In the early 1980s in Moscow, in a park near the Aeroport metro station, one could often see an elderly woman walking. Numerous passers-by who met her rarely recognized in her the pop singer and actress Klavdia Ivanovna Shulzhenko, previously famous throughout the Soviet Union. At one time, soldiers and officers on all fronts of the Great Patriotic War listened to her voice, and in peacetime she was applauded by Leningrad builders, Ivanovo weavers, Donetsk miners and Kazakh virgin lands. The talent of this woman was admired by the country's top leadership and honored artists. On the Soviet stage, she really was a superstar, the idol of hundreds of thousands of people, records with her songs were recorded and sold in millions of copies.
Klavdia Ivanovna Shulzhenko was born on March 24, 1906 (exactly 110 years ago) in Kharkov. Then no one could have thought that this girl would become a famous pop singer throughout the country, and in 1971, a People's Artist of the USSR. Klavdia Ivanovna was born in the family of the accountant of the Railway Administration Ivan Ivanovich Shulzhenko and his wife Vera Aleksandrovna Shulzhenko. It is worth noting that the girl's father was not an ordinary Kharkov accountant, he was a real connoisseur of songs and romances. In his spare time, he sang in an amateur choir and played in a brass band. They say that when Ivan Shulzhenko began to sing, listeners pulled up from all over the street, and from neighboring streets too. So the love for music and singing was passed on to the girl from her father.
The father dreamed that his daughter would become a singer. And little Klavdia Shulzhenko was crazy about Vera Kholodnaya and other silent film actors, believing that everyone could sing, but only a few could become a good actor. One way or another, all the native girls supported her hobbies and inspired her to a creative career. In Kharkov there was a Ukrainian drama theater, in which the famous director Nikolai Sinelnikov worked in those years. By the age of 15, Claudia reviewed the entire repertoire of the theater and vowed to herself that she would definitely become an actress.
As a result, at the age of 16, the girl, whose creative potential was supported by relatives and acquaintances, decided to take a very bold step. In 1923, she came to the Kharkov Drama Theater and cheerfully offered the director to take her to work in the troupe. To the question of Nikolai Sinelnikov, slightly discouraged by this approach, about what she can do, Klavdia Shulzhenko resolutely answered: "Sing, dance and recite!" The chubby little girl with basket braids, dressed in her mother's elegant dress, charmed the famous director. He asked the well-known in the future, but still novice composer Isaak Dunaevsky, who was in charge of the musical part of the theater, to play along with her. The girl's musical talent, her childish spontaneity and already visible talent liked the director, and he took her into the theater troupe. In those years, getting into the troupe of director Sinelnikov was considered a very great success for a novice actor. At that time, the Kharkov theater and its collective were considered the best on the periphery.
For several years until 1928, Klavdiya Shulzhenko worked under the direct supervision of Nikolai Sinelnikov. On his recommendation, she entered the Kharkov Conservatory for a vocal course taught by Professor Chemizov. Thanks to her participation in the performances of her native theater and persistent studies at the conservatory, the Kharkiv audience began to recognize Klavdia. Although Klavdia Ivanovna never became a famous actress, in the theater she played mainly in the crowd and sang in the choir, her work in the drama theater was not in vain for her. Claudia's acting abilities were most clearly manifested then on the stage, where she managed almost everything from the acting arsenal that she acquired on the stage: comedic characters, lyrics, the ability to dance.
For Klavdia Shulzhenko, Kharkov has become not just a city of childhood and youth, but also the birth of serious love. In 1928, her peer from Odessa, Vladimir Koralli, came to this city on tour. In the mid-20s of the last century, he went on tour with a variety theater, beat tap dance, led concerts as an entertainer, performed satirical and funny couplets. The first meeting turned out to be fleeting, in the same year the singer left for Leningrad. It was in the city on the Neva that their second meeting took place, which laid the foundation for their future family and creative union. Claudia Shulzhenko married Vladimir Coralli in 1930, in May 1932 they had a son, Igor.
It is worth noting that the true recognition and love of the public came to Shulzhenko precisely in Leningrad, where she left Kharkov in 1928 and to which she then gave half of her life. As a pop singer in the spring of 1928, she was invited to perform at a concert that was timed to coincide with the Press Day, the performance took place on the stage of the Mariinsky Theater. In literally one evening, she became famous. For an encore, the singer was summoned at that concert three times, and offers to perform were poured in. In 1929 she became a soloist of the Leningrad stage and performed at the Moscow Music Hall. One after another, records appear with her recordings, which are sold in thousands. In those years in the USSR it was difficult to find a house in which the songs performed by her would not sound: "Chelita", "Grenada", "Note", "Unharness, lads, horses!", "Uncle Vanya", "From the edge to edges "," Portrait "and many others.
In 1934, Shulzhenko managed to star in the film "Who is your friend?" directed by M. A. Averbakh in the role of Vera. In 1936 her first gramophone recordings appeared. And in the fall of 1939, the first All-Union Contest of Variety Artists took place. The extremely strict and authoritative jury of the competition did not award the first prize to anyone, although there were quite a few talented artists among the contestants. At the same time, three songs - "Chelita", "Note" and "Girl, Goodbye", which were presented by Klavdia Shulzhenko, made a very strong impression on both the audience and the jury, allowing her to become a laureate of the competition. After its completion, her popularity only grew. More and more records with her recordings were born, and they did not linger on store shelves for a long time.
In January 1940, a jazz orchestra was formed in Leningrad under the direction of the spouses Vladimir Coralli and Claudia Shulzhenko, which was quite popular and existed until the summer of 1945. From the first day of the Great Patriotic War, this collective turns into a front-line jazz ensemble, with which Klavdia Shulzhenko performs in front of the soldiers of the Leningrad Front, sometimes right on the front line. The announcement of the beginning of the war found the singer on tour in Yerevan, from where she voluntarily decides to go to the front. Hundreds of times Shulzhenko went to the front, where she performed in front of the soldiers of the Red Army, her songs sounded both in the front lines and in hospitals in the rear. At the end of 1941, the future legendary song "Blue Scarf" appeared in her repertoire, the music for which was written by the Polish composer Jerzy Peterburgsky. There were many different versions of the lyrics for this song. Klavdia Shulzhenko performed the text by Yakov Galitsky edited by Mikhail Maksimov.
On July 12, 1942, the 500th concert of Shulzhenko and the Front Jazz Ensemble took place on the stage of the Leningrad House of the Red Army, later in the same year the singer was awarded the medal "For the Defense of Leningrad", and on May 9, 1945 - the Order of the Red Star. In the summer of 1945, for outstanding services in the field of vocal art, Klavdia Ivanovna was awarded the title of Honored Artist of the RSFSR. Then the Soviet press wrote that the singer's final creative credo, her lyrical heroine and artistic theme were formed precisely during the Great Patriotic War, since there were no more “random” songs in her repertoire. However, her songs were still different, but the artist learned to make them truly her own. During the siege of Leningrad, she gave more than 500 concerts for soldiers and officers. And thanks to her performance, such front-line songs as "Let's smoke", "Blue handkerchief", "Friends-fellow soldiers" received all-Union recognition and love of the audience.
During the war years, the forts of Kronstadt, front-line dugouts, hospital wards, an airfield field, a forest edge, and wooden sheds often became its stage sites. However, in any conditions, she tried to appear at the concert in a dress and high-heeled shoes. Once she had to perform straight from the side of a truck with the sides folded down, climbing on this impromptu scene, she broke a heel. After that, she gave a concert, standing on tiptoe. During the performance, German aviation made a raid, anti-aircraft artillery started working, bombs began to explode not far away. The singer was literally pushed down by force, someone pressed her overcoat to the ground. When the air raid ended, Klavdia Shulzhenko went up on stage again, dusted off her outfit and finished the concert, but without her shoes. And this is just one small episode from the military biography of Shulzhenko, and she held a huge number of such concerts during the war years. The soldiers answered her for this gratitude: they wrote her numerous letters, gave flowers, kept records and photographs.
At the end of the 1940s, Shulzhenko still remains a fantastically popular and sought-after singer, the circulation of records on which her songs would be is estimated at millions of copies. In fact, Shulzhenko's voice becomes a real symbol of the era, the sound embodiment of the Great Patriotic War. Very often it was used in feature films and documentaries in order to indicate the time frame of what is happening. However, attempts to act in films basically did not lead to anything, losing contact with the audience, Klavdia Ivanovna herself was lost.
At some point, her relationship with the authorities even began to deteriorate. At the turn of the 1940-1950s, she was accused of philistinism and tried to impose her own repertoire on her. However, she did not begin to perform pretentious songs of the Soviet years. Shulzhenko sang about love, not about the party and the Komsomol, perhaps that is why she received the title of People's Artist of the USSR relatively late, in 1971, already at the end of her pop career. True or myth, but there is information that Klavdia Ivanovna even quarreled with Stalin. She refused to perform at a concert on December 31, 1952, which was attended by the leader. The day before, on December 30, they called her and said that she would perform in the Kremlin, to which the singer replied that they had warned her too late, she had already managed to draw up her own plans for this day. "According to the constitution, I also have the right to rest!" - said Shulzhenko. If such a story really took place, the early death of Joseph Stalin left her without any special consequences for the singer's creative activity.
In 1956, Shulzhenko divorced Coralli. In July of the same year, director Marianna Semenova introduced her to the famous cinematographer Georgy Kuzmich Epifanov, who had been in love with the singer since 1940. Epifanov fell in love with her even before the start of the war, when he accidentally acquired her disc with the song "Chelita". And a few months later, having got to her concert in Leningrad, he realized that he had completely “disappeared”. Georgy Epifanov was in love with Claudia Shulzhenko in absentia for 16 long years and remained faithful to this love until the end of his life. All these years, the singer received many letters from fans, many confessed their love to her, but in this mass of letters and greeting cards she always singled out those that were signed with the initials G. E. all corners of the vast country. At the same time, the cameraman was 12 years younger than the Soviet pop star. It would seem that if two people love each other, what can become an obstacle to their happiness? However, these days the difference in the age of two lovers is not looked at so strictly, and in those years such a union was condemned, behind their backs they whispered: "The devil got in touch with the baby." However, the love of two people turned out to be much stronger than prejudice and gossip. They lived together until 1964, then separated, but after a long time, in 1976, they got back together and never parted.
In the postwar years, Klavdia Shulzhenko literally reigned on the Soviet stage, any songs she performed over time became popular. She gave dozens of solo performances a month, and each new day brought her hundreds of fans. Over the years, her skills have been sharpened more and more. The last time Klavdia Ivanovna appeared on the big stage of the Column Hall of the House of Unions was in 1976. At that concert, at the numerous requests of the audience, she performed all her songs of the war years. At the same time, the last LP by Klavdia Shulzhenko "Portrait" was released in 1980, four years before her death, and in 1981 her memoirs were published.
Claudia Shulzhenko's heart stopped beating more than 30 years ago, she died on June 17, 1984. They buried her in Moscow at the Novodevichy cemetery. According to the recollections of eyewitnesses, that day in the capital, the weather was cloudy, it was raining, but the sun peeped out from behind the clouds directly at the funeral. The younger generation knows about her only in passing. But the main thing is that in the distant and very difficult years of the war, her voice raised the Soviet soldiers to attack, facilitated the recovery of the wounded and instilled in people confidence that Victory would still come.
On May 26, 1996, the city museum of Klavdia Ivanovna Shulzhenko was opened in Kharkov, which displays concert costumes, personal belongings, documents and other relics that belonged to the singer. And for the centenary of the performer, the Saratov Jazz Orchestra "Retro" has prepared a program of original scores of ensembles and orchestras with which the famous singer has performed. So many years later, in 2006, under the arches of the Column Hall in the Kremlin, her songs sounded again.
Klavdia Ivanovna Shulzhenko was and remains a real national treasure, a classic and a standard of Soviet art. It would seem that she did not have such a strong voice and such an attractive appearance, but it was her “Let's smoke” and “Blue handkerchief” that became and remain forever hits. It is no coincidence that without exaggeration they say about her: "Soviet Edith Piaf."
