Great Soviet singer Zykina dead at 80: state TV

July 1, 2009

One of the Soviet Union's best-loved folk singers, Lydmila Zykina, who rose to stardom from the factory floor, has died of a heart attack, Russian state television said. She was 80 years old. "A few days ago Lyudmila Georgievna suffered a heart attack and today her heart stopped beating," said a statement published on the website of Channel One television. Born in Moscow in 1929, Zykina worked during World War II as a turner in a Moscow machine tool factory, and her singing career took off after she won a pan-Russian singing competition in 1947. In a career that spanned Russia's postwar history, she sung in a choir in front of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin and also met Russia's former president and post-Communist strongman Vladimir Putin.