Lidija Andreevna Ruslanova

Lidija Ruslanowa in Berlin, 1945

Lidija Andrejewna Ruslanowa (occasionally also Lydia and Lidiya , Russian : Лидия Андреевна Русланова; born October 27, 1900 in Czernowka , Saratov Governorate ; † September 21, 1973 in Moscow ) was a successful and at the time extremely famous Soviet folk singer.

Life

Lidija Ruslanowa was born in the village of Chernivtsi, near the city of Saratov, to a peasant family, and was christened Agafia Leykina (Russian: Агафья Лейкина). At the age of five she lost her parents; her father was killed in the Russo-Japanese War in 1905 . She then spent most of her childhood in an orphanage . Her musical career began when she joined the local children's choir and a little later appeared as a soloist .

Her uncle later found her a job in a furniture factory in Saratov, where her singing caught the attention of a foreman of the factory, who recommended that she study at the conservatory in Saratov. But she never began a musical education herself. During the First World War , Lidija Ruslanowa worked as a nurse on an ambulance train . A child born in May 1917 emerged from a brief relationship with a soldier. Later she probably married a participant in the Russian Civil War , which fell there. She is said to have received her last name from him.

Career

Russian postage stamp from 1999

Ruslanowa gave her first concert as a singer at the age of 16 in front of a military committee, where she performed all of her repertoire . She gave her first concerts in front of soldiers during the Russian Civil War and made her debut as a professional singer in Rostov-on-Don in 1923 . She was particularly noticeable for her good timbre , which qualified her especially for interpreting old Russian folk songs. After 1929 she is said to have been in a relationship with a member of the Cheka , in 1942 she married General Vladimir Viktorovich Krjukow . Previously, she was the emcee married Mikhail Garkawi.

She finally became extremely famous within the Soviet Union in the 1930s, and has given concerts across the country in that decade. After the outbreak of the Second World War , she moved her concerts to the fronts , where she was supposed to motivate the soldiers with her singing and her extremely patriotic repertoire and inspire them for their homeland. Her interpretations of the well-known Russian folk songs Valenki (Russian: валенки) and Katjuscha , some of which were written especially for her, were particularly popular .

On the steps of the Reichstag with soldiers from the Red Army, May 1945

Eventually Lidija Ruslanowa became one of the richest women in the Soviet Union and financed the construction of two Katyusha rocket launchers , which she presented to the Red Army in 1942. In the same year she was awarded the title “Artist of Honor of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic ”. After the Battle of Berlin , she appeared in front of the Soviet soldiers on the stairs to the destroyed Reichstag building .

Two years after the arrest of her husband, who was seen as a supporter of the Stalin opponent Georgi Konstantinowitsch Zhukov , Ruslanova was also sentenced to ten years of forced labor. Like her husband, she also had German looted property in her private possession. a. 132 original paintings, again German spoils from the Soviet Union. She was allowed to sing in the gulag and was worshiped there too. After Stalin's death in 1953, she was allowed to leave the labor camp, but her health suffered severely from the prison conditions. Nevertheless, she continued her singing career.

Ruslanova lived in Moscow until her death in 1973 .

Trivia

The Ruslanowa crater on Venus and the asteroid (4810) Ruslanova are named after her.

Web links

Commons : Lidiya Ruslanova  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Lidiya Ruslanova in the Internet Movie Database (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} Arkadi Waksberg : The persecuted of Stalin - from the dungeons of the KGB. 1993, ISBN 3-499-19633-6 .