Olga Lepeshinskaya (dancer) - Prima Ballerina

Prima Ballerina

Lepeshinskaya graduated from Bolshoi Choreographic School and started working the Bolshoi Theatre. She started as Rosina in a ballet of The Barber of Seville (Тщетная предосторожность) performed by the second stage of the theater. In 1935 she performed the main role in the Three fatmen' ballet by Yury Olesha fairytale. The ballet became very popular and the 18-year old ballerina became famous.

Lepeshinskaya performed in private concerts at the Moscow Kremlin from the age of 17. Lepeshinskaya was very close to Polina Zhemchuzhina, wife of Vyacheslav Molotov. It was a great shock for her when Zhemchuzhina was imprisoned in a Gulag. Lepeshinskaya was known as "the favourite ballerina of Joseph Stalin" and even rumoured to be his mistress.

Lepeshinskaya married a Soviet intelligence MGB general Leonid Raykhman (known as the curator of Nikolai Ivanovich Kuznetsov). He was arrested on 19 October 1951 as an alleged participant in the fabricated Zionist Plot in MGB. Lepeshinskaya claimed that her appeals to Stalin saved the life of her husband. In March 1953, after Stalin death, Leonid Raykhman was freed, rehabilitated and appointed the head of MVD Control Commission. In August 1953 he was arrested again that time for his own fabrications of criminal cases, tortures of prison inmates and other violations of the "Socialist Law". He was sentenced to five years in prison in August 1956 but amnestied in November 1956. Since then he was doing a research work in astronomy.

In February 1940, the Kirov Ballet in Leningrad first performed their Don Quixote ballet with Lepeshinskaya as Kitry. The ballet was a great success. In 1941, when the Stalin Prize was established, Olga Lepeshinskaya was among the first laureates of the prize for her performance in Don Quixote. All together Lepesinskaya received four Stalin Prizes.

With the beginning of the Great Patriotic War Lepeshinskaya became a member of the Front brigade of the Bolshoi Theater. The brigade performed near the front lines, in hospitals, in Moscow and in Saratov where the Bolshoi was evacuated. Lepeshinskaya was a member of the brigade until the end of World War II. Her performances near the battlefields were filmed in the 1941 Soviet Documentary Kontsert - Frontu (Concerto to the Front).

In 1942, Soviet youth anti-fascist committee was organized. Lepeshinskaya was its Deputy chairperson.

In 1943, she starred as Assol in the Bolshoi première Scarlet Sails. On May 9 she was with her Bolshoi brigade with Soviet troops in Warsaw. The next day she received her invitation to perform in the Bolshoi's production of Cinderella. The ballet, first performed on 21 November 1945, was the first post-war show at the Bolshoi. Lepeshinskaya won her second Stalin prize for her performance. She received her third Stalin prize for her performance in the Flames of Paris and the fourth prize for the Tao-Hoa role in The Red Poppy. In 1951 she received the People's Artist of the USSR title along with Galina Ulanova.