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Mikhail Ulyanov was a distinguished Russian actor and director, as well as a significant Soviet political figure. He was a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, co-chaired the Theatrical Union of the USSR alongside Kirill Lavrov, and led the Vakhtangov Theatre in Moscow, Russia.
Born Mikhail Aleksandrovich Ulyanov on November 20, 1927, in the village of Bergamak, Omsk province, Soviet Union, his father Aleksandr Andreevich Ulyanov served as Chairman of a Soviet collective farm and later as Mayor of Tara, Russia. His mother, Elizaveta Mikhailovna Ulyanova, was a homemaker. Due to his father's status within the Soviet Communist Party, Ulyanov experienced a relatively privileged upbringing. He eventually joined the Soviet Communist Party himself, a step that advanced his career. His surname’s resemblance to that of the Soviet Communist Party founder, Ulyanov-Lenin, aided him in securing the lucrative role of Lenin on stage and in film.
From 1946 to 1950, Ulyanov studied acting at the Shchukin Theatrical School affiliated with the Vakhtangov Theatre in Moscow under Boris Zakhava, graduating in 1950. From then until his death in 2007, he was a permanent member of the Vakhtangov Drama Theatre troupe. His stage colleagues included notable actors such as Vasiliy Lanovoy, Ruben Simonov, Mikhail Astangov, Boris Zakhava, Varvara Popova, Yuliya Borisova, Lyudmila Maksakova, Lyudmila Tselikovskaya, Marianna Vertinskaya, Nina Ruslanova, Irina Kupchenko, Natalya Tenyakova, Nikolai Plotnikov, Yuriy Yakovlev, Vladimir Etush, Vyacheslav Shalevich, Andrei Abrikosov, Grigori Abrikosov, Boris Babochkin, Nikolai Gritsenko, Nikolai Timofeyev, Aleksandr Grave, Evgeniy Karelskikh, Sergey Makovetskiy, among others.
In 1987, Ulyanov became the artistic director of the Vakhtangov Theatre in Moscow. Throughout his career, he was closely monitored by the Communist Party and Ekaterina Furtseva, the influential Minister of Culture during the 1960s and 1970s, who instructed him to continue portraying Lenin and other ideal figures for the Soviet people. Ulyanov became renowned for his portrayals of exemplary communists, Soviet-era heroes, and characters emblematic of Soviet propaganda on both stage and screen. He portrayed Marshal Georgi Zhukov in several Soviet war films. Though he never met the real Marshal Zhukov, Ulyanov was the officially sanctioned impersonator of the famed Soviet military leader. His facial features closely resembled Zhukov’s, and Ulyanov’s likeness was even used as the model for the Zhukov monument in Moscow.
Following official recognition for his roles as Lenin and Zhukov, Ulyanov gained greater artistic freedom, allowing him to showcase the full scope of his talent. In 1970, he delivered one of his finest performances as General Charnota, a White Russian émigré, in Beg (1971), an epic film by directors Alov and Naumov. In 1979, a few years after the death of actor-director Vasiliy Shukshin, Ulyanov directed a stage production of Shukshin's unfinished work "Ya prishel dat vam volyu" ("I Came to Set You Free"), playing the lead role of Stepan Razin, the 17th-century Cossack leader who led a major popular uprising against the Russian Tsar and was brutally executed at Moscow’s Red Square.
During the political upheavals of the 1980s Soviet Union, Ulyanov expressed criticism of the dramatic social transformations brought about by Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika and glasnost reforms. Nonetheless, he continued to portray V. I. Lenin in numerous stage productions and on Soviet National television. After the Soviet Union’s collapse, he voiced disappointment over the profound socio-economic changes and cultural turmoil in post-Soviet Russia. He took on several patriotic, intense, and sometimes controversial roles in films produced during the post-Soviet period. In the 2000s, Ulyanov leveraged his prominence to support struggling colleagues within the Russian Theatrical Union and backed the policies of the Russian President.
Between 1976 and 1990, Ulyanov was a permanent member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the USSR. Over his more than 50-year acting career, he earned numerous Soviet and Russian honors, including the Order of Lenin (twice), the Order of the October Revolution, Lenin’s Prize, and the USSR State Prize. He passed away from heart failure on March 26, 2007, in Moscow and was buried at Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow, Russia.
