Paper Short Abstract:

The story of Feodora Kornilova, wife of socialist Hungary’s dictator Mátyás Rákosi, is fascinating. The First Lady of the Hungarian People’s Republic was an Indigenous woman from a far-flung Northeastern Siberia (Sakha). She was actively engaged in charitable causes and was a talented porcelain artist, producing a number of remarkable pieces. Her formal training in this art makes her the first professional Sakha ceramicist. Based on primary and secondary sources, the author looks at the many aspects of Feodora Kornilova’s life and art.

Paper Abstract:

The story of Feodora Kornilova, wife of socialist Hungary’s dictator Mátyás Rákosi, is fascinating. The First Lady of the Hungarian People’s Republic was an Indigenous woman from a far-flung Northeastern Siberia (Sakha). An attractive woman of Asian appearance, her quiet and self-composed presence was striking in the halls of power of post-war Europe. The Rákosis were indeed an unorthodox first couple — not only in the context of their time but historically as well. Mátyás Rákosi was Jewish, and his rise to power in the second half of the 1940s, just a few years after half a million Hungarian Jews were murdered in the last years of the Holocaust, is remarkable. Feodora Kornilova’s racial and ethnic background as an Indigenous Siberian makes her an outlier among the European elites of any historical period. To this day, foreign-born spouses of national leaders are a rare phenomenon. As the First Lady of Hungary, she was actively engaged in charitable causes and was a talented porcelain artist, producing a number of remarkable pieces. Her formal training in this art makes her the first professional Sakha ceramicist. Based on primary and secondary sources, the author looks at the many aspects of Feodora Kornilova’s life and art.