Klavdiya Shulzhenko ( March 24 1906 – June 17, 1984 ) was a popular female singer of the Soviet Union. Shulzhenko started singing with jazz and pop bands in the late 1920s. She rose to fame in the late 1930s with her version of Sebastian Yradier's La Paloma. In 1939, she was awarded at the first all-Soviet competition of pop singers. During World War II, Shulzhenko performed about a thousand concerts for Soviet soldiers in besieged Leningrad and elsewhere She, as traditional pop singer, was named People's Artist of the USSR in 1971. On April 10, 1976 Shulzhenko performed to enraptured audience in the Column Hall of the House of Unions in what would become her most famous concert.