Ekaterina Furtseva

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During her lifetime, Furtseva was ironically referred to as Catherine the Third, an allusion to the famous Russian empress likewise named Ekaterina Alekseyevna.

Ekaterina Alekseyevna Furtseva (Russian: Екатерина Алексеевна Фурцева; November 24, 1910, Vyshniy Volochek - October 24, 1974, Moscow) was probably the most influential woman in Soviet politics and the first woman to be admitted into Politburo.

Until the 1940s, Furtseva worked as an ordinary weaver at one of Moscow's textile factories. Gradually, she became active in Komsomol affairs and rose to the position of Secretary of the Moscow City Council in 1950. Under Nikita Khrushchev, who sympathized with her, Furtseva was the mayor of Moscow.

In 1956 she was appointed the Secretary of the Central Committee and became the first woman to join the Politburo the next year. In this capacity, she did her best to promote de-Stalinization and to secure the downfall of Vyacheslav Molotov, Georgy Malenkov, and Lazar Kaganovich when they conspired to depose her patron Khruschev.

At that period she fell in love with a married Soviet ambassador in Yugoslavia, Nikolay Firyubin, and scandalized the Soviet elite by her weekend trips abroad in order to meet her lover. As he married her and rose to become the Deputy Foreign Minister, their relations cooled down somewhat.

In 1960, the KGB recorded her telephone call to a friend denouncing Khruschev's policies. This affair led to her being ousted from the Politburo. In exasperation, she made her first attempt at suicide by cutting her veins. Furtseva's ostensible repentance gained her pardon and appointment to the honourable but powerless position of the Soviet Minister of Culture.

During the following 14 years, remembered as the Age of Furtseva, she exterted immense influence on Soviet culture, both repressive and beneficient. As she became increasingly interested in manipulating theatre and cinema, many remarkable actors and directors tried to secure her friendship in order to further their own careers. According to the most intimate of her friends (such as the singer Lyudmila Zykina), she also became addicted to alcohol. In 1974, she was implicated in illegal commercial dealings and, wishing to preclude the impending scandal and disgrace, committed suicide. Furtseva is buried at the Novodevichye Cemetery.