The stars of the unknown first ladies of the Union: the wives of general secretaries who avoided publicity

In the USSR, single men were not allowed to lead and could not have a political career. First, the family was a guarantee that he had something to lose. Second, proof that the comrade is not homosexual.

It was far from always obvious who was now the wife of the next leader. If Nadezhda Krupskaya took an active part in political life, Nina Kukharchuk accompanied her husband – Nikita Khrushchev – on his visits abroad, and Raisa Gorbachev, it seems, did not leave the television screens at all, then not everyone could immediately answer who Andropov, Brezhnev and Stalin were married . These “first ladies” of the state were not the first in terms of public attention.

The country’s leader, known both for his fight against workplace absenteeism and the dismissal of eighteen ministers caught in large-scale bribery and embezzlement, as well as for his strict prosecution of dissidents and non-union creatives, has been married twice.

The second wife of Yuri Vladimirovich was named Tatyana Filippovna – with her he became general secretary. In her native Lebedeva, unlike the proud Kukharchuk, she took her husband’s surname. Their eldest son Igor was born a month after the entry of German troops into the USSR, their daughter Irina was born after the Second World War.

It must be said that Andropov had very soft, liberal views on the family, and his wife was hidden from the public not because she “knew her place.” The fact is that in 1956, when there was an anti-Soviet uprising in Hungary, Andropov was the Soviet ambassador to that country. The uprising was far from peaceful, and Tatyana Filippovna was seriously damaged by the cruel scenes she witnessed. She spent the rest of her life on medication. It was impossible to introduce her to the public, nor to force her to look at crowds of people.

The man who will become famous as the strictest general secretary took care of his wife throughout their life together, he made sure that her life was filled with family warmth as much as possible, and when her wife ended up in the hospital during exacerbations, he visited her regularly, although he was busy.

Konstantin Ustinovich Chernenko’s tenure as General Secretary turned out to be the shortest – only one year and twenty-five days. At the time of taking office, he was already 73 years old and the ruler had serious health problems.

According to the official biography, Chernenko was married twice, but there were constant rumors that the loving general secretary had more than two wives (according to some sources – 5), whom he left with children as soon as he found a new passion.

Be that as it may, Anna Dmitrievna Chernenko, née Lyubimova, is considered the second wife of the Soviet leader. The couple had three children together – daughters Elena and Vera and son Vladimir. Anna Dmitrievna and Konstantin Ustinovich lived together for 40 years, and it was she who supported her husband in the last years of his life.

Before marriage, the future “first lady” worked as a secretary of the Komsomol committee, and after she got married, she left her office duties and settled at home, becoming a devoted companion of her husband and creating a reliable background for him. And as we know, unfortunately, history does not remember such women – even on the web there is very little information about Anna Lyubimova. But it is said that it was she who once contributed to Chernenko’s friendship with the then leader Leonid Ilyich, which gave him the opportunity to advance in the political nomenclature.

The wife of the general secretary, who became famous for her passion for kisses, kept a dangerous secret: she was rumored to be Jewish. However, after the establishment of the modern state of Israel, intended to revive the ancient Jewish statehood and the urgent gathering of Jewish scientists and other experts from around the world, Jews in the USSR without exception began to be suspected of intending to flee to Israel with all state secrets.

This determined the internal politics of the USSR as somewhat Judeophobic. It became inconvenient for a party member, and even more so for a general secretary, to have a Jewish wife, and Viktoria Petrovna had to emphasize throughout her life that she was given an unorthodox name in honor of some family acquaintances, Poles: it is said that there were many Poles on the railway in Belgrade.

She personally took care of her husband’s menu and wardrobe. Although he had chefs named by function, she taught them to cook Leonid Ilyich’s favorite dishes and gave instructions on dietary restrictions. The domestic conclusion was given to her, at least outwardly, easily: politics did not interest her at all, she was indifferent to public events where she had to appear occasionally.

Victoria Petrovna survived her husband by thirteen years. Unlike the Gorbachevs, most of the state property was taken from her. At that time, Victoria Petrovna was suffering from diabetes, which limited her mobility. She spent the last years of her life alone and died after the collapse of the USSR. Maybe before that she repeatedly recalled the brightest moments of her life. For example, how she, a student of the first year of a technical school, a future nurse, was invited to a dance by the pretty bubble girl Lenya.

Judging by the circumstances under which Stalin conceived children, he was attracted to middle-aged girls. Nadezhda Alliluyeva, who is considered Stalin’s main love and was his wife when he became the head of the country, was no exception. Stalin had an affair with her when she was sixteen.

The unusualness of the novel was due to the fact that Iosif Vissarionovich was once supposedly the lover of Nadezhda Sergeevna’s mother, and in this capacity spent time with little Nadia. He saved her once when she was drowning. According to legend, it was this memory that made sixteen-year-old Naděžda fall in love without memory when she met Josef again. He was thirty-seven at the time and had returned from Siberia, where he had had two children with another teenage girl since her fourteenth birthday.

According to the fashion of the time, Nadezhda kept her maiden name. In the twenties, a son and a daughter were born to her. Alliluyeva’s daughter later recalled that her mother often left them for nannies because her father wanted her to be there at all the feasts. There is a version that out of jealousy of the children, despite the desire of Nadezhda Sergeevna to give birth again, he forcibly sent her to have an abortion.

In 1932, Nadezhda Sergeevna committed suicide by shooting herself in the heart. Rumors spread that she did it after an argument with her husband. However, the adopted son, who grew up in Stalin’s family, claimed that the main reason for Alliluyev’s instability was the most unbearable headaches that she suffered from in the last years of her life. The argument could only serve as a trigger.

Alliluyeva practically did not participate in public life: Stalin did not want to establish a second Krupskaya next to him, and Nadezhda Sergeevna herself stayed away from political intrigues. She once tried to save eight of her former classmates who were arrested in the 1930s: she called Yagod to let them go. Yagoda calmly replied that they had just died of some infectious disease right in the prison.

After Alliluyev’s death, Stalin often visited his wife’s grave. Their daughter claimed that he himself thought about suicide in the first days after the funeral. He also testifies that his mother left him a farewell letter full of reproaches, and this letter was immediately destroyed by his father.

Photo: Musaelyan Vladimir, Pesov Eduard/TASS; Vladimir Musaelyan/TASS; Kavashkin Boris, Yatsina Vladimir/TASS