Yevgeny Vesnik

Who was Yevgeny Vesnik?

Yevgeny Yakovlevich Vesnik was a Russian and Soviet stage and a film actor. The son of Yakov Vesnik, the first director of the Kryvorizhstal plant, he fought the Germans in the Second World War. He worked at the Maly Theatre from 1963 and was named a People's Artist of the USSR in 1989, three years before his retirement from the stage.

Primarily a comedian, Vesnik is remembered as the first Soviet actor to play the character of Ostap Bender. After he was remembered as Teatcher Taratar, or Tarator in The Adventures of the Elektronic, one of greatest Soviet films for children.

Among his other roles are the policeman in Old Khottabych, "Boss of Sport Complex" in Seven Old Men and One Girl, the Procurator in Bat, the commissioner in Charodey, "radist" in Weather Is Good on Deribasovskaya, It Rains Again on Brighton Beach and many other films.

He died, aged 86, on April 10, 2009 in Moscow after suffering a stroke.