Victoria Fyodorova

For the retired Russian high jumper, see Viktoriya Fyodorova.

Victoria Fyodorova (January 18, 1946 – September 5, 2012) was a Russian-American actress and author. She was born shortly after World War II to U.S. Admiral Jackson Tate (1898–1978) and Russian actress Zoya Fyodorova (1909–1981); the couple had had a brief affair before Tate was expelled from Moscow by Joseph Stalin. Victoria Fyodorova wrote the 1979 book, The Admiral's Daughter, which was about her experience attempting to reunite with her father.

Early life

Fyodorova's mother, Zoya Fyodorova, was a well-known Soviet actress starting in the 1930s. In 1945, she met United States Navy Captain Jackson R. Tate, a deputy attaché who was stationed in Moscow, and they had an affair. Tate was warned to end the relationship by secret police.

When Stalin learned of the affair, Tate was declared "persona non grata" and expelled from Moscow. Zoya Fyodorova was arrested and sent to Siberia for eight years. Their daughter, Victoria, was born January 8, 1946, and named for V-E Day. Fyodorova lived with her mother's sister in Kazakhstan until she was 8 years old, when her mother was released from jail after Stalin's death. Victoria Fyodorova was also an actress in Russia, as her mother had been. She appeared in a number of well-received films, including a 1970 adaptation of Crime and Punishment. She was married briefly and divorced.

Reunion

University of Connecticut professor Irene Kirk learned of Victoria's story in 1959 and spent years trying to find Tate in the United States. Tate was unaware of having a daughter and of his former lover's arrest and imprisonment. When Kirk found Tate in 1973, she carried correspondence between the two back and forth to Moscow.

In 1974, Tate began a campaign to convince the Soviet government to allow his daughter to travel to see him in the United States. She was granted permission and arrived in the United States in March 1975 on a three-month travel visa. She spent several weeks in seclusion in Florida with her father. While in the United States, she met Frederick Pouy, a pilot for Pan American World Airways, and they married on June 7, 1975, in Stamford, Connecticut, days before her visa was to expire. Their son, Christopher Alexander Fyodor Pouy, was born on May 3, 1976. Zoya Fyodorova petitioned the Soviet government and was allowed to travel to the U.S. to be with her daughter for the birth.

Later life

Victoria Fyodorova settled in Stamford, Connecticut. Working with agent Paul Kohner, she appeared as a Russian doctor in an episode of Medical Center in 1975, and in the 1985 movie Target. She and Pouy divorced in 1990.

Bibliography

• Fyodorova, Victoria; Frankel, Haskel (1979). The Admiral's Daughter. Delacorte Press. p. 372. ISBN 0-440-00366-0.

See also

• Victoria Fyodorova at IMDb
• "Vicky, the Admiral's Daughter, Comes from Russia with Love". People. 1975-05-05.