Moscow’s Bolshoi Ballet had three leading women when it was building up after the Revolution, but the only one of them seen in Britain was the vividly expressive Galina Ulanova during the company’s 1956 tour. The oldest of the three (100 this year) was Marina Semyonova who, to judge from accounts and from snatches of film, was also the most elegant. That leaves Olga Lepeshinskaya, who was tiny and whose style was what we would call demi-caractère, that is, with the academic technique coloured by a more dramatic or comic manner.

Olga Vasiliyevna Lepeshinskaya was born in Kiev, the descendant of a noble Polish family. Her father was a railway engineer. On her first audition at the Moscow school, Lepeshinskaya was rejected, but she applied again with more success. Her earliest performances came while she was still a student, making her stage debut at 10 as one of the little birds in The Daughter of the Snows, and playing the Sugar Plum Fairy in The Nutcracker when she was 15. The following year she graduated into the company and remained for 30 years as one of its prominent members.

Her first role was as Rosina in a ballet of The Barber of Seville, and then she played the lead in a fairytale ballet, The Three Fat Men, which brought her fame at the age of 18. By her own account, however, her first great success was the lead in Don Quixote, which was about the only one of the classics to suit her; snatches of film demonstrate how dazzlingly she performed its fast turns and light jumps. She declared that she enjoyed the role so much that she had to get a friend to stand behind her in the wings with arms around her waist to prevent her from rushing on stage too soon.

The other classic in which Lepeshinskaya enjoyed some success was Lise in Alexander Gorsky’s version of La Fille mal gardée, where again she was able to show the humour as well as the brilliance. For the most part, however, it was in newly created roles that Lepeshinskaya shone brightest. These included several ballets by the Bolshoi’s freshly appointed choreographer, Rostislav Zakharov, notably his Taras Bulba, based on Gogol’s story about a Cossack general who led the Ukrainians against Polish aggressors. There were also Zakharov’s version of Cinderella (in which, despite some disputes, the first night went to Lepeshinskaya rather than Ulanova) and The Bronze Horseman, based on a poem by Pushkin about a couple suffering under a flood around the statue of Peter the Great. Another of Lepeshinkaya’s noted roles was the virtuoso duet Moszkovski Waltz, which she danced with Pyotr Gusev, hurling herself right across the stage into his arms; this is another part preserved on film.

On a larger scale is her coquettish role in the ballet Mirandolina, and she also took the lead in performances of The Flames of Paris. During the Second World War she took part in the Bolshoi’s travelling company which performed before soldiers in the front line. In 1953 she broke her leg during the opening of The Red Poppy but managed to complete her part despite four fractures which were diagnosed later.

She was known to be Stalin’s favourite dancer, although it remains uncertain whether she was, as some suggest, his mistress. It must be noted that when he introduced the coveted annual Stalin Prize, Lepeshinskaya was awarded it three times. Her distinctions also included being made a People’s Artist of the USSR, and she was appointed to membership of the Supreme Soviet.

On retiring from the stage Lepeshinskaya became a teacher, notably for the Komische Oper in East Berlin. She also taught for a time in Munich, and in America at the Banff Centre summer school.

Lepeshinskaya’s first husband was Leonid Reichman, a lieutenant-general in the state security system under Lavrenti Beria. He was arrested in 1951 and she divorced him, saying that she would not have an enemy of the people as her husband; but later they remarried on his release; but when Beria was executed in 1953, Reichman was arrested again and Lepeshinskaya divorced him a second time. In 1956 Lepeshinskaya married another Soviet general, Alexei Antonov, but he died and the shock caused her temporarily to lose her sight.

Olga Lepeshinskaya, ballerina, was born on September 28, 1916. She died on December 20, 2008, aged 92