Childhood and youth of Lyudmila Zykina
Lyudmila Zykina. Photo: ale07.ru
Lyudmila Zykina. 1963. Photo: uznayvse.ru
Lyudmila Zykina is a soloist of the Russian Song Choir of the All-Union Radio. 1957. Photo: weekend.rambler.ru
Lyudmila Zykina was born in Moscow. Her father worked at a bakery, her mother worked as a nurse in a hospital. We lived in a wooden house in the Cheryomushki area - then it was on the outskirts of the city. To feed the family, parents worked two shifts in a row. The daughter was left with her grandmother, who came from a village in the Ryazan region. They spent a lot of time outside: tending the garden, going to the forest to pick mushrooms and berries. Since childhood, Lyudmila Zykina has helped run the household - she fed chickens, piglets, ducks and a cow.
The family loved music and at holidays they sang Russian folk songs: “Oh, you, wide steppe”, “Here comes the postal troika”, “Khas-bulat daring”. Zykina remembered the words from her grandmother: she knew a lot of melodies and always started singing first. In the book “My Volga Flows,” Zykina recalled: “What wonderful voices my relatives had! Later, in the Pyatnitsky Choir, and on the radio, and simply in the villages, I met hundreds of singers. But I have never heard such voices as in our house anywhere else! My grandmother had an alto, my father had a bass, and Aunt Pasha was most likely a mezzo. But my mother had a voice of a completely unique timbre, high.” At home, Lyudmila Zykina taught herself to play the guitar and accordion.
There was an amateur club at the hospital where my mother worked. Lyudmila Zykina went there for classes, but not for vocals, but for dancing. I didn’t think about the stage: I dreamed of becoming a pilot.
Like thousands of my peers, I raved about the names of Chkalov, Baidukov... and, of course, heroine pilots - Raskova, Grizodubova, Osipenko... I played volleyball, football, and hockey - I didn’t want to give in to the boys in anything. I didn’t get off my bike in the summer. I repaired it myself, disassembled and reassembled it, lubricated the bearings. I loved tinkering with engines.
Lyudmila Zykina. From the book “My Volga Flows”
In 1941, when Lyudmila Zykina turned 12 years old, the Great Patriotic War began. My father went to the front, and my mother’s hospital became a military hospital, where the wounded were brought every day. There were not enough products that were issued with a dependent card, and Lyudmila Zykina went to work. She got a job as a turner's apprentice at the Moscow Machine Tool Plant. When I wrote my application for admission, I added two years to myself - otherwise they simply wouldn’t have accepted her because of her age. Three months later, Zykina already received the third category and began to work independently. The artist recalled: “To operate the machine, I placed a bench. It was interesting to work, but I wanted to sleep all the time - I was also studying at school, preparing homework until late. One day, in order not to fall asleep, she started up another nearby machine and began to move in turn from one to the other. I had to work hard. But I exceeded the norm.”
In 1943, my father returned home from the front. Through friends, he got his daughter a job at a bakery factory, but Zykina did not work there for long. At one of the shifts, the future singer met the soloist of the Philharmonic, Elena Vyazemskaya. Vyazemskaya heard Zykina sing and invited her to perform before screenings at the Khudozhestvenny cinema. Sometimes they were invited to give concerts in hospitals. All songs were mainly performed by Vyazemskaya. Lyudmila Zykina danced and was a backup singer.
Soul and song Lyudmila Georgievna Zykina passed away
It seemed that her voice was always heard. And it will always sound. So inextricably did he merge in the perception of millions of people with the ideal image of Russia, he embodied and presented in reality the most characteristic features of the Russian soul: breadth and freedom, calm and firm dignity, ease of relationships, depth and constancy of feelings. But just a few weeks after her 80th birthday, on July 1, 2009, People’s Artist of the USSR Lyudmila Zykina died in Moscow City Hospital No. 83.
She belonged to that very rare type of people in history who were destined by fate to go beyond the usual division into workshops and genres and give people a complete understanding of the unconscious, but very important part of both national existence in general and the life of each person individually. “I taught women to speak,” the great poetess Anna Akhmatova once said. Lyudmila Zykina presented us with a fused image of the country and people.
The worldview she created is infinitely far from the vulgar use of the word “people”, dividing into masters and servants, power and subjects, intelligentsia and the crowd, which has long been flourishing in all strata of society. Her Russia was not torn into right and wrong periods; there were no revolutions or new worlds built on the rubble. At a time when the history of the country was counted from the revolution of 1917 and the vast majority of its inhabitants had internally long ago lost touch with that old Russia, Lyudmila Zykina somehow easily and organically built a bridge across all historical chasms. Professional historians have yet to solve this most difficult task. But she did it. And it gave the worldview of our people a very important tone, the main component of which was respect. Confident and not arrogant respect for yourself, for your country, for the history of your people. In this she became, to use a musical term, a tuning fork.
Lyudmila Zykina in her youth. Photo broadcast on Channel One
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Another Zykina phenomenon. All the references to world pop authorities, who appeared in abundance in the press in the pre-anniversary days, seem somehow unnecessary and far-fetched. They say that the Beatles appreciated it, and someone else. Maybe she was appreciated as a singer, but as a phenomenon of a completely different scale, it is we who should appreciate her, that is, those about whom and for whom she sang. And authorities will not help here. In a certain sense, Zykina is on a par with Pushkin, whom no matter how much you translate into other languages, nothing worthwhile will come of it. To call her work an “encyclopedia of Russian life”, however, is hard to come by. The word doesn’t stick, it’s very learned. But it certainly has become a mirror of Russia. Not with fragile glass, but with the calm surface of the lake, which gives everything that is reflected in it a mysterious and bewitching depth.
The future People's Artist was born into a Moscow working-class family on June 10, 1929. Lyudmila Zykina remembered with constant warmth her mother Ekaterina Vasilievna, who worked as a nurse in a hospital. My father worked at a bakery. Almost everyone in the house sang: grandmother, mother, father and numerous relatives. There were often impromptu home concerts, to which neighbors gathered. As a child, my beloved and adored daughter did not miss either handicrafts or caring for the garden, piglets, and poultry.
During the war, in 1942, while still a teenager, Zykina went to work as a turner at the Moscow Machine Tool Plant named after Sergo Ordzhonikidze. For her conscientious work she was awarded the honorary title “Honored Ordzhonikidzovets”. Many years later, already recognized and entering the highest offices, Zykina recalled this award as the most valuable in her life. Even then she sang for the wounded in the hospital.
During the war, there was no time to think about education—you had to work and earn money. After the war, Zykina worked as a nurse in a military hospital and as a seamstress, until a notice she accidentally saw on a fence turned her life in a completely different direction. The announcement talked about a competition for the Pyatnitsky choir. Out of one and a half thousand applicants, four were chosen. And one of them was 18-year-old Lyudmila Zykina.
The famous musical group became her first music school. However, in 1949, the aspiring singer had to leave the choir. My mother died, and due to nervous shock and emotions, Zykina lost her voice. She returned to her working profession and got a job as a bookmaker at the First Model Printing House. New trouble - the father brought another woman into the house, Lyudmila did not get along with her stepmother and left home. As it turned out, for good.
Lyudmila Zykina in her youth. Photo broadcast on Channel One
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The voice returned as suddenly as it had disappeared. Zykina recalled how one day she was walking down the street and humming something. And suddenly I realized that the voice had returned! Her next place of work was the Russian song choir of the All-Union Radio, where she later became a soloist. A repertoire of folk songs appeared (“Down along the Volga River”, “Here comes the daring troika”, “Meadow duck”, “Steppe and steppe all around”, “Thin mountain ash”, “Under the arc the bell sings”, “Mother, that the field is dusty"), and from songs by Soviet composers ("Snow of gray hairs", "The path has broken off at the cliff", "Don't wake up the widows of Russia, cranes", "Birch trees are growing in Volgograd", "People remember", "On a young sailor is going on leave” and many others).
1957 brought the title of laureate of the VI Festival of Youth and Students in Moscow, and in 1960 Zykina won the All-Russian Competition of Variety Artists. Later she recalled the nervous tension this victory was associated with. The jury, which included pop idols of that time Arkady Raikin, Lydia Ruslanova, Klavdiya Shulzhenko, demanded that she perform her program again. And she sang. Alone, without musicians. She was unconditionally declared the winner.
Lyudmila Georgievna recalled that for a long time she did not dare to perform the song, which later became her calling card. Zykina believed that she had a weak voice to perform the song “The Volga River Flows” by composer Mark Fradkin and poet Lev Oshanin. However, when I saw that other artists were singing this song, I decided for myself - I’ll take it and do it! And she sang, so much so that everyone who heard her performance was sure that no one else sang this song except Zykina.
Since 1960, the singer's solo career began. By Lyudmila Georgievna’s own admission, she traveled throughout the Soviet Union at least six times and performed in dozens of foreign countries. She performed both at concert venues and at enterprises, in houses of culture and clubs. The leaders of the party and state loved her song: in 1964, Nikita Khrushchev invited her to the Kremlin for his 70th birthday. Leonid Brezhnev, who later took his place, also treated the singer favorably.
Personal friendship connected Lyudmila Zykina with the then Minister of Culture Ekaterina Furtseva. The episode with Zykina’s purchase of a car became almost a joke. Having seen a foreign car from one of her musician friends, the singer herself wanted to buy a Peugeot. Since such cars were not imported into the country at that time, I had to turn to Furtseva, to which she sharply replied: “You are a Russian woman, a Russian singer. Must drive a Russian car." And Zykina got behind the wheel of the Volga. Lyudmila Georgievna suffered the death of Furtseva as a severe personal loss.
In 1969, already a recognized singer, Lyudmila Zykina received her first musical education - she graduated from the Ippolitov-Ivanov Music College. Lyudmila Zykina received her higher musical education in 1977, when she graduated from the Gnessin State Music and Pedagogical Institute. Popular singer Alexander Gradsky recalled that as a third-year student at this institute, he gave solo singing lessons. His surprise knew no bounds when a country-famous singer came to class. She had a notebook in her hands, in which she carefully wrote down Gradsky’s advice. Even at the zenith of her fame, Zykina continued to study. Subsequently, she began teaching herself, becoming first an associate professor and then a professor at the Moscow Institute of Culture.
The time of her creative maturity and national fame fell on the stagnant years of the reign of Leonid Brezhnev. She, as they say, “got into the cage.” Any resident of the Soviet Union could guess the program of government concerts in advance and almost accurately. And of course, Lyudmila Zykina was always there. This gave rise to subsequently accusing her of involvement in all the sins of that system. However, the prosecutors were mistaken and did not take into account one simple thing. It was not she who leaned against the regime in search of a warm place. It was the regime that tried to use it to look more humane. If I didn’t have talent, I would work in a factory like everyone else. And since God gave the ability to influence souls, it did. From the screens of government television, but about humane, eternal and necessary things.
Lyudmila Zykina was awarded the title of “People's Artist of the USSR” in 1973. In the 1970s, she created her own musical group of Russian songs, which in 1977 received the name “Russia”.
Lyudmila Zykina celebrating her anniversary in 2009. Photo (c)AFP
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Lyudmila Zykina’s repertoire included more than two thousand songs, and she recorded about 250 of them. The total circulation of her records is 6 million copies. During her career, the singer became a laureate of the Lenin Prize (1970), the Glinka State Prize of the RSFSR (1987), the Saints Equal-to-the-Apostles Cyril and Methodius Prize (1998), and the Ovation Prize twice, in 1999 and 2004. Zykina was awarded many orders and medals. In 1987, the singer was awarded the title “Hero of Socialist Labor”. Lyudmila Zykina received her last award in her life from President Dmitry Medvedev on her 80th birthday. For her “outstanding contribution to the development of Russian musical culture,” she was awarded the Order of Merit for the Fatherland, 1st degree.
Lyudmila Zykina wrote three books: “Song”, “At the Crossroads of Meetings” and “My Volga Flows...”. The publication of the book “I Love You”, which contains letters addressed to Zykina, was timed to coincide with the singer’s 80th birthday. Despite undergoing several operations, she did not give up her concert activities. An anniversary tour of her group throughout Russia was planned for the summer of 2009. The singer herself planned to perform in several concerts. On June 25, Lyudmila Zykina was hospitalized in serious condition, and on July 1, her heart stopped.
To the choir for ice cream: first performances on stage
Lyudmila Zykina. Photo: 24smi.org
Lyudmila Zykina. Photo: eventsinrussia.com
Lyudmila Zykina. Photo: peoples.ru
After the end of the war, Lyudmila Zykina began to often visit the state farm Cheryomushkin club - where the youth of the region gave concerts and staged plays. Zykina recalled: “It was small, nondescript, with low ceilings. But it seemed like a palace to us. They even organized—this was during the post-war devastation—fashion evenings. Once a week we gave a paid performance, and the entire proceeds went towards theatrical costumes and shoes.” If Zykina managed to save some money, she went to the Udarnik cinema, where the famous singer Capitalina Lazarenko performed before the screenings. In her book “My Volga Flows,” Zykina described her impressions after her performances: “It was a holiday, a real holiday in a capital that had not eaten enough and had not yet healed its wounds.”
In 1946, 17-year-old Lyudmila Zykina joined the Pyatnitsky Choir. It happened by chance: while out for a walk, she saw a recruitment ad and bet six ice creams with her friends that she would go to the audition. When Zykina knocked on the door of the hall, the second round was already underway. However, she was admitted. Out of a thousand applicants, only four were accepted into the choir - among them was Lyudmila Zykina.
The famous composer and conductor Vladimir Zakharov became the singer’s mentor. Zykina studied a lot - she had no musical education, so at first it was difficult. The performer recalled: “I learned from Zakharov to understand “approaches” to a song. He condemned the sugary sweetness of some singers, complained about their bad taste, excessive gestures, howls and similar “embellishments,” and demanded maximum rigor and simplicity of performance.” During rehearsals, much attention was paid to the meaning of the piece - it was necessary not just to sing, but to “live” the song. Together with the Pyatnitsky Choir, Lyudmila Zykina often went on tour, including abroad. In 1948, she performed in Czechoslovakia at the Prague Spring festival.
In 1949, Lyudmila Zykina’s mother died. This event greatly affected the artist’s life: she lost her voice due to stress. The singer had to leave the choir. Three months later she was able to get a job as a booklet maker at the First Model Printing House. Then she moved out of the house to live with relatives: her father started a new family.
Zykina’s voice returned only two years later. In the book “My Volga Flows,” the performer wrote: “And suddenly - unexpectedly for myself - I sang something and was amazed - my voice returned! I was then choked with happiness - I was singing! I didn’t believe myself, I took it higher - it sounds! She sang Zakharov’s “Wherever you go or go” - everything is fine.” Soon she began singing in the Russian Song Choir of Central Television and Radio. The artistic director of the group was Anna Rudneva. To achieve purity of sound, she asked Zykina to sing without accompaniment during rehearsals. Rudneva knew folklore well and told the singer a lot about folk music, taught how to behave on stage: where to look, how to leave gracefully.
“Miss Volga”: solo songs by Lyudmila Zykina
Lyudmila Zykina. Photo: 24smi.org
Lyudmila Zykina. Photo: peoples.ru
Lyudmila Zykina. Photo: kino-teatr.ru
Gradually, Lyudmila Zykina began to think about a solo career. The opportunity presented itself in 1960: the All-Russian competition of pop artists was held in Moscow. At the audition I decided to sing without instrumental accompaniment. In front of the jury, she performed the songs “Dropped the Ring,” “Meadow Duck,” and “Blow, Blow, Downwind.” Lyudmila Zykina was noticed - the singer became a laureate of the competition, and soon she was invited to work at the Mosconcert.
I wasn’t worried at all - I was alone on stage, singing as I wanted. And I really wanted to prove to everyone who didn’t believe in me that I could be the first. And that day I probably had the most precious success for me. No one saw how I cried later - from happiness, from the fact that so, not immediately, not suddenly, my long-standing and hidden dream came true.
Lyudmila Zykina. From the book “My Volga Flows”
The first song in Lyudmila Zykina’s repertoire was a song about a young sailor “On Leave.” Musician Alexander Averkin and poet Viktor Bokov offered to perform the composition. However, at first it did not bring success to the singer: the song was not played on the radio, and at concerts they applauded sparingly. It also affected the fact that Zykina found it difficult to switch from choral singing to solo singing. She recalled: “When I came to the stage, I couldn’t get rid of the feeling that the audience in the hall couldn’t hear me, because I was accustomed to singing quietly in front of the microphone. So we had to adapt on the fly: break established habits, established singing techniques.” Then Lyudmila Zykina decided to move a little away from the style of performing folk songs. The singer added play with her voice: she abruptly switched from a quiet performance to a loud one, and then returned to the previous one. The trick worked. Soon Alexander Averkin offered Zykina another composition - “Letter to Mother”.
In her first years on the stage, Lyudmila Zykina performed many songs about the difficult fate of women: “Tears”, “The birch tree gave me earrings”, “Your father”. The artist wrote about this period: “I sang a lot of songs - simple-minded and sugary. My repertoire lacked either genuine lyrics or serious letters, and I did not dare to venture into a larger civic theme. That's how I started on the stage. And every beginning is a search.” By 1965, Lyudmila Zykina revised her repertoire. Famous singers Irma Yaunzem and Lydia Ruslanova helped her with the new program. They selected the songs “Mother, It’s Dusty in the Field,” “Thin Rowan,” and “Late Evening from the Forest.” Soon Zykina included a composition about the love of a daughter and mother, “Orenburg Down Shawl.” The song based on the poetry of the poet Viktor Bokov became one of the most popular in her repertoire. She said: “Performing the “Orenburg Shawl,” I seem to be reflecting on the fate of this old woman who lived a difficult life. A mother woman is always beautiful, always worthy of admiration.”
At the same time, Lyudmila Zykina attended classes at the Moscow Music School named after Ippolitov-Ivanov. New songs required virtuoso voice control, and daily work with composers and directors required knowledge of music theory. Zykina’s programs became more and more thoughtful: now the singer connected individual numbers with poems and carefully selected costumes. Thus, in the concert “For You, Woman,” the artist showed the history of women in Russia: from lack of rights in ancient times to heroic deeds on an equal basis with men during the Great Patriotic War. Zykina began with cries of “Not along the river” and “Don’t rage, wild winds,” then performed “Let’s go, let’s go, cheerful friends” to the music of Isaac Dunaevsky. The highlight was “Mother’s Arioso” by Alexander Novikov - a song about a mother who is waiting for her son to come home.
In the mid-1960s, the singer worked on Lev Oshanin’s song “The Volga River Flows.” It was first sung by actor Vladimir Troshin in 1962 in the film “The Volga Flows.” Zykina recalled: “Almost everyone sang it, but I still couldn’t make up my mind - it seemed that I didn’t have an even sound in the low and high registers. Time passed. A moment came and I felt that I couldn’t help but sing it.” The song performed by Zykina became a hit: records were released in large quantities, and Western media called the artist “Miss Volga.”
In 1968, Lyudmila Zykina became a soloist at a concert by composer Rodion Shchedrin. He wrote “Poetory” based on the poems of Andrei Voznesensky. It was a concert of a poet accompanied by an orchestra. The singer recalled: “Those hours that I studied with him were a difficult school for me, but they flew by unnoticed - I listened to him with such joy.” The concert received a prize at the International Festival in Boston, England, for its original use of folklore in a symphonic work.
I look for poems myself, look through poetry collections, buy old magazines from second-hand book dealers, in which interesting “poetry material” may appear. ...In my opinion, a singer cannot help but love poetry, otherwise they simply have nothing to do in art.
Lyudmila Zykina. From the book “My Volga Flows”
In 1969, Zykina graduated from music school. By this time, she was a famous singer and spent up to 20 days a month on tour. The performer performed in France, Poland, Bulgaria, Finland, Czechoslovakia, and traveled throughout most of the USSR. She even sang for polar explorers in the Arctic.
On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Lenin's birth, in 1970, Lyudmila Zykina again performed as a soloist at a concert by composer Rodion Shchedrin. He wrote the cantata "Lenin in the People's Heart." The work was structured as a story of two ordinary people who saw Lenin: the Red Guard Belmas and the worker Natorova. The form of the cantata was similar to Poetry - the monologues of the characters were supported by the arias of the soloists, chorus and orchestra. Lev Leshchenko in his book “Apology for Memory” wrote: “The music of the oratorio is an incredibly complex score, based on documentary evidence of people who knew and saw Lenin. Well, “story” in this case is a very conditional definition of that vocal part, which only a highly professional performer can do.” In 1972, the work was awarded the State Prize. A year later, Zykina was awarded the title of People’s Artist of the USSR “for great achievements in the development of Soviet musical art.”
At the peak of her career, Lyudmila Zykina decided to get a higher education: she wanted not only to sing herself, but also to teach folk songs to others. In 1977, the performer graduated from the Gnessin State Musical and Pedagogical Institute. Soon Lyudmila Zykina began teaching at the Moscow State Institute of Culture in the folk choir department.
Music
Initially, Lyudmila Zykina was taken for choral performance, but soon the girl became a soloist. Her career was quickly going uphill, but then the singer suffered grief - her mother died. Stress had such an effect on Zykina’s ligaments that the vocalist could not only sing, but even speak normally for a year. Zykina's vocal career paused for a while. In order not to be a parasite, the girl went to work in a printing house. Fortunately, after a while, her voice was restored, and Lyudmila continued her performances.
Zykina was unable to return to Pyatnitsky’s choir, so she became a soloist in the Russian song choir of the All-Union Radio. Gradually, songs that are so beloved by fans appear in the singer’s repertoire - “Thin Rowan,” “Steppe and Steppe All Around,” “A Young Sailor Is Going on Leave,” “Down the Volga River” and others. In total, Zykina sang over 2000 compositions, which she remembered by heart until the end of her life.
The end of the 50s passed under the sign of Lyudmila Zykina: the singer became a laureate of one festival after another. The singer tours a lot both in the Soviet Union and abroad. During her musical career, Lyudmila Georgievna performed in 92 countries around the world, and everywhere she was received warmly and sincerely. And in her homeland, Zykina sang, perhaps, in all corners. The vocalist even has a concert at the North Pole for polar explorers drifting on an ice floe.
One day, while on tour abroad, the artist accidentally crossed paths with members of The Beatles. After meeting, the British musicians asked Zykina to sing a song from the Russian repertoire, and then they themselves performed a number of Russian songs. This fact from the singer’s biography was kept silent for 30 years, until the artist herself spoke about the significant meeting in an interview.
Lyudmila Zykina became the favorite singer of Soviet political leaders - Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev. The singer often appeared at government concerts, and once at Khrushchev’s birthday she replaced a line in the song “The Volga River Flows” and sang “And you are 17 years old!”, which pleased the hero of the day.
At the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the founding of the USSR, Chairman of the Council of Ministers Alexei Kosygin invited those present to raise a glass to Lyudmila Zykina, whom he called the only Russian singer, after which rumors spread on the sidelines of the government about the romance between the artist and the statesman.
A special friendship connected Lyudmila Zykina and Minister of Culture Ekaterina Furtseva. The friends visited each other regularly, both loved bathing procedures. After the death of Ekaterina Furtseva, Lyudmila canceled her tour for the duration of the funeral.
In 1977, the singer created her own Russian folk ensemble “Russia”, which she led until the end of her life. In later years, Zykina often sang duets with pop musicians - Nikolai Rastorguev, Mikhail Kizin, Marc Almond and others.
It is worth noting that although Lyudmila Georgievna is considered a performer of folk songs, it was her own pop hits stylized as folklore that brought worldwide fame to the singer: “The Volga River Flows,” “Orenburg Down Shawl,” “Winter,” “Wait for Me.” For the artist, musical hits were created by composers Rodion Shchedrin, Oscar Feltsman, Alexandra Pakhmutova, Tikhon Khrennikov, Mark Fradkin.
In the last years of her life, Zykina continued to give concerts. In addition to teaching at a music university, Lyudmila Zykina also supervised a number of orphanages and served as president of the Russian Academy of Culture and president of the Moscow Peace Foundation. A charitable foundation acted on behalf of the singer, the director of which was Mikhail Kizin, soloist of the Rossiya ensemble. The singer helped the artist work on her autobiography “I Love You,” which was published in 2009. Zykina’s last concert program had the same name.
“I love what I do too much”: the personal life of Lyudmila Zykina
Lyudmila Zykina with her first husband Vladlen Pozdnov. Photo: piterburger.ru
Lyudmila Zykina with her fourth husband Viktor Gridin. Photo: peoples.ru
Lyudmila Zykina was married four times. The first husband was an automobile plant engineer, Vladlen Pozdnov. The singer was 22 years old at that time; they met when Zykina worked in a printing house. A few months later, her voice returned, and the performer began to often go on tour with the choir of Central Television and Radio. The couple lived together for only a year.
Soon Zykina met a photojournalist for the magazine “Soviet Warrior” Evgeny Svalov. We met on a trolleybus: the singer was returning from a rehearsal and sat down opposite her future husband. Svalov immediately liked her, and the journalist decided to accompany the performer home. A couple of months later he proposed. The marriage was short-lived: a few years later the couple divorced.
The singer’s third husband was Vladimir Kotelkin, a foreign language teacher and personal translator of Patriarch Alexy I. They lived together for ten years. Lyudmila Zykina reasoned: “I love what I do too much. This is in the first place for me: everything that once bothered me, I threw it all away. Maybe that’s why my family didn’t work out. There are rehearsals every day, concerts almost every day, sometimes two a day. Which man would like a wife who comes home tired after midnight?
In 1975, Lyudmila Zykina met her fourth husband, accordion player Viktor Gridin. Later he led the ensemble that accompanied the singer. By the time he met the artist, he was already married and raising two children. However, he fell in love with Zykina and divorced his wife. The following year they got married. The couple lived together for 17 years: they performed together, thought through the program, and went on tour. The marriage broke up in 1993.
