"Faith in me gradually strengthened"

Actor Nikolai Pastukhov, in an interview with Gazeta, was celebrated by the 85th anniversary of the Russian artist Nikolai Pastukhov. A student of director Alexei Popov first entered the Red Army Theater 17-year-old. He left this theater, returned and still consists in his troupe. First of all, the theater actor, Pastukhov nevertheless played several remarkable roles in films, such as “Uncle Vanya”, “Unfinished play for a mechanical piano”, “Several days from the life of Oblomov”, “Station career”. On the eve of the anniversary, Nikolai Pastukhov in an interview with Gazeta correspondent Gleb Sitkovsky told about how he became an artist and what helped survive at the front.

- Your teacher was director Alexei Popov. How much did he affect you as an actor?

- This is a great happiness that I came to Alexei Dmitrievich. I was admitted to the auxiliary cast of the theater, without even graduating from 10 classes. The “commander of the Suvorov” in the production of Alexei Popov was a brilliant performance. When people watched him, they shouted in the hall: "Hurray!" I was still a boy and had to meet Suvorov in a mass of mass. And so I came up with a wooden cross for this role. He drank it myself, because I did not have a real cross, and put on a rehearsal. Alexei Dmitrievich approached me and says: "Well done, where did you find him?" And I say: “I was in the Tretyakov Gallery and saw a crying boy in the picture of Pryanishnikov, and on it a wooden cross. And I wanted to repeat this detail. ”

- Where did you study?

- When the war began, I managed to enter the school of the Maly Theater. I did not want to take a statement: I graduated from only seven classes. I look at those who act, they suddenly shout: "Gavrilov!" And it is nowhere to be found. I say: "This is me Gavrilov." - “What are you sitting here? Go faster. " I go. The commission Konstantin Zubov, Mikhail Tsarev. They say: "Read." I read the passage from Taras Bulba to half, they say: “Well done, come to the second round! What is the surname? " Here I call the surname, they are looking in the papers, they cannot find. “Well, okay,” they say, “come anyway.” Then Tsarev was busy so that I was allowed to study. I remember that there was a small hall in the school and portraits of the actors of the Maly Theater on the walls. So I somehow climbed into the chair and began to kiss these portraits. In Maly, I saw Zetuzhev in Othello and generally loved this theater since childhood. And then my heart flunked from the thought that I would work in the same theater with Kolvuzhev.

As soon as he acted - two months later the agenda for the front. Before sending to the troops, I went to the Red Army Theater and I met Alexei Dmitrievich Popov there. I tell him: "Here, they call me to the army." And Popov told me: “Well, everything is right, the homeland is in danger. Fight, just stay alive. You will stay - I’ll take it back to the theater. ” And in the Maly Theater of Zubov and the Tsarev went to trouble for me to the military enlistment office. They didn’t succeed, but the very fact that I mean something to these people was a shock to me. At the front, I thought only about one thing: they are waiting for me there, which means I have to return.

- Your generation was almost completely pumped out by the war, but you were lucky enough to survive. Thanks to what?

- Do you know why I survived? Remember, I told you about a wooden cross, which then made for the "commander of Suvorov"? So, I put it on myself and carried the whole war. It seems to me, that's why I survived. Faith in me gradually strengthened. Before the war, I had a tendency to this. I lived on a rampant, and was engaged in amateur performances in the House of Culture on Baumanovskaya. And on the way he always went to the Elokhov Church.

- You probably were a pioneer. Have you made trouble?

- Never was a pioneer. But at the front there was a case: one of the bosses attacked that I was walking with a cross. I had to get into a parachute landing, but because of this they did not take me to the landing. And then I found out that the whole landing was killed. When the war ended, it was a great joy. I had a friend Arnold at the front, he dreamed of an artist to become an artist. And here we are standing after the war, tears are pouring with joy. A car with different food arrived. There is a lot of food, but there is no vodka. “To drink,” we think. There is no vodka, but there are perfumes. I say: “Arnold, because you and I want to work in the theater, and the main thing there is spirituality. Let's spiritualize! " Diluted the spirits with water and drank for the victory.

05/15/2008 / Gleb Sitkovsky material published in the newspaper No. 88 of 05/15/2008.