On August 8, 1947, he was sentenced to 25 years in the camps. Zoya Fedorova
An actress was sentenced to 25 years in a labor camp with confiscation of property for "espionage." Zoya Fedorova — a star of the Soviet screen, two-time winner of the Stalin Prize.
I was extremely surprised by this arrest, since I didn’t know of any crimes... Bring me back to life!
(presumably from a letter from Zoya Fedorova to Lavrentiy Beria)
Born in 1909 in St. Petersburg. His father was a worker, his mother a housewife. When he was nine, the family moved to Moscow, where his Bolshevik father received a position as head of the Kremlin passport service.
They lived well by the standards of the time. Zoya was a good student at school, attended drama club, and dreamed of becoming an actress. Her father was against it and, after school, got his daughter a job as a meter reader at Gosstrakh.
The prominent girl was popular with men, one of her suitors was a handsome officer Kirill Prove — I met him at a dance; he played the piano beautifully. In 1927, Prove was arrested on suspicion of espionage. Zoya was arrested at the same time. She held her own during interrogation.
I don't have any foreign friends.
Surprisingly, the case against her was closed - at the instigation of Genrikh Yagoda:
The investigation failed to establish the charges against Mrs. Fedorova Z.A., and therefore I would consider the case against Fedorova Z.A. to be terminated by the investigation.
In 1928, she entered the Theatre School and continued her studies at the Theatre of the Revolution (the future Mayakovsky Theatre). She graduated in 1934.
In 1932, she made her film debut in the film "The Counter." Her scene was not included in the final version of the film, but the experience nonetheless proved valuable—she became friends with the cameraman on set. Vladimir Rapoport. She married him in 1934. Her film career took off. She achieved nationwide popularity in 1936, after the release of the film "Girlfriends." Film offers poured in, one after another.
In 1938, my father was arrested on trumped-up charges. He was sentenced to 10 years in a labor camp. To save him, she requested a personal meeting with Beria. The details of the meeting are unknown, but my father was released in 1941—his fingers amputated due to frostbite—and declared unfit for work. He died a couple of months later.
By that time, Fedorova's five-year marriage to Rapoport had already fallen apart. Zoya had a new love—a pilot. Ivan Kleshchev. The war destroyed their relationship. Zoya, who won the Stalin Prize twice in 1941 and 1942, took every opportunity to see her common-law husband, regularly traveling to the front as part of artistic brigades. On New Year's Eve 1943, Kleshchev died in Tambov region.
There's a theory that it was during this period that Beria persistently paid attention to the actress. After an unsuccessful courtship, he allegedly handed her a bouquet: "These are flowers for your grave."
In 1945, at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Fedorova met the naval attaché, Captain Jackson Tate. In January 1946, she gave birth to a daughter, Victoria Dzhoksonovna. By then, Tate had been declared persona non grata and expelled from the USSR. He knew nothing about his daughter. To conceal the pregnancy from the foreigner, a composer friend of Fedorova's Alexander Ryazanov, proposed marriage.
In December 1946, the actress was arrested on charges of "espionage." She was sentenced to 25 years in a labor camp. Ryazanov was also exiled for five years. Fedorova's sisters also ended up in the camps: one of them raised her daughter Zoya as her own—until she was eight, Zoya didn't know who her real mother was. A letter written to Beria asking for help was of no avail.
In Vladimir Central, I became friends with By Lidia Ruslanova.
She was released in 1955. She continued acting, but in minor roles—her years in the camps had left their mark on her appearance. In the 1970s, she visited the United States. In 1975, her beautiful daughter, also an actress, joined her father, married a pilot, and became an American citizen.
Zoya Fedorova's attempt to move to the United States for permanent residence was unsuccessful. In 1981, she was shot to death in her own apartment. The killer was apparently an acquaintance—Zoya herself opened the door for him and offered him tea. The murder remains unsolved. Investigators pursued the possibility of involvement in the "diamond mafia," but found no compelling evidence.
