page_title: Nikolai Pogodin
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Nikolai Pogodin / Career
caption_attribution_description: For documentary purposes the German Federal Archive often retained the original image captions, which may be erroneous, biased, obsolete or politically extreme. Gera, Szene der Dorftheatergruppe Ebersdorf Zentralbild Liebers 10.7.70 Gera: Dorftheater Ebersdorf spielt "Der Mann mit dem Gewehr"- In einer Szene des Schauspiels "Apotheker Dr. Rudolf Laufke als "Lenin", Schlosser Ralf Töpfer als "Arbeiter" (2.v.l.) und der Lehrer Roland Mösch als "Iwan Schadrin" (l.). Mit diesem Stück von Nikolai Pogodin, das vom Dorftheater Ebersdorf anläßlich des Leninjahrs einstudiert wurde, beteiligte sich das Ensembele an den Arbeiterfestspielen in Rostock. Das 100 Mitglieder zählende Ensemble zeigte seit seiner Gründung im Jahre 1959 15 Inszenierungen. Für seine hervorragenden Leistungen wurde es bisher mit dem Titel "Hervorragendes Volkskunstkollektiv", dem Kunstpreis des Bezirks Gera, dem Staatspreis für künstlerisches Volksschaffen I. Klasse und dem Vaterländischen Verdienstorden in Silber geehrt.
context_page_description: Nikolai Fyodorovich Pogodin was a Soviet playwright. His plays were recognized in Soviet Union theater for their realistic portrayals of common life combined with socialist and communist themes. He is most widely known as the author of a trilogy about Lenin, the first time Lenin was used as a character in any theatrical works.
context_section_description: Pogodin's series of three plays featuring Lenin as a character was part of a Soviet movement referred to as Leniniana, which sought to control the way Lenin was portrayed in artistic works. In 1936, the government commissioned, under the People's Commissariat of Education, a collection of writers and directors to make films depicting Lenin and also the revolution in an approved format and presentation style. Among those invited to the initial commission were Alexander Korneichuk, Alexander Afinogenov, Vladimir Kirshon, and the novelist Alexei Tolstoi. Despite his historical significance of presenting Lenin in this approved style, Pogodin was not invited at first. Instead, he volunteered to join the commission and was accepted.
  Pogodin did not limit his writing to mainstream theater. He also lent his screenplay skills to the State Leningrad Puppet Theater of Fairy Tales with a play titled The Tale of the Beast Called Indrik. Pogodin also provided a report on children's literature at the Tenth Plenary Meeting of the Union of Soviet Writers in 1946.
  Despite working under restrictive creative conditions, Pogodin did support the primary journal for "permitted, formal" dissent at the time, Novyi Mir.
  
  In 1929, Pogodin's first play, Tempo (Temp, 1929) was published after a visit to the Stalingrad Tractor Plant, where the play was later set. The play's major theme of young Communists outdoing their American counterparts was a common theme of Soviet Realism. His later works, Poema o topore (A Poem about an Ax, 1930) and Moi Drug (My Friend, 1930) also touched on themes of soviet industrialism and ingenuity. His plays frequently mixed "factual reports" with dramatization.
  His most popular play was Chelovek s ruzhyom (Man with a Gun, 1937), about Shadrin, a soldier who comes to Petrograd in October 1917 and gets involved in the Revolution; the climax of the play is his meeting with Lenin. The second play in his Lenin trilogy, Kremlyovskie kuranty (The chimes of the Kremlin, 1940), was set in 1920 and featured a scene in which Lenin talks with an old Jewish watchmaker engaged in repairing the Kremlin chimes so they can play the Internationale; the third, Tretya pateticheskaya (The Third: Pathetic, 1958) used the news of Lenin's death as a tragic leitmotif. Kogda lomaiutsya kop'ya (When the Spears Break, 1953) was a comedy; Sonet Petrarki (Petrarch's Sonnet, 1956) "takes the position that there are certain individual matters--personal feelings and affairs of the heart--which are none of the collective's or the Party's business."
  From 1951 to 1960 Pogodin was the chief editor of the theatrical journal Teatr.
caption: A rehearsal of Pogodin's play, Chelovek s ruzhyom (Man with a Gun).
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