Solomon Mikhoels

Solomon (Shloyme) Mikhoels, born in Daugavpils, Latvia  was a 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 several times by truck to create the impression of a traffic accident.

Born Shloyme Vovsi in Daugavpils, Latvia, Mikhoels studied law in Saint Petersburg, but left school in 1918 to join Alexander Granovsky's Jewish Theater Workshop, which was attempting to create a national Jewish theater in Russia based on theYiddish 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, who showed outstanding talent, was the company's leading actor and, as of 1928, its director. He played in several memorable roles, including 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) as well as in many original works, such as Bar Kochba, and translations.

Perhaps his most noted role was as King Lear in a Yiddish translation of the play by William Shakespeare. These plays were ostensibly supportive of the Soviet state; however, historian Jeffrey Veidlinger has argued that closer readings suggest they actually contained veiled critiques of Stalin's regime and assertions of Jewish national identity. It is now believed that the Ukrainian director Les Kurbas contributed to the original King Lear production after he was ousted from his Berezil theater in 1934. He seems to have had a lasting influence on Mikhoel's directing style.

By the mid-1930s, Mikhoels' career was threatened because of his association with other leading "intelligentsia", who were victims of Stalin's purges.

In 2nd stage of WW2 (when Soviet - Nazi allies break their 1939 agreement in 1941) Mikhoels actively supported communists and Stalin against Adolf Hitler.

In 1942, he was elected chairman of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee. In this capacity, he travelled around the world, meeting with Jewish communities to encourage them to support the Soviet Union in its war against Nazi Germany. He raised large funding from USA to purchase even armored vehicles etc.

While this was useful to Communist rule during World War II, after the war, Stalin opposed contacts between Soviet Jews and Jewish communities in non-Communist countries, which he deemed as "bourgeoisie".

The Jewish State Theater was closed and the members of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee were arrested – all except for two were eventually executed in the purges shortly before Stalin's death.

Mikhoels was the most visible of the intellectual Jewish leadership, and a show trial would have cast aspersions on Stalin's rule.

Thus in January 1948, he was assassinated on Stalin's personal orders in Minsk. 

His death was disguised as a hit-and-run car accident. Mikhoels was taken to MGB dacha and killed, along with his non-Jewish colleague Golubov-Potapov, under supervision of Stalin's Deputy Minister of State Security Sergei Ogoltsov. Their bodies were then dumped on a road-side in Minsk and run over by a truck.

Members of KGB killing squad recieved highest state awards for "successfull operation"- three oficeers recieved Order of WW2 (highest rank), one - Order of Red Star, but chief of operation F. Tsanava - Order of Red Flag.

Mikhoels was married to Anastasia Pototskaya, a Russian of Polish descent. He had two daughters from his first marriage to Sara Kantor, Nina and Natalya Vovsi, who emigrated to Israel.

Mikhoels' cousin Miron Vovsi was Stalin's personal physician. He was arrested during the Jewish Doctors' plot affair but released after Stalin's death in 1953, as was his son-in-law, the composer Mieczyslaw Weinberg.

In 1983, Mikhoel's daughter, Natalia Vovsi-Mikoels, wrote a biography of her father in Hebrew: My Father Shlomo Mikhoels: The Life and Death of a Jewish Actor.

A large international cultural center in Moscow is named after him, Street in Daugavpils, Latvia bears his name