Mikhail Alexandrovich Ulyanov

About museum

Mikhail Alexandrovich Ulyanov – a Soviet and Russian theatre and film actor and director, a theatre figure, People's Artist of the USSR, Hero of Socialist Labour. He was born on 20 November 1927 in the village of Bergamak in Omsk Oblast. In 1944 he moved to Omsk, where he enrolled in the studio at the Omsk Drama Theatre. In 1946 he entered the B. V. Shchukin Theatre School.   

From 1950 he was an actor at the Vakhtangov Theatre. In the 1960s Ulyanov created several notable film roles: Trubnikov (The Chairman, 1964), the rebel Mitya Karamazov (The Brothers Karamazov, 1968), General Charnota (The Flight, 1970), and Marshal Zhukov. In 1973 he made his debut as a director, staging V. Rozov's play 'Situation' at the Vakhtangov Theatre. In 1976 he was co-director of a production of 'Richard III', and in 1979 he staged an adaptation of V. M. Shukshin's epic novel 'I Came to Give You Freedom' and played Stepan Razin in it.   

In September 1987 he was appointed artistic director of the Vakhtangov Theatre. He was active in public life: he was a delegate to the 27th Congress of the CPSU, a People's Deputy of the USSR (1989–1992), a member of the CPSU Central Committee until 1991, and a member of the Central Auditing Commission of the CPSU. Author of the books: 'My Profession', 'I Work as an Actor', 'Returning to Myself'. He was awarded two Orders of Lenin, the Order of the October Revolution, the Order 'For Merit to the Fatherland' 3rd class, and the 1998 Presidential Prize of Russia in the field of literature and the arts. Mikhail Alexandrovich Ulyanov passed away on 26 March 2007 in Moscow.