Mikhail Yanshin

Mikhail Yanshin
Mikhail Yanshin in the short film The Acceptance of Catastrophes (from Combat Film Collection No 7). 1941.
Born	Mikhail Mikhailovich Yanshin (1902-10-20)20 October 1902 Yukhnov, Smolensk Governorate, Russian Empire
Died	17 July 1976(1976-07-17) (aged 73) Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1924 - 1976

Mikhail Mikhailovich Yanshin (Russian: Михаи́л Миха́йлович Я́ншин) (20 October 1902 - 17 July 1976) was a Soviet stage and film actor.

Yanshin was born in the city of Yukhnov, located in the present-day Kaluga Oblast. As a young man he worked as a carpenter. In 1919 he volunteered for the Red Army. Following the Russian Civil War, he enrolled at the school of the Moscow Art Theatre, where his classmates included Mikhail Kedrov and Boris Livanov. He joined the theatre's company in 1924 and remained a member of the institution until his death.

Yanshin's first notable roles at the Art Theatre were as Dobchinsky in Gogol's The Government Inspector and as the footman Petrushka in Griboyedov's Woe from Wit. He came to greater attention in the role of Lariosik in Bulgakov's Days of the Turbins, and thereafter began to receive work in other theaters. From 1934 to 1939 he was artistic director of the Moscow Theatre of the Forest Industry; from 1937 to 1941 he directed the Romen Theatre; and from 1950 to 1963 he was chief director of the Stanislavski and Nemirovich-Danchenko Moscow Academic Music Theatre. In 1963 Yanshin was criticized by the Soviet ministry of culture, which disapproved of his staging contemporary, non-traditional plays; he resigned and returned to the Moscow Art Theatre, where he was instrumental in the hiring of the director Oleg Yefremov.

In addition to his theatrical work, Yanshin appeared in many films. He was a frequent voice actor for Soyuzmultfilm cartoons, and often collaborated with the animators Zinaida and Valentina Brumberg. In addition to working as a voice actor, he also wrote the script of the Brumbergs' 1951 film The Night Before Christmas.