Lidia Ruslanova

Lydia Ruslanova

Lidia Andreyevna Ruslanova (sometimes spelt Lidya or Lydia, Russian: Лидия Андреевна Русланова; 27 October 1900, Saratovskaya gubernia – 21 September 1973, Moscow) was one of the greatest and best-loved performers of Russian folk songs.

Early life

She was born in Chernavka near Saratov, into a peasant family, and was christened "Praskov'ia Leikina" Russian: Прасковья Лейкина Her parents both died by the time she was five—her father was killed in the war with Japan and her mother died soon after—so she spent most of her childhood in an orphanage. She began singing when she joined the local parish children's choir, and she soon became a soloist.

Her uncle invited her to come and work in a furniture factory, and she sang during her work. One of the factory's owners heard her, and recommended she go to study at the Saratov Conservatory. However, she did not enjoy academic study; during World War I, she worked on a hospital train, and during this period she met Vitalii Stepanov, with whom she had a child, born in May 1917. He left her after a year, due to her erratic lifestyle. According to a Saratov source, she married a different man who later died in the civil war, whom she took her surname from.

Career

Ruslanova gave her first concert at the age of 16, to a military audience, where she sang everything she knew. She first started singing for Russian soldiers during the Russian Civil War, and debuted as a professional singer in Rostov-on-Don in 1923. She was noted for her peculiar singing voice and timbre, which was a revival of old traditions in which female soloists would perform on festive occasions. Until 1929, she lived with a Cheka official, then she married again, this time to Vladimir Kryuchkov.

Stamp of Russia devoted to Lidiya Ruslanova, 1999, 2 rub. (Michel 759, Scott 6545)

During the 1930s, Ruslanova became extremely popular. She became an artist of the state association of musical, variety and circus enterprises in 1933, and performed all over Russia throughout the rest of the decade. When World War II broke out, she ceaselessly toured from one front to another, helping to boost the soldiers' courage with her patriotic songs. Her signature songs were Valenki and Katyusha, written specially for her. During the Battle of Berlin she performed on the doorsteps of the smouldering Reichstag.

Ruslanova became one of the richest woman in Soviet Russia and even financed the construction of two Katyusha batteries, which she presented to the Red Army in 1942. That same year, she was made an Artist of Honour of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. Her rough manners and racy language appealed to the soldiers to such a point that she came to be regarded as a potential threat to the Soviet authorities. In 1948, due to association with Georgy Zhukov, a marshall, who was a strong political opponent of Stalin, Ruslanova's husband General Vladimir Kryuchkov was arrested and Ruslanova followed two years later. Ruslanova was forced to sign a declaration that her husband was guilty of treason, but refused so sentenced to 10 years of camp labour.

In the gulag she was dispatched to, Ruslanova became a star lionized by inmates and administration alike. Therefore, she was moved to a prison cell in the Vladimirsky Tsentral. Following Stalin's death, she was released on 4 August 1953; she was thin, gray, and had difficulty walking. However, she returned to singing almost immediately. Her spell in prison was unmentioned in the press, until decades after. Although awards and titles bypassed her, Ruslanova presided over the first All-Soviet Festival of Soviet Songs, together with Leonid Utyosov, Mark Bernes, and Klavdiya Shulzhenko. She went on singing right up until her death in 1973, at the age of 72.

Ruslanova crater on Venus is named after her.