Born Apr. 5 (17), 1894, in Moscow; died there Oct. 7, 1939. Soviet Russian actor. People’s Artist of the USSR (1936).
In 1920, Shchukin enrolled in the dramatic studio directed by E. B. Vakhtangov, subsequently joining the troupe of the Vakhtangov Theater. Shchukin was greatly influenced by his teacher’s aesthetics, which emphasized vivid theatricality, irony, and associations with folk buffoonery and the grotesque. One of the most important actors of the Soviet realistic school, Shchukin brilliantly combined the principles of comedy and drama. On the stage his simple outer appearance belied a refined intellect.
Shchukin made an important contribution to the development of the Soviet theater in the title role in Gorky’s Egor Bulychov and the Others, as Pavel Suslov in Virineia by Seifullina and Pravdukhin, and as Polonius in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Shchukin was one of the first actors to portray V. I. Lenin on the stage and in motion pictures, in Pogodin’s play Man With a Gun (1937) and in M. I. Romm’s films Lenin in October (1937) and Lenin in 1918 (1939).
Shchukin was awarded the State Prize of the USSR (1941, posthumously) and the Order of Lenin.