Lidia Ruslanova

She was born in the village of Chernavka near Saratov, into a peasant family, and was baptized as Praskovya Andrianovna Leykina-Gorshenina (Russian: Прасковья Андриановна Ле́йкина-Горшенина).[2] Her mother was an Erzya by ethnicity.[3] By the time she was five, both her parents had died; her father in the Russo-Japanese War and her mother soon after. As a result, she spent most of her childhood in an orphanage.[4] She began singing when she joined the local parish children's choir and soon became a soloist.[5][3]

Her uncle invited her to work in a furniture factory. One of the factory's owners heard her singing as she worked and recommended that she go to study at the Saratov Conservatory.[6] However, she did not enjoy academic study.[1] During the First World War, she worked on a hospital train and met Vitalii Stepanov during this period, with whom she had a child, born in May 1917. He left her after a year, due to her erratic lifestyle.[6] According to a Saratov source, she married a different man who later died in the Russian Civil War, whom she took her surname from.[7]

Ruslanova gave her first concert at the age of 16, to a military audience, where she sang everything she knew.[6] She first started singing for Russian soldiers during the Russian Civil War, and debuted as a professional singer in Rostov-on-Don in 1923.[5] 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.[1] Until 1929, she lived with a Cheka official, then she married again, this time to Vladimir Kryukov.[8]

During the 1930s, Ruslanova became extremely popular.[8] 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.[1] When World War II broke out, she ceaselessly toured from one front to another, helping to boost the soldiers' courage with her patriotic songs.[9] 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.[10]

Ruslanova became one of the richest women in Soviet Russia and even financed the construction of two Katyusha batteries, which she presented to the Red Army in 1942.[5] That same year, she was made an Artist of Honour of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.[1] Her rough manners and racy language appealed to the soldiers to the point that she was regarded as a potential threat to the Soviet authorities. In 1948, due to association with Marshal Georgy Zhukov (who led the Red Army to the defeat of Nazi-Germany during World War II, and who became a strong political opponent of Joseph Stalin in the post-war years) Ruslanova's husband, Hero of the Soviet Union, Lieutenant-General Vladimir Kryukov 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.[5]

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 time in prison was unmentioned in the press until decades after.[11] 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.[5]

Ruslanova crater on Venus is named after her.

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

• 1996: Поёт Лидия Русланова (Lydia Ruslanova sings)[12]
• 2000: Царица Русской песни (Queen of the Russian Song)[13]
• 2001: Великие исполнители России XX века (Great performers of Russia of the XX century)
• 2002: Русские народные песни (Russian folk songs)[14]
• 2007: Имена на все времена (Names for all time)[15]