he was awarded the State Prize of the USSR. Dauguvietis was also elected a deputy to the second convocation of the Supreme Soviet of the Lithuanian SSR.