Most Powerful Female Communist In Russia

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30367, 17 February 1964, Page 2

Most Powerful Female Communist In Russia

[By

GRANT HUDSON]

Who is that woman with Khrushchev? The Moscow crowds massed for the 1955 May Day parade were inquisitive. Premier Khrushchev, with undiluted bonhomie, had invited her to step from the anonymity of a group of Communist officials and join him on the top of Lenin’s tomb for the march-past.

The question was shrewdly answered six years later by a film director at the 1961 Cannes Film Festival. Spotting her surrounded by starlet beauties, he observed to his companion, “That, my dear, is an interesting woman.”

He was epeaking of Ekaterina Alekseeva Furtseva, 53-year-old Soviet Minister of Culture, deputy of the Supreme Soviet, member of the Central Committee and the only woman on the Praesidium—<he policy-making body between party congresses. In short, Russia's most powerful female Communist.

Only once has she been completely powerless—when che was stuck in a lift in a French hotel She rose to her £370-a--week ministerial poet from a peasant mill-girl, pausing only to alert her Communist boss of the 1957 Molotov plot to destroy his leadership. I asked an experienced foreign correspondent for his opinion of Madame Furtseva. "Take two parts intelligence,” he told me, "add one part ruthlessness and allure of quiet modesty, and you have a personable cocktail—with Molotov effects.” That she has an allure, often found in women the “wrong aide” of 45, cannot be denied. She is the darling of the Soviet musicians and •cientists. They acclaim her “The minister we have always dreamed of,” and Sir Malcolm Sergent admits to her being “my favourite woman." Even on this occasion Madame Furtseva was not without her alluring modesty—she blushed. Has Daughter Ekaterina has a daughter, Svetlana, aged 21, and is married to the Soviet Foreign Minister, Nikolai Firjubin, but for reasons only she can gave, •he neither wears his wedding ring nor uses his surname. Born in the textile town of Vyshniy Volochek, 150 miles north of Moscow, she became • weaver like her parents and worked in the Bolshevic Woman Textile Mill. Her father died at the front, in the First World War.

Ait 14 she was an under-age member of the Young Communists and helping to teach illiterate peasants to read and write, besides collecting scrap metal for the geared-up foundries. Admitted to the Communist Party in 1930, her hearty appetite for work, persistence, ambition, and talented public speaking gained her a number of fiiU-time posts in the Moscow Party mactiine in the 1930’s and 1940’& Just when Mr Khrushchev •potted her potential is uncertain, but in 1950, as first secretary of the Moscow

party organisation, he chose her as second secretary. In this position she was his closest ally in building up the stages which helped him, after the death of Stalin, to reach power. When Mr Khrushchev’s fortunes began to rise, Furtseva’s. fortunes rose too.

She succeeded Mr Khrushchev as first secretary of the Moscow party machine when he became first secretary of the Communist Party. Her loyalty to him was now quite apparent She was of even more assistance to him during the leadership crisis of June, 1957, when the Molotov-Malenkov group tried to oust him. She is said to have tipped him off. Two years ago the exuberance of this woman, of whom it was being said, “If Furtseva says it, you can be sure Khrushchev means it,” nearly ruined her. At the party congress she vehemently criticised her idol's critics and launched a veritable anthem of praise about the man himself. An embarrassed Mr Khrushchev, aware of the dangers of a personality cult, had to rebuke her. As a result, she suffered a slight fall from favour with “the powers that be,” but bounced back to become permanent Minister of Culture in 1962. Madame Furtseva has been heralded as the prototype of the perfect Soviet woman. She is a first-class business woman, commands the vast cinema, theatre, and millionvolume a year book industry, and is renowned as a gay and enchanting social companion. She wears a minimum of cosmetics, no jewellery except her gold star Order of Lenin, and performs an excellent

mazurka, polka, and Viennese waltz. Among her dearest wishes is “to see Russian women the best-dressed in the world.” Whatever accolades surround her head, Madame Furtseva maintains, “I am one ot many millions of simple women in my country and I never thought I would become so great”