November 12: Tatyana Konyukhova – actress of the "Thaw"
She was born in Tashkent Tatyana KonyukhovaOne of the first beauties of the Thaw era. An "unreliable" actress of Soviet theater and cinema.
Tatyana Konyukhova: Family and Childhood
Her parents were originally from Ukraine. Her father, a military man, was sent to Uzbekistan to develop the cotton industry. In 1934, when Tatyana was three, he was arrested on false charges.
One of his colleagues, a scoundrel, filed a denunciation, claiming his father had concealed his grandfather's origins from the Party. He was supposedly some kind of estate manager, a bourgeois. But there was no deception: his grandfather was an agronomist, a professional of the highest caliber.
My father spent three years in prison (he was later rehabilitated). In 1942, he volunteered for the front.
He emerged from the camps a terrible anti-Stalinist. I, on the other hand, received everything a young person could under Soviet rule and established myself as an actress.
Institute and first roles
Since childhood, she was fascinated by theater and cinema. On her first attempt, she was accepted (despite the 800 applicants per place in 1949) into the All-Union State Institute of Cinematography. She graduated at 24 and worked at the Maly Theater. She later worked at the Film Actors' Studio Theater.
She has played in more than 50 films of various genres.
She made her film debut in her second year, and immediately in the lead role in the film "May Night, or the Drowned Woman" Alexandra RoweWhen the film was released, she woke up famous throughout the Soviet Union.
My huge portrait hung in the very center of Moscow
She couldn't voice the role in the film herself - she didn't have enough experience, which made her very worried and she asked to stay at the institute for a second year.
I was so frustrated I even considered changing my major. I doubt any student within the walls of this university, before me or after, has ever voiced such a thing.
She most often played stern, serious, and principled heroines of the Thaw. Her filmography includes the films "Good Morning," "Different Fates," "Freemen," "Over the Tisza," "Shine, My Star," "The Marriage of Balzaminov," "Moonlit Nights," and "The Career of Dima Gorin."
Tatyana Konyukhova, under various names—Valya, Galya, Katya, Sonya, Nelya—exemplified what is known as the typical young contemporary woman. This is precisely why she was so appealing.
(Soviet Screen, 1988)
An episode in the film “Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears,” in which the heroine, speaks of how popular she was in the USSR Irina Muravyova says enthusiastically:
Oh, I love Konyukhova!
Failures and denunciations at Goskino
In the late 1950s, she was supposed to star in the trilogy "The Road to Calvary" Grigory Roshal, but lost the role due to the director's wife's jealousy. She took the failure hard and fell into depression—not long before, she had even turned down roles in "The Cranes Are Flying" and "Carnival Night" to star in an adaptation of Tolstoy's novel.
Acting is a very dangerous profession. Getting knocked out is like blowing out a candle.
She was saved by her role on the film "Oleko Dundich," which nearly got her banned from traveling to Yugoslavia in 1957. By then, Goskino had two denunciations against her—both for un-Soviet behavior. She had "loitered all night" with foreigners in Prague at the Karlovy Vary festival, and had "tarnished the reputation of a Soviet artist" by hanging out with a Moscow State University professor on tour in Romania.
At Goskino they told me: “You, girl, are not very reliable.”
Khrushchev's son-in-law was also among her admirers. Adzhubey, who promised Kremlin honors.
One day he asked me straight away: "Do you want to become a People's Artist of the USSR?" I said: "You know, Alyosha, everything I've achieved in this life and in art, I owe only to myself." He boiled over: "What a fool!"
She received the title of People's Artist of the RSFSR later, in 1991.
She was married three times. In 1986, she lost her third husband and the father of her only son—he died of cancer at 55. To pay off the debts for his treatment, she performed concerts and creative events, and recited poetry. Tsvetaeva и Akhmatova.
In the 1990s she hardly acted at all.
I don't regret the roles I didn't play.
Later years
She worked with children at the Theatre Studio at the Moscow Children's Academy of Folk Art.
Until the last years of her life, she taught acting to students at the Moscow State University of Culture and Arts.
She died in 2024, at 92.