Early Life
She was born in Dushanbe, Tajik ASSR to a religious Bukharian Jewish family. Her mother, Sivyo Davydova, was from Samarkand and her father, Rubin Mullodzhanov, originally came from Bukhara. Her family traces its ancestry to an artistocratic Levite tribe that has been into performing and entertaining since the time of the First and Second Temple in Jerusalem. At some point as an adult she changed her surname from Mullodzhanova to Mullojonova in Soviet Tajikistan.
Her family was full of entertainers (actors, singers, and musicians). In 1924, her parents and older siblings (Ribi, Levi, Itzakhar, Roshel, Zulai) moved from Uzbekistan to Tajikistan, where Shoista was born a year later. She learned to speak fluent Bukhori, a dialect of the Tajiki-Persian language, and Russian. Her mother was also a singer and her whole family was into music and acting. She graduated from the Stalinabad Women's Pedagogical School in 1943 and studied at the Moscow Conservatory from 1947 to 1953.
Read more about this topic: Shoista Mullojonova
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