Actor Innokenty Smoktunovsky.
Photo: family archive.
March 28 marked the 99th anniversary of the birth of Innokenty Smoktunovsky. In a year it will be his anniversary. On the occasion of the centenary of the People’s Artist of the USSR, the Norilsk Polar Drama Theater named after Mayakovsky plans to premiere the play “Being Smoktunovsky”.
Innokenty Mikhailovich lived and worked in Norilsk from 1946 to 1951. He worked in the local theater, which was born in the early 40s from amateur creative groups of the famous Norillag. A forced labor camp, which is part of the Gulag system. Throughout its more than twenty years of existence, half a million people have passed through its crucible. They were brought here from all over the country to build a city on permafrost and a mining and metallurgical plant.
The first hall of the theater was the dining room barracks of the second department of the camp (there were 30 such apartments in Narillag). They say that when the daughter of the People’s Artist of the USSR Georgy Zhzhenov (also exiled to Norillag in 1949-53) saw an ugly wooden structure in the photograph, she exclaimed: “This barracks cannot be the theater where my father worked . . Dad told me there were columns and curtains in the theater…” However, it was exactly the same building. According to the memories of former prisoners, all of Norilsk at that time was entangled in barbed wire: every house, every object… The first person the exiles saw was a sentry with a rifle. There were towers everywhere. But even behind the barbed wire, the prisoners managed to create a wonderful world of art that gave them the strength to live and not lose their human appearance. Many camp departments had an amateur musical or theater group. Prisoners from among the repressed intelligentsia performed on stage: artists, directors, composers, conductors, musicians, singers, poets, artists, entertainers. There was a jazz orchestra, there was a full-strength choir “sent” from Lvov, there were dancers, pop and dramatic artists. They organized vaudeville shows, where women’s roles were often played by men. As the writer Sergei Snegov, who was exiled in Norilsk at the same time as Lev Gumilyov, later recalled: “Neither before nor after Norilsk have I encountered such a concentrated concentration of intellectuals in one place… Life here was intensely interesting. …”.
From the artist’s profile.
Photo: Anastasia Pleshakova
Olga Benois worked as an artist in the countryside theater; Evdokia Urusova (née Princess, actress of the Ermolova Theater in Moscow), Vitaly Golovin (son of a singer of the Bolshoi Theater, accused of the murder of Zinaida Reich), Georgy Zhzhenov, Innokenty Smoktunovsky performed on stage… The artistic level was very high.
Unlike Zhzhenov and Urusova, Smoktunovsky was not an exile, but a civilian employee. How did the future genius of the theater, the only Prince Myshkin on the stage and Hamlet on the cinema, end up among the prisoners? A separate story?
Innokenty Mikhailovich – a front-line soldier, served in the infantry, during the war he commanded a machine gun squad. In his military biography there is a dramatic story, when he spent time in German captivity, from which he escaped and returned to the front through a partisan detachment. He received medals “For courage”: for crossing the Dnieper, for the liberation of Warsaw, for the capture of Berlin … But all this courage could not erase the “black mark” of a prisoner of war.
After the war, he returned to Krasnoyarsk, the city where he grew up. She entered the theater studio of the local theater and played small roles. But she did not stay in the Krasnoyarsk theater: she quarreled with someone and did not find a common language with the group. And most importantly, he felt like clouds were gathering above him. He had an acquaintance who was also captured.
Performance program.
Photo: Anastasia Pleshakova
“Postcards were regularly sent with the words: ‘Uncle Vasya feels great.’ This was his encryption, which meant: everything is fine,” Lada Shebeko, director of the Polar Theater in Norilsk, told me. – One day the letter did not arrive. postcard from a friend. A friend was arrested. Smoktunovsky was sure that they would come for him. Luckily for him, the director of the Second Polar Theater, Alexander Duchman, came from Norilsk. He invited Smoktunovsky to his theater. Innokenty Mikhailovich did not think for a long time: anyway they would not be sent beyond Norilsk, and there he could get lost. He accepted Duchman’s offer. It was he who advised Smoktunovsky to change his surname, which was Smoktunovich by birth. Without further ado, the artist only changed the ending of your last name.
In Norilsk, in its first season, he starred in six premieres. And during his stay at the Teatro Polar he was busy in more than 40 roles, including the main ones. First they began to write about him in the local newspaper “For Metal”: they noticed that he was looking for new colors, that he was different from other artists: “The standard is what scares the young man the most…”. This form of existence on stage was maintained throughout his life.
In addition to working in the theater, he performed in school concerts, was a dispatcher at a mining plant, searched for gold and platinum, was employed at a permafrost station… He spent more than 4 years in voluntary exile, suffered from poor health, contracted scurvy and lost all his teeth. But it was in Norilsk that he went through acting universities. After all, he came here with an eighth-grade education. And he left a ready-made dramatic artist. “Such a constellation of talent could only be found in the old Maly and the Moscow Art Theater. Thanks to them I became an artist,” Innokenty Mikhailovich said in an interview.
Smoktunovsky on the stage of the Norilsk Theater
Photo: Anastasia Pleshakova
In the spring of 1951 he left Norilsk. In this he was helped by Georgy Zhzhenov, who believed that great talents should not perish in the permafrost. When fifteen years later they starred in Eldar Riazanov’s comedy “Careful with the Car”, they had something to remember. Zhzhenov gave money to Smoktunovsky, which was also a local paradox: the exile had more money than the civilian. With this money, Smoktunovsky bought a camera, started taking pictures and got a Norilisk ticket. After which his biography included theaters in Makhachkala, Grozny, Stalingrad, BDT, Moscow Art Theater … Norilsk was always separate. There is no doubt that the artist’s professional foundations were laid there.
On the occasion of the centenary of Innokenty Smoktunovsky, the chief director of the Norilsk Polar Drama Theater Anna Babanova is preparing the play “Being Smoktunovsky”. The material has already been collected. Including the one that was previously stored in closed files under the title “Top Secret”: Smoktunovsky’s profile, his service record. This information is now available.
– While working in Norilsk, Innokenty Mikhailovich said in the questionnaire that his nationality was Polish. That he didn’t change his last name. That he was not captured,” Anna Babanova shared with KP. – These facts differ radically from the version that he presented later, when one could talk about captivity and that he changed his surname… Of course, human memory grinds some events from the past. But I think the point is different: in Norilsk he wanted to do a different biography. At that time one could get lost here, which was impossible even in big cities. There is an entry in his profile that surprised me. Innokenty Mikhailovich signed that he was in the service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR: “he undertakes to maintain the strictest confidentiality and not to reveal all the circumstances known to me…”. This seems a bit ambiguous, as if it was specially sent to Norilsk. But I think the explanation is different: the Norilsk Theater (like other city enterprises) was then in the GULAG system. Its employees were automatically included in the service first of the NKVD and then of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR.
Be that as it may, in Norilsk Smoktunovsky played many roles, here he began to understand the acting profession. And after having gone through terrible trials, his love for life, for people, for God remained in him forever…
