After the war, the Slichenko family settled at a Romani collective farm in Voronezh Oblast.

That was the time when Nikolai heard about a theater in Moscow and had dreamt of performing on its stage.

This was at the time when the theater left to Zagorsk (present-day Sergiyev Posad) with the play Four Fiancées by Ivan Khrustalev.

In all, at the time he played more than 60 roles in his native theater, and also took part in a number of popular films, including Under the Rain and the Sun, My Island Is Blue, Wedding in Malinovka and others.

[5] For this, he completed the Higher Courses for Directors at the Russian Academy of Theatre Arts in 1972, under the management of the People's Artist of the USSR Andrey Goncharov.