Portrait of Polina Zhemchuzhina

Birthday profile

Polina Zhemchuzhina

Soviet politician (1897-1970)

Born
March 12, 1897
Died
May 1, 1970
Zodiac sign
Pisces
Birth year
1897

About Polina Zhemchuzhina

Polina Semyonovna Zhemchuzhina (born Perl Solomonovna Karpovskaya; 27 February 1897 – 1 April 1970) was a Soviet politician and the wife of the Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov. Zhemchuzhina was the director of the Soviet national cosmetics trust from 1932 to 1936, Minister of Fisheries in 1939, and head of textiles production in the Ministry of Light Industry from 1939 to 1948. In 1948, Zhemchuzhina was arrested by the Soviet secret police, charged with treason, and sent into internal exile, where she remained until after the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953. == Biography == Zhemchuzhina was born Perl Solomonovna Karpovskaya to the family of a Jewish tailor Solomon Karpovsky in the village of Polohy, in the Alexandrovsky Uyezd (today Zaporizhzhia 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. As a communist, she went by the surname Zhemchuzhina, which, like her Yiddish birth name, Perl, means "pearl" in Russian. In 1920, she married Vyacheslav Molotov, by then a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (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 Minister (Narkom) in the government of the Soviet Union, as head of the Ministry of the Fishing Industry, and was elected to the Central Committee that year. During the 1920s, her sister immigrated to Palestine. Her brother Sam Carp was a successful businessman in the United States.

Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.

Career and life highlights

Polina Zhemchuzhina timeline

  1. Zhemchuzhina was the director of the Soviet national cosmetics trust from 1932 to 1936, Minister of Fisheries in 1939, and head of textiles production in the Ministry of Light Industry from 1939 to 1948.
  2. Polina Zhemchuzhina befriended Golda Meir, who arrived in Moscow in November 1948 as the first Israeli envoy to the USSR.
  3. In 1948, Zhemchuzhina was arrested by the Soviet secret police, charged with treason, and sent into internal exile, where she remained until after the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953.

The world when Polina Zhemchuzhina was born

Polina Zhemchuzhina was born in 1897. The year snapshot below places that birthday in its cultural and historical setting: the music and films people were following, the headlines shaping public life, and the everyday prices families encountered.

Headlines and milestones

  • Top headlineKlondike Gold Rush begins in Canada
  • Technology milestoneFirst practical diesel engine built
  • Defining fadKlondike Gold Rush fever
  • World population~1.57B

United States snapshot

  • U.S. leaderWilliam McKinley
  • U.S. population70.0M

1897 versus 2026

These figures put everyday life in Polina Zhemchuzhina's birth year beside the site's latest United States snapshot.

Measure18972026
Population70.0M341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, Library of Congress. See our editorial policy for sourcing, corrections, and review standards.

Read the source biography on Wikipedia. Wikipedia text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.