Rakhlenko, Leonid Gdalevich Grigorevich

Rakhlenko, Leonid Gdal’evich (Grigor’evich) 

Born Aug. 23 (Sept. 5), 1907, at the Terekhovka railroad station, in what is now Gomel’ Oblast. Soviet Russian actor and director. People’s Artist of the USSR (1966). Member of the CPSU since 1942.

Rakhlenko graduated from the Leningrad Institute of Stage Arts in 1928. He began his career as an actor in 1929 and as a director in 1935. From 1937 to 1943 he was artistic director of the la. Kupala Byelorussian Theater in Minsk. His best roles included Gorlokhvatskii in Krapiva’s He Who Laughs Last, the title role in Korneichuk’s Makar Dubrava, Gvozdilin in Pogodin’s The Third Pathétique, Stepan Syrovarov in Leonov’s The Snowstorm, Bubnov in Gorky’s The Lower Depths, and Krutitskii and Flor Fedulovich in Ostrovskii’s Even a Wise Man Stumbles and The Ultimate Sacrifice. Rakhlenko staged Biadu-lia’s The Nightingale (1937), Krapiva’s Partisans (1938), Ostrovskii’s Guilty Without Guilt (1938), Korneichuk’s The Front (1942), Romashov’s The Fiery Bridge (1954), Pogodin’s The Kremlin Chimes (1956), and other plays.

Rakhlenko received the State Prize of the Byelorussian SSR in 1970. He has been awarded the Order of the October Revolution, three Orders of the Red Banner of Labor, and medals.