1868–1953
○ Natural causes
Actress turned Bolshevik financial agent whom Lenin called 'Comrade Phenomenon'
In 1903, passing as the wife of a senior railway official, she hid a wanted underground activist in her first-class compartment while delivering a suitcase of May Day leaflets to Gorky.
Maria Andreyeva was a leading actress of the Moscow Art Theatre and stage partner of Konstantin Stanislavski who, after joining the Bolsheviks in 1904, became one of the party's most effective financial agents. Her fundraising prowess (channeling fortunes from industrialists like Savva Morozov into Lenin's coffers) earned her the party alias 'Comrade Phenomenon,' and during her eighteen years as Maxim Gorky's common-law wife she was the material and practical backbone of his literary work and propaganda tours abroad. After the October Revolution she served as Commissar of Theaters and Public Shows in Petrograd, co-founded the Bolshoi Drama Theatre, and later directed the Moscow House of Scientists for eighteen years, dedicating her final decades to building Soviet cultural institutions.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1894–1898Actress, Russian Society of Art and Literature
- 1898–1905Leading actress, Moscow Art Theatre
- 1904–1917Financial agent, RSDLP (Bolsheviks) — 'Comrade Phenomenon'
- 1918–1921Commissar of Theaters and Public Shows, Petrograd
- 1919Co-founder, Bolshoi Drama Theatre
- 1922–1928Art and film representative, Soviet trade delegation, Berlin
- 1931–1948Director, Moscow House of Scientists
Theatre administration and cultural work after 1917
After the February Revolution of 1917, Andreyeva was appointed head of the municipal theatres under the State Duma. Her relations with the Bolsheviks briefly cooled after October, but in 1918 she became commissar of theatres and public entertainments for the Northern Commune and head of the Commissariat of Foreign Trade's commission of experts. That year she played Lady Macbeth at the Alexandrinsky Theatre. Following the production's success, she joined Maxim Gorky, Feodor Chaliapin, and Yuri Yurev in founding the Bolshoi Drama Theatre, intended to stage classical repertory in revolutionary times. The new Petrograd theatre opened on 15 February 1919 with Schiller's Don Carlos, and Alexander Blok became its manager. In 1920 Andreyeva headed the Petrograd section of the Commissariat of Enlightenment; the following year the government sent her abroad on a cultural mission. Her duties included the international sale of museum holdings and artworks obtained after the liquidation of bourgeois households. In 1922, as part of a Soviet trade delegation in Berlin, she handled film negotiations.
In 1926 Andreyeva was sent to Berlin again and became head of the art-industrial department of the Soviet trade mission. According to the Russian-language Wikipedia account, she sold property confiscated from class enemies and works from museums, including the Hermitage, in Germany to obtain foreign currency for industrialization. This account identifies the objects and purpose of the sales, but does not by itself settle their detailed circumstances or legal status. Sources differ on her return: Encyclopedia.com dates it to 1930, while the Russian-language Wikipedia says 1928. The dates given for her Moscow House of Scholars directorship also differ: the former account places it after her 1930 return, while the latter gives 1931–1948. Andreyeva led the House until retiring in 1948.