Vyacheslav Tikhonov
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Vyacheslav Vasilyevich Tikhonov (; 8 February 1928 – 4 December 2009) was a
Soviet The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...
and
Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...
n
actor An actor (masculine/gender-neutral), or actress (feminine), is a person who portrays a character in a production. The actor performs "in the flesh" in the traditional medium of the theatre or in modern media such as film, radio, and television. ...
whose best known role was as Soviet spy
Stierlitz Max Otto von Stierlitz (, ) is the lead character in a Russian literature, Russian book series written in the 1960s by Yulian Semyonov, and the television series, television adaptation ''Seventeen Moments of Spring'' (starring Vyacheslav Tikhonov ...
in the television series ''
Seventeen Moments of Spring ''Seventeen Moments of Spring'' () is a 1973 Soviet Union, Soviet twelve-part television series, directed by Tatyana Lioznova and based on the novel of the same title by Yulian Semyonov. The series portrays the exploits of Maxim Isaev, a Soviet ...
''. He was a recipient of numerous state awards, including the titles of
People's Artist of the USSR People's Artist of the USSR, also sometimes translated as National Artist of the USSR, was an honorary title granted to artists of the Soviet Union. The term is confusingly used to translate two Russian language titles: Народный арти ...
(1974) and
Hero of Socialist Labour The Hero of Socialist Labour () was an Title of honor, honorific title in the Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact countries from 1938 to 1991. It represented the highest degree of distinction in the USSR and was awarded for exceptional achievem ...
(1982).


Biography

Tikhonov was born in Pavlovsky Posad near
Moscow Moscow is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Russia by population, largest city of Russia, standing on the Moskva (river), Moskva River in Central Russia. It has a population estimated at over 13 million residents with ...
. His mother was a kindergarten teacher and his father an engineer in the local textile factory. Vyacheslav dreamed of acting but his parents envisioned a different career, and during the war he worked in a munitions factory. After employment as a metal worker, he began raining for anacting career in 1945 by entering, not without difficulty, the Actors’ Faculty of VGIK. After graduating VGIK with honours in 1950, he began his acting career on stage of Theatre Studio of Film Actor, where he worked for six years. In 1948, he married Nonna Mordyukova, a popular actress at the time. The couple had one son, Vladimir, also an actor, who died in 1990. The marriage was dissolved in 1963. Later, Tikhonov married a second time to Tamara Ivanovna Tikhonova and had one child with her, Anna Tikhonova, also an actor, in 1969. He died on 4 December 2009 in Moscow, Russia. Russian President
Dmitry Medvedev Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev (born 14 September 1965) is a Russian politician and lawyer who has served as Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of Russia since 2020. Medvedev was also President of Russia between 2008 and 2012 and Prime Mini ...
expressed his condolences to Tikhonov's family.


Career

Tikhonov made his film debut in 1948. For the next few years, he appeared in relatively low-profile films and at the Film Actors' Studio Theatre in
Smolensk Smolensk is a city and the administrative center of Smolensk Oblast, Russia, located on the Dnieper River, west-southwest of Moscow. First mentioned in 863, it is one of the oldest cities in Russia. It has been a regional capital for most of ...
. Tikhonov became more well known with the release of the rural family drama '' It Happened in Penkovo'' (1958), which was followed by several wartime dramas: ''May Stars'' (1959), set in
Prague Prague ( ; ) is the capital and List of cities and towns in the Czech Republic, largest city of the Czech Republic and the historical capital of Bohemia. Prague, located on the Vltava River, has a population of about 1.4 million, while its P ...
, and ''On the Seven Winds'' (1962), on the Western front. In Yevgeny Tashkov's ''Thirst'' (1959), based on real events, Tikhonov, in the first of his spy roles, portrays a scout in an operation to free an Odessa water plant from the Nazis. In ''Two Lives'' (1961) Tikhonov plays the less fortunate of two men who unwittingly meet in France, 40-odd years after fighting on opposite sides of the 1917 Revolution. Rostotsky's '' We'll Live Till Monday'' (1968), in which a history teacher plans to defend a student at a disciplinary meeting, earned Tikhonov a state prize. In 1979 Rostotsky made a documentary about his friend, called ''Profession: Film Actor''." Tikhonov also played Prince Andrei Bolkonski in the
Oscar Oscar, OSCAR, or The Oscar may refer to: People and fictional and mythical characters * Oscar (given name), including lists of people and fictional characters named Oscar, Óscar or Oskar * Oscar (footballer, born 1954), Brazilian footballer ...
-winning adaptation of
Leo Tolstoy Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy Tolstoy pronounced his first name as , which corresponds to the romanization ''Lyov''. () (; ,Throughout Tolstoy's whole life, his name was written as using Reforms of Russian orthography#The post-revolution re ...
's ''
War and Peace ''War and Peace'' (; pre-reform Russian: ; ) is a literary work by the Russian author Leo Tolstoy. Set during the Napoleonic Wars, the work comprises both a fictional narrative and chapters in which Tolstoy discusses history and philosophy. An ...
'' (1968) by
Sergei Bondarchuk Sergei Fyodorovich Bondarchuk (25 September 192020 October 1994) was a Soviet and Russian actor and filmmaker of Ukrainian origin who was one of the leading figures of Soviet cinema in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. He is known for his sweeping p ...
(who played Bezukhov). But Tikhonov reportedly got the role only at the suggestion of the Minister of Culture when Innokenty Smoktunovsky opted for Kozintsev's Hamlet and Oleg Strizhenov was also unavailable. In 1973, Tikhonov starred in the role for which he is most known for in the former Soviet republics, when director Tatiana Lioznova chose him over Smoktunovsky to star in an adaptation of Yulian Semyonov's novel ''
Seventeen Moments of Spring ''Seventeen Moments of Spring'' () is a 1973 Soviet Union, Soviet twelve-part television series, directed by Tatyana Lioznova and based on the novel of the same title by Yulian Semyonov. The series portrays the exploits of Maxim Isaev, a Soviet ...
'' as Standartenführer Stierlitz. The 17 moments are 17 days in the spring of 1945 just before the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II and centers around attempts by some of the Soviet Union's men in Germany to thwart secret peace talks between the Nazis and the U.S. and Britain. The film enjoyed enormous popularity among Russian viewers of several generations. Prior to that, however, it had faced the risk of remaining unknown:
Mikhail Suslov Mikhail Andreyevich Suslov (; 25 January 1982) was a Soviet people, Soviet statesman during the Cold War. He served as Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union#Secretariat, Second Secretary of the Communist Party of the Sovi ...
had opposed the film to go on general release. He had claimed that the film was not showing the feat of the Soviet people in the war. Fortunately, the decision to release the would-be classic film was supported by
KGB The Committee for State Security (, ), abbreviated as KGB (, ; ) was the main security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 to 1991. It was the direct successor of preceding Soviet secret police agencies including the Cheka, Joint State Polit ...
Chairman
Yuri Andropov Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov ( – 9 February 1984) was a Soviet politician who served as the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from late 1982 until his death in 1984. He previously served as the List of Chairmen of t ...
. Although several of Semyonov's Stierlitz novels were adapted for the screen, Tikhonov did not return, perhaps feeling that the original series was definitive. The role won him the title People's Artist of the USSR, one of a number of awards. In 1976, Tikhonov rejoined Bondarchuk in an adaptation of
Mikhail Sholokhov Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov ( rus, Михаил Александрович Шолохов, p=ˈʂoləxəf; – 21 February 1984) was a Russian novelist and winner of the 1965 Nobel Prize in Literature. He is known for writing about life ...
's ''They Fought for Their Country''. It suited Tikhonov by concentrating on character rather than histrionics and won him another state prize in the year that he finally joined the Communist Party. 1977 saw a change of pace with Rostotsky's Oscar-nominated ''White Bim the Black Ear'', in which Tikhonov played a middle-aged writer who is "adopted" by a non-pedigree setter puppy. Though he was often typecast as militiamen or spies, there were good roles among them, such as the KGB general in the cold-war thriller ''TaSS is authorised to announce'' (1984), another television series based on a Semyonov novel. In later years he was able to display a wider range, including the bishop in ''Besy'', a film version of Dostoyevsky's ''The Devils'' (1992) and Charlemagne, in the ''Ubit Drakona'', ('' To Kill a Dragon'', 1998) after Evgeny Shvarts's wartime satire. Shvarts was inspired by
Hans Christian Andersen Hans Christian Andersen ( , ; 2 April 1805 – 4 August 1875) was a Danish author. Although a prolific writer of plays, travelogue (literature), travelogues, novels, and poems, he is best remembered for his literary fairy tales. Andersen's fai ...
, and Tikhonov appeared in
Eldar Ryazanov Eldar Aleksandrovich Ryazanov (; 18 November 1927 – 30 November 2015) was a Soviet and Russian film director, screenwriter, poet, actor and pedagogue whose popular comedies, satirizing the daily life of the Soviet Union and Russia, are celebrat ...
's fantasy-biography of the Danish fabulist, ''Andersen: Life Without Love'' (2006), playing God. On 8 February 2003, Russian President
Vladimir Putin Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (born 7 October 1952) is a Russian politician and former intelligence officer who has served as President of Russia since 2012, having previously served from 2000 to 2008. Putin also served as Prime Minister of Ru ...
awarded the
Order of Merit for the Fatherland Order, ORDER or Orders may refer to: * A socio-political or established or existing order, e.g. World order, Ancien Regime, Pax Britannica * Categorization, the process in which ideas and objects are recognized, differentiated, and understood * ...
, third degree, to Tikhonov. Tikhonov appeared in
Nikita Mikhalkov Nikita Sergeyevich Mikhalkov (; born 21 October 1945) is a Russian filmmaker and actor. He made his directorial debut with the Red Western film ''At Home Among Strangers'' (1974) after appearing in a series of films, including the romantic com ...
's Oscar-winning ''
Burnt By the Sun ''Burnt by the Sun'' (, Transliteration, translit. ''Utomlyonnye solntsem'', literally "wearied by the sun") is a 1994 Russian drama film starring, directed, written, and produced by Nikita Mikhalkov and co-written by Azerbaijani screenwrite ...
'' (1994) and also appeared in the 2010 sequel, which finished shooting before his death.


Filmography


Film


Television


Legacy

* The name of Vyacheslav Tikhonov is given to the marine vessel of geophysical exploration of the shipping company Sovcomflot (launched in August 2011, the flag was raised on 16 September 2011). * In May 2013, a monument by sculptor Alexey Blagovestnov was installed on the actor's grave. The monument reflects the versatility of Tikhonov's talent. The bronze figure is located in front of the relief on the gospel story Adoration of the Magi, which depicts many biblical characters. * A
Commemorative plaque A commemorative plaque, or simply plaque, or in other places referred to as a historical marker, historic marker, or historic plaque, is a plate of metal, ceramic, stone, wood, or other material, bearing text or an image in relief, or both, ...
is installed on the building of Lyceum No. 2 in Pavlovsky Posad (the former school No. 1, where the actor studied), now bearing his name. * Since 2017, the Vyacheslav Tikhonov International Film Festival, called "17 Moments", has been held. The initiator of the festival was the actor's daughter Anna. * On 25 August 2018, the V. Tikhonov House-museum was opened in Pavlovsky Posad in the house where the actor was born and grew up. * 2019 — Volodarsky Street in Pavlovsky Posad was renamed Tikhonov Street. * On 20 May 2022, a monument to Vyacheslav Tikhonov was unveiled in Pavlovsky Posad. The monument made of bronze and granite is installed at the intersection of Herzen and Kirov streets.


References


External links

*
Actor Vyacheslav Tikhonov, the Legendary Stierlitz (Biography)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tikhonov, Vyacheslav 1928 births 2009 deaths People from Pavlovo-Posadsky District Communist Party of the Soviet Union members Russian male film actors Russian male television actors Soviet male film actors Soviet male television actors Heroes of Socialist Labour Recipients of the Lenin Prize People's Artists of the USSR Recipients of the USSR State Prize Burials at Novodevichy Cemetery