Galina Korotkevich

She was born Galina Petrovna Korotkevich on August 18, 1921, in St. Petersburg, Russia, into a family of actors. Her family lived on the Nevsky Prospekt, number 11, near the Hermitage museum. As a young girl she was fond of art, music and theatre.

In the 1930s, she studied drawing and ballet, then took an acting class. Galina Korotkevich was nineteen when Hitler's troops attacked her country in WWII. The war changed her life forever. She survived the siege of Leningrad during the Nazi occupation of Russia in the Second World War. At that time she and her mother nearly died of starvation, but they survived. In her effort to help the resistance, Korotkevich formed a small concert troupe and gave over two thousand performances for soldiers in the front-lines during WWII. Several times she was risking her life. She narrowly escaped death under air-bombings by the Luftwaffe. Her cheering appearances before soldiers in the front-lines helped lift their spirits during the hard years of WWII.

Her acting debut was in 1941 during the Siege of Leningrad.

In 1945, after the war ended, Galina Korotkevich resumed her studies at the Leningrad Institute of Theatre, Music, and Cinematography.

In 1946 she graduated from the acting class of Boris Sushkevich.

From 1946 to 1962 she was member of the troupe at the Theatre of Lensoveta in Leningrad. There she shot to fame as Nadia Kovrova in the popular play "Spring in Moscow" directed by Nikolai Akimov.

Galina Korotkevich is a Russian actress known for the leading role in Vesna v Moskve (1953).

Eventually, the play was made into movie Vesna v Moskve (1953), and Korotkevich became an instant celebrity in the Soviet Union.