Valentina Istomina – Stalin’s housekeeper and long-time mistress – isn’t very well known but her name has occasionally been bandied about as one of Stalin’s ‘jewish mistresses’ so I thought I’d address this issue here.
We don’t know a great deal about Valentina as she didn’t talk much about her time – or her relationship - with Stalin from at latest 1938 until his death in 1953. (1) However, what we do know is that she was born Valentina Vasilevna Zhbychkina - later Istomina; presumably upon her marriage although I can find no reference to such - in 1917 (2) with her birthplace being uncertain but it seems to have been the town of Donok near Nizhny Novgorod.
What we know about Valentina is summarized by Montefiore as follows:
‘In 1938, she came to work in Kuntsevo. Stalin was attracted to a specific ideal: the busty, blue-eyed, big-haired and retrousse-nosed Russian peasant woman, submissive and practical, a baba who could make a home without in any way becoming involved in his other life.’ (3)
She was also thought of by several members of Stalin’s inner circle and guards as ‘Stalin’s common law wife’ (4) and seems to have acted as an ersatz mother to Stalin’s daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva after her mother’s suicide in November 1932. (5)
However, there is absolutely no evidence that Valentina Istomina was jewish that I can find. She was basically the mistress who satisfied Stalin’s babushka fetish, but she wasn’t jewish.
References
(1) Simon Sebag Montefiore, 2004, ‘Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar’, 1st Edition, Phoenix: London, p. 298
(2) Stephen Kotkin, 2017, ‘Stalin’, Vol. 2, 1st Edition, Penguin: New York, p. 1012, n. 147
(3) Montefiore, Op. Cit., p. 298
(4) Ibid., p. 301
(5) Ibid., pp. 299-302; also https://europebetweeneastandwest.wordpress.com/2015/09/25/the-keeper-of-secrets-valentina-istomina-discovering-stalins-mistress/ and https://europebetweeneastandwest.wordpress.com/2014/07/08/the-quiet-concubine-valentina-istomina-stalins-housekeeper/
retrousse-nosed https://remosince1988.com/cdn/shop/collections/Noses_thumb_25676746-999b-4742-8d69-ace50c7e4e77.jpg?v=1657348299 also pug or snub nosed