Aleksei Buldakov, a popular Soviet and Russian actor known for his role in a string of drunken slapstick comedies, has died while visiting Mongolia. He was 68.
Russian news agencies quoted friends and colleagues on April 3 as saying that Buldakov died in the Mongolian capital, Ulan Bator, of a blood clot. No further details were released.
Buldakov was born in 1951 in the Altai region in Siberia and grew up in Kazakhstan. He performed in various theaters in Kazakhstan and Russia before moving to Moscow in 1993.
He starred in many films from 1982, but real fame came after he played the role of General Aleksei Ivolgin in a series of hit comedies made after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The first, released in 1995 and called Peculiarities Of The National Hunt, involves a group of Russian and Finnish men who go hunting in the Russian wilderness, bringing with them copious amounts of vodka.
The film was hugely popular at the Russian box office and was followed by a series of similarly named -- and similarly themed -- films, including Peculiarities Of National Fishing, Peculiarities Of The National Hunt In Winter, and Peculiarities Of National Politics.