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Lyudmila Zykina Soviet Union’S Best-Loved Folk Singers, Dies

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Lyudmila Zykina, who rose to stardom from the factory floor to become one of the Soviet Union’s best-loved folk singers, died Wednesday in Moscow. She was 80.

Her doctor, Vladimir Konstantinov, told the Itar-Tass news agency that she had died in hospital on Wednesday morning. A statement on 1tv.ru, the Web site of Channel One television in Russia, said she had had a heart attack a few days before her death.

Born in Moscow in 1929 into a family of singers, Ms. Zykina worked during World War II as a turner in a Moscow machine tool factory. Her singing career took off after she won a pan-Russian singing competition in 1947.

With her powerful, deep voice, she symbolized the Soviet style of Russian folk singing, using traditional songs but performed in an almost operatic style with orchestral backing.

Called the “Russian dith Piaf” in some quarters, she charmed millions of Soviet television viewers with songs like “Volga,” a paean to the Russian river, or “I Am Flying Over Russia” and remained a revered figure even after the collapse of Communism.

She had been decorated as a People’s Artist of the Soviet Union and a Hero of Socialist Labor, and she won the prestigious Lenin Prize in 1970.

Although little known abroad, she was a major figure in Russia, and her death led state and private television news. Her Web site, ludmilazykina.com, crashed because of the volume of traffic.

A memorial ceremony was scheduled at the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall, one of the biggest in Moscow.

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