Awards :
Artiste émérite de la République (1926).
Ordre de Lénine (1939).
Prix Staline (1946).
Artiste du peuple de l’URSS (1939).
Biography
Solomon Mikhailovich Mikhoels (born Vovsi, 1890–1948)
Solomon Mikhailovich Mikhoels was a leading Jewish actor, stage director, and public figure, and a central figure in Soviet Jewish theater and culture during the first half of the 20th century. He is best known as the artistic director and star of the Moscow State Jewish Theater (GOSET), as well as the chairman of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAC). His life and work were closely intertwined with the major political events of his era: the Revolution, the development of Soviet culture, Stalinist repressions, and the Second World War.
He was born on March 4 (16), 1890, in Dinaburg (now Daugavpils, Latvia), the son of Mikhel Meerovich Vovsi, a merchant of the second guild, and his wife Basheva Khaimovna Vovsi. The family moved to Riga when he was a child, settling at 49 Bolshaya Korolovskaya Street.
In 1903, he graduated from a heder (a Jewish religious primary school for boys). According to the actor himself, he “did not begin systematic study of secular subjects and the Russian language until the age of thirteen.” From 1905 to 1908, he studied at the Riga Realschule. He took part in amateur performances and gave concerts in gymnasiums. From 1909 to 1910, he worked as a private tutor in Riga. From 1911 to 1913, he studied at the Kyiv Commercial Institute (now the Vadym Hetman Kyiv National University of Economics), but was unable to graduate, having been expelled for participation in student movements. From 1915 to 1918, he studied at the Faculty of Law of Petrograd University.
From 1918 to 1919, he studied at the A. M. Granovsky Jewish School of Performing Arts in Petrograd. Beginning in 1919, he performed at the Jewish Theater Studio (Jewish Chamber Theater). His roles included The Blind by Maeterlinck (directed by A. Granovsky), Amnon and Tamar by Sh. Asch, Uriel Acosta by K. Gutzkow, and his own play, The Builder. From 1919 onward, he performed under the stage name “Mikhoels” (literally “son of Mikhl”).
In 1920, he moved with the studio to Moscow. In 1925, the studio became the Moscow State Jewish Theater (GOSET). In 1928, he toured with GOSET in Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Austria. After the departure of A. M. Granovsky abroad, Mikhoels became the theater’s artistic director and chief stage director in 1929.
From 1931 onward, alongside his theater work, he taught at the theater school (later the Moscow State Jewish Theater School – MGETU) and was promoted to professor in 1941.
From 1939, he served as a member of the Artistic Council of the Arts Committee under the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR.
During the war, he was evacuated with GOSET to Tashkent in 1941, where he took part not only in the activities of the Jewish theater, but also those of the Khamza Uzbek Drama Theater and the State Opera and Ballet Theater of Uzbekistan.
In February 1942, upon the establishment of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAC) at the initiative of Soviet leaders—intended to “mobilize the Jewish masses worldwide in the struggle against fascism”—he became its first chairman. In 1943, he traveled with the JAC to the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Great Britain on propaganda missions aimed at securing financial support for the Soviet war effort. During this trip, he met prominent figures from the scientific and artistic worlds, including Albert Einstein and Charlie Chaplin.
In February 1944, together with Itzik Feffer and Shakhno Epstein, he wrote a letter to Stalin requesting the establishment of Jewish autonomy in Crimea.
He was a member of the Presidium of the All-Russian Theatre Society and of the Central Committee of the Trade Union of Arts Workers. Like many Soviet theater actors, Solomon Mikhoels also appeared in several films, including the 1925 film Jewish Luck (Yevreyskoye schastye) by Aleksei Granovsky, in which he played the leading role; the film is still considered one of the most powerful Jewish films ever made. He also played a small role in Grigori Alexandrov’s famous 1936 musical comedy Circus (Tsirk), where at the end of the film he sings in Yiddish while holding a Black baby in his arms. This scene, intended to demonstrate that the Soviet Union was a multiethnic state in which none of its peoples practiced the anti-Black racism prevalent in the United States at the time, was removed from the film in 1948 and restored during the Perestroika period.
Persecution, Assassination, and Consequences
The postwar period in the USSR was marked by a rise in antisemitism within the ruling circles and by increased repression against the active Jewish community. The authorities grew increasingly suspicious of the activities of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee and the international ties of its leaders. In 1948, Mikhoels was killed (run over by a truck) in Minsk, at the dacha of Tsanava, First Deputy Minister of State Security, on the night of January 12–13. For a long time, the official Soviet version concealed the circumstances of his death, presenting it as an accident or a robbery. It later emerged that Mikhoels’s assassination had been ordered by the Soviet secret services on the personal instructions of Stalin. This murder was part of a broader campaign against the Jewish intelligentsia and Jewish organizations in the USSR, which culminated in the “Doctors’ Plot” and the deportations and repressive measures against Jews in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
Personal Life
Twin brother: Efim (Khaim-Neukh) Mikhailovich Vovsi (1890–1959), lawyer, legal adviser to the Moscow Circus.
Elder brothers: Moisey (1882–?) and Lev (Leib), actor (stage name: Lev Nevolin).<
First cousin: Miron Semionovich Vovsi (1897–1960), physician, Major General of the Medical Service (1943), Academician of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences (1948).
First wife: Sara Lvovna Kantor (1900–1932), daughter of the journalist and public figure L. O. Kantor (1849–1915).
Daughters: Nina Mikhoels (1925–2014), stage director, lecturer at GITIS; Natalia Vovsi-Mikhoels (1921–2014), theater scholar, author of My Father, Solomon Mikhoels (1997).
Son-in-law: Moisei Weinberg (1919–1996), composer, pianist, People’s Artist of the RSFSR (1980).
Second wife: Anastasia Pavlovna Pototskaya (1907–1981), biologist.
Artistic Legacy and Influence
Mikhoels left a lasting mark on the history of Yiddish theater. As an actor and director, he raised the artistic standards of Yiddish stage art, enriched its repertoire, and gave the stage an active social role. Under his leadership, GOSET became a platform for the development of new artistic forms, staged numerous significant productions, and contributed to the international recognition of Yiddish theater.
After Mikhoels’s death, a state-sponsored campaign in the late 1940s and early 1950s led to the gradual dissolution of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, the persecution of its members, and the destruction of many cultural initiatives. Only after Stalin’s death and the partial rehabilitation of the victims of repression did historians and theater critics begin to reassess the role of Mikhoels and GOSET.
Memory and Research
In the postwar decades—particularly from the 1960s through the 1990s—scholarly research traced Mikhoels’s biography, the history of GOSET and the JAC, the circumstances of his assassination, and its consequences for Jewish culture in the USSR. Biographies and memoirs by contemporaries (both Soviet and émigré) have made it possible to reconstruct many aspects of his theatrical work, international tours, and public activity.
Photos, videos, texts
1936 - Le Cirque (Цирк) de Grigori ALEXANDROV
1932 - Le Retour de Nathan Becker (Возвращение Нейтана Беккера) de Boris CHPIS , Rachel MILMAN
1925 - Le Bonheur juif (Еврейское счастье) de Alekseï GRANOVSKI
