Maria Veniaminovna Yudina was an influential Soviet pianist. Yudina was born to a Jewish family in Nevel, Vitebsk Governorate, Russian Empire. She studied at the Petrograd Conservatory under Anna Yesipova and Leonid Vladimirovich Nikolayev. Yudina was one of the few Soviet artists who openly opposed the Communist regime, resulting in her being banned from teaching or performing on stage on several occasions. She can also be considered one of the great Christian thinkers of Russia in the twentieth century .Yudina has the distinction of being Joseph Stalin's favorite pianist.Among her friends were Boris Pasternak (who did the first reading of his novel Doctor Zhivago at Yudina's apartment as early as February 1947), Osip Mandelstam, Mikhail Bakhtin, Pierre Suvchinsky, Dmitri Shostakovich, Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen and many others.