Valentin Pluchek

Valentin Nikolayevich Pluchek (Russian: Валенти́н Никола́евич Плу́чек; real name Isaak Nokhimovich Gintsburg, Russian: Исаа́к Нохи́мович Ги́нцбург; 4 September 1909 – 17 August 2002) was a Soviet and Russian theater director and actor. He is known as a stage director of the Physical Culture Day parade in Moscow during the Stalinist epoch.^[1] The Physical Culture Day took place each summer at central squares of major Soviet cities. Peter Brook's cousin.^[2]

Pluchek worked with the director Vsevolod Meyerhold until he was arrested and shot in 1940, and then worked with the playwright Aleksei Arbuzov. In 1950, he joined the "often-daring" Moscow Satire Theatre in 1950, and rose to chief director in 1957.^[3]

• Two Orders of the Patriotic War, 2nd class (1945, 1985)
• Honored Artist of the RSFSR (1956)^[4]
• People's Artist of the RSFSR (1964)^[5]
• Order of the Red Banner of Labour (1970)
• People's Artist of the USSR (1974)
• Order of Friendship of Peoples (1979)
• Order of Lenin (1986)
• Order "For Merit to the Fatherland", 3rd class (1999)
• Jubilee Medal "In Commemoration of the 100th Anniversary of the Birth of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin"
• Medal "For the Defence of the Soviet Transarctic"
• Medal "In Commemoration of the 850th Anniversary of Moscow"