Лесь Курбас

Field of activity: Culture
Date of birth: February 25, 1887
Date of death: November 3, 1937
Navigator: World Wars

A director, playwright, theater theorist, and publicist. A victim of Stalinist repressions and a representative of the “Executed Renaissance.”

Les Kurbas was the son of traveling actors, so from early childhood he was well acquainted with the backstage world of theater — he even performed on stage alongside his parents. He studied at Lviv University and later at the University of Vienna, where he became acquainted with European theatrical culture. In 1907, he founded a student theater; later, after returning home, he worked for some time in the theater of Hnat Khotkevych, and in 1915 established the first professional theater in Ternopil.
Kurbas stood at the origins of one of today’s most popular Kyiv theaters — the Young Theater. In 1916, he moved to Kyiv at the invitation of Mykola Sadovskyi and created a youth acting studio, which later evolved into a theater. Although the Young Theater’s first period lasted only two years, it produced a generation of directors who shaped the face of Ukrainian theater for years to come.
March 1922 marked the creation of the legendary theater-studio “Berezil,” which became Kurbas’s hallmark. Founded in Kyiv, it later moved to Kharkiv and transformed into a large-scale creative workshop with acting studios, a directing laboratory, and a music hall. The studio’s golden era was its collaboration with Mykola Kulish, a playwright whose artistic style closely matched Kurbas’s vision of a “theater Ukrainian in essence and European in form.” Moving away from the then-dominant realist tradition, “Berezil” gravitated toward avant-garde, constructivism, and expressionism, creating a unique “theater-mystery.”
In 1924–1925, Kurbas combined theater work with filmmaking. At the invitation of the All-Ukrainian Photo Cinema Administration (VUFKU), he produced several satirical and agitational films at the Odesa film studio: Macdonald, The Dream of Tovstopuzenko, Vendetta, and Arsenaltsi. All of them have been lost.
Kurbas himself believed that “communism is incompatible with human nature, like fire with water.” During the years of Stalinist terror, a person with such views was doomed. In 1933, he was removed from the leadership of “Berezil” and stripped of the title of People’s Artist of the Ukrainian SSR; later, the theater itself was dissolved for its “bourgeois-nationalist line.”
On December 25, 1933, Kurbas was arrested as a “counterrevolutionary” and accused of plotting an assassination attempt against Pavlo Postyshev, secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Ukraine. Under torture, he was forced to sign a confession, which became the basis for his first sentence: five years in a labor camp. Initially, he served his sentence at the construction of the White Sea–Baltic Canal, but was later transferred to the Solovetsky special-purpose camp. During his imprisonment, he continued creative work as much as possible: he managed to establish a theater troupe and stage about a dozen performances.
On October 9, 1937, the NKVD “special troika” reviewed Kurbas’s case and sentenced him to death. Among the 1,825 prisoners condemned to execution at the Solovetsky camp was also Mykola Kulish, Kurbas’s friend and colleague — they were executed on the same day (which later gave rise to the legend that they were killed with a single bullet, temple to temple). The fact of execution was concealed for a long time: in 1961, Kurbas’s widow, Valentyna Chystiakova, received a death certificate stating that her husband had died in 1942 from a cerebral hemorrhage.
The true place and circumstances of Kurbas’s death became known only in 1997, when his “Case No. 3168” and the Solovetsky execution lists were discovered and made public.

Author: Olha Herasymenko

Brief conclusions

Cultural figure and reformer — transformed Ukrainian stage art by Europeanizing it and creating an innovative theatrical system.
Public activity — one of the most prominent representatives of the Executed Renaissance, a symbol of the destroyed intelligentsia.
Builder and founder — established the “Berezil” Theater, a center of experimental and modern theater in Ukraine, as well as the Young Theater.
Directorial work — developed a unique system of training actors and directors, emphasizing high performance culture, intellectual depth, and stylistic flexibility.
Legacy — elevated directing in Ukraine to a modern scientific and artistic level.

Portal Editorial Team