MICHAEL J. NICHOLAS
Introduction to a Performance in Kiev (1991)
by Igor Shwedov, Writer and
Artistic Director of the Kiev Theatre of Historical Portraits
Dear Friends, Allow me to introduce tonight’s guest performer, who is the artistic director of the Moscow Author and Performers Theatre.
As you can see from the poster, M. J. Nicholas is the performer of his oral books titled, “An American in the land of Bolsheviks (Years 1940-1990).”
One may call it a documentary since Nicholas was an active participant in all the events he is going to narrate.
Nicholas was born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania; lived and worked on the streets of New York City as a shoe polisher and newsboy, as they called such kids like him in the 1930s, and as an artist, drawing silhouettes of tourists for a dime.
During the years of the Great American Depression, his father, a steel worker, was offered a job in the Soviet Union. He took his family to Makeyevka, Ukraine.
When the war with Nazi Germany broke out and when his homeland, the United States of America, joined that war, Nicholas enlisted in the Soviet Red Army as an American volunteer and took part in the battle of Kursk in Russia, in the battle of Bobruysk in Belorussia, in the battle of Warsaw in Poland, and in the battle of Berlin in Germany.
After the Reichstag was captured on May 2, 1945, on its walls 300,000 autographs appeared. All of them were written by the victorious Soviet Red Army troops in Russian, Ukrainian, Belorussian, Armenian, Georgian, Moldavian, and many other languages of the Soviet Republics, except one which was written in English. It read: “Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, U.S.A. – Makeyevka, Ukraine – Aktyubinsk, Kazakhstan – Berlin, Germany – 2 May 1945 – Nicholas.”
During the war Nicholas was four times wounded, two times shell-shocked and decorated with numerous medals for bravery.
After World War Two ended he dedicated all his life to the performing arts. From the mid-1950s to the late 1960s he was artistic and executive director of the Ukrainian Lunacharski Theatre. During the 1970s and early 1980s, he worked as a script writer and theatre director in Gosconcert of the Ministry of Culture, U.S.S.R. Three of his plays were performed on the stages of Kremlin Palace of Congresses and in the Rossiya Concert Hall, as well as in many cities of the U.S.S.R. From the mid-1980s to the present day [1991], Nicholas is the artistic director of the Moscow Author and Performers Theatre.
I have known Nicholas for more than a quarter of a century and cannot help but admire his boundless optimism and his love of life. Like many of his fellow Americans, he’s attractive, well-disposed, clever, quick in his thoughts and actions, with a fine-tuned sense of humor. With all these qualities is was not easy to survive in this country [U.S.S.R.] during the last decades because [those] like him were not seen to have value by our bureaucrats and compatriots called nomenclatura. He was resisting the bureaucracy and red tape fiercely with all the consequences that followed. He was several times knocked down but always managed to rise above opposition and carry on the fight. His original ideas and interesting solutions for the various circumstances brought joy to his friends and hatred from his foes. And this is what his oral non-fiction books are all about.
Perhaps that is why Nicholas has enthralled audiences from Kaliningrad to Vladivostok, a distance of eleven time zones, for the past quarter of a century in the Soviet Union and other countries.
In conclusion, on his American birth certificate and American passport, his name is Nicholas Harry Burlak. So where has the pen name “M. J. Nicholas” come from? His father was born in Kiev, Ukraine, took part in the 1905 Russian Revolution, escaped from execution and fled to America. In the Burlak family, there were three brothers and a sister. All four of them were born in Pennsylvania: Anne, Michael, John and Nicholas. In the mid-1930s, Michael, John and Nicholas were brought by their parents to Makeyevka, Ukraine. The author’s books and stories include the destinies of not one, but three Americans in the “Land of the Bolsheviks.” The author-performer uses this pen name to honor his brother’s place in the Burlak family saga.
