喬治▪託夫斯托諾戈夫，Georgi Aleksandrovich Tovstonogov was born on September 28, 1915, in Tiflis, Russian Empire (now Tbilisi, Georgia). Young Tovstonogov was fond of theatre and started acting on stage while at high school. In 1933 he moved to Moscow to study acting and directing. He studied at the Moscow Institute of Theatrical Art (GITIS), from which he graduated as a theatre director in 1938. Then he returned to Tbilisi and was a director at the Theatre of Russian Drama named after Griboedov until 1946. From 1946-1950 he worked as director at the Central Children's Theatre in Moscow.Tovstonogov moved to Leningrad (St. Petersburg) in 1950, and from 1950-1956 was a director at the Leningrad Theatre of Leninsky Komsomol. There he continued his life-long effort focused on re-establishing the Russian Classical drama and literature in the Soviet-dominated theatrical repertoire. Tovstonogov was the first one who returned the works of Fyodor Dostoevsky into Soviet theatre. This became possible after Nikita Khrushchev denounced Iosif Stalin in February of 1956, and initiated the "Thaw" in Soviet culture and politics. Tovstonogov's 1956 production of 'The Insulted and Humiliated' was based on the eponymous book by Fyodor Dostoevsky, and became a brilliant artistic response to the dictatorship of Iosif Stalin.From 1956-1989 Tovstonogov was the director general at the Leningrad Bolshoi Drama Theatre (BDT) named after Maxim Gorky. There he directed plays by Anton Chekhov, Lev Tolstoy, Aleksandr Griboyedov, Maxim Gorky, Nikolay Gogol, Vasiliy Shukshin, Charles Dickens and other authors. Under the leadership of Tovstonogov the Leningrad Bolshoi Drama Theatre (BDT) was nicknamed the "Tovstonogov's theatre" and that nickname became widely used by actors and public. After the director's death all actors and loyal theatre patrons appealed to the Russian Federal government to commemorate the famous director. In 1992, the St. Petersburg Bolshoi Drama Theatre (BDT) was renamed after Tovstonogov.Much of T