The Cinderella of the Soviet Empire

Raisa Struchkova, an outstanding Stalinist-era prima ballerina, died on March 3, at the age of 79. She belonged to that glorious cohort of Soviet ballerinas of the 1940‘s and ‘50s who officially established the Russian Empire style on the stage of the Bolshoi Theatre, while in reality enriching it with humanity and a complexity of emotions.
Struchkova graduated from Moscow Ballet School in 1944, a year after Maya Plisetskaya.

Thus, in the heat of the war, the Bolshoi gained two potential stars of diametrically opposing characters: a spirited “rebel“ in Plisetskaya and a tender “ingenue“ in Struchkova, who was clearly not of her time. In those days, the main Bolshoi ballerinas were expected to dance at grand receptions in the Kremlin and to live and work in accordance with their heroic images, and they were very often part of the inner circle around Stalin. Galina Ulanova and Marina Semyonova became involuntary icons of the Empire. Olga Lepeshinskaya, another symbol of the epoch and Communist activist, danced on the front line and was married first to an MGB general, then to a general of the Soviet Army. Compared to these colleagues, Struchkova‘s life looked much more modest. Her ...