What happened to the actress who slapped Soviet head of security in the face?

Eugenia Garkusha, wife of Pyotr Shirshov, disappeared on July 28, 1946, shortly after she publicly slapped Lavrentiy Beria, former Soviet Minister of Interior and the head of the state security.

Pyotr Shirshov was a big boss – Commissar of Maritime Fleet of the USSR, and Garkusha – a famous actress.They met in Moscow in 1941, when Shirshov's family was in evacuation, and Eugenia's husband, the poet Yaroslav Rodionov – at the front (he died there in 1943). However, nothing prevented a stormy romance – Shirshov took Eugenia with him even on business trips. When his wife with a young son and daughter returned from evacuation, he put her before the fact – Garkusha in 1944 had already given birth to his daughter, Marina, and Pyotr decided to stay with a new family.

Eugenia Garkusha, actress (L) // Lavrentiy Beria, the head of Ministry of Interior (R)

S. Artemiev/Sputnik; Public domain

In 1946, at a reception in the Kremlin, Lavrentiy Beria, then the all-powerful member of Politburo, who also controlled the system of state security, "laid eyes" on Yevgenia, and made her a direct indecent proposal, to which Garkusha responded with a ringing slap. July 28, 1946 Eugenia Garkusha was arrested – and none of her relatives were not informed about it. She was accused of treason and speculation. On November 29, 1947 she was sentenced to 8 years in camps and sent to Magadan region, where she died on August 11, 1948 – or committed suicide by taking too large a dose of sleeping pills. 

Pyotr Shirsov

S. Artemiev/Sputnik; Public domain

Pyotr Shirshov never remarried. In 1948 he was removed from the post of Minister of the USSR Navy, and in 1953 he died of cancer. Eugenia and Pyotr's daughter, Marina Petrovna Shirshova, devoted her life to science and lives in Moscow.

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