Russian theatre director Yuri Lyubimov challenged Soviet authorities

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Russian theatre director Yuri Lyubimov challenged Soviet authorities

Yuri Lyubimov was a Russian theatre director whose revolutionary expressionism, political metaphors and theatrical impact brought him into conflict with the Soviet authorities, who stripped him of his citizenship and forced him into exile.

He was the founder, in 1964, of the radical Taganka Theatre company in Moscow, which sought to provide a theatrical retort to Soviet realism. His productions drew large and enthusiastic crowds, while achieving startling effects through their scenic arrangements and lighting.

Revolutionary: Yuri Lyubmov in Moscow in 2011.

Revolutionary: Yuri Lyubmov in Moscow in 2011.

Despite the popularity of his work, three of his productions were banned in the 1981-82 Moscow season, including his staging of Pushkin's Boris Godunov, in which a character chastises the masses for their complacency. "Why do you remain silent?" he asks. The authorities appreciated neither the message nor the messenger.

Nevertheless, Lyubimov was still permitted to travel and, while in London in 1983, told The Times how the situation in Moscow had become intolerable.

"Neither I nor the theatre can imagine continuing our work without these three productions," he said. "I cannot allow myself to be trampled underfoot."

Months later, while still in London, he was informed that he had been stripped of his Soviet citizenship.

Yuri Petrovich Lyubimov was born at Yaroslavl, on the upper Volga, on September 30, 1917, on the eve of the October Revolution. His father owned a delicatessen and his mother was a music teacher.

He became a student actor in Moscow at the age of 19 and enrolled at the Vakhtangov Theatre, where he was influenced by the school's emphasis on the grotesque. During the Second World War he performed for Soviet troops before returning to the Vakhtangov, making a name for himself as an actor, especially in the cinema.

The following year Lyubimov was offered the artistic direction of a small theatre in Taganskaya Square in Moscow. There, he established his young troupe – many of them circus trained – as one of the Russian capital's most inventive avant-garde companies.

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News of Lyubimov's fearless style soon spread. In 1978 his plan to stage Alfred Schnittke's adaptation of Tchaikovsky's The Queen of Spades in Paris was condemned by Pravda as "a calculated attempt to destroy a monument of Russian culture".

Five years later Lyubimov gave his controversial interview. Months later he was sacked from the Taganka, expelled from the Communist Party and stripped of his Soviet citizenship.

During his enforced exile, when every mention of him in Russia was suppressed, Lyubimov worked in France, Italy, Austria, the US and Israel. Just as in the Soviet Union, so there were clashes in the west, although now they were with fellow artists rather than with the state.

Nor was his later relationship with the Taganka in Moscow, to which he was allowed to return in 1989 during the early days of glasnost, entirely trouble-free. In 2011, when his Taganka actors demanded to be paid upfront for their performances during a Czech tour, he resigned, suggesting that talk of money was an insult to his artistic sensibilities.

Lyubimov is survived by his wife Katalin Korcz, and by their son.

Telegraph, London

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