Table of contents:
- Bronislava Solomonovna Metallikova-Poskrebysheva
- Katerina Kalinina
- Polina Semyonovna Zhemchugova-Molotova
- Not resigned
Video: The wives of Soviet party leaders whom even their high-ranking husbands could not save from repression
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
The women who will be discussed in this review are very different - housewives and activists, loved ones and forgiven betrayal, simpletons and intelligent ladies. One thing unites them: their husbands, who were in power and entered the highest offices, could not protect them from the steel millstones of repression.
Bronislava Solomonovna Metallikova-Poskrebysheva
The most trusted person of the Leader, Alexander Poskrebyshev, married a second marriage to Bronislava when she was 24 years old. His wife, an endocrinologist, was the sister of Trotsky's daughter-in-law. At a conference in Paris, she and her brother, Mikhail Metallikov, ran into Trotsky's son, Lev Sedov, for a walk. Five years later, in 1937, this fleeting meeting turned into a death sentence for Mikhail. Poskrebyshev managed to snatch his wife out of the hands of the OGPU, but in 1939, relatives forced Bronislava to go to the Lubyanka to bother about her brother. She did not come back.
Beria, when asked by Stalin's secretary, replied that his wife had been taken home by car. Stalin advised to find another woman. Based on the documents stored in the Main Information Center of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia, it can be concluded that Bronislava Solomonovna was in prison until the fall of 1941 and was shot on October 16, when the Germans came close to Moscow. Poskrebyshev, on Stalin's advice, married Ekaterina Zimina, who took care of his life and daughters from her marriage to Bronislava.
Katerina Kalinina
On October 25, 1938, the wife of the All-Union head M. I. Kalinin was invited to a fitting in the studio. But the NKVD officers were waiting for her there. From that day on, pleading guilty to anti-Soviet activities under torture, Katerina Iogannovna will be in the Akmola camp for the wives of traitors to the motherland for seven years. Her husband, the chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, the formal leader of a great state, could not do anything for his wife! Mikhail and Katerina got married in 1906. Estonian by birth, she was an energetic woman dedicated to the cause of communism. In 1924, she wrote a denunciation against her brother Vladimir, who was in charge of the Mossukno trust. After a short investigation, my brother was shot.
Katerina left her husband several times, then to her native village of Kalinin, then to Altai, to the city of Chemal. There she tried to try a free life away from official conventions and traditions: “I was not a person in the Kremlin,” Katerina wrote to her husband. - I was a false figure in the society to which I belonged because of your position … I do not need any amenities, no cars, and I do not need your false honors. In her absence, Mikhail Ivanovich found solace in the arms of the ballerinas and his housekeeper. However, he went to Altai and persuaded his wife to return to the capital. Katerina Kalinina has worked all her life.
A semi-literate weaver, in 1922 she became the deputy of the weaving factory "Liberated Labor". In Altai, she supervised the construction of the Rest House of the USSR Central Executive Committee and the Chemal Hydroelectric Power Station. Returning to Moscow, in 1936 Katerina was appointed a consultant, a member of the Special Board of the Supreme Court of the RSFSR. It was here that her retribution for her brother who died in the camps overtook her. In prison, Katerina was severely tortured. It happened that she could not go to interrogations by herself, she was worn. No evidence, only accusations of ties with the enemies of the peoples.
The wife of the USSR leader stayed in "Algeria" until 1945. As an indulgence, as a disabled person, she was instructed to clean nits from the prisoners' underwear. Having learned about the decree on pardon in honor of the Victory, the terminally ill Kalinin begged Stalin to forgive Katerina. It seemed humiliating to her, but her sister came to the camp and screamed terribly, forcing Katerina to sign a penitential petition for clemency. Katerina Kalinina died in 1960 at the age of 88.
Polina Semyonovna Zhemchugova-Molotova
Pearl Semyonovna Karpovskaya was not a beauty, but she had enough energy and charisma for seven. Enlisting in the Red Army in 1918, she became a political worker, and in 1919 in Kiev she switched to underground work under the pseudonym "Polina Zhemchugova". Subsequently, she registered the documents in this name and surname. The future chairman of the Council of People's Commissars saw Pearl at a meeting in Petrograd. Having visited the woman the next day, Molotov invited her to Moscow. They got married the following year.
Polina Molotova's career is reminiscent of the heroine from the movie "Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears." In 1931 she became the director of the Novaya Zarya perfume factory. It was she who came up with the branded packaging for the Krasnaya Moskva perfume bottle. In 1932, he became the first woman minister in Russia: the head of the Ministry of Light Industry of the RSFSR. The husband was against it, but could he object to Stalin?
However, Polina has one flaw, from the Kremlin's point of view. She was Jewish. Pearl Semyonovna did not consider it necessary to hide her origin. When she met Israeli Ambassador Golda Meir at a reception in honor of the 31st anniversary of the October Revolution, she addressed her with the words in Hebrew, "I am the daughter of the Jewish people." This was the reason for the arrest and five-year exile near Kostanay - a mild sentence for those times.
Not resigned
Among the spouses who were condemned to the torment of their wives, one can note those who opposed the cruel decision. Here are examples of the unconquered: Nikolai Yezhov and Kliment Voroshilov. For Voroshilov, other women did not exist: Golda Gorbman from Nyrobe, who abandoned her family for him and took the name Ekaterina, was the only one for him. According to eyewitnesses, when the OGPU officers came to arrest her, the marshal fired several shots at the ceiling. The taken aback army men retreated, and Stalin, having heard about it, only said, "To hell with him."
The marriage of Nikolai Yezhov and Evgenia Feigenberg was strange. She had prominent lovers: Sholokhov, Babel, Schmidt. He gravitated towards boys, had mistresses, whom he received in the "operational apartment". But when Stalin ordered Yezhov to divorce, since his wife had compromised the People's Commissar with indiscriminate ties, he refused. In the spring of 1939, Stalin once again strongly advised that the marriage be dissolved. Yezhov told his wife everything. They decided not to divorce, but from that moment on, Zhenya Feigenberg lost her peace. Insomnia and neurotic phenomena tormented her until autumn. She lived in constant horror, wrote letters to Stalin and to the Central Committee of the CPSU, and in despair she committed suicide.
Even today, the unthinkable fate of Pavlik Morozov is of great interest. Historians still argue today - it was family drama or murder with political overtones?
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