Yuri Sherling

Founder and first Director of Jewish Drama and Music Theatre - officially based in a mock Jewish Autonomy Province capital city of Birobijan - but really in Moscow. The theatre became extremely popular and successfully toured Soviet Union between 1976 and 1981 with Jewish Folkore-based shows such as "All Together Now" and "Black Bridle For A White Mare" - all republics except Ukraine, whose then First Communist Party Secretary (the equivalent of PM) Mikhail Shcherbitsky had ordered the scheduled shows cancelled on anti-semitic grounds. Yuri Sherling, a talented Director, Composer and Choreographer, continued to lead the theatre until Yuri Andropov's short reign as Soviet Union's General Secretary (Head Party Chief) in 1983, when the theatre was closed, and Sherling himself sent to prison on KGB-fabricated bribe charge. When Mikhail Gorbachev became the first President of the Soviet Union on the wave of his democratic "perestroika" reforms in 1990, the Jewish Drama and Music Theatre was allowed to re-open, and Sherling was freed, but he chose not to return to his Director's chair, and Alexander Levenbuk of "Radio-Nanny" - a popular 1970s-1980s radio show fame - became a new Director.