Galina Vishnevskaya

Galina Vishnevskaya was a famous Russian opera singer and public figure. She was born Galina Pavlovna Ivanova on October 25, 1926, in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg), Russia. Abandoned by her parents during Stalin's dictatorship, young Galina was raised by her grandmother, only later to learn her father had been imprisoned. During WWII, she refused to evacuate from Leningrad which was besieged by the Nazis, who intended to starve the population and raze the city. (Some one million people died, mostly of starvation and disease, between 1941 and 1944.) She joined the resistance and, after two years of fighting, she was decorated for her courage defending her city from the Nazis. At age 18, she married naval officer Georgi Vishnevsky, but the marriage did not work, because he objected her opera career. After divorce, she kept the surname Vishnevskaya. In 1944, after the liberation of Leningrad, she joined a small operetta company led by Mark Rubin, who became her second husband. The co