Lyudmila Zykina was Russia’s greatest and most popular modern folk singer. A favourite performer in Soviet times, she retained her popularity in post-communist Russia to become a national institution.

She was born in Moscow in 1929 to Georgy Petrovich Zykin and his wife Ekaterina Vasilevna. Her father worked in a bread factory; her mother was an assistant nurse in a Moscow hospital. Her childhood was in a time of great hardship in Russia. The First World War, the ensuing revolution, civil war and starvation were all recent history, but Russians were enduring the desperate years of Stalin’s purges. The atmosphere in Moscow was particularly terrifying; disappearances were common but no one talked about them. When recalling her childhood in later life, these were not the aspects that Zykina would dwell on. Rather, she would focus on her own family’s experiences, recalling what a good relationship she had with her mother, who came from a large rural family, and how her mother forgave her father his wayward lifestyle.

It was among her family that Zykina’s talent for singing was first realised. Her maternal grandmother, Vasilisa, taught her traditional Russian popular songs, rhymes, riddles and laments. The family would often sing together, performing for their neighbours, at birthdays, weddings, or simply for the joy of it. For Zykina, singing was a natural part of family life.

She was 12 when, in 1941, Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union, drawing it into the Second World War. Like many Soviet children, she went to work: keeping watch on the rooftops, collecting stray munitions after bombing raids, and also as a lathe operator in a factory. Later she followed her mother into nursing, working as a nursing assistant in a military hospital just outside Moscow.

Perhaps it was the hardship she faced during these years that gave her voice the powerful certainty, the resilience in the face of torment, personal and national, for which she was to become known.

Folk song presented the Soviet aesthetic with a dilemma. As the authentic voice of the people, it was seen as something to be preserved and praised in the new Soviet order, but like every other aspect of popular and private life, the Bolshevik ideology required that folk song be re-formed in relation to what the party deemed correct, appropriate and wholesome. Where previous Russian autocrats had banned traditional peasant song and dance, these popular arts were now exalted and presented as symbolic of the country and its people.

Often the result was a cloying mix of propaganda and real folk traditions: performers were all rictus grins and joy in the face of struggle, but Zykina’s voice contained none of that Soviet schmaltz.

Although singing had always been an important part of her life, the young Zykina, like many Soviet girls, dreamt of being a fighter pilot — the Soviet air force was the first to let women fly in combat missions. But the war ended, and her career developed through a mixture of talent and luck.

On a spring day in 1947, she was going to see a film with her friends. They spotted an announcement inviting people to audition for a prominent Moscow choir. She went to the audition, and in the face of stiff competition — more than 1,000 people for a handful of places — she got through to the final, and won. The directors of the Pyatnitsky Russian State National Choir, Vladimir Zakharov and Petr Kazmin, were impressed by the originality of her approach, the depth and sorrow in her voice and her natural sense of performance.

It was at this point in her career that Stalin saw her perform. That fearsome ruler whose smallest utterance could make or break a man, said: “You’ll go far.” That prophecy was fulfilled.

When her mother died, in 1949, Zykina grieved so deeply that it was three years before she sang again. In 1951 she joined the National Radio Choir. There the training she had received at the Pyatnitsky Russian State National Choir was reinforced; she was encouraged to expand her repertoire, and to develop her talent as a solo singer. This was another characteristic of her approach to her art. She was always seeking to develop her talent, to expand her repertoire and to perfect her performance. Never content to sit back and bask in her success, she enjoyed working hard at her singing. This love for studying her art went hand in hand with her desire to give others the opportunity to find their own voice. Under her tutelage her choir, Rossiya, launched many fine young Russian talents. She was never egotistical, never afraid that a younger star might eclipse her place on the stage.

Although many of the songs for which she was famous were lyrical, rural laments, Zykina was a Muscovite through and through. She travelled the country and the world performing for audiences of the political elite, simple workers and ordinary folk, but Moscow was always her home, and Muscovites remained her most loyal audience.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union she refused to have her Moscow flat redecorated in the newly popular European style. And she insisted on driving only Russian-made cars.

She performed across Russia, from the Arctic north and Siberia to the Far East. She was warmly received in the US, Europe, India and China. Nehru, Pompidou, Charlie Chaplin, Marc Chagall, Nasser, Frank Sinatra, the Beatles, de Gaulle, Helmut Kohl and Boney M all enjoyed her concerts. One of her most recent performances was at the Oh Russia, My Fate concert in Kolomensk in 2004, and she sold more than six million records.

In later life she performed less but when she did, her voice still had the same melancholy beauty that it had in her early years. She devoted herself largely to charity galas in aid of war veterans, those who dealt with the aftermath of Chernobyl, people with Aids, orphans and monasteries.

She always said that her personal life had not been easy but that the torments of love were a great inspiration. Her first three marriages lasted only a few years. Her fourth marriage, to Viktor Gridin, an accordionist in her choir and 14 years her junior, was the most successful, lasting 17 years. When he left her for a young singer, she was philosophical, saying: “What can you do; they fell in love, she is beautiful, talented and 20 years younger.”

Zykina’s 80th birthday was marked with documentaries about her life on Russian TV, and she received official birthday greetings from the Government. She received many Soviet and post-Soviet awards recognising her unique contribution to Soviet and Russian cultural life, including the Lenin Prize and the Order of Lenin. An asteroid, 4879 Zykina, is named after her. In 2004 President Putin awarded her the prestigious Order of Andrei Pervozvanny. Just before her death she was preparing for a tour of 20 Russian cities.

Lyudmila Zykina, folk singer, was born on June 10, 1929. She died after a heart attack on July 1, 2009, aged 80