Nadezhda Plevitskaya
Russia, 1909–1940
Russian folk singer (1884–1940), born to a Kursk peasant family. The first to bring peasant folksong to the grand concert stage, she was adored by Chaliapin and the Tsar's family and effectively founded the Russian folk-song performance genre — a repertoire of some 800 songs later carried on by Ruslanova, Shulzhenko and others.