How Stalin destroyed the marriage of the "non-Soviet" beauty Marina Figner and for which the actress was given 5 years in the camps

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

She was very beautiful and talented, but she was never able to play any significant roles in films. Marina Nikolaevna Figner attracted the attention of directors, she was often invited to auditions, but she was not approved for roles, her beauty was too “non-Soviet”. She herself literally attracted men's views, but at the same time she was distinguished by a special aristocracy. At the beginning of her career, due to the personal intervention of Joseph Stalin, her first marriage was destroyed, and later she ended up in the camps for five long years.

Unfulfilled happiness

Marina Figner was born and raised in a very famous family. Her grandfather Nikolai Figner was a famous tenor and an approximate person of Alexander III. The sister of Marina's own grandfather was the famous revolutionary Vera Figner, who, together with Lenin's older brother, attempted the life of the tsar and was sentenced for this to life imprisonment, from which she emerged after the revolution after serving 25 years.

The actress's father, Nikolai Figner, served in the tsarist army, then in the Red Army and died in 1943. Mom, Vera Figner, was an actress, but after the birth of children, she left the stage and devoted herself entirely to the family. Marina Figner decided to follow in her mother's footsteps, and immediately after graduation she entered the troupe of the Lensovet Theater in Leningrad, where the girl was accepted without special education. True, she did not serve there for long. After just a few months, Marina Figner moved to Moscow and joined the auxiliary staff of the Moscow Art Theater. She also did not act in films too much, having played only 12 films in her entire life.

Many sources write that the actress had two husbands, pilot Rafail Ivanovich Kaprelyan and screenwriter Isaak Semyonovich Prok. But in the book of the famous diplomat Timur Dmitrichev there is information about the very first marriage of the actress with the famous director Vladimir Petrov.

Vladimir Mikhailovich was one of the directors of the film "Peter the First", which won the approval of Stalin himself. But it was the "father of all nations" who played a role in the fact that the family of Vladimir Petrov and Marina Figner broke up at the very beginning of its existence.

The fact is that before marrying Marina Figner, Vladimir Petrov was married to Katevan Tsereteli. To marry Marina, who was 26 years younger than the director, he divorced his wife. She was also a Georgian and the daughter of one of Stalin's associates.

When Joseph Vissarionovich found out about Petrov's divorce, he, as he writes in his book “Curiosities of the Cold War. Diplomat's Notes”Timur Dmitrichev, personally called the director and shamed him for his inappropriate attitude towards his Georgian wife. And with a touch of humor, he asked if Vladimir Petrov's divorce had become an "annoying misunderstanding" that could be easily corrected.

After this conversation, Vladimir Petrov very quickly parted with Marina Figner and returned to his first wife. The girl was very upset about parting with her beloved, but at the same time she understood Vladimir Petrov. It is unlikely that family happiness cost his life. If he dared disobey the leader and did not correct the "annoying misunderstanding", he could, at best, end up in camps, at worst - be shot.

Two marriages, camps and complete oblivion

A little later, Marina Figner still arranged her personal life, becoming the wife of the famous pilot Raphael Kaprelyan. During the Great Patriotic War, his plane was shot down, he was captured, from where he was able to escape. He was almost shot by the partisans, to whom he went out after his escape, and was pardoned only after the pilot's identity was confirmed from the General Staff. But this marriage of Marina Figner did not last long and ended in divorce.

In the last war years, the actress became close to the composer, actress and singer Yulia Zapolskaya, whose songs were often performed by Leonid Utyosov. Yulia Zapolskaya, the notorious Zoya Fedorova, Marina Figner and several other young women made friends with young employees of the US Embassy. At that stage, there were no obstacles on the part of the special services to the communication of Soviet women with the Americans.

Julia married Tom Whitney, who was ready to stay in the Soviet Union for the sake of his wife, knowing that if he left, his wife would be arrested and then exiled. Julia Zapolskaya, thanks to her husband's decision to continue working in the USSR, remained at large. But Marina Figner and Zoya Fedorova were much less fortunate. Both women were arrested and sent to labor camps.

Marina Figner was arrested in 1947 and spoken to for five years in the camps. In 1948 she began working at the Karaganda Drama Theater, was amnestied in 1952, then moved to Sverdlovsk, where she served for a year at the local theater. Then she moved to the Crimea and in 1954-1955 she was an actress of the Crimean Drama Theater. She received permission to move to the capital in 1955, at the same time she was reinstated in the staff of the Theater-Studio of the film actor. Marina Figner was rehabilitated already in 1956, clearing all charges against her.

But even after rehabilitation, she acted in films very little, was more busy in dubbing, was engaged in lectures and social activities.

Shortly after returning to Moscow, the actress married screenwriter Isaac Prok, who served in the Central Documentary Film Studio. She herself in 1965 became an assistant director in the creative association "Screen", then quit her job, and occasionally starred in films. In 1960, she starred in Andrei Tarkovsky's diploma short film Skating Rink and Violin. The last work of the actress was the film "Land on Demand". It is known that she was invited to star in the film "Bindyuzhnik and the King", but Marina Figner, for some reason, refused.

After that, her traces are lost. The actress died in 1991. At the same time, in some sources the information is limited to the brief “died in 1991”, while others mention the death of Marina Figner in a car accident.

The truth of the popular proverb that one cannot renounce prison and the bag is often confirmed. In the era of the USSR, one could get a prison sentence not only for real crimes, but also on trumped-up charges. Representatives of the intelligentsia, actors, scientists, and politicians were sent to camps.