The spouses of the highest state dignitaries and major military leaders in different countries and in different eras had a special status and could count on some privileges. But in the Soviet Union of the 1930s-1940s, no discounts were given to anyone.
In order to collapse from the heights of his position, not just to the bottom, but to be behind the bars, it was enough to take one wrong step, a careless statement or a thoughtlessly accepted gift. High-ranking husbands in some cases tried to fight for their second halves, but more often accepted what happened with humility.
Bronislava Poskrebysheva: execution for the wife of the faithful assistant of the leader
Alexander Nikolaevich Poskrebyshev For a quarter of a century, he was the head of the special sector of the Central Committee. Under this name, the personal secretariat of Joseph Stalin was hidden, and Poskrebyshev himself was the first assistant to the leader.
Poskrebyshev’s first wife was a revolutionary Jadwiga Stankiewicz, with which Stalin’s assistant parted in 1929. Soon he met endocrinologist Bronislava Metallikova, an employee of the Research Institute of Endocrinology at the People’s Commissariat of Health of the RSFSR. In 1934 they got married.
Bronislava Metallikova. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org
Bronislava’s older brother, Mikhail, still under Lenin he headed the medical and sanitary department of the Kremlin. The Metallikovs traveled to participate in medical conferences, and in 1933 they accidentally met across the borderLev Sedov, son and active assistant Leon Trotsky. In addition, Mikhail Metallikov’s wife was the sister of Sedov’s wife.
The competent authorities became aware of that meeting, which carefully recorded compromising evidence on the Metallikovs.
In 1937, Mikhail was arrested on charges of counter-revolutionary activities, who was subsequently shot. Then Poskrebyshev managed to avert the threat of arrest from his wife.
But, since the repressions also affected her other relatives, Bronislava appealed to the competent authorities several times, demanding a review of their cases. In 1939, during one of the visits to the NKVD, the wife of Stalin’s assistant was arrested.
This time, at the request of Poskrebyshev, the leader advised to find a new spouse. He did so, in 1941, when he married Ekaterina Zimina.
Bronislava Metallikova-Poskrebysheva was shot in October 1941. In 1957, she was posthumously rehabilitated.
Ekaterina Kalinina: the wife of the All-Union headman suffered for her opinion
The All-Union headman Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin married an Estonian Ekaterina Johannovna Lorberg back in the beginning of his revolutionary activity. His wife went through all the stages with him, starting from arrests and exile and ending with the elevation to the position of one of the top leaders of the USSR.
Kalinin’s wife was not a shadow of her husband, she had her own opinion on everything, which she was not shy to express. In the second half of the 1930s, when Stalin’s leadership in the party had already become indisputable, Ekaterina Kalinina allowed herself quite harsh criticism of the leader, about which he was informed.
On January 17, 1938, at the first session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of the 1st convocation, Kalinin was elected Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. And in the autumn of the same year, the wife of the nominally first person of the country was in prison on charges of anti-Soviet and counter-revolutionary activities. Kalinin did not manage to protect his Trotskyist wife.
On April 22, 1939, Ekaterina Kalinina was convicted by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR and sentenced to 15 years in labor and correctional camps with deprivation of civil rights for five years.
Only in 1945 Kalinin managed to achieve mitigation of the fate of his wife. She was pardoned, released from the camp, shortly before the death of the All-Union headman. Despite her release, she was soon sent into exile.
Ekaterina Kalinina was rehabilitated in 1953, after Stalin’s death. She died in December 1960, at the age of 78.
Olga Budennaya: the wife of the commander of the First Cavalry was let down by frivolity
The famous commander of the First Cavalry and one of the first Soviet marshals Semyon Budyonny he was married three times. The first wife of the military commander, Nadezhda, died in 1925 in an accident.
Soon after, Budyonny was sent to a resort in Kislovodsk to restore his psychological state. During this trip, he met an opera singer Olga Mikhailova, who was much younger than the legendary cavalryman.
This did not stop Budyonny, and he married a beautiful woman. Olga’s status as the wife of a legend helped in her acting career, but her behavior and frivolity caused the condemnation of Budyonny’s friends. Numerous novels were attributed to the woman, they said that she was just using her husband. During the years of marriage, the family never had children.
Budyonny himself, however, adored his wife, gave her furs and jewelry. And Olga is so used to expensive gifts that she stopped being aware of who she accepts them from.
Her visits to foreign embassies, where diplomats made her expensive offerings, ended with her arrest in 1937. Budyonnaya was accused of espionage and attempted poisoning of her husband, and at the same time they beat out testimony against the marshal himself.
But Stalin ordered the compromising material on Budyonny to be removed. As for his wife, she was sentenced to 8 years in prison, subsequently adding another three years.
Budyonny himself got married for the third time, and his chosen one was the cousin of the arrested Olga. In this marriage, he finally found true family happiness. His wife gave birth to three children.
To accuse Budyonny of betrayal is not worth — judging by everything, for many years he believed that the arrested spouse was no longer alive.
When Budyonnaya was released in 1956, the marshal moved her to the capital and provided her with financial assistance.
Lydia Ruslanova: the fatal love of a great singer
The famous singer was a favorite of the entire Soviet Union, and never complained about the lack of male attention. During the war years, she went with concerts to the front, where she met the commander of the 2nd Guards Cavalry Corps, Major General By Vladimir Kryukov, who was part of the inner circle of Georgy Zhukov.
Ruslanova could not resist the courtship of the brave cavalryman, and a few months later she married him.
On May 2, 1945, Ruslanova gave a concert at the walls of the defeated Reichstag. The delighted Marshal Zhukov presented her with the Order of the Patriotic War.
The family of the general and the singer lived luxuriously, and this well-being subsequently became the cause of great problems. Kryukov became one of the defendants in the so-called “Trophy case” related to the appropriation of property by high-ranking military personnel in Germany. It is believed that Marshal Zhukov was the main target of the investigation, but it did not come to his arrest.
General Kryukov was arrested on September 18, 1948, and ten days later Lydia Ruslanova was also in prison. According to the materials of archival and investigative cases No.0046 and No. 1762, during the searches, V.Kryukov and L.Ruslanova were seized: a car “Horch 951A”, two “Mercedes”, “Audi”, two hundred and eight diamonds, and also emeralds, sapphires, pearls, one hundred and seven kilograms of silver products, one hundred and thirty-two paintings by Russian artists Shishkin, Repin, Serov, Surikov, Vasnetsov, Vereshchagin, Levitan, Vrubel, Makovsky, Aivazovsky and others, thirty-five antique carpets, antique tapestries, many antique sets, furs, sculptures made of bronze and marble, decorative vases, a large number of books, seven hundred thousand rubles in cash and more.
Kryukov was sentenced to 25 years in prison, Ruslanova was given 10. Both spouses were released and rehabilitated after Stalin’s death.
According to the memories of loved ones, the singer did not worry about the confiscated property: “they humiliated her for the fact that it is impossible to survive this in front of the whole country.”
General Kryukov died in 1959, his wife survived him by 14 years. They are buried nearby at the Novodevichy Cemetery of the capital.
Polina Zhemchuzhina: the indomitable Stalinist was not broken by prison
The future head of the Soviet government and People’s Commissar of Foreign Affairs Vyacheslav Molotov got married in 1921 to a fellow wrestler Polina Zhemchuzhina, behind whose shoulders were underground activities during the Civil War and work as a political worker in the Red Army.
Molotov’s wife was an independent person, and she promoted her career solely at the expense of her own abilities. In 1939, she headed the People’s Commissariat of the Fishing Industry of the USSR, although she did not last in this position for a long time.
Polina Zhemchuzhina (birth name Pearl Solomonovna Karpovskaya). Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org
The Pearl fell into disgrace quite unexpectedly, after the war. Stalin supported the creation of the state of Israel, but its leaders quickly shifted to the United States, which caused the anger of the leader.
Polina, a Jew by nationality, met withGolda Meir Who worked as Israel’s ambassador to the USSR, speaking highly of the socio-economic transformations in the new Jewish state.
In January 1949, Zhemchuzhina was arrested on charges of having links with Jewish nationalists.On December 29, 1949, Polina was sentenced by a special meeting of the USSR MGB to 5 years of exile in the Kostanay region. In 1953, a new charge was being prepared against her, but after Stalin’s death, the case was closed, Zhemchuzhina was released and rehabilitated.
Zhemchuzhina amazed everyone by the fact that she remained a convinced Stalinist after her arrest, and what happened did not change her views in any way. She died in 1970. Vyacheslav Molotov survived his wife by 16 years, and died in 1986 at the age of 96 years.
