“Kremlin Wives” is a documentary and journalistic study devoted to the fates of those women whose husbands stood at the helm of the Soviet state. From N. K. Krupskaya to R. M. Gorbacheva, a chain of real women’s stories passes before the reader—along with their characters and deeds. The wives of Stalin, Kalinin, Voroshilov, Molotov, Mikoyan, Budyonny, Beria, Malenkov, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko appear on these pages. What were they like? Were they happy beyond the walls of the Kremlin? Why did some of them end up in prison and in exile, and why did not a single statesman protect any of them?
A special place is given to those who were not merely women “in the role of wives,” but appeared in the image of comrades and walked through the halls of the Kremlin: Larisa Reisner, Alexandra Kollontai, Galina Semyonova. Alongside them are figures of another kind: Countess Sofia Panina, Socialist-Revolutionary Maria Spiridonova, actress Tatyana Okunevskaya—women of resistance.