Background
Galina Kravchenko was born on February 11, 1905, in Kazan, Russian Empire (now Kazan, Tatarstan, Russia). After the Russian revolution of 1917, she moved to Moscow. There her mother worked in the Soviet Government.
In 1923, in her mother"s Moscow office young Kravchenko met Vsevolod Pudovkin, who was very impressed with her natural beauty and talent, and recommended her to the acting school at State Institute of Cinema (Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography).
Education
From 1924 - 26 she studied acting under Vladimir Gardin, graduating as actress.
Career
During the 1920s and 30s Kravchenko was a staff actress with Mezhrabpom Film Studio. She enjoyed a stellar career in Soviet silent films. In August 1936, however, Kamenev and Zinovyev were tried again in the first public-show trial of the Great Purge.
Accused of conspiring to assassinate Stalin and other Soviet leaders, Kamenev was brutally pressured and eventually confessed to the fabricated charges in the vain hope of saving his family.
Five decades later, Lev Kamenev was cleared of charges by the Soviet Supreme Court in 1988. Kravchenko suffered a blow to her acting career and personal life.
She was censored under the dictatorship of Joseph Stalin, and was practically unemployed for more than 20 years. After the death of Stalin, Kravchenko returned to Moscow and struggled to survive until the late 1950s, when Nikita Khrushchev initiated the "Thaw" in cultural life in the Soviet Union.
Kravchenko made a comeback as Maria Lvovna Karagina, the omnipresent socialite in Voyna i mir (1967) by director Sergei Bondarchuk.
She later wrote a book of memoirs describing her joy of working with Bondarchuk in "War and Peace". Kravchenko was designated Honorable Actress of Russia in 1980. Kravchenko died on March 5, 1996, in Moscow.
Politics
During the 1930s she was married to the son of the powerful Soviet leader, Lev Kamenev, who was a political opponent of Joseph Stalin. After the party leader Sergey Kirov was assassinated on December 1, 1934, Kamenev was secretly tried and sentenced, on false accusations for having contributed to the crime.
Membership
At that time, Bondarchuk was not a member of the Soviet Communist party, so he was dare to cast many actors who were previously censored under Stalin, including Kravchenko.