April 17: Boris Shchukin's birthday, the actor who voiced Lenin.
Boris Shchukin was born on April 17, 1894, in Moscow. He rose from a railway mechanic to one of the leading actors of the Soviet stage, and made history as the first to portray Lenin in film, a performance so compelling that it became a benchmark for decades.
From Kashira to Vakhtangov
At the age of five, Shchukin moved with his parents to Kashira, where his father owned a railway cafeteria. After graduating from college, he worked at the railway station and performed in an amateur theater there—and it was there that he realized the stage was more important than mechanics. After serving in the army and the Civil War, he found himself in Moscow and enrolled in a drama studio under the direction of Yevgeny Vakhtangov. He then joined the Vakhtangov Theatre troupe, where Shchukin became one of the leading actors of the Soviet realist school.
A role that couldn't be refused
In 1937–1938, Shchukin starred in the films "Lenin in October" and "Lenin in 1918." Director Mikhail Romm and Shchukin himself tried to back out: the director of Mosfilm was under arrest, the deadline was extremely tight—two and a half months—and Stalin personally oversaw the work. Half of "Lenin in October" was filmed in a single take. But there was no turning back.
It was in these films that the expression "political prostitutes" gained widespread popularity: in Romm's film, Lenin, after reading Kamenev and Zinoviev's article on the eve of the October Revolution, says, "Just look, Comrade Vasily, how these sanctimonious people, these political prostitutes, betrayed us." Lenin himself never used this expression verbatim, although he did use the word "prostitutes" to describe his political opponents.
A miracle of makeup and immersion
The premiere took place on schedule. Shchukin was praised in the USSR and abroad. The New York Times called him "a true miracle of makeup and immersion in character," noting in particular that playing Lenin for Soviet audiences was a task involving enormous risks. Director Mikhail Romm, who saw Lenin in person, recalled that the nature of Shchukin's charm was "Leninist." Grigory Chukhrai noted that at the time, leaders were portrayed in a monumental, inaccessible manner, whereas in Romm's films, Lenin came across as simple and humane.
Shchukin's interpretation became so ingrained that actors of subsequent generations, according to Romm himself, played not so much Lenin as Shchukin as Lenin. Even Shchukin's voice came to be considered "Lenin's voice."
Theatre and pedagogy
Alongside his film career, Shchukin directed plays and taught. He died in Moscow in October 1939, at the age of 45, of heart disease. That same year, a theater school was named after him—today the Boris Shchukin Theatre Institute.
