Katya Furtseva could have stayed in the South. Grow old under the scorching southern sun. Find yourself a betrothed. But something prevents you from focusing on your personal life. Maybe Komsomol work. Maybe sports. She's a good swimmer. Knows how to avoid underwater currents, harmful influences. She is noticed, summoned to the city committee of the Komsomol and offered a new Komsomol ticket. From the blessed South she is sent to the North, to the very heart of the revolution, to the capital of October, to Leningrad. To the Higher Courses of Civil Aeroflot.
For the first time Katya is in a big city, in a European capital. How many people! How many new acquaintances - all in protective tunics, all young, brave, correct. Of course she fell in love. Of course, in the pilot. His name was Peter Ivanovich Petkov.
At that time, "pilot" was an almost mystical word. The pilots are not people, but "Stalin's falcons". The pilot is irresistible, like Don Juan. To be married to a pilot meant to keep up with the times. To live almost by a myth. It was possible to share everything with the pilot - even love for Comrade Stalin.
Several photographs of Yekaterina Alekseevna with Pyotr Ivanovich have survived. Looking at the photo, you involuntarily think that her betrothed is a person accustomed to standing in the center. Leader by nature. This is probably why Ekaterina Alekseevna seems like a gray mouse next to her.
This was generally her remarkable property. Being next to men, with any of them, she knew how to set off his dignity, leaving herself in the shadows. And the imprint of resignation on her face is also striking. Exhaustion. Maybe the price for your exorbitant enthusiasm?
Petr Ivanovich is a one hundred percent man, a practical man. He does not understand her passion for airplanes. At this time, they were sent to Saratov (to teach at an aviation technical school), then to Moscow. Here Furtseva becomes an instructor of the student department in the apparatus of the Central Committee of the Komsomol. A year later, she was sent on a Komsomol ticket to the Moscow Institute of Fine Chemical Technology. The future process engineer plunges headlong into Komsomol work. Apparently, the bourgeois way of life is not for her.
The war broke out, my husband was mobilized. She was left alone, with her mother, who by that time had been discharged to Moscow. Lectures, laboratory, cards, rations ... Landmines are exploding in Moscow, she, along with everyone, is on duty on the roof, extinguishing incendiary bombs - saving the capital. And suddenly - long-running news after a date with her husband: she is pregnant.
Svetlana was born in May 1942. Only four months after the birth of his daughter did her husband come to visit. And ... he announced that he had been living with another for a long time.
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Disappointment followed disappointment. Catherine graduated from the institute and stopped in indecision. For the first time in my life, I didn't know where to throw myself. But he shouldn't have rushed anywhere. You just had to wait. As a political activist, she was offered to enter graduate school, and a year and a half later she was elected party organizer of the institute. She found herself in a strange, conventional world of "liberated" political workers. Science was done away with forever.
Now the three of them lived: her mother, Svetlana and she. Ekaterina received a room in a two-room apartment near the Krasnoselskaya metro station. As a party organizer. From the institute, where she is clearly feeling cramped, she is sent to work in the Frunze District Party Committee.
The immediate chief of Furtseva, the first secretary of the district committee, was Pyotr Vladimirovich Boguslavsky. She developed a special relationship with him. An office romance is something of an outlet. Communication with Boguslavsky gave her invaluable experience. It was then that she began to comprehend the laws of the male game, in the rules of which - and a man's feast, and a salty word, and dubious jokes. She learned not to notice it.
In 1949, during a party concert backstage at the Bolshoi Theater, Nikolai Shvernik gave her an audience with the Boss. Stalin liked her. For the first and last time she had seen a living God, but for his keen eye it was enough. In December 1949, she speaks at an expanded plenum of the city party committee, where, harshly criticizing herself, she talks about the district committee's shortcomings. Purely feminine. A bit masochistic. Next to men, it becomes a wise shadow. Seemingly without intent. And they notice her. The meeting with Stalin yielded results.
In early 1950, she moved to a building on Staraya Square, to the office of the second secretary of the Moscow City Party Committee. A couple of months later, her faithful friend Pyotr Vladimirovich Boguslavsky fell victim to the struggle against cosmopolitanism - he was removed from all posts and expelled from the party. The novel ended by itself.
From 1950 to 1954, Furtseva clashed closely with Khrushchev. There were rumors about their romance. Immediately after Stalin's death, she became the first secretary of the city party committee. Now all of Moscow was under her command. She made a strong impression on Khrushchev: both by the fact that she spoke at meetings without a piece of paper, and by the fact that she was not afraid to confess and repent of her imaginary sins, and by the fact that she was a "specialist." This was her favorite word. When meeting new people, the first thing she did was ask: "Are you a specialist ?!"
Until the end of her life, Furtseva retained a respectful attitude towards professors and important old people, associate professors, whom she had seen in graduate school. The "specialist" knows more than she, this conviction was very strong in her. And in her team, she - a former weaver - wanted to see just such people.
"Weaver, from the peasants". Thanks to this line in her biography, she ascended high. And the word "weaver" will accompany her all her life. Someone will command respect, someone - neglect.
But now the weaving factory is a thing of the past. Ekaterina Alekseevna Furtseva - First Secretary of the Moscow City Committee. A woman playing men's games. The moves in these games were different: swearing, and drinking, and a long relaxing feast - and all the other accessories of men's life. And in order to survive and, moreover, to win this game, she had to play according to the "male" rules, without any discounts. Hence - and vodka, and a variety of barbaric ways to quickly put yourself in order. Hence the fatigue on the face.
The problems of the only woman in the men's camp are sometimes absurd. For example, a household item is a toilet. Next to the room where the Politburo (then the Presidium of the Central Committee) met, there was only one toilet - a man's. During a long meeting, the men ran there, like boys, in turn. Ekaterina Alekseevna, if it was too much for her, she had to run far along the corridors, to another compartment, where there was a women's toilet. And during the time that the person was not in the office, anything could happen.
It never occurred to any of the members and candidates for members of the Politburo that Ekaterina Alekseevna might have similar physiological problems.
Although once it was the absence of a female toilet that played a fantastic role in her life. Something like a magic wand for Cinderella, who in an instant turned an ordinary member of the Central Committee of the party into a powerful member of the Presidium of the Central Committee.
This took place after Stalin's death. Furtseva then held the post of secretary of the Central Committee and by rank was supposed to be present at a narrow private gathering of members of the Presidium of the Central Committee. The "seasoned" ones Malenkov, Kaganovich and Molotov gathered to overthrow another "hardened" - Nikita.
Furtseva, Khrushchev, Malenkov, Kaganovich, Molotov, other members of the Presidium of the Central Committee sat in a stuffy room next to the former Stalinist cabinet. Ekaterina Alekseevna immediately understood where the scales were tilting. Most of the members of the Presidium voted against Khrushchev. And then the inexplicable happened. She decided to resist the obvious injustice. How is it that a person who stirred the Stalinist anthill - and suddenly trampled into the mud? Perhaps she did not lose the far-reaching consequences of her act, she simply reacted to the obvious injustice of the "terrible men". But how and how could she help? And then she "wanted to go out." It was a move from a women's game. She simply calculated that, as a representative of the "weaker" sex, she has the right to leave at least once during a meeting, no matter how important it may be, "to send her natural needs." And the men, her potential opponents, took a bite. Since there was only a men's toilet nearby, and it was necessary to run to the women's one for a long time, she had a formal reason to be absent for a long time, without arousing suspicion either from Malenkov or from Kaganovich. She was released. Just like in the school game - "can I get out?".
Instead of a toilet, she rushed to her office to call those on whom it depended not to let a new coup take place.
A phone call of this kind could be perceived as a provocation. Anyone with whom she spoke could have thought: Malenkov or Kaganovich was standing next to the caller and listening to how powerful generals were going to overthrow him.
But the one who would later be called the Great Catherine, passionately, almost hysterically, begged the all-powerful generals to come to the meeting and not allow Nikita Sergeevich to be removed from the post of First Secretary of the Central Committee. And she persuaded. In minutes. Almost all of those whom she called said that they would come and support Nikita Sergeevich - simply by saying that their law enforcement agencies would not go against him.
Brezhnev did the same trick. He rushed to call Defense Minister Marshal Zhukov. And when he returned, Molotov, Kaganovich and Pervukhin sat down next to him, everyone was wondering where he was going. To which Brezhnev replied that he had a sudden upset and he sat in the restroom.
Zhukov, Ignatov and a number of other members of the Central Committee who supported Khrushchev came to the Kremlin. The meeting of the Presidium has not ended yet. They entered and announced that such important matters could not be solved in private, that everything had to be resolved. Khrushchev was suddenly raised and seated on the throne.
It was a happy time for Furtseva. And not only in public life. While still working as a secretary in the Moscow City Party Committee, she met Nikolai Pavlovich Firyubin, one of her subordinates.
Nikolai Firyubin was a professional diplomat. He spoke English and French: His former colleague Nikolai Mesyatsev described him as follows: "He knew how and wanted to please women."
He was a short, slender brown-haired man with a thoroughbred, expressive face. Men did not like him because of his arrogance. To those who knew both of them well, it was amazing how such different people could get together.
She herself did not really realize that "this" had happened. She was drawn to Firyubin. It was impossible to fight this.
Their secret meetings gave rise to a lot of speculation. Everyone in the party's Central Committee, from the secretaries to the secretaries of the Central Committee, discussed Furtseva's reckless trips to Firyubin. It was a local sexual revolution at the level of a single female minister.
Outwardly, she behaved inappropriately. At every opportunity she flew to him in Prague, then to Belgrade, where he was transferred as an ambassador. All this was in front of everyone, but she was not going to hide. This clearly flattered him. They didn't even notice how smoothly their passion grew into a game called "Romeo and Juliet".
Firyubin looked for an excuse to break off his previous marriage, threatened to renounce everything, but E.A. did not ask him for anything, did not demand anything and, perhaps, therefore, attracted him with something.
Five years later, when he returned to Moscow and became Deputy Foreign Minister, they signed. And only then did EA realize how wrong she was. But it was no longer possible to change anything.
Khrushchev did not forget what he owed her. Soon, Ekaterina Alekseevna was introduced to the Presidium of the Central Committee and overnight turned from a party Cinderella to a party Queen.
Khrushchev's gratitude, however, was not eternal. The fact that the first time served a good service - the telephone, played against Ekaterina Alekseevna herself for the second time.
It was 1960, the second half of Khrushchev's reign. Many were dissatisfied with him. Including Furtsev. This dissatisfaction was let down in steam. Just washing the bones. Once, in a telephone conversation, Furtseva "walked" on Nikita Sergeevich. The next day he read the transcript of her personal conversation with a member of the Central Committee, Aristov. His reaction was lightning fast. At the next, extraordinary, plenum of the Presidium, Ekaterina Alekseevna was removed from the post of secretary.
And the overheard conversation was, of course, only a pretext for Khrushchev. The one who saw you weak cannot be your favorite for long. And Furtseva found herself just in this position.
Her reaction was as frank and sincere as Khrushchev's "footstep". On the same day, she arrived home, ordered not to let anyone in, went to the bath and opened her veins. But she was not going to die. That is why she did not cancel the meeting with one of her friends, who was assigned the role of a savior angel.
And this friend played her role. There was surprise at the silence outside the door, then bewilderment. Then the fright. Then - a call to the special services and the arrival of a special brigade, which broke down the door and found Ekaterina Alekseevna bleeding.
But Khrushchev did not respond to this “cry from the heart”. The next day, at a meeting of the expanded composition of the Central Committee of the party, of which Furtseva remained a member, he, laughing wryly, explained to the party members that E.A. has a banal menopause and should not pay attention to it. EA accurately conveyed these words. She bit her lip and realized: for the second time, women's games in a company that only plays men's games do not work. And she closed herself in. It was 1961.
The procedure for removal from power was worked out to the smallest detail. No one burst into the office, defiantly did not turn off the phone. The abdication of power was marked by silence. They suddenly stopped greeting you, and most importantly, the turntable fell silent. It was simply turned off.
A month later, a message came that Furtseva was appointed Minister of Culture. And it was then that the nickname that stuck to her for a long time went for a walk throughout the country - Catherine the Great.
She considered her team tens of thousands of cultural workers in Moscow and the Moscow region. And another three or four million rank-and-file "army of cultors" throughout the USSR: modest librarians, learned museum workers, impudent employees of theaters and film studios, etc. All this army called her the Great Catherine - who knows, sarcastically, with admiration?
But analogies with the Russian tsarina arose not only among the subjects of her "empire". Furtseva's office was decorated with a portrait of Queen Elizabeth, with a laconic inscription: "To Catherine from Elizabeth." There was a legend that, after talking for half an hour with Furtseva, the Queen turned to her with a request: “Catherine, do not call me Your Highness, just call Comrade Elizabeth.
The Danish queen Margrethe once said that she would like to do for her country as steadfastly as Furtseva did for hers.
After her expulsion from the Presidium of the Central Committee, she began to drink. I drank a lot, but not ugly. While getting drunk, she complained about fate, about the peasants who abandoned her, cursing them for nothing.
Everything fell out of hand. At work - a series of triumphs and stupidity. According to her note addressed to Suslov, the Taganka Theater was established, and at the same time, with her light hand, abstraction artists were vilified in the Manege. With her blessing, Shatrov's play The Bolsheviks was performed in Sovremennik. It was she who initiated the construction of a sports complex in Luzhniki and a new building for a choreographic school.
Personal life ... It's all over with Firyubin. She did not get divorced, but she did not love either. Became withdrawn. She revived, perhaps, only during noisy feasts, over a glass of good wine. In recent years, this tendency has already been noticed by everyone. Marishka, the granddaughter of Ekaterina Alekseevna, was born to her daughter Svetlana. Svetlana and her husband really wanted to have a dacha. Furtseva did not want to build it, but under pressure from her daughter, she turned to the Bolshoi Theater - there it was possible to buy building materials for a penny. The deputy director of the Bolshoi Theater for construction helped her, and then a scandal erupted. She received a reprimand, almost flew out of the party.
For the last two years, Furtseva has been alone. Almost no one visited her house, Firyubin had an affair on the side, and she knew about it ...
On the night of October 24-25, 1974, a bell rang in the apartment of Svetlana Furtseva on Kutuzovsky Prospekt. The call was made by the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR, Nikolai Pavlovich Firyubin, her mother's husband. He cried. "Ekaterina Alekseevna is no more."
Source of information: Anton Pototsky, "Cult of Personalities" magazine, September / October 1999.
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Biography, life story of Ekaterina Alekseevna Furtseva
Furtseva Ekaterina Alekseevna - Soviet statesman and party leader. Minister of Culture of the USSR.
Childhood and adolescence
Ekaterina was born in the small town of Vyshny Volochek (Tver province) on November 24 (according to the new style - December 7), 1910. Her father, Alexei Gavrilovich, a worker, died at the front in 1914. The girl was brought up by her mother Matryona Nikolaevna, an employee of a weaving factory.
In 1924, Ekaterina Furtseva joined the ranks of the youth communist organization of the Komsomol. In 1928, the girl graduated from school and got a job at the same spinning and weaving factory where her mother also worked. Within the walls of this factory, Furtseva spent two years, after which she seriously took up Komsomol work.
In 1930, twenty-year-old Catherine was admitted to the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks). From that moment until 1933, the girl worked first as the secretary of the Korenevsky district committee of the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League of the Kursk region, then - the secretary of the Feodosia City Committee of the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League.
In 1933, the daughter of an ordinary worker, who was brought up without a father, became a student at the Moscow Institute of Fine Chemical Technology. In parallel, the girl held the posts of secretary of the Komsomol committee of the institute and an employee of the apparatus of the Komsomol Central Committee.
Career
In 1937, a year before graduation, Ekaterina Furtseva was appointed secretary of the party organization of the university. Catherine worked for this position until 1941. After that, for a year she was the secretary of the Kuibyshev city committee of the CPSU (b), then for 8 years she worked first as the second, and then as the first secretary of the Frunzensky district committee of the CPSU (b) in Moscow.
From 1950 to 1954, Ekaterina Alekseevna was the second secretary of the Moscow City Committee of the CPSU. In 1952, a woman was elected as a candidate member of the Central Committee of the CPSU (she was subsequently re-elected several times - in 1961, 1966 and 1971). From 1954 and for 3 years, Ekaterina served as First Secretary of the Moscow City Committee of the CPSU. In parallel, in 1950-1962, Furtseva was a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.
CONTINUED BELOW
In 1956, Ekaterina Furtseva was elected a candidate member of the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee. In the same year she became the secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU, having worked in this post for 4 years. In 1957 she became a member of the Presidium, in 1961 her powers were removed.
In 1960, Ekaterina Furtseva was appointed to the post of Minister of Culture of the USSR. Furtseva held this honorary post for 14 years, until her death. Thanks to her, many theaters received new premises, in the USSR they began to hold magnificent creative festivals (music, cinema, ballet, and so on), museums and monuments appeared. Furtsev successfully combined her work as a minister with the duties of a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR (since 1966).
Despite the fact that Ekaterina Alekseevna did a lot for the development of the culture of the USSR, many art workers of that time noted the excessive severity of the minister. So, Furtseva was not very well versed in modern trends in painting, theater and music and sometimes forbade even very highly artistic works to be displayed. Due to Furtseva's personal dislike for rock music, the planned concerts did not take place in the USSR and.
A family
The first husband of Ekaterina Furtseva was the pilot Pyotr Ivanovich Bitkov. They got married in 1935. In 1942, the couple had a daughter, Svetlana. In 1944, Catherine and Peter divorced. It is believed that their marriage broke up due to the fact that Bitkov met another woman. However, in fact, the reason for their breakup lies in something else ... For 7 years of marriage, Catherine, passionately dreaming of having a child, was never able to get pregnant from Peter. When Bitkov went to the front, she got a lover solely for the sake of impregnating her. When Pyotr Ivanovich returned home, Sveta was already 4 months old. At first Bitkov was unaware of the deception, but one day, with the help of their neighbor, the truth surfaced. The legend that it was Bitkov who found himself another, and not Furtseva, behind her husband's back, fighting for the freedom of the homeland, allowed herself to get pregnant from a stranger, the spouses composed in order not to humiliate the gallant pilot in the eyes of the public.
While working in the Frunzensky District Committee, Ekaterina Furtseva began an affair with the secretary of this organization, Pyotr Boguslavsky. Their relationship ended when Peter was removed from office. He did not want to spoil the reputation of the woman he truly loved.
In 1956, Furtseva became the wife of diplomat Nikolai Firyubin. Already married, Catherine fell passionately in love with the passionate Italian Antonio Giringelli, director of La Scala.
Mysterious death
On the night of October 24-25, 1974, Ekaterina Furtseva died. The official cause of death is acute heart failure. But it is widely believed that Furtseva killed herself. In recent years, the minister felt terribly lonely, and the day of October 24 turned out to be especially unpleasant for her - she faced problems at work, had a fight with her husband, saw how happy her daughter was away from her. Apparently, the prolonged depression and the nebula of the future forced Furtseva to say goodbye to life.
It is believed that in the second half of the 20th century there was no woman in our country who would have reached such political heights and made such an incredible career as Ekaterina Alekseevna Furtseva. She was the secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU, a member of the Presidium of the Central Committee, the first secretary of the Moscow City Party Committee and for almost 14 years - the Minister of Culture of the USSR.
Let's remember her life in the format of a biographical photo collection.
Portrait of a candidate member of the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee E. A. Furtseva
Ekaterina Alekseevna Furtseva was born on December 7, 1910 in a village near Vyshny Volochk. Mother Matryona Nikolaevna worked at a weaving factory. My father died in the First World War.
Ekaterina Alekseevna with her mother
Catherine graduated from the seven-year school, at the age of fifteen she entered the weaving factory where her mother worked. But a different fate awaited her. At twenty, the factory girl joined the party. Soon the first party task follows: she is sent to the Kursk region to raise agriculture. But there she does not stay long, she is "thrown" to the Komsomol-party work in Feodosia.
Portrait of the young Ekaterina Furtseva
She is noticed, summoned to the city committee of the Komsomol and offered a new Komsomol ticket. From the blessed South she is sent to the North, to the very heart of the revolution, to the capital of October, to Leningrad. To the Higher Courses of Civil Aeroflot.
Nikita Khrushchev, Nina Petrovna, Ekaterina Furtseva (third from the left in the first row). Moscow region, early 60s
In the new city, Catherine fell in love with a pilot. His name was Peter Ivanovich Bitkov.
At that time, "pilot" was an almost mystical word. The pilots are not people, but "Stalin's falcons". The pilot is irresistible, like Don Juan. To be married to a pilot meant to keep up with the times. To live almost by a myth. It was possible to share everything with the pilot - even love for Comrade Stalin.
Ekaterina Furtseva with her husband Peter Bitkov and daughter Svetlana
In Moscow, Furtseva becomes an instructor of the student department in the apparatus of the Central Committee of the Komsomol. A year later, she was sent on a Komsomol ticket to the Moscow Institute of Fine Chemical Technology. The future process engineer plunges headlong into Komsomol work.
Clement Voroshilov, Anastas Mikoyan, Ekaterina Furtseva
The war broke out, my husband was mobilized. She was left alone, with her mother, who by that time had been discharged to Moscow. Landmines are exploding in Moscow, she, along with everyone, is on duty on the roof, extinguishes incendiary bombs - she saves the capital. And suddenly - long-running news after a date with her husband: she is pregnant.
Ekaterina Furtseva with her daughter Svetlana
Svetlana was born in May 1942. Only four months after the birth of his daughter did her husband come to visit. He announced that he had been living with another for a long time. Disappointment followed disappointment. After graduating from the institute, she, as a political activist, was offered to enter graduate school, and a year and a half later she was elected the party organizer of the institute. Science was done away with forever.
Now the three of them lived: her mother, Svetlana and she. Ekaterina received a room in a two-room apartment near the Krasnoselskaya metro station. From the institute she is sent to work in the Frunzensky district party committee. The immediate chief of Furtseva, the first secretary of the district committee, was Pyotr Vladimirovich Boguslavsky. She developed a special relationship with him.
In 1949, during a party concert backstage at the Bolshoi Theater, Nikolai Shvernik gave her an audience with the leader. Stalin liked her. She had seen him for the first and last time, but that was enough for her.
Ekaterina Furtseva speaks at the Plenum of Creative Unions. 1967
In December 1949, she speaks at an expanded plenum of the city party committee, where, harshly criticizing herself, she talks about the district committee's shortcomings.
In early 1950, she moved to a building on Staraya Square, to the office of the second secretary of the Moscow City Party Committee. A couple of months later, her faithful friend Pyotr Vladimirovich Boguslavsky fell victim to the struggle against cosmopolitanism - he was removed from all posts and expelled from the party. The novel ended by itself.
Family of Ekaterina Furtseva: daughter Svetlana, granddaughter Marina, son-in-law Igor Kozlov - with cosmonaut Adriyan Nikolaev
From 1950 to 1954, Furtseva clashed closely with Khrushchev. There were rumors about their romance. Immediately after Stalin's death, she became the first secretary of the city party committee. Now all of Moscow was under her command.
NS. Khrushchev, writer K. A. Fedin, Minister of Culture of the USSR E. A. Furtseva (right) and others talking at a country dacha during a meeting of party and government leaders with figures of Soviet culture and art.
She made a strong impression on Khrushchev: both by the fact that she spoke at meetings without a piece of paper, and by the fact that she was not afraid to confess and repent of her imaginary sins, and by the fact that she was a "specialist." This was her favorite word. When meeting new people, the first thing she did was ask: "Are you a specialist ?!"
N.S. Khrushchev and E. A. Furtseva at the opening of the exhibition. 1950s
Until the end of her life, Furtseva retained a respectful attitude towards professors and important old people, associate professors, whom she had seen in graduate school. The "specialist" knows more than she, this conviction was very strong in her. And in her team, she - a former weaver - wanted to see just such people.
It was a happy time for Furtseva. And not only in public life. While still working as a secretary in the Moscow City Party Committee, she met Nikolai Pavlovich Firyubin, one of her subordinates.
Ekaterina Furtseva with Nikolai Pavlovich Firyubin
Nikolai Firyubin was a professional diplomat, a short, slender brown-haired man with a thoroughbred and expressive face. He spoke English and French. To those who knew both of them well, it was amazing how such different people could get together.
Outwardly, she behaved inappropriately. At every opportunity she flew to him in Prague, then to Belgrade, where he was transferred as an ambassador. All this was in front of everyone, but she was not going to hide. It flattered him. Firyubin was looking for an excuse to break off the previous marriage, he threatened to renounce everything.
Five years later, when he returned to Moscow and became Deputy Foreign Minister, they signed. And only then Ekaterina Alekseevna realized how wrong she was. However, it was no longer possible to change anything.
Khrushchev did not forget what he owed her. Soon, Ekaterina Alekseevna was introduced to the Presidium of the Central Committee and overnight turned from a party Cinderella to a party Queen.
Khrushchev's gratitude, however, was not eternal. The fact that the first time served a good service - the telephone, played against Ekaterina Alekseevna herself for the second time.
Participants of the 1st All-Union Congress of Journalists; among those present: 1st row from left to right: General Director of TASS under the Council of Ministers of the USSR N. G. Palgunov (2nd from the left), Chairman of the Presidium of the USSR Armed Forces K. E. Voroshilov, editor-in-chief of the newspaper Pravda P. A. Satyukov, Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR N. S. Khrushchev, member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU M. A. Suslov (6th left), member of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU E. A. Furtseva, member of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU N. A. Mukhitdinov.
It was 1960, the second half of Khrushchev's reign. Many were unhappy with him. Including Furtsev. This dissatisfaction was let down in steam. Just washing the bones. Once, in a telephone conversation, Furtseva "walked" on Nikita Sergeevich. The next day he read the transcript of her personal conversation with a member of the Central Committee, Aristov. His reaction was lightning fast. At the next, extraordinary, plenum of the Presidium, Ekaterina Alekseevna was removed from the post of secretary.
Her reaction was as frank and sincere as Khrushchev's “footstep”. On the same day, she arrived home, ordered not to let anyone in, went to the bath and opened her veins. But she was not going to die. That is why she did not cancel the meeting with one of her friends, who was assigned the role of a savior angel. And this friend played her role.
There was surprise at the silence outside the door, then bewilderment. Then the fright. Then - a call to the special services and the arrival of a special brigade, which broke down the door and found Ekaterina Alekseevna bleeding. Khrushchev did not respond to this “cry from the heart”. The next day, at a meeting of the expanded composition of the Central Committee of the party, of which Furtseva remained a member, he, laughing wryly, explained to the party members that Ekaterina Alekseevna had a banal menopause and should not pay attention to it. These words were accurately conveyed to her. She bit her lip and realized: for the second time, women's games in a company that only plays men's games do not work.
Gina Lollobrigida, Yuri Gagarin, Marisa Merlini, Ekaterina Furtseva
The procedure for removal from power was worked out to the smallest detail. No one burst into the office, defiantly did not turn off the phone. The abdication of power was marked by silence. They suddenly stopped greeting you, and most importantly, the turntable fell silent. It was simply turned off. However, a month later, a message came that Furtseva was appointed Minister of Culture. And it was then that the nickname that stuck to her for a long time went for a walk throughout the country - Catherine the Great.
She considered her team tens of thousands of cultural workers in Moscow and the Moscow region. And another three or four million ordinary "army of culturologists" throughout the USSR: modest librarians, learned museum workers, insolent employees of theaters and film studios, etc. All this army called her the Great Catherine.
Delegates to the 24th Congress of the CPSU, Minister of Culture of the USSR E. A. Furtseva (right) and soloist of the ballet of the Bolshoi Theater of the USSR, People's Artist of the RSFSR M. Kondratyeva talking during a break between sessions.
Furtseva's office was decorated with a portrait of Queen Elizabeth, with a laconic inscription: "To Catherine from Elizabeth." There was a legend that, after talking for half an hour with Furtseva, the Queen turned to her with a request: "Catherine, do not call me Your Highness, just call me Comrade Elizabeth."
Ekaterina Furtseva and Sophia Loren
The Danish queen Margrethe once said that she would like to do for her country as steadfastly as Furtseva did for hers.
Speech by the Minister of Culture of the USSR E. A. Furtseva at the opening of the II International Competition of Ballet Dancers at the Bolshoi Theater of the USSR.
According to her note addressed to Suslov, the Taganka Theater was established, and at the same time, with her light hand, abstraction artists were vilified in the Manege. With her blessing, Shatrov's play The Bolsheviks was performed in Sovremennik. It was she who initiated the construction of a sports complex in Luzhniki and a new building for a choreographic school.
Minister of Culture of the USSR E.A. Furtseva and Hero of Socialist Labor, brigadier of shipbuilders of the Baltic Shipyard named after S. Ordzhonikidze V. A. Smirnov
It was all over with Firyubin. She did not get divorced, but she did not love either. Became withdrawn. She revived, perhaps, only during noisy feasts, over a glass of good wine. In recent years, this tendency has already been noticed by everyone. Marishka, the granddaughter of Ekaterina Alekseevna, was born to her daughter Svetlana.
Ekaterina Alekseevna with her daughter Sveta and granddaughter Katya
Svetlana and her husband really wanted to have a dacha. Furtseva did not want to build it, but under pressure from her daughter, she turned to the Bolshoi Theater - there it was possible to buy construction materials inexpensively. The deputy director of the Bolshoi Theater for construction helped her, and then a scandal erupted. She received a reprimand, almost flew out of the party.
E.A. Furtseva, A. I. Mikoyan, L. I. Brezhnev, K. E. Voroshilov
For the last two years, Furtseva has been alone. Almost no one was in her house, Firyubin had an affair on the side, and she knew about it.
On the night of October 24-25, 1974, a bell rang in the apartment of Svetlana Furtseva on Kutuzovsky Prospekt. The call was made by the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR, Nikolai Pavlovich Firyubin, her mother's husband. He cried: "Ekaterina Alekseevna is no more."
Having climbed to the top of the political Olympus with great difficulty, the Minister of Culture of the USSR Yekaterina Furtseva preferred not to remember what was left at its foot. But three decades after her death, the archives of Korenevo village revealed one of the secrets of a powerful woman. And the official biography of "Catherine III" has changed.
The first marriage lasted three months
Even the authors of the most famous books about Furtseva claim: the first lady of the USSR got married twice. And both times were unsuccessful. The woman, on whose decisions the life of the country largely depended, was unable to change her own destiny. The first husband, pilot Pyotr Bitkov, left the family immediately after the birth of his daughter. “I'm tired of living with your job!” He threw to Furtseva before slamming the door. The second husband, Deputy Foreign Minister Nikolai Firyubin, according to the recollections of relatives, in the last years of their life together did not miss an opportunity to humiliate his wife. And a month after the death of Furtseva, he married another. There were also rumors about the special relationship of the first lady of the USSR with Khrushchev.
It is not surprising that among the representatives of the party elite, the biographers did not notice the Korenev carpenter - the first husband of Furtseva. However, so that no one knew about him, Ekaterina Alekseevna herself tried a lot. However, it was not possible to delete it from the archives.
"A year after starting work in Korenevo, Furtseva got married. The marriage was registered on August 25, 1931 in our village council," says Valentin PISARYUK, a local historian of Korenevo. Crimea. Then she said that her first husband was Bitkov. She didn't even like to remember her work in Korenevo, so that the fact of an unsuccessful marriage would not accidentally surfaced. "
If Ekaterina Furtseva chose to forget about the Kursk outback and the mistakes of her youth, the residents of Korenevo, on the contrary, carefully keep the documents associated with the name of an influential woman. In 2006, by the decision of the head of the administration, the district house of culture was named after Furtseva. It was in this building, the former regional committee of the Komsomol, that the future member of the Politburo took her first steps up the career ladder. And it was in Korenevo that Furtseva joined the party.
The rural archive stores many documents reflecting the activities of the proactive first secretary of the regional Komsomol committee: "On convening a meeting of collective farm youth", "On mobilizing forces for logging" ... A dozen years later, she will have to resolve issues of a different scale, and her subordinates will be world famous cultural figures ... Most of them will remember Furtseva with gratitude. Even if she did not cut the "window to Europe" for the creative intelligentsia, she nevertheless opened the "window". Weeks of Italian and French cinema, exhibitions of French impressionists opened in Moscow. A new building for a ballet school, a new Moscow Art Theater, a children's musical theater under the direction of Natalia Sats, Obraztsov's theater and Sovremennik were built.
Joseph Kobzon is going to Korenevo
On December 7, 2006, the memorial hall of Ekaterina Furtseva was inaugurated in Moscow. Yuri Luzhkov named her one of the capital's libraries. The Korenev delegation was also invited to the holiday. Valentin Pisaryuk, whose performance was vigorously applauded by Joseph Kobzon, gave Furtseva's granddaughter a photo of her famous grandmother at the regional congress of collective farmers, told about the opening of a memorial plaque at the rural house of culture. Upon learning that the institution was named after the Minister of the USSR, Iosif Kobzon promised its leaders the support of the state and the Ekaterina Furtseva Foundation. And he even expressed a desire to come to Korenevo personally.
The guests also visited the Novodevichye cemetery, where the ashes of the one that was once known as "the woman on the Mausoleum" rest. “There is only a name and years of life on the marble slab,” says Vasily Pisaryuk. “It seems that someone specially made such an inconspicuous tombstone so that people would not think about who she was during her lifetime or about her death.”
The death of Ekaterina Furtseva really raised many questions. The official cause is heart failure. However, many believe that the Minister of Culture passed away on her own, without waiting for her to "leave" her high post. "Whatever it was, whatever they say about me, I will die as a minister!" - said "Catherine III" shortly before her death. And so it happened. Furtseva died at the end of October 1974, not having lived a month before her sixty-fourth birthday.
Probably, in the second half of the 20th century, there was no woman in our country who would have reached such political heights and made such an incredible career as Ekaterina Alekseevna Furtseva ...
Probably, in the second half of the 20th century, there was no woman in our country who would have reached such political heights and made such an incredible career as Ekaterina Alekseevna Furtseva. She was the secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU, a member of the Presidium of the Central Committee, the first secretary of the Moscow City Party Committee and for almost fourteen years - the Minister of Culture of the USSR.
She was born on December 7, 1910 in a village near Vyshny Volochk. Mother Matryona Nikolaevna worked at a weaving factory. My father died in the First World War. Katya graduated from the seven-year school, at the age of fifteen she entered the weaving factory where her mother worked. It seems that everything was a foregone conclusion: thirty years in the branch of hell - amid the stupefying rumble of looms, then early deafness and a meager pension. But Katya will face a different fate. At twenty, the factory girl joined the party. Soon the first party task follows: she is sent to the Kursk region to raise agriculture. But there she does not stay long, she is "thrown" to the Komsomol-party work in Feodosia.
Katya Furtseva could have stayed in the South. Grow old under the scorching southern sun. Find yourself a betrothed. But something prevents you from focusing on your personal life. Maybe Komsomol work. Maybe sports. She's a good swimmer. Knows how to avoid underwater currents, harmful influences. She is noticed, summoned to the city committee of the Komsomol and offered a new Komsomol ticket. From the blessed South she is sent to the North, to the very heart of the revolution, to the capital of October, to Leningrad. To the Higher Courses of Civil Aeroflot.
For the first time Katya is in a big city, in a European capital. How many people! How many new acquaintances - all in protective tunics, all young, brave, correct. Of course she fell in love. Of course, in the pilot. His name was Peter Ivanovich Petkov.
At that time, "pilot" was an almost mystical word. The pilots are not people, but "Stalin's falcons". The pilot is irresistible, like Don Juan. To be married to a pilot meant to keep up with the times. To live almost by a myth. It was possible to share everything with the pilot - even love for Comrade Stalin.
Several photographs of Yekaterina Alekseevna with Pyotr Ivanovich have survived. Looking at the photo, you involuntarily think that her betrothed is a person accustomed to standing in the center. Leader by nature. This is probably why Ekaterina Alekseevna seems like a gray mouse next to her.
This was generally her remarkable property. Being next to men, with any of them, she knew how to set off his dignity, leaving herself in the shadows. And the imprint of resignation on her face is also striking. Exhaustion. Maybe the price for your exorbitant enthusiasm?
Peter Ivanovich is one hundred percent man, a practical man. He does not understand her passion for airplanes. At this time, they were sent to Saratov (to teach at an aviation technical school), then to Moscow. Here Furtseva becomes an instructor of the student department in the apparatus of the Central Committee of the Komsomol. A year later, she was sent on a Komsomol ticket to the Moscow Institute of Fine Chemical Technology. The future process engineer plunges headlong into Komsomol work. Apparently, the bourgeois way of life is not for her.
The war broke out, my husband was mobilized. She was left alone, with her mother, who by that time had been discharged to Moscow. Lectures, laboratory, cards, rations ... Landmines explode in Moscow, she is on duty with everyone on the roof, extinguishes incendiary bombs - saving the capital. And suddenly - long-running news after a date with her husband: she is pregnant.
Svetlana was born in May 1942. Only four months after the birth of his daughter did her husband come to visit. And ... he announced that he had been living with another for a long time.
Disappointment followed disappointment. Catherine graduated from the institute and stopped in indecision. For the first time in my life, I didn't know where to throw myself. But he shouldn't have rushed anywhere. You just had to wait. As a political activist, she was offered to enter graduate school, and a year and a half later she was elected party organizer of the institute. She found herself in a strange, conventional world of "liberated" political workers. Science was done away with forever.
Now the three of them lived: her mother, Svetlana and she. Ekaterina received a room in a two-room apartment near the Krasnoselskaya metro station. As a party organizer. From the institute, where she is clearly feeling cramped, she is sent to work in the Frunze District Party Committee.
The immediate chief of Furtseva, the first secretary of the district committee, was Pyotr Vladimirovich Boguslavsky. She developed a special relationship with him. An office romance is something of an outlet. Communication with Boguslavsky gave her invaluable experience. It was then that she began to comprehend the laws of the male game, in the rules of which - and a man's feast, and a salty word, and dubious jokes. She learned not to notice it.
In 1949, during a party concert backstage at the Bolshoi Theater, Nikolai Shvernik gave her an audience with the Boss. Stalin liked her. For the first and last time she had seen a living God, but for his keen eye it was enough. In December 1949, she speaks at an expanded plenum of the city party committee, where, harshly criticizing herself, she talks about the district committee's shortcomings. Purely feminine. A bit masochistic. Next to men, it becomes a wise shadow. Seemingly without intent. And they notice her. The meeting with Stalin yielded results.
In early 1950, she moved to a building on Staraya Square, to the office of the second secretary of the Moscow City Party Committee. A couple of months later, her faithful friend Pyotr Vladimirovich Boguslavsky fell victim to the struggle against cosmopolitanism - he was removed from all posts and expelled from the party. The novel ended by itself.
From 1950 to 1954, Furtseva clashed closely with Khrushchev. There were rumors about their romance. Immediately after Stalin's death, she became the first secretary of the city party committee. Now all of Moscow was under her command. She made a strong impression on Khrushchev: both by the fact that she spoke at meetings without a piece of paper, and by the fact that she was not afraid to confess and repent of her imaginary sins, and by the fact that she was a "specialist." This was her favorite word. When meeting new people, the first thing she did was ask: "Are you a specialist ?!"
Until the end of her life, Furtseva retained a respectful attitude towards professors and important old people, associate professors, whom she had seen in graduate school. The "specialist" knows more than she, this conviction was very strong in her. And in her team, she - a former weaver - wanted to see just such people.
"Weaver, from the peasants." Thanks to this line in her biography, she ascended high. And the word "weaver" will accompany her all her life. Someone will command respect, someone - neglect.
But now the weaving factory is a thing of the past. Ekaterina Alekseevna Furtseva - First Secretary of the Moscow City Committee. A woman playing men's games. The moves in these games were different: swearing, and drinking, and a long relaxing feast - and all the other accessories of men's life. And in order to survive and, moreover, to win this game, she had to play according to the "male" rules, without any discounts. Hence - and vodka, and a variety of barbaric ways to quickly put yourself in order. Hence the fatigue on the face.
The problems of the only woman in the men's camp are sometimes absurd. For example, a household item is a toilet. Next to the room where the Politburo (then the Presidium of the Central Committee) met, there was only one toilet - a man's. During a long meeting, the men ran there, like boys, in turn. Ekaterina Alekseevna, if it was too much for her, she had to run far along the corridors, to another compartment, where there was a women's toilet. And during the time that the person was not in the office, anything could happen.
It never occurred to any of the members and candidates for members of the Politburo that Ekaterina Alekseevna might have similar physiological problems.
Although once it was the absence of a female toilet that played a fantastic role in her life. Something like a magic wand for Cinderella, who in an instant turned an ordinary member of the Central Committee of the party into a powerful member of the Presidium of the Central Committee.
This took place after Stalin's death. Furtseva then held the post of secretary of the Central Committee and by rank was supposed to be present at a narrow private gathering of members of the Presidium of the Central Committee. The "hardened" Malenkov, Kaganovich and Molotov gathered to overthrow another "hardened" - Nikita.
Furtseva, Khrushchev, Malenkov, Kaganovich, Molotov, other members of the Presidium of the Central Committee sat in a stuffy room next to the former Stalinist cabinet. Ekaterina Alekseevna immediately understood where the scales were tilting. Most of the members of the Presidium voted against Khrushchev. And then the inexplicable happened. She decided to resist the obvious injustice. How is it that a person who stirred up the Stalinist anthill - and suddenly trampled into the mud? Perhaps she did not lose the far-reaching consequences of her act, she simply reacted to the obvious injustice of the “terrible men”. But how and how could she help? And then she "wanted to go out." It was a move from a women's game. She simply calculated that as a representative of the "weaker" sex, she has the right to leave at least once during a meeting, no matter how important it may be, "to send natural needs." And the men, her potential opponents, took a bite. Since there was only a men's toilet nearby, and it was necessary to run to the women's one for a long time, she had a formal reason to be absent for a long time, without arousing suspicion either from Malenkov or from Kaganovich. She was released. Just like in the school game - "can I get out?".
Instead of a toilet, she rushed to her office to call those on whom it depended not to let a new coup take place.
A phone call of this kind could be perceived as a provocation. Anyone with whom she spoke could have thought: Malenkov or Kaganovich was standing next to the caller and listening to how powerful generals were going to overthrow him.
But the one who would later be called the Great Catherine, passionately, almost hysterically, begged the all-powerful generals to come to the meeting and not allow Nikita Sergeevich to be removed from the post of First Secretary of the Central Committee. And she persuaded. In minutes. Almost all of those whom she called said that they would come and support Nikita Sergeevich - simply by saying that their law enforcement agencies would not go against him.
Brezhnev did the same trick. He rushed to call Defense Minister Marshal Zhukov. And when he returned, Molotov, Kaganovich and Pervukhin sat down next to him, everyone was wondering where he was going. To which Brezhnev replied that he had a sudden upset and he sat in the restroom.
Zhukov, Ignatov and a number of other members of the Central Committee who supported Khrushchev came to the Kremlin. The meeting of the Presidium has not ended yet. They entered and announced that such important matters could not be solved in private, that everything had to be resolved. Khrushchev was suddenly raised and seated on the throne.
It was a happy time for Furtseva. And not only in public life. While still working as a secretary in the Moscow City Party Committee, she met Nikolai Pavlovich Firyubin, one of her subordinates.
Nikolai Firyubin was a professional diplomat. He spoke English and French: His former colleague Nikolai Mesyatsev described him as follows: "He knew how and wanted to please women."
He was a short, slender brown-haired man with a thoroughbred, expressive face. Men did not like him because of his arrogance. To those who knew both of them well, it was amazing how such different people could get together.
She herself did not really realize that "this" had happened. She was drawn to Firyubin. It was impossible to fight this.
Their secret meetings gave rise to a lot of speculation. Everyone in the party's Central Committee, from the secretaries to the secretaries of the Central Committee, discussed Furtseva's reckless trips to Firyubin. It was a local sexual revolution at the level of a single female minister.