Galina Zagurskaya

Galina Nikolayevna Zagurskaya was born on 27 April 1905 in Irkutsk. Her father, Nikolay Zagurskiy, came from Poles exiled to Eastern Siberia after the uprising of 1863 and worked as an engineer on the Far Eastern Railway; he was shot by White Guards in 1918.

At the age of nine Zagurskaya entered a ballet school, and after finishing it in 1921 she became a ballerina at the Irkutsk Drama Theatre, where she stayed for about five years. She then staged dances in drama theatres as a ballet master.

She made her debut as a dramatic actress in 1932 in Yaroslavl; the story goes that she stepped in for an ailing lead in Chekhov’s “The Grasshopper”. Later she played in theatres in Yaroslavl, Vladivostok and Irkutsk.

From 1937 Zagurskaya belonged to the company of the Maxim Gorky Russian Drama Theatre in Tashkent (today the Russian Drama Theatre of Uzbekistan), where, with a break, she acted until 1977; from 1946 she was also its artistic director. In the late 1940s and early 1950s she spent about two years in Vladivostok. She played more than a hundred and fifty roles in all.

Her roles included Anna Karenina, Ranevskaya in Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard”, Kruchinina in Ostrovsky’s “Guilty Without Guilt”, Filumena in De Filippo’s “Filumena Marturano”, Diana in Lope de Vega’s “The Dog in the Manger”, Jamila in Hamza’s “The Rich Man and the Servant” and Tolgonai in a stage version of Chingiz Aitmatov’s “Mother Earth”, for which she received the Hamza State Prize of the Uzbek SSR (1971). As a director Zagurskaya staged plays in the theatre and in the drama circle of the Tashkent Palace of Pioneers, and she worked a great deal with children and young actors.

In 1944 she was named People’s Artist of the Uzbek SSR, and in 1969 People’s Artist of the USSR. She received the Order of the Badge of Honour (1944), the Order of the Red Banner of Labour (1950), the Order of Lenin (1959) and the Order of the October Revolution (1976), and sat as a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the Uzbek SSR of the 6th convocation.

Galina Zagurskaya died on 16 November 1978 in Tashkent and was buried at the Botkin Cemetery.