1. Aleksei Dikiy was a Soviet actor and director who worked at Moscow Art Theatre and later worked with Habima Jewish theatre in Tel Aviv.
19 Facts About Aleksei Dikiy
1. 2.
Aleksei Dikiy was arrested and imprisoned in Gulag under the dictatorship of Joseph Stalin but later played the role of Joseph Stalin in several films.
3.
Aleksei Dikiy was born Aleksei Denisovich Dikiy on 24 February 1889 in Ekaterinoslav, Russian Empire.
4.
Young Dikiy made his acting debut at the age of 6, on stage of the Kharkiv Drama under the directorship of Oleksi Sukhodolskiy.
5.
Aleksei Dikiy admired the stage works of Michael Chekhov and was his partner on stage.
6.
In 1922 Aleksei Dikiy followed Michael Chekhov in the formation of the second Moscow Art Theater, MKhAT-2.
7.
In 1928 Aleksei Dikiy received an invitation to work in Tel Aviv as director with Habima, the Jewish theatre troupe that had originated in Russia.
8.
In 1931, back in Moscow, Aleksei Dikiy started his own theater-studio in Moscow and taught an acting class.
9.
In 1936, Aleksei Dikiy was ordered out of Moscow, then he was appointed the director of the Bolshoi Drama Theater in Leningrad.
10.
In 1937 Aleksei Dikiy was arrested on false accusations of anti-Soviet activity.
11.
Aleksei Dikiy was sentenced and exiled to a Gulag prison-camp in Siberia, where he spent four years until his release in 1941.
12.
Aleksei Dikiy was not allowed to return to work either in Leningrad or in Moscow, instead he lived and worked in the Siberian city of Omsk for several years during the Second World War.
13.
In 1944 Aleksei Dikiy was cast in the title role as Prince Kutuzov in a Soviet propaganda film Kutuzov, which was known outside of Russia as 1812.
14.
Stalin had a drink and told Aleksei Dikiy that his imprisonment was a must, and that everyone in the country must undergo such experience in exile and prison-camps.
15.
Later Aleksei Dikiy told his students that he played the role of Joseph Stalin as a dangerous, scary, power-hungry dictator.
16.
Aleksei Dikiy was nominated for 'Best Actor' and received a special mention at the 1947 Venice Film Festival for the title role in Admiral Nakhimov.
17.
In 1953 Aleksei Dikiy directed his last stage production, the play Teni, by Saltykov-Shchedrin.
18.
Aleksei Dikiy banned the play, and censored both Babochkin and Dikiy from public performances and kept them virtually unemployed for three years until Babochkin was finally forced to repent to the Communist Party.
19.
Aleksei Dikiy died of a heart failure on 1 October 1955 in Moscow and was laid to rest in Novodevichy Monastery Cemetery in Moscow.