Shumskii, Iurii Vasilevich

Shumskii, Iurii Vasil’evich 

(real surname, Shomin). Born Nov. 5 (17), 1887, in Tiraspol’; died June 7,1954, in Kiev. Soviet Ukrainian actor. People’s Artist of the USSR (1944). Member of the CPSU from 1942.

Shumskii took an active part in the revolutionary movement. He appeared with a workers’ drama group, and from 1917 to 1920 he headed an amateur Ukrainian theater and studio in Kherson. From 1925 to 1934 he performed with the Ukrainian Derzhdrama (now the Odessa Theater of the October Revolution), and in 1934 he joined the Kiev I. Franko Theater. He played the roles of Shvandia in Trenev’s Liubov’ Iarovaia, Gaidai in Korneichuk’s Destruction of the Squadron, Khlestakov and the Mayor in Gogol’s The Inspector-General, the title role in Korneichuk’s Bogdan Khmel’nitskii, Philip II in Schiller’s Don Carlos, and the title role in Pushkin’s Boris Godunov. Shumskii also played Marshal Vasilevskii in the motion pictures The Third Strike (1948) and The Battle of Stalingrad (1949).

Shumskii, a recipient of the State Prize of the USSR in 1950 and 1951, was awarded the Order of Lenin, two other orders, and several medals.