The spouses of the highest state dignitaries and great military leaders in different countries and at different times had a special status and could count on certain privileges. But in the Soviet Union of the 1930s-1940s, no discounts were given to anyone.
In order to fall from the heights of your position, not just to the bottom, but to be behind bars, one misstep, one careless statement, or one lightly accepted gift was enough. High-ranking husbands sometimes attempted to fight for their “other halves,” but more often accepted what happened with humility.
Bronislava Poskrebysheva: execution of the wife of the leader's faithful assistant
Alexander Nikolaevich Poskrebyshev was for a quarter of a century the head of a special sector of the Central Committee. Under this name, the personal secretariat of Joseph Stalin was hidden, and Poskrebyshev himself was the chief's first assistant.
Poskrebyshev's first wife was a revolutionary Yadviga Stankevich, with Stalin's assistant broken in & nbsp; 1929 & nbsp; Soon he meets the endocrinologist Bronislava Metallikova, an employee of the Research Institute of Endocrinology of the People's Commissariat of Health of the RSFSR. They married in 1934.
Bronislava Metallikova. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org
Bronislava's older brother, Mikhail, still under Leninheaded the medical and sanitary department of the Kremlin. The Metallikovs traveled to medical conferences, and in 1933 the border accidentally met Lev Sedov, son and active assistant of Leo Trotsky. Moreover, Mikhail Metallikov's wife was the sister of Sedov's wife.
This meeting became known to the relevant authorities, who carefully recorded incriminating evidence about the Metallikovs.
In & nbsp; 1937, Mikhail was arrested on charges of counter-revolutionary activities, who was later shot. Then Poskrebyshev managed to avoid the threat of arrest of his wife.
But, since the repressions also affected his other relatives, Bronislava repeatedly appealed to the competent authorities, demanding a review of their records. 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 advises to find a new wife. He did exactly that in 1941, marrying Ekaterina Zimina.
Bronislava Metallikova-Poskrebysheva was shot in October 1941. In 1957, she was posthumously rehabilitated.
Ekaterina Kalinina: Wife of 'All-Union Starosta' suffered for her opinion
“All-Union Starosta» Mikhail Ivanovich Kalininmarried Estonian Ekaterina Iohannovna Lorbergeven at the beginning of its revolutionary activities. His wife went through all the stages with him, from arrests and exiles, to ascension to the position of the highest leaders of the USSR.
< p>Kalinin's wife was not the shadow of her husband — she had her opinion on everything, which she did not hesitate to express. In the second half of the 1930s, when Stalin's leadership in the party had already become undeniable, Ekaterina Kalinina allowed herself quite harsh criticism of the leader, of which he was informed.
The 17 January 1938, at the 1st 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 fall of the same year, the wife of the country's nominally first person ended up in prison for anti-Soviet and counter-revolutionary activities. Protect your “Trotskyist” wife Kalinin failed.
On April 22, 1939, Ekaterina Kalinina was found guilty by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR and sentenced to 15 years of detention in labor and correctional camps with deprivation of civil rights for five years.< /p >
Only in 1945 Kalinin managed to alleviate the fate of his wife. She was pardoned, having been released from the camp, shortly before the “leader of the whole Union” died. Although she was released, she was sent into exile soon after.
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 disappointed in frivolity
The famous commander of the first cavalry and one of the first marshals Soviets Semyon Budyonnyhas been married three times. The first wife of the military leader, Nadezhda, died in 1925 due to an accident.
Soon after, Budyonny was sent to a resort in Kislovodsk to restore his psychological condition. During this trip, he met the opera singer Olga Mikhailova, much younger than the legendary horseman.
That didn't stop Budyonny, and he married a beauty. The status of the wife of a legend helped Olga in her acting career, however, her behavior and frivolity brought condemnation from Budyonny's friends. Many novels were attributed to the wife, they were about the fact that she simply used her husband. Over the years of marriage, children never appeared in the family.
Budyonny himself, however, adored his wife, gave her furs and jewelry. And Olga got so used to expensive gifts that she stopped knowing who accepts them since 1937 & nbsp; Budyonna was charged with espionage and attempted poisoning of her husband, and at the same time annulled testimony against the Marshal himself.
But Stalin ordered that the Compromising evidence about Budyonny be removed. As for his wife, she was sentenced to 8 years imprisonment, then to three additional years.
Budyonny himself married for the third time, and the arrested cousin of Olga became his chosen one. In this marriage he finally found true family happiness — his wife bore him three children.
It's not worth blaming Budyonny for the betrayal — apparently for many years he believed that the arrested wife was no longer alive.
When Budennaya was released in 1956, the Marshal transferred her to the capital and its financial aid.
Lydia Ruslanova: the fatal love of the great singer
The famous singer was the favorite of the whole 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 Vladimir Kryukov, who was a member of the inner circle Georgy Zhukov >.
Ruslanova could not resist the courtship of the brave horseman, and a few months later she married him.
On May 2, 1945, Ruslanova gave a concert near the walls of the defeated Reichstag. Marshal Zhukov, delighted, presented him with the Order of the Patriotic War.
The family of the general and the singer lived in luxury, and this prosperity later became the cause of great trouble. Kryukov became one of the defendants in the so-called “trophy case”, associated with the appropriation of high-ranking military property in Germany. It is believed that Marshal Zhukov was the main target of the investigation, but the case never led to his arrest.
General Kryukov was arrested on September 18, 1948, and ten days later Lidia Ruslanova also ended up in prison. According to the documents of the archival and investigative files No. 0046 and No.1762 during searches in VV Kryukov and LA Ruslanova were confiscated: the car “Horch 951A “, two Mercedes, an Audi, two hundred and eight diamonds, as well as emeralds, sapphires, pearls, one hundred and seven kilograms of silver objects, one hundred and thirty-two paintings by Russian artists Shishkin , Repin, Serov, Surikov, Vasnetsov, Vereshchagin, Levitan, Vrubel, Makovsky, Aivazovsky and others, thirty-five old carpets, old tapestries, many old sets, furs, bronze and marble sculptures, decorative vases, a large number of books, seven hundred thousand rubles in cash and more.
Kryukov was sentenced to 25 years in prison, Ruslanova received 10. Both spouses were released and rehabilitated after Stalin's death.
< p>According to the recollections of relatives, the singer did not get together. is not worried about confiscated property: “they humiliated” for nothing in front of the whole country & nbsp;& mdash; it's impossible to survive.
General Kryukov died in 1959 year, his wife survived him by 14 years. They are buried nearby in the capital's Novodevichy Cemetery.
Polina Zhemchuzhina: the inflexible Stalinist was not broken by prison
The future head of the Soviet government and the People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs Vyacheslav Molotov were married in 1921 to companion-in-arms ;combatPolina Zhemchuzhina, who was behind underground activities during the Civil War years and worked as a political worker in the Red Army.
Molotov's wife was an independent and promoted his career only at the expense of his own abilities. In 1939, she headed the People's Commissariat of Fishing Industry of the USSR, although didn not last long in this position.
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Polina Zhemchuzhina (birth name Pearl Solomonovna Karpovskaya). Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org
Pearl fell out of favor rather unexpectedly after the war. Stalin supported the establishment of the State of Israel, but its leaders rather quickly shifted their focus to the United States, which angered the leader.
Polina, a Jew by nationality, met Golda Meïr, who worked as Israel's ambassador to the USSR, praising the socio-economic transformations of the new Jewish state.
In January 1949, Zhemchuzhina was arrested for relations with  ;Jewish nationalists. 29 29 In December 1949, Polina was sentenced to 5 years of exile in the Kustanai region by a special meeting at the USSR Ministry of State Security. In 1953, a new charge was being prepared against her, but after Stalin's death the case was dismissed, Zhemchuzhina was released and rehabilitated.
Zhemchuzhina amazed everyone that even after her arrest she remained a convinced Stalinist, and what happened changed her point of view. She died in 1970 . Vyacheslav Molotov survived his wife by 16 years and died in 1986 at the age of 96.
