Solomon Mikhoels

Solomon (Shloyme) Mikhoels (Yiddish: שלמה מיכאעלס‎, Russian: Cоломон (Шлойме) Михоэлс, 16 March [O.S. 4 March] 1890 – 13 January 1948) was a Soviet Jewish actor and the artistic director of the Moscow State Jewish Theater. Mikhoels served as the chairman of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee during the Second World War. However, as Joseph Stalin pursued an increasingly anti-Semitic line after the War, Mikhoels' position as a leader of the Jewish community led to increasing persecution from the Soviet state. In 1948, Mikhoels was murdered on the orders of Stalin and his body was run over to create the impression of a traffic accident.

Born Shloyme Vovsi in Dvinsk (now Daugavpils, Latvia), Mikhoels studied law in Saint Petersburg, but left school in 1918 to join Alexis Granowsky's Jewish Theater Workshop, which was attempting to create a national Jewish theater in Russia based on the Yiddish language. Two years later, in 1920, the workshop moved to Moscow, where it established the Moscow State Jewish Theater. This was in keeping with Vladimir Lenin's policy on nationalities, which encouraged them to pursue and develop their own cultures under the aegis of the Soviet state.

Mikhoels was the company's leading actor and, as of 1928, its director. His memorable roles included Tevye, in an adaptation of Sholom Aleichem's comic short stories about Tevye the Milkman (which were adapted for an American audience as Fiddler on the Roof); and the title role in a Yiddish translation of Shakespeare's King Lear, in 1935. As a director he commissioned a new Bar Kochba, written by Shmuel Halkin, which the company successfully staged as a socialist turn on the traditional story.

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