Tamara Petkevich

Tamara Vladislavovna Petkevich was a Russian actress, theater scholar, and memoirist.

Tamara Vladislavovna Petkevich was born on March 29, 1920, in Nevel (according to her memoirs, in Petrograd). Her father was Vladislav Iosifovich Petkevich, her mother was Efrosinya Fyodorovna Mochalovskaya, and her younger sisters were Valentina and Renata. In 1927, Tamara entered School No. 182 in Leningrad. In 1937, her father, a veteran of the First World War and a member of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) since 1918, was arrested and sentenced to 10 years of imprisonment without the right of correspondence (in fact, he was executed). At the same time, Tamara was expelled from the Komsomol for “loss of vigilance,” since she did not denounce her father and did not renounce him. In 1938, she completed secondary school and entered the First State Institute of Foreign Languages, majoring in English.

On December 26, 1940, Tamara married and went to join her husband in exile in the city of Frunze (now Bishkek). Her husband’s father had also been arrested on political charges. She worked as a theater designer in Frunze, and in 1942 she entered the medical institute there. On January 30, 1943, she was arrested simultaneously with her husband and on May 4, 1943, was sentenced for counterrevolutionary activity under Article 58-10, Part 2, of the RSFSR Criminal Code to 7 years in labor camps, 3 years’ disenfranchisement, and confiscation of property. She served her sentence in camps in Kyrgyzstan, the Komi ASSR, and in Sevzheldorlag. She worked in agricultural labor, in the construction of a vegetable storehouse, in logging, and in the surgical ward of the infirmary.

Personal tragedies added to the hardships of imprisonment. During the blockade of Leningrad, Tamara’s mother and younger sister died of starvation. Her husband, who was serving his sentence in another camp