La Femme de Molotov Face à Staline : Arrestation, Crimée et Secrets du Kremlin
L’URSS Oubliée
11,433 views
One night in January 1949 in Moscow. Three men in uniform knock on the gate of the apartment of Polina Zhemchuzina, the wife of Vyacheslav Molotov, the second most powerful man in the regime after Stalin. Search, arrest, police van in the Moscow night. Behind the opening door is a woman who knows exactly what is coming. This arrest, the documentary recounts in reverse chronological order, is no accident. It is the culmination of a journey that began in Pologi, in present-day Zaporizhzhia, at the end of the nineteenth century, in a Jewish family where poverty was measured by the number of mouths to feed. Perla Karp worked on an assembly line in a cigarette factory, contracted tuberculosis there, and turned her forced immobility into self-education. The 1917 revolution found her ready, and the pseudonym Zhemchuzina, the pearl, became her armor. The civil war, life underground in Kyiv under Denikin's Whites, agitprop, promotion to Moscow, then marriage to Molotov in 1921—a political alliance as much as a sentimental union, a pact one already sensed would almost always end in a coffin. The 1930s established the couple at the top. Molotov signed off on the five-year plans, Polina directed the perfume industry, oversaw the Novaya Zarya fashion house, created Red Moscow, the emblematic fragrance of the Soviet aristocracy, traveled, and received diplomats with a frankness that the dictatorship considered reckless. NKVD reports piled up. In the West, her brother Sam Karp, an American citizen and intermediary between Moscow and Wall Street, was caught by the FBI. In the East, Mikhoels's Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, too visible, displeased Stalin. In 1946, Mikhoels was assassinated on a road in Minsk. In 1948, the trap was sprung. Abakumov's reports, Goldfarb's depositions, FBI copies, a Yiddish conversation with the Israeli legation recorded by an MGB officer. The file grew thicker, Polina's name appearing on every page. The documentary recounts the arrest, the journey through the Vorkuta gulag, the couple's separation enforced by Molotov himself, then the return to Moscow after the 20th Congress, the decades of oblivion, the death in 1970, and the olfactory legacy of Red Moscow that would permeate the USSR like a signature of power. A story of lineage, loyalty, state-sponsored antisemitism, perfumes, and prisons.
Hashtags
history #documentary #USSR #Stalin #Molotov #PolinazhemChouzina #Gulag #antisemitism #Kremlin #microhistory #perfumes #Novayazaria #Moscow #Mikholes #AntifascistCommittee #diplomacy #NKVD #MBG #FBI #Zionism #Zaporijia
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La Femme de Molotov Face à Staline : Arrestation, Crimée et Secrets du Kremlin
L’URSS Oubliée
11,433 views
One night in January 1949 in Moscow. Three men in uniform knock on the gate of the apartment of Polina Zhemchuzina, the wife of Vyacheslav Molotov, the second most powerful man in the regime after Stalin. Search, arrest, police van in the Moscow night. Behind the opening door is a woman who knows exactly what is coming. This arrest, the documentary recounts in reverse chronological order, is no accident. It is the culmination of a journey that began in Pologi, in present-day Zaporizhzhia, at the end of the nineteenth century, in a Jewish family where poverty was measured by the number of mouths to feed. Perla Karp worked on an assembly line in a cigarette factory, contracted tuberculosis there, and turned her forced immobility into self-education. The 1917 revolution found her ready, and the pseudonym Zhemchuzina, the pearl, became her armor. The civil war, life underground in Kyiv under Denikin's Whites, agitprop, promotion to Moscow, then marriage to Molotov in 1921—a political alliance as much as a sentimental union, a pact one already sensed would almost always end in a coffin. The 1930s established the couple at the top. Molotov signed off on the five-year plans, Polina directed the perfume industry, oversaw the Novaya Zarya fashion house, created Red Moscow, the emblematic fragrance of the Soviet aristocracy, traveled, and received diplomats with a frankness that the dictatorship considered reckless. NKVD reports piled up. In the West, her brother Sam Karp, an American citizen and intermediary between Moscow and Wall Street, was caught by the FBI. In the East, Mikhoels's Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, too visible, displeased Stalin. In 1946, Mikhoels was assassinated on a road in Minsk. In 1948, the trap was sprung. Abakumov's reports, Goldfarb's depositions, FBI copies, a Yiddish conversation with the Israeli legation recorded by an MGB officer. The file grew thicker, Polina's name appearing on every page. The documentary recounts the arrest, the journey through the Vorkuta gulag, the couple's separation enforced by Molotov himself, then the return to Moscow after the 20th Congress, the decades of oblivion, the death in 1970, and the olfactory legacy of Red Moscow that would permeate the USSR like a signature of power. A story of lineage, loyalty, state-sponsored antisemitism, perfumes, and prisons.
Hashtags
history #documentary #USSR #Stalin #Molotov #PolinazhemChouzina #Gulag #antisemitism #Kremlin #microhistory #perfumes #Novayazaria #Moscow #Mikholes #AntifascistCommittee #diplomacy #NKVD #MBG #FBI #Zionism #Zaporijia