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Polina Semyonovna Zhemchuzhina (Russian: Полина Семеновна Жемчужина; 1897 - 1970) was the wife of Vyacheslav Molotov.

Born Pearl Karpovskaya (the word pearl in Russian is жемчужина) to the family of a Jewish tailor in the village of Pologi, in the Yekaterinoslav region (today Dnepropetrovsk Oblast, Ukraine), she joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party of Bolsheviks in 1918 and served as a propaganda commissar in the Red Army during the Russian Civil War.

In 1921, she married Vyacheslav Molotov, by then a member of the Central Committee of the CPSU. She also made a successful career in the Soviet hierarchy, serving in the Narkomat of Food Industry under Anastas Mikoyan, to become in 1939 the first female Narkom (of Fishing Industry), and was elected a candidate to the Central Committee that year.

During the 1920s, her sister emigrated to the Land of Israel, then the British Mandate of Palestine. According to historian Zhores Medvedev, Stalin was highly suspicious of Zhemchuzhina. He thought that she negatively influenced Molotov, and he recommended Molotov to divorce her.^[1] Her brother Karp was a successful businessman in the USA (Montefiore, Stalin n282)

In a secret meeting of the Politburo on August 10, 1939, the agenda item number 33, "Regarding Comrade Zhemchuzhina", her alleged "connections to spies" led to a request to verify that information by the NKVD. As it was customary during the Great Purges, many of her coworkers were arrested and questioned, but the "evidence" (frequently acquired by force) against her was so contradictory that (on October 24) the Politburo concluded the "allegations against comrade Zhemchuzhina's participation in sabotage and spying... to be considered slanderous." However, she was severely reprimanded and demoted for unknowingly keeping contacts with "enemy elements thereby facilitating their spying missions." In February, 1941, she was taken off the list of the candidates to the Central Committee.

During the Great Patriotic War, Zhemchuzhina actively supported the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAC) and befriended many of its leading members, most notably Solomon Mikhoels. She frequently attended performances by the Moscow State Jewish Theater.

Polina Zhemchuzhina befriended Golda Meir, who arrived in Moscow in 1948 as the first Israeli ambassador to the USSR. By the end of 1948, Stalin realized that Israel was siding with the West in the Cold War and unleashed a campaign against the "rootless cosmopolitans" which many historians have termed anti-Semitic.^[2]

In January, 1948, Zhemchuzhina was arrested for treason, sharing the fate of the Jewish wives of a number of other Soviet politicians: Mikhail Kalinin, A. Poskryobyshev, Semyon Budyonny, Grigoriy Kulik. On December 29, 1949, she was sentenced to 5 years of exile in Kustanai Oblast, Kazakhstan. In January, 1953, while in exile, she was re-arrested during the preparation of a new show trial. However, in March 1953, after Stalin's death, she was rehabilitated of charges against her.

1. ^ (Russian) Zhores Medvedev, Stalin and the Jewish Question: New Analysis (2003) ISBN 5-7712-0251-7
2. ^ Paul Johnson, A History of the Jews, London, 1987, p.527

• Report by Shkiryatov and Abakumov about Zhemchuzhina to Stalin, in Russian