Zinaida Nikolayevna Reich was a Russian actress and became one of the main stars of the Meyerhold Theatre until it was closed under Joseph Stalin. She married poet Sergey Yesenin and had two children with him. After their divorce, she married the director Vsevolod Meyerhold. In 1939 Meyerhold was arrested by the NKVD, and she was brutally stabbed in her apartment by NKVD agents who staged a robbery.