People and events:

• TRIBUTE TO ANDREI MIRONOV (to the 60th anniversary of the actor's birth)
• 113 MUSES OF ALEXANDER PUSHKIN: UNKNOWN FACTS FROM THE POET'S BIOGRAPHY (Based on a book by Yevgeny Riabtsev)
• THE MAGIC BRUSH OF NATALIA PASCHUKOVA

Mironov's 60th birthday was marked by an unusual premiere at the Satire Theatre where the actor had played for a quarter of a century. Having neither a plot, nor characters in the traditional sense of the word, "Andryusha" (Mironov's pet name) is, nonetheless, a repertory performance and not a one-night anniversary production. The script was written by the well-known satirist Arkady Arakanov. Producer Alexandr Shirvindt, Mironov's close friend and long-standing stage partner, described the play's genre as "Andrei Mironov's Birthday". His extraordinary personality revives in the reminiscences of his fellow actors - Alexandr Shirvindt, Vera Vasilyeva, Mikhail Derzhavin, Olga Aroseva, Spartak Mishulin and others, while Mironov himself smiles at the audience from a huge screen. The performance features fragments of movies and theatre productions starring Mironov, his unforgettable songs and rare videotapes from personal archives.

113 MUSES OF ALEXANDER PUSHKIN: UNKNOWN FACTS FROM THE POET'S BIOGRAPHY

Based on a book by Yevgeny Riabtsev

"Women loved Pushkin not only for his brilliant talent, but also because the moment he was gripped by a certain feeling, he surrounded himself wholly to it". This is a passage from Yevgeny Riabtsev's book 113 Muses of Alexander Pushkin.

It's about women of noble and less noble origin, he was fascinated or fell in love with at various moments of his life. The author made a bold attempt to penetrate into the poet's intimate world. Citing his letters and diaries as well as notes by his contemporaries, Riabtsev portrays Pushkin as a passionate lover and adventure seeker. The Don Juan list of "lovely creatures" who yielded to the poet's unfailing charm, drawn up by Pushkin himself at the age of 30, numbers 34 women. His wife, Natalia Goncharova, was his 113th love. Of special interest are the chapters titled "Romantic Flames Of Youth" telling about the love adventures of Pushkin under age and "Illegal Comets" about his passionate romances with Anna Kern and Agrafena Zakrevskaya. In the author's opinion, Pushkin's first love was Sofia Sushkova, the daughter of the well-known essayist Nikolai Sushkov. He fell in love with her at the age of 9. This was a platonic love, of course, for Sofia was only 8 at the time.

The first romantic passion of young Pushkin was Natalia Kochubei, an haughty upper-class beauty. Most researchers are inclined to believe that her name is behind the mysterious NN on the poet's Don Juan list. Apparently, Pushkin was passionately in love with her and must have suffered a lot when in 1818 she married a rich and influential nobleman - Count Stroganov. Natalia Kochubei never flirted with Pushkin. She knew he was mad about her, but remained as cold as ice. Yevgeny Riabtsev holds that Pushkin's poems The Caucasian Prisoner, Poltava, The Fountain Of Bakhchisarai and certain lines from Evgeny Onegin bear sad reminiscences about that unrequited love.

But not all of his loves were unrequited. In 1828 Pushkin met two upper-class women who captivated him - Anna Kern and Agrafena Zakrevskaya. The former was hardly pretty. At one of her portraits made by Arefief-Bogayev she appears in a dark unsophisticated dress, a modest hat, with colorless brows and eye-lashes, looking more like the wife of a clergyman than an aristocratic lioness. And yet, she drove dozens mad. The famous Russian composer Mikhail Glinka was also in love with her.