by Daniil Pelymov
[REGNUM] On December 10, 1981, film actress and Honored Artist of the RSFSR Zoya Alekseyevna Fyodorova was found shot to death in her Moscow apartment on Kutuzovsky Prospekt. The Soviet film star died ten days before her 71st birthday.
Fedorova shone in optimistic film stories and musical comedies of the 1930s and 1940s, and was a master of character roles in post-war cinema, from "Girl Without an Address" to "Wedding in Malinovka." Her personal biography included two episodes in the spy thriller genre (along with romantic drama). But after her death, Zoya Fedorova became the heroine of a non-classical detective story with an open ending.
Over the course of two years of investigation, nearly four thousand witnesses were interviewed and volumes were filled, but the case never reached trial. The elderly actress's death remains a mystery. As, indeed, did her life.
"WHAT HAPPENED, ZOYA?!"
On the night of December 9-10, 1981, Fedorova was at home. The actress lived alone, but not lonely. According to her family, she was talking on the phone with a friend that day, planning a trip to Krasnodar.
Zoya Alekseyevna stopped responding after midday: the door was locked, and the phone was constantly busy. Next, we need to look at the testimony—whether to believe it or not is an open question.
One of Fedorova's friends, Margarita Nabokova— an old friend, an assistant director at Mosfilm, who worked on Gentlemen of Fortune, among other things—gave investigators a detailed explanation.
Around 1:10 PM, she arrived at a friend's house at 4/2 Kutuzovsky Prospekt, went up to apartment 243, and rang the doorbell. According to Nabokova, she could hear the radio playing in the apartment and water running in either the bathroom or the kitchen. But no one answered either the knock or the ring.
Attached to the case is a note (which, according to Nabokova, she left on the door):
"What happened, Zoya? I rushed here in a taxi, and you weren't home! How could this happen? Margarita. 1:10 PM."
A Mosfilm employee told investigators that she spoke with Zoya Fyodorova from 1:45 PM to 2:10 PM. That is, after Margarita Nabokova's arrival.
Nabokova said that she arrived at Kutuzovsky a second time around 5:00 pm, and no one opened the door for her either.
A little later, the actress's nephew, Yuri Fyodorov, a party organizer at a Moscow factory, arrived. The short winter day had ended—the light in the apartment was visible from the street. According to Yuri, he rang the doorbell several times and, when no answer came, went back to his apartment to get a spare key. He returned and opened the door…
Zoya Alekseyevna sat in a chair, holding a telephone receiver in her hand, her head cocked to the side. The actress's face was covered in blood. Yuri called 911 and met the police at the entrance.
By the time the police arrived, the body hadn't had time to cool. "I took her hand and felt her pulse—there was no pulse, but the body was still warm," recalled Boris Krivoshein (chief of the criminal investigation department at Moscow's 123rd police station in 1981). This means the crime had been committed no more than a few hours earlier.
The case file contains expert testimony: the killer shot the victim in the back of the head at close range—approximately 10–20 centimeters; the bullet passed through, knocking out the victim's left eye and breaking the lens of his glasses.
There were no obvious signs of a struggle or resistance. There were no signs of a search: all the cabinets and safes remained intact.
During a visual inspection, only three valuables were found missing. A silver service, an original Matisse, and a gold ring, valued at approximately 50,000 rubles (the monthly salary of a skilled worker in the USSR in 1981 was approximately 180 rubles), were missing. Other valuables, including 2,400 rubles in cash, were still there.
An important fact: the door to Fedorova's apartment was not forced. The testimony contained in the case file contains a leitmotif: the actress was extremely cautious and rarely let in strangers. No one forced entry to the crime scene—the killer entered unhindered.
Judging by the evidence, Fedorova knew him. There were two cups and cakes on the table.
MUR officer and junior detective Sergei Butenin noted: "We saw that she was wearing torn slippers, threadbare wool socks, and an old robe. This suggests that someone she knew well had visited her."
The first clue: investigators also discovered numerous jewelry tags in the apartment. Furthermore, next to the body was a notebook containing over 2,000 phone numbers and over 1,500 mailing addresses of various people across the Soviet Union.
Judging by the size of her address book, Fedorova was well acquainted with people “from various social strata” – from antique dealers and trade workers to (something the police were unlikely to be happy to see) high-ranking comrades from party and business bodies.
A ballistics analysis revealed a second clue, and simultaneously a mystery. The killer used a Sauer 38H pistol, a 7.65mm caliber pistol—a weapon produced in Nazi Germany until 1945 (and used by Wehrmacht and SS officers).
THE FIRST SUSPECTS ARE RULED OUT
The material evidence immediately created complications for the investigation: the Sauer was registered to only three Soviet citizens, all of whom had airtight alibis. So, the weapon was unregistered?
No traces or fingerprints of the killer were found.
Next question: The concierge claimed she didn't see any other visitors heading to apartment 243, other than Margarita Nabokova and Yuri Fyodorov.
But Nabokova claimed she hadn't gotten into the apartment. And, indeed, no trace of her was found. Yuri, upon arriving, immediately called the police.
If he were the killer, who for some reason decided to call the police to the crime scene, the body would have been "fresh"—but here, several hours had clearly passed. Plus, Yuri had a more than convincing alibi: at the presumed time of the murder, he was at a meeting of the factory party committee.
Further investigation concluded that Margarita and Yuri had no motive.
Investigators speculated that the killer could have entered through an unlocked attic (building 4/2 adjoins the adjacent building, and judging by the context, there were no doormen in the entrances there). The perpetrator could also have left through the same door.
But the door hadn't been forced open, and the tea party for two once again muddied the waters. The analysis of what happened boiled down to the fact that Fedorova herself had opened the door, sat down in the chair, and during their conversation, someone had approached from behind and fired a shot.
THE STRANGE LIFE OF ZOYA FEDOROVA
It would seem that the direction we should be looking for is the addresses in the mysterious notebook. We'll touch on these clues below. For now, let's note that publications and books published as early as the 1990s have been pushing an exotic theory: the Soviet actress was killed by her closest relative, an American. And this seems plausible. After all, Zoya Fyodorova had a strange biography.
Thus, her rapidly developing film career was not hindered by her father's arrest: Alexei Fyodorov was "arrested" in 1938. But even after that, she continued to star in leading roles, and, what's more, received two Stalin Prizes, in 1941 and 1942.
A few words about my father. Biographies usually mention that he was a metalworker. Less often, they mention that in 1918, Alexei Fyodorov served as head of the Kremlin passport service.
It's believed that Zoya Fyodorova's nationwide popularity, which came after her film "Girlfriends" (1936), acted as a shield at the time of her father's arrest. They say they couldn't touch the nation's favorite actress.
Less well known is that Fedorova had already been arrested long before her film career began. In 1928, as she herself put it, "for foxtrotting."
A quote from the testimony of 19-year-old Z. A. Fedorova to an OGPU investigator: "In 1926–1927, I attended parties... where I danced the foxtrot... I met a serviceman, Kirill Fedorovich Prove." Prove was under investigation by the OGPU on suspicion of spying for Britain. But the key witness, Zoya, was unharmed. The document "removing Z. A. Fedorova from the case" bore the signature of OGPU Chairman Genrikh Yagoda.
Fedorova had many affairs under her belt—for example, with pilot Ivan Kleshchev, a hero of the Battle of Khalkhin Gol (in the pre-war years, military pilots were true stars). This was quite typical. But in 1945, at a reception at the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs, the actress met Jackson Rogers Tate, a naval attaché at the US Embassy.
The diplomat and the artist allegedly successfully concealed their relationship.
That same year, 1945, Tate was expelled from the country at the request of the Soviet authorities—not because of his affair with Fedorova, but for some other reason. In January 1946, the actress gave birth to a daughter, Victoria, who later went on to have a successful film career of her own, first in the USSR and then in the United States.
Tate claimed he was unaware of Zoya's pregnancy. Zoya, concealing the foreigner's paternity, married composer Alexander Ryazanov. In December of that same year, 1946, Fedorova was arrested and sentenced to 25 years in prison for espionage. She was released nine years later, in 1955. Even before the "thaw," she returned to Moscow and filmmaking, and was reunited with her daughter.
"AMERICAN FIGHT" OR "KGB"?
Twenty years later, in the spring of 1975, Soviet actress Victoria Yakovlevna (as the name "Jackson" was Russified) Fedorova tracked down her father, Jackson R. Tate, a retired US Navy rear admiral, in the United States. She was invited overseas, as if the Iron Curtain didn't exist.
In June of that same year, 1975, a few days before her visa expired, Victoria Fedorova married a certain Frederick Powe, a Pan American pilot, and remained in the United States.
And this American son-in-law could well have been Zoya Fyodorova's killer. This hypothesis was publicly voiced in the post-Soviet era by the renowned screenwriter Eduard Voldarsky, who knew "Vika Fyodorova" well. Moreover, in 1995, he published a book about it, "Crime Without Punishment."
"Vika's American husband, a pilot, flew constantly between Moscow and New York. His salary was small. And after Zoya Alekseyevna's death, he suddenly went into big business. Was it with the Fedorov diamonds?" Voldarsky wrote. A story in the spirit of Agatha Christie—murder over an inheritance (the sole heir was "Victoria Jacksonovna").
More about the diamonds later, but for now let's note: this is Voldarsky's version, not the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs or the KGB.
In any case, it's not known that our law enforcement officials believed that Mr. Powe, having arrived in Moscow, decided to visit his mother-in-law, entering through the attic of a neighboring building, and shot her with a "fascist" pistol. After all, tracking the arrivals and departures of PanAm crews wouldn't have been difficult.
The murder of a Soviet citizen, the pride of Soviet cinema, by an American would have been a powerful propaganda plot during the final stages of the Cold War (remember, it was 1981). But no.
For his part, Christopher Povey, the son of Frederick Povey and Victoria Fedorova, claimed for many years that his grandmother was murdered by "KGB agents." The reason given was a darkly romantic: Zoya allegedly once refused Lavrentiy Beria himself. For this, he imprisoned her in a Siberian Gulag, and the murder was supposedly belated revenge by the KGB. It's a plausible theory, but there's no evidence to support it.
But rumors were circulating in Moscow at the time about the involvement of either the KGB, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, or some high-ranking party officials. The American term "deep state" hadn't yet been adopted, but there were whispers of something similar.
The writer Yuri Nagibin, naturally, already during perestroika, published in the liberal Ogonyok the story " Afanasych " about how the murder of Zoya Fyodorova was personally ordered by the head of Brezhnev's Ministry of Internal Affairs, Nikolai Shchelokov : the minister's wife found out that the actress was keeping a unique diamond - and everything was done to get hold of it.
But let's move from speculation to criminal specifics.
"STONES," MONEY, FAKE MATISSE
A more thorough search turned the case around. A hiding place containing handbags was discovered in apartment no. 243. One contained three thousand rubles, another a gold chain, and the others were empty. Jewelry tags were also discovered. Recall that similar tags were found during the initial examination of the crime scene.
It seemed the apartment's owner was preparing to sell a large consignment of jewelry. The question was, to whom? Overall, the evidence pointed to People's Artist of the RSFSR Fedorova being involved in shady schemes involving the sale of precious stones, jewelry, and antiques.
Hence the tags, the notebook, the antique furniture, and the "crystal" in the three-room apartment on Kutuzovsky Prospekt. The killer was clearly not simply "visiting" a wealthy actress he knew, but rather had a specific goal in mind.
Fedorova could have been killed because of debts or unfavorable deals. Witness testimony indicated that the actress often borrowed money and didn't repay it, or took interest-free "advance payments" for her services (including assistance in smuggling items across the border). "There was a theory that she took something from someone and didn't return the money," recalled MUR officer Captain Butenin.
If Fedorova had paid for something dishonestly, she could have made a powerful enemy in the criminal or near-criminal world.
A separate story is the disappearance of a Matisse painting from an apartment.
It turned out that Fedorova had purchased the painting to send to her daughter in the States. It also turned out that the painting was a fake, and Victoria wouldn't get a cent for it. "Fedorova demanded a refund from the seller who had defrauded her. Perhaps she pressured him, or these people were afraid of being exposed. So they killed her. Politics wasn't involved, only crime," recalled Vyacheslav Pankin, former head of the Main Criminal Investigation Directorate of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs.
Politics most likely had nothing to do with it, but the closest relative of the country's main politician ended up very close to Fedorova's case.
THE SHADOW OF THE "GYPSY PRINCE"
The investigation couldn't help but take into account the serial nature of the robberies: in November 1980, thieves "took" the apartment of Lyudmila Tolstaya, the widow of the "Red Count" Alexei Tolstoy. Less than three weeks after Fedorova's murder, thieves robbed the apartment of animal trainer Irina Bugrimova. The criminals were interested in jewelry.
In both cases, the soloist of the Romen Theatre, the “Gypsy Prince of the Soviet Union” Boris Buryatse, was detained.
He is also the lover of Galina Brezhneva, the daughter of the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.
Galina Brezhneva was... Zoya Fyodorova's neighbor in the same building. So was the Interior Minister's wife, Svetlana Shchelokova. Both women were friends with the pre-war film star, who was part of the "inner circle."
The investigation, unraveling criminal connections, could have found a trail, but it seemed as if they had hit a brick wall.
Where the investigation could have been focused, again, is in the American direction. Fedorova applied several times for permission to travel to the United States to visit her daughter and son-in-law. Later publications alleged that the actress, in preparation for her departure, hastily sold off valuables, including paintings.
Later, a version circulated in the perestroika press: having been refused permission to leave the USSR, Fedorova could have blackmailed a high-ranking link in the “diamond” chain—and overdone it.
This, we emphasize, is speculation.
The fact is, Victoria Fedorova was denied entry into the Soviet Union for her mother's funeral. And the murder investigation... came to nothing. Two years of joint investigations by the KGB and the Ministry of Internal Affairs, four thousand interviews with suspects—and nothing. The investigation was never reopened. The Chekists and police investigators dutifully dug into the matter, but we'd venture to suggest that the word of those known as the party and economic nomenklatura carried more weight.
All that remains are legends like this one: shortly before her death, Fedorova called her daughter and casually said: “They’ll kill me soon.”