Chebakov Nikita Nikanorovich (1916-1968) - Soviet painter. Laureate of the Stalin Prize of the first degree (1951). Nikita Nikanorovich was born in 1916 into a poor family in the village of Zhennye Rakity, Znamensky District. He received a special art education at the Omsk Art and Industry College named after M.A. Vrubel (1932-1936) and at the All-Russian State Institute of Cinematography (1939-1948). Studied with professors Yu. I. Pimenov and F.S. Bogorodsky. He defended his diploma as a film designer. While studying at the institute, he took part in the development of compositional solutions for the first series of the film «Ivan the Terrible», which was filmed by the outstanding director S. M. Eisenstein. In 1941, in the third year, he was mobilized into the ranks of the Red Army in connection with the Great Patriotic War. He served in the newspaper «Soviet Pilot» of the 5th Air Army of the 2nd Ukrainian Front with the rank of junior lieutenant. The war ends with a victory in Vienna.
In 1948 he worked with Bondarchuk on the film «Young Guard», with which he studied on the same course. For this film, he completed a series of sketches. At the same time he entered the Moscow Union of Artists. Then he spoke out against the party nomenklatura, for which he was suspended from work on the film «Young Guard», although it was his thesis. Only in 1951, due to his irrefutable services to the Motherland, was he reinstated in the party lists of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks). After graduation, N.N. Chebakov travels around the country a lot in search of artistic images of his contemporaries - working people: workers, fishermen, teachers, doctors. He takes an active part in all-Union exhibitions. Chebakov was widely known for the paintings Lenin's Speech at the III Congress of the Komsomol (which he wrote under the direction of B.V. Ioganson) and «Pavlik Morozov» (1952). The works are kept in the State Russian Museum and the State Tretyakov Gallery. The artist's works are also in museums in Novosibirsk, Rostov-on-Don, Arkhangelsk, Kostroma, Tver, as well as in private collections. In 1962 he teaches at the Department of Painting at the Surikov Moscow State Art Institute with the rank of Associate Professor. He died of a heart attack in 1968 in Moscow in the Town of Artists on Verkhnyaya Maslovka. Awards and prizes: Medal «For the capture of Budapest»; Medal «For the capture of Vienna»; Medal «For Victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945»; Order of the Red Star; Stalin Prize (1951) - for the painting «Speech by V. I. Lenin at the III Congress of the Komsomol» (1950, with co-authors).
